However the candidates do today in Michigan and Washington, I think it’s clear who the biggest loser is…

UNITE President Bruce Raynor:

UNITE has a long and proud history with John Edwards. We were the first national union to endorse him when he ran for Senate, and we are now the first national union to support him in his campaign for President.

From the mill villages across the U.S., to the working class neighborhoods in our urban centers, in every corner of this country, his story of two Americas rings true. Like our members, John Edwards wants see the dignity of work restored and the great opportunities of America shared by all its people.

Katha Pollitt:

The ongoing public inquest into Dr. Judith Steinberg makes me see, however, that we need First Ladies: Without them, American women might actually believe that they are liberated, that modern marriage is an equal partnership, that the work they are trained for and paid to do is important whether or not they are married, and that it is socially acceptable for adult women in the year 2004 to possess distinct personalities–even quirks! Without First Ladies, a woman might imagine that whether she keeps or changes her name is a private, personal choice, the way the young post-post-feminists always insist it is when they write those annoying articles explaining why they are now calling themselves Mrs. My Husband…

I have no idea why Judith Steinberg hasn’t slogged through the snow for her husband. Maybe she’s nervous in public. Maybe she’s busy. (“It’s not something I can say, ‘Oh, you take over for a month,'” she explained to Diane Sawyer. Imagine that, Tina, Diane, Maureen–a job where if you don’t show up, it matters!)

Nathan Newman refutes Bill Frist’s self-interested claim that universal healthcare is unachievable in America, and slams George Bush’s use of 9-11 bailout money to demand concessions from workers.

Interesting choice of words:

Meanwhile, retired Gen. Wesley Clark — trying to sustain what his campaign dubbed “Oklaho-mentum” after his breakthrough there earlier in the week — kept up his attacks on both Kerry and Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina.

My guess is that “Oklaho-mentum” ranks somewhere between “Joe-mentum” and whatever level of -mentum it takes to be noticably moving forward…

The Times:

At moments, Mr. Bush and his national security team ? badgered for explanations about whether the country would have gone to war if it knew then what it knows now ? have sounded as if these days, it is every warrior for himself. Rather than uniform and disciplined, their answers have been ad hoc and inconsistent. And the result is that the president appears very much on the defensive just at a moment when his aides thought he would be reaping the political benefits of ridding the world of Saddam Hussein.

“It’s been a bit of a cacophony,” one national security official at the White House acknowledged Friday. “Maybe the naming of the commission will smooth it out.”

More progress towards protecting the rights of “enemy combatants”:

Under the new rules, attorneys for the defendants who will be tried before the special military courts at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, will be notified when their conversations with clients are electronically monitored by military officials, a Pentagon source said. The old rules had not clarified whether the defense lawyers would be informed about such eavesdropping.

The government’s ability to listen in on attorney-client talks was one of many provisions of the tribunal rules denounced by human rights groups, some foreign officials and legal organizations such as the American Bar Association.

Still a long, long way to go…

The YDN Editorial Board gets something right:

Daycare in general means that women and single parents can have careers, and that children can be raised in two-income families. In this way, providing daycare means more than making a valuable service available to employees. It is an investment — not only in Yale’s staff and their families, but in the future of the city.

ABC News’ The Note suggests some questions for Bush on Sunday:

— “When did you realize that your Administration’s cost estimates for the Medicare prescription drug law were wildly underestimated, and how did you react to that news?”

— “A strong majority of Americans believe the federal deficit is a ‘very serious’ or ‘somewhat serious’ problem. And members of your own party are increasingly angry about your budget spending proposals and the historic deficits your Administration is posting. Economists say that your often-repeated claim to cut the deficit in half is, in fact, impossible. How do you answer those critics?”

From CNN:

Dean told reporters in a conference call Thursday that his campaign is focusing on the Badger State because of his “strong connections to Wisconsin’s progressive politics.” He said his goal is to be one of the two candidates left standing after February 17, the date of the Wisconsin primary…”We’re going to do what we said in the e-mail. We’re going to win here,” Dean said at a news conference in Milwaukee.

But a poll conducted by the University of Wisconsin Survey Center showed Dean has a lot of ground to cover if he plans on winning there. The Badger Poll, released Thursday, showed Kerry with 35 percent of the vote and retired Gen. Wesley Clark in a distant second with 11 percent. Edwards was next with 9 percent, while Dean and Sen. Joe Lieberman were tied for fourth with 8 percent. Lieberman dropped out of the race after a poor showing in Tuesday’s seven state contests.