Obama way up in NC

The Wright controversy may hurt Obama in Pennsylvania, as everyone seems to suggest, but there isn't evidence it's hurting him much beyond the Keystone state. A new poll out of North Carolina shows Obama up 21 points over Clinton. North Carolina is the next major primary after Pennsylvania and it has 134 delegates. A new Rasmussen poll out of Pennsylvania has Clinton up 10.

She went there

Until today, it seemed that the Clinton strategy was to not get involved in the Jeremiah Wright issue. The campaign was tight-lipped, letting the issue play out for itself. But as the fiery sermons fade from the newscasts, Clinton has brought them right back to the forefront. In an interview with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Clinton said, "You don't choose your family, but you choose what church you want to attend."

4,000

Over at HuffingtonPost, Nico Pitney put together this mosaic of the faces of 4,000 dead soldiers (there are a few duplicates because there is not always a picture released by the Pentagon.) You can see a bigger image here.

"The surge is working"

MSNBC:

Four U.S. soldiers were killed by a bomb blast in southern Baghdad late Sunday, raising the death toll for American forces since start of the war to 4,000, according to the Pentagon.

The grim milestone was reached less than a week after the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion to topple former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and coincided with a spate of violence across Iraq on Sunday that left at least 61 people dead.

The attacks included rockets and mortars fired at Baghdad's U.S.-protected Green Zone and a suicide car bomb detonated at an Iraqi army post in the northern city of Mosul.