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Buh Bye Tucker! MSNBC Cancels Carlson’s Show [C+L] Insiders tell TVNewser Tucker Carlson’s 6pmET show Tucker is getting the axe, but Carlson stays on as a political contributor to all MSNBC shows at least through the 2008 election. The official announcement, expected tomorrow, will include details about who will replace Tucker at 6pmET as well as other political programming additions. Sources say the network is going to beef up its schedule with more NBC News talent.

The ‘Don’t Protect America’ Democrats [Weekly Standard] It’s been three weeks since Democrats in Congress allowed the Protect America Act of 2007 to expire. Three weeks in which House Democrats have allowed marginal special interest groups veto power over national security legislation. And no one in the House Democratic leadership seems particularly bothered by it. Without a new law, intelligence professionals have to establish “probable cause” that the target of surveillance is a terrorist to the satisfaction of a judge on the court created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) before they can intercept the suspect’s communications. This is an onerous and unprecedented burden on the intelligence community. FISA court orders were never meant to apply to foreign intelligence missions overseas. The last time U.S. spooks had to rely on FISA court approval to gather intelligence overseas—in the first half of 2007—the backlog of warrant applications quickly grew so thick that America’s ability to hear what her enemies were saying was degraded by “70 percent,” according to the director of national intelligence, Vice Admiral Mike McConnell.

Influential Democrats Waiting to Choose Sides [WaPo] Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s trio of victories over Sen. Barack Obama last week appears to have convinced a sizable number of uncommitted Democratic superdelegates to wait until the end of the primaries and caucuses before picking a candidate, according to a survey by The Washington Post. Many of the 80 uncommitted superdelegates who were contacted over the past several days said they are reluctant to override the clear will of voters. But if Clinton (N.Y.) and Obama (Ill.) are still seen as relatively close in the pledged, or elected, delegate count in June, many said, they will feel free to decide for themselves which of the candidates would make a stronger nominee to run against Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the fall. “You’re going to see a lot of delegates remaining uncommitted,” said Rep. Mike Doyle (Pa.), who has not endorsed either candidate. “There’s a sense that this is going to Denver not resolved.” Obama’s victory in yesterday’s Wyoming caucuses gave him an additional seven delegates, bringing his total to 1,578. Clinton won five delegates, bringing her total to 1,468, according to the Associated Press. Obama had 61 percent of the votes to Clinton’s 38 percent. Hillary Clinton Sets Her

Sights on Three Ways to Win [Times London] Fresh from her victories in three out of four states last week and surging back in the national polls, Hillary Clinton has crafted a new strategy for winning the Democratic nomination which she believes will legitimise her claim to be president. Clinton thinks she can win a majority of the popular vote in primaries and caucuses, even if she cannot overtake Barack Obama, her rival, in the number of “pledged” delegates who will vote to choose the candidate at the Democratic national convention in August. The New York senator has unnerved Obama, who has been left reeling by a series of errors from senior policy advisers. The two opponents face an ugly six-week battle in the run-up to a potentially pivotal primary in Pennsylvania next month.

Hillary and the Invisible Woman [Newsweek] Hillary Clinton’s run-up to the Texas and Ohio primaries was the political equivalent of Hell Week for a Navy SEAL. At least it felt that way for the reporters who’d been participating in this killing Democratic marathon since the Iowa caucuses in January and now, dosed up on Airborne and bad coffee, were covering what was being billed as Hillary’s last stand. As a campaign virgin who joined the press bus on Saturday morning in Ft. Worth, Texas, I was staggered by how isolated accompanying reporters actually are most of the time. It’s like being trapped in a moving bathysphere. You can’t buy newspapers or watch TV in real time. Occasionally, as you fall into your seat on a plane hop from Dallas to Columbus, Ohio, wanly clutching a boxed panini, you catch a glimpse of a familiar large, frosted head in the first-class section that’s rumored to belong to the candidate. She doesn’t come back much to visit the press, except for the odd bright-eyed moment of managed conviviality. One senses a moment of trepidation on the flight from Cleveland to Toledo: “I intend to do as well as I can on Tuesday and we will see what happens after that.”

Clintons Push a Hillary/Obama Ticket [Reuters] Hillary and Bill Clinton are again teaming up on Barack Obama — this time saying the first-term U.S. lawmaker, whom they have derided as inexperienced, would be a strong running mate on a Democratic presidential ticket headed by the former first lady. In talking up a joint ticket, the Clintons may be seeking the upper hand, attempting to put her in consideration for the top of the ticket when she so far has failed to win the votes necessary to assure that she would face Republican presidential candidate John McCain in the November election. The maneuver may also be aimed at countering an image in voters’ minds of Obama as presidential material and at helping restore an aura of inevitability as the party’s nominee that Clinton had early in the campaign but lost.

Mehlman, Rove Boost McCain [Politico] John McCain is getting much more than President Bush’s endorsement and fundraising help for his campaign. He’s getting Bush’s staff. It’s no secret that Steve Schmidt, Bush’s attack dog in the 2004 election, and Mark McKinnon, the president’s media strategist, are performing similar functions for McCain now. But other big-name Bushies are lining up to boost McCain, too. Ken Mehlman, who ran Bush’s 2004 campaign, is now serving as an unpaid, outside adviser to the Arizona Republican. Karl Rove, the president’s top political hand since his Texas days, recently gave money to McCain and soon after had a private conversation with the senator. A top McCain adviser said both Mehlman and Rove are now informally advising the campaign. Rove refused to detail his conversation with McCain.