As to moral courage, I have rarely met with two o'clock in the morning courage; I mean instantaneous courage.

Obama almost always cleans up at caucuses, so Hillary's team is attempting to find a way to argue that the popular vote is all that matters.  As Glenn Smith writes, Hillary's team hopes,

... that if they win the popular vote, they can avoid, at least for one news cycle,  news reports that even if they do so they will very likely lose the delegate fight in Texas and fall further behind Obama in the national delegate contest.

This is not speculation. This has been the subject under discussion. While I have not been part of that discussion,  plenty of sources last night and this morning confirmed this as the core of the dispute.

It is widely assumed that Obama's organizational advantage will achieve in the caucus portion of the Texas election just what it has achieved in earlier caucuses: a significant victory in delegates. There are 67 delegates at stake in those caucuses. The Clinton campaign would like to delay the reporting of the caucus results, and that is why they have continually "reserved the right to challenge" Texas law and Democratic party procedures.

If Hillary wins Ohio -- and the popular vote in Texas, that might be enough to keep her in the race -- even if she techically loses Texas (due to the caucus).  She could then argue to Super Delegates that she -- having won the popular vote in both Ohio and Texas -- is the candidate with momentum.  It's a stretch, but this is clearly her plan ...

British officials had hoped to keep Prince Harry's deployment secret until he had safely returned, but they released video of him serving in Helmand province after the leak. The Australian women's magazine New Idea reported on Harry's deployment in January. The news appeared Wednesday in the U.S. Web site the Drudge Report, and media around the world subsequently reported it

"They said that they would have huge gains on March 4," Plouffe said. "They’re going to fail and fail miserably. "

The Philadelphia City Council has voted to evict the Boy Scouts of America from the headquarters building they’ve occupied for 80 years, punishing them for not allowing openly gay scouts or scout masters. Even though Scouting’s Cradle of Liberty Council has invested millions in constructing, restoring and maintaining their historic building, it’s located on city land and politicians want to enforce their “non-discrimination” policy by terminating a time-honored relationship.  

Scouting currently serves 56,000 Philadelphia youngsters—many of them inner city kids with no fathers. Rather than destroying a cherished program because it doesn’t meet their standards, why don’t gay rights activists start a new program that does?  

If they launched their own scouting program—call it “Rainbow Scouts”—they could serve even more kids, including some who feel excluded by the Boy Scouts. By choosing to wreck an existing organization, rather than building a constructive alternative, the left exposes its underlying intolerance and negativity.

These excerpts from a Haaretz article on the looming battle for Gaza underscore the imminence of a huge clash between the IDF and Hamas, a major moment in the global war between jihadists and their enemies, but the situation doesn't seem to be receiving much attention in the U.S.:

Defense Minster Ehud Barak on Friday blamed Hamas for the escalating violence in the south, and said the Islamic movement would bear the consequences of it.

"Hamas is directly responsible for the current situation and will be the one to bear the cost of our response", Barak said during a visit to Ashkelon, adding that "an Israeli response is necessary and will be carried out."...

Also Friday, the chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee said the IDF must reoccupy part of the Gaza Strip for an unlimited time and overthrow the Hamas government.

"The State of Israel must make a strategic decision to order the IDF to prepare quickly to topple the Hamas terror regime and take over all the areas from which rockets are fired on Israel," MK Tzachi Hanegbi (Kadima) told Israel Radio. He said the IDF should prepare to remain in those areas for years.

MK Gideon Sa'ar (Likud) said his party would back an invasion of Gaza, though he fell short of advocating reoccupation.

"There is no doubt that the security response needs to include a ground component," said Sa'ar. He said the "takeover of territory in the northern Strip" from which the Palestinians launch rockets at Israel would reduce the barrages from Gaza.

Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai went as far as threatening a "shoah,"
the Hebrew word for holocaust or disaster. The word is generally used to refer to the Nazi Holocaust, but a spokesman for Vilnai said the deputy defense minister used the word in the sense of "disaster," saying "he did not mean to make any allusion to the genocide."

"The more Qassam fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, [the Palestinians] will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves," Vilnai told Army Radio on Friday.

The suddenness of the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah stunned most Americans, but the start of this next battle is being telegraphed.  American media might want to ask Senators Clinton and Obama about Israel's right to defend itself as the rocket attacks from the south escalate, and might also get about the business of informing the American public as to the aggressions against Israel being launched from Gaza.

Inevitably Israel gets hammered in the international media when it comes to blows with the Hamas jihadists, but the situation is simply as untenable as it would be for the U.S. if rockets were raining down on San Diego from Tijuana. 

How many Americans also know that yesterday PLA President Mahmoud Abbas asserted that al Qaeda was in Gaza working with Hamas:

“Al-Qaeda is present in Gaza and I’m convinced that they [Hamas] are their allies,” said Mr Abbas in an interview with al-Hayat, a London-based Arabic newspaper. “I can say without doubt that al-Qaeda is present in the Palestinian territories and that this presence, especially in Gaza, is facilitated by Hamas.”

(HT: Commentary's Abe Greenwald.)

I can understand why Democrats don't want to talk about the war against the jihadists, but MSM really does owe the American public comprehensive coverage of the war unfiltered by the political campaign underway.  It seems incredible that the Middle East is on the brink of a huge explosion, and there isn't even a story on the Washington Post's front page.