NEW YORK TIMES: 1:11 p.m. — As the crowd at the Meadowlands awaited Mr. Obama’s arrival, Mr. De Niro made a surprise appearance and received a thunderous welcome. Mr. De Niro said he’d never
before made a political speech, and the actor made a special appeal to the young people and first-time voters, saying that Mr. Obama gave them someone to gather behind. “You wanted to vote, you just didn’t have anyone to vote for,” he said. ” Well you know what? I felt the same way. Until now.” Mr. De Niro introduced Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts; his niece Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of President John F. Kennedy; and Mr. Obama, who were greeted with raucous applause by the crowd, which had grown to about 3,000 by the time the candidate began his speech. MORE
BOSTON GLOBE: “Some of you know I now have Secret Service protection,” Obama said. “Those guys never smile; they are always cool. But I noticed when De Niro walks in, they’re all like elbowing each other – ‘Hey!’ They were excited. Who wouldn’t be excited?” MORE
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RELATED: SAN FRANCISCO—Even The Dead are endorsing Barack Obama. Three remaining members of the Grateful Dead—Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Phil Lesh—reunited Monday for 
a get out the vote concert to support Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential bid. The concert, billed as Deadheads for Obama, would be the first time the band performed together since they held a reunion tour in 2004. The band dropped “Grateful” from its name to honor the memory of its lead singer, Jerry Garcia, who died in 1995, and also has called itself The Other Ones. The band, calling the last-minute show a one-time-only event, said they came together the night before the Super Tuesday primaries because the Obama campaign asked them to hold a get-out-the-vote rally. “I think this is the first time for us,” Lesh said, when asked what other political candidates the legendary band has so publicly supported. Lesh’s 18-year-old son is a volunteer on Obama’s campaign. Obama taped a short introduction for the concert that the band planned to play before the show. MORE
MATT BAI: Win or lose, Obama represents the next generational incursion. He is, by definition, a late boomer, having made the cutoff by about three years, but temperamentally he belongs to what the writer Douglas Coupland branded Generation X, the first wave of Americans to come of age politically after Watergate. He was 6 when Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy were assassinated; 14 when “Saturday Night Live” first came on the air; 19 when Ronald Reagan was elected president. For those of us Obama’s age and younger, the formative events of the 1960s, the enmities and shared experiences that defined the next 40 years of American politics, are as much a part of history as the Treaty of Versailles; we weren’t shaped by this constant sense of political Armageddon. Obama’s emergence as a serious contender for the nomination has been framed, in historic terms, as a racial marker, but it also signals the beginning of the end of what history may record as a fruitless political era. MORE
NY DAILY NEWS: In a surprise announcement on this morning’s Rick Dees show, Oscar-winning actor Jack Nicholson endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. “I wanted to, as a performer, see how Sen Clinton dealt with the glee that they (her opponents) exhibited in their desire to bury her candidacy,” said Nicholson. “I must tell you: when I saw her sit down, and she said she ‘found her voice in New Hampshire’, that was it for me. She handled that next debate as the masterful person that she is. She’s the one to get the job done that needs to be done.” MORE
NEW YORK POST: It was another two-hanky day on the campaign trail today, as Hillary Clinton teared up at
an event targeting women voters on the eve of the Super Tuesday elections. After getting a warm introduction from an old friend, Clinton’s eyes welled up and glistened under TV camera lights, she paused and gathered her composure. She didn’t choke up — as she did at a similar event on the eve of the New Hampshire primary — in a widely publicized moment that Clinton herself now says may have helped her snag a critical victory last month by making her appear human and vulnerable. But there were enough similarities between the two near-crying jags that some skeptics wondered whether the whole thing was contrived. “Whenever Obama picks up steam, she seems to open up the waterworks,” said one Democratic operative. MORE
WASHINGTON POST: It’s hard to dispute that the fundraising story from January was Democrat Barack Obama‘s announcement last week that he had raised $32 million for the month — a number that dwarfs any monthly total he or his rivals posted during the course of last year. But the impressiveness of that number remained unclear because Obama’s chief rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton, had not disclosed the amount she raised during a period where she and Obama repeatedly traded bursts of momentum. Now, that mystery appears to be solved — Clinton’s campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe told NBC’s Tim Russert this evening that her campaign raised “about 13 million, $13.5 million” last month. MORE
USA TODAY: President Bush’s proposed $3.1 trillion budget may be dead on arrival in Congress, but the impact of
that political deadlock will make life difficult for the man or woman who succeeds him. The next president will inherit a deficit of about $400 billion, and maybe more. Unless the economy rebounds and revenue pours in, deficits will push the cumulative federal debt past $12 trillion in the next five years. He or she will need to spend far more in Iraq and Afghanistan than Bush proposed, because he included only $70 billion — designed to last until Jan. 20, when he leaves office. White House budget director Jim Nussle said Monday that even the cost of drawing down forces is “surprisingly high.” MORE