WORTH REPEATING: Cruel To Be Kind?

LOUISVILLE COURIER-JOURNAL: Editorial cartoons are designed to make sharp, immediate points, and they depend on caricature and exaggeration to make those points in weighing in on the news of the day. And make no mistake: The Democratic race is not only among the top stories of the day, it’s a story for the ages as the two front-runners vault over old barriers of gender and race in their history-making quests for the White House. If you’re an editorial cartoonist, are there any special guidelines or sensitivities when it comes to drawing Clinton and Obama? How do you use exaggeration and caricature with these candidates, who are shattering gender and race ceilings, without falling into sexist or racist traps? Framing several questions with the reader and editor concerns I outlined above, I contacted nine editorial cartoonists whose work is widely syndicated in print (including in the C-J) and online. MORE

RELATED: Aides to the former first lady concede she is in the midst of a difficult period in which she could lose 10 straight contests. She is hoping to rebound on March 4, in primaries in Ohio and Texas, states where both candidates have already begun television advertising.In fact, while still in Virginia on Tuesday, Clinton did satellite interviews with 10 TV stations in Ohio, Texas and Wisconsin, calling for more debates and addressing regional concerns such as the economy in Ohio and immigration in Texas.

MEDIA MATTERS: Citing a “Zogby poll that showed a big Obama lead in California,” Robert D. Novak asserted that Sen. Barack Obama‘s defeat in the California presidential primary “raises the specter of the dreaded ‘Bradley effect.’ ” But in explaining why his poll showing Obama leading in California by 13 points did not match the actual results, John Zogby wrote: “It appears that we underestimated Hispanic turnout and overestimated the importance of younger Hispanic voters. We also overestimated turnout among African-American voters.” MORE

CNN: Six days after Super Tuesday, when millions of voters cast ballots in 24 states and America Samoa, the winner remains in doubt in the Democratic presidential caucus in New Mexico. Volunteers with the Democratic Party of New Mexico have been working 16 hours a day — in shifts — to try to figure out whether Democrats there preferred Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York or Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, the state party said Sunday. The national media spotlight has moved on to primaries and caucuses in other states, including contests Tuesday in Maryland, Virginia and Washington D.C. Yet 227 volunteers with the Democratic Party of New Mexico are still slogging through provisional ballots — votes cast by people whose names did not appear on lists of eligible voters.

Election rules let people cast provisional ballots that will be counted as long as officials verify that the person is eligible to vote. As it stands now in New Mexico, Clinton leads Obama by 1,066 votes out of about 154,000 cast, according to the state Democratic Party. That total does not include 17,276 provisional ballots. The party faithful have been going through those provisional ballots — under the watchful eye of Clinton and Obama representatives — to determine how many are valid. The party has so far determined that 2,778 provisional ballots should be counted as votes for one candidate or the other, it said Sunday. Once party volunteers finish verifying or rejecting provisional ballots — a process called “qualifying” — then they will actually tabulate results. MORE

TIME CAPSULE: NEW MEXICO COMMUNE 1969

[Photo by ROBERT ALTMAN]