A few more “bad nights” like Super Tuesday and Mitt Romney will be the Republican presidential nominee. With his haul from yesterday, according to AP, Romney now has 415 delegates, Rick Santorum 176, Newt Gingrich 105, and Ron Paul 47 out of the 1,144 needed for the GOP nomination.

To be the frontrunner, you need to kill the frontrunner. And like a poor marksman—or at least an underfunded one—Santorum keeps missing the target. First Michigan, now Ohio. Online betting market Intrade gives Romney a 90% chance of being the GOP nominee. Of course, no one has a mathematical lock on the nomination yet. The fight will continue.

The common pundit wisdom is that the combative primary season is hurting the GOP’s chances of beating President Obama in the fall. But as a believer in the Feiler Faster Thesis, I think all the current unpleasantness will seem like distant history by September. Unless the economy surges—though just the opposite may be more likely if gas and Greece don’t cooperate—we’re looking at a very close race.

Yesterday, I examined three forecasting models. Yahoo!’s model has Obama at 303 electoral votes with key swing states pretty much a dead heat. Yale’s Fair Model has Obama at 49% of the popular vote, the Hibbs Bread and Peace model at 48%. Like I said, it’s going to be this close.

The counter argument: GOPers feel about Romney like Democrats did about John Kerry in 2004. Meh. And just as intense Democratic dislike of George W. Bush wasn’t enough to make Kerry president, intense Republican repugnance toward Obama won’t be enough to get Romney first past the finish line. The GOP is just too divided.

Read More at The American By James Pethokoukis, The American

The U.S. government has the right to order the killing of American citizens overseas if they are senior al-Qaeda leaders who pose an imminent terrorist threat and cannot reasonably be captured, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said Monday.

“Any decision to use lethal force against a United States citizen — even one intent on murdering Americans and who has become an operational leader of al-Qaeda in a foreign land — is among the gravest that government leaders can face,” Holder said in a speech at Northwestern University’s law school in Chicago. “The American people can be — and deserve to be — assured that actions taken in their defense are consistent with their values and their laws.”

Holder’s discussion of lethal force against U.S. citizens did not mention any individual by name, but his address was clearly animated by the targeting of Anwar al-Awlaki, a senior figure in al-Qaeda’s Yemeni affiliate. Awlaki, who was born in New Mexico, was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Yemen in September.

Since that operation, the Obama administration has faced calls to explain the legal framework behind its decision to target Awlaki and to release at least portions of a classified memorandum by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel that contains its evidence, reasoning and conclusions.

Holder’s speech represented the administration’s most elaborate public explanation to date for targeted killings. And it followed a prolonged internal debate about how to inform the public about one of the most extraordinary decisions a government can take without explicitly acknowledging the ongoing classified drone program.

Read More at The Washington Post By Peter Finn and Sari Horwitz, The Washington Post

MSNBC anchor Chris Matthews on Thursday connected Don Imus’s firing in the wake of the “nappy-headed hos” remark to Rush Limbaugh, hinting that the conservative commentator could face similar problems for referring to “sluts” who “must be paid to have sex.” (MSNBC, of course, is no stranger to contorversial comments. One anchor on the network recently compared Rick Santorum to mass murderer Joseph Stalin.)

Matthews played a clip of Limbaugh’s comments, made after college student Sandra Fluke testified before Congress on the issue of birth control.

The anchor linked the two radio hosts: “You know, this cost Don Imus a lot of career, you know? A lot of career, this kind of talk. Calling people sluts, whores. This kind of stuff.” [MP3 audio here.]

Matthews brought on Democratic strategist Steve McMahon to trash the host. McMahon derided Limbaugh as sounding “like a vile, disgusting pervert who had come completely unglued on the radio.”

Former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele piled on: “And I think in this instance, I think a lot of people have a problem with [the comments]… And I think in this particular case, that line has been crossed.”

Read More at Media Research Center By Scott Whitlock, Media Research Center

Once again, we have Newt Gingrich show why we need this year’s primary season to continue into the Republican Convention. While some of the others are trying to jump into Newt’s shoes, and go after the media for their lies and twisting of the facts we all know, Newt not only points out the medias misrepresentations, he also demolishes the policies of this failed, (from an American’s point of view), president.

Newt realizes who the real target is. He, from the inside of the electoral process, and Sarah Palin from the outside, is more interested in bringing down Obama than playing gotcha games.

The MSM loves to point out how the Republican field is taking a beating in the polls because of the divisive debates and attacks amongst the candidates.

No one points out that had they followed the lead Newt Gingrich tried to set, and stayed away from attacking each other, this division would not have occurred.

Can you imagine if instead of following the smear machine tactics of Mitt Romney, the candidates had instead turned each and every question from the media against the real target, Obama?

 Read More at Coach Is Right By Kevin “Coach” Collins, Coach Is Right