At a rally in Michigan, Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama picked up an endorsement from Al Gore, the former Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate. Gore said, "Looking back over the last eight years, I can tell you that we have already learned one important fact since the year 2000. Take it from me, elections matter. If you think the next appointments to the Supreme Court are important, you know that elections matter.” Gore......

Photograph of Democratic National Committee Rules and Bylaws committee co-chairs Jim Roosevelt, second from left, and Alexis Herman, second from right, by Susan Walsh; also at the tale are Joe Sandler, DNC General Counsel, left, and DNC staff member Phil McNamara. In a televised meeting that could be subtitled "Death by a Thousand Paper Cuts," the Democratic Party's Rules & Bylaws Committee is meeting today to discuss and hear testimony on the dilemma of......

With the South Dakota primary next week, Senator Hillary Clinton made a visit to Mount Rushmore. But her campaign was dealing with news that lawyers for the Democratic Party believe, according to party rules, that "Florida and Michigan [should] lose at least half their delegate strength," which damages Clinton's hopes of overtaking Senator Barack Obama. This weekend, the Democratic Party's rules committee will meet to discuss the fate of Florida and Michigan delegates. In order......

Hillary Clinton may have won more votes in Tuesday’s crucial primaries, but the victories barely made a dent in Barack Obama’s lead, narrowing the gap by only a few delegates. Unless scandal or some other meltdown severely damages Obama, Clinton’s chances of beating him on pledged delegates are extremely difficult. The strategy for Clinton now is, first and foremost, to stop a growing number of superdelegates from committing to Obama at the convention. Clinton's arguing,......

Photograph of Clinton, holding the hands of Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones and Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland and celebrating in Ohio, by Mark Duncan/AP Fresh off her big night of wins in Ohio and Texas, Hillary Clinton spoke on CBS's Early Show and mentioned the words "dream ticket" in relation to the heated Democratic presidential race. Harry Smith told Clinton, "We talked to a lot of people in Ohio who said there really isn't that......

Another Will Ferrell sports flick will inflate this weekend, capping off a nationwide “Funny or Die” promotional tour that brought him to Radio City Music Hall Sunday night. The movie is Semi-Pro, which stars Ferrell as Jackie Moon, owner of the 1976 Flint Michigan Tropics, a team in the maverick ABA basketball league. To keep his career alive against all odds, Moon initiates off a series of increasingly desperate publicity stunts to attract fans –......

No, he's not blushing from all the attention. Mao Mi is a Red Panda and the newest addition to Prospect Park Zoo in Brooklyn. He arrived last week from Michigan's Binder Park Zoo as part of a Wildlife Conservation Society breeding project. Red Pandas are an endangered species with fewer than 2,500 adults thought to remain in the wild in Bhutan, China, India, Laos, Nepal and Burma. Mao Mi will probably be mated with this......

Photograph of a Manhattan polling place by Daniella Zalcman on Flickr After the NY Times story revealed how NYC votes for Barack Obama appear to have been undercounted for the unofficial (yet official enough to be sent to the AP and other news outlets) results on primary night, State Senator Bill Perkins of Harlem spoke out. Perkins, who supports Obama, told the Post: "Every election has problems, but in this case, all the problems......

After Hillary Clinton's started airing a commercial in Wisconsin questioning why Barack Obama declined to appear in another debate, Obama came back with his own ad. The voiceover says:After eighteen debates, with two more coming, Hillary says Barack Obama is ducking debates? It's the same old politics, the phony charges, and false attacks. On health care, even Bill Clinton's own labor secretary [Robert Reich] even says Obama covers "more people" than Hillary and does......

Hillary Clinton's February flop continued today as voters in Virginia, Maryland and D.C. turned out for Barack Obama by nearly two-to-one margins (in D.C. he won by 75% to 24%). According to exit polls, Obama not only did well with young voters, blacks and independents but, surprisingly, with certain demographics Clinton's been counting on: senior citizens, women and blue collar voters. Polls suggest 49% of those who voted for Obama were white and voters over......

It's another Tuesday test of candidates' appeal as D.C., Maryland and Virginia have primaries today. Both the Republicans and Democrats have primaries those three states, but most attention is being focused on the battle between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, who are just about neck-and-neck in terms in delegate totals. Virginia is an open primary, which means independents can vote, which the Obama camp is excited about since he has done well with independents. At......

The specter of a Mormon multimillionaire as president has been lifted; Mitt Romney announced his withdrawal from the Republican primary race this afternoon. Romney used his speech to the Conservative Political Action Committee to declare: “If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win.” Wonkette liveblogged the speech to great......

Photo by Benzadrine. New York City faced some stiff competition in the Forbes Top 10 “Misery Measure”, but ultimately moped away with a respectable fourth place, losing only to such perennial dystopias as Detroit (#1, forever); Flint, Michigan (#3) and… Stockton, California, in the #2 slot? Apparently, the Bay Area satellite has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country and a swelling population. To compile the list, Forbes compared 150 of America’s largest......

Photograph of Giuliani, with wife Judi next to him, speaking to supporters in Florida by John Raoux/AP After early results put John McCain and Mitt Romney in a "too close to call" race, McCain won the Florida primary. Rudy Giuliani, who once led national polls, looks like he'll finish in third place (though Mike Huckabee is a close fourth as of 10PM), which is actually his best finish after the primaries and caucuses in......

LECTURE SERIES: The Nation forges on with their series of Tuesday evening lectures tonight. Nation columnist and Columbia Law professor Patricia J. Williams will be on hand to discuss her montly "Diary of a Mad Law Professor" column. Expect to examine the law in whole new light. 6pm // Library of the General Society [20 W 44th St] // $15 MUSIC: Peasant, who played our Gothamist House during CMJ, is back in New York and......

People have been wondering about former mayor Rudy Giuliani's campaign for a long time (his presidential campaign plan notebook went missing last January! he pays more attention to his friends' advice versus that of election consultants). Now, with the Florida primary on the horizon, it seems his New York-based supporters are starting to worry. The first few weeks of the new year have brought Giuliani embarrassing finishes in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Michigan as......

Photograph of Obama, Clinton and Edwards at the Nevada debate by Charles Rex Arbogast/AP Yesterday the three top Democratic contenders for the presidential nominations debated in Nevada. The debate wasn't as testy as previous ones, in part because Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were trying to maintain an aura of good will and love for the Democratic party - and not bicker over race or gender. Which meant that Clinton, Obama and John Edwards were......

Were you rudely awakened by a clap of thunder early this morning? We heard one at 2:49 a.m. and again around six and seven. Gothamist is going to be a grumpy worker bee today! Yes, we were treated to a rare January thunderstorm last night. Showers and possibly another thundershower or two will continue until the early afternoon. A storm currently over Michigan is going to drag a warm front and then a cold front......

Hillary Clinton proved the polls and pundits wrong with her New Hampshire primary win last night and dominated the front pages for a second day in a row. Clinton and John McCain, who won the Republican primary, are being called comeback...adults as New Hampshire polling centers had record turn outs. WNBC's Gabe Pressman writes that their wins are a defeat for pollsters and journalists who had written them off. Clinton chalked up at least......

The medical examiner's office said the autopsy of top long distance runner Ryan Shay is inconclusive. Shay collapsed during the U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials on Saturday in Central Park and died shortly after. The ME's office said, "We want to take a closer look at the heart tissue," and will probably come to a conclusion in a week. His father had revealed his son was diagnosed with an enlarged heart at age 14, and Joe......

We may be in for a bit of a wild weather ride later today. The same low pressure system that spawned 29 tornadoes from the panhandle of Florida to northern Michigan yesterday will be our big weather maker today. The Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center has the metropolitan area in a slight risk of severe weather this afternoon and evening. For us the severe weather is likely to be thunderstorms with gusty winds and......

Gov. Spitzer announced yesterday that illegal immigrants will be able to get valid New York State drivers licenses if they provide a valid and verifiable foreign passport. Spitzer hopes that the change, which reverses a four-year-old Pataki-era decision, will legitimize the 500,000-1 million undocumented immigrants who are driving in New York. In a repudiation of the federal government's stance, the governor said "We will not become part of what is propagated on the federal level......

THEATER: The fall theater season gets curiouser and curiouser with the start of The Alice in Wonderland Puppet Festival at HERE. (The festival, which is not recommended for children under twelve, will feature a tea party after every show.) Tonight curiouser & curiouser fuses text from Alice in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll’s diary entries and his muse Alice Liddell’s memoirs to try to decipher what destroyed their unique friendship. - John Del......

MUSIC: Scottish indie sensations Camera Obscura bring their pop and their rock to the Seaport tonight. They're joined by The Last Town Chorus. After that, there's only one more show down there this season! Friday // 7pm // South Street Seaport, Pier 17 // Free MOVIE: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is playing tonight, and you've got a golden ticket! Stock up on sweets and enjoy the 1971 classic down by the river. Friday......

While SFist cringed at the fatal dose of crime littering the Bay Area, it found solace in Hillary Clinton's San Francisco campaign headquarters opening, which featured loads of exposed mammary glands. In other news, SF Taxi Commission ruled that Satan's cab must keep its (in)famous medallion number, 666; and in an un-fashion-forward frenzy, San Francisco Fashion Week (chortle) bars bloggers from covering and getting smashed at their shows and parties, respectively. Also, they found a......

Jenni Ferrari-Adler has held many jobs—egg-seller, literary agency assistant, reader for The Paris Review—but her latest accomplishment is as the editor of a mouth-watering anthology of essays entitled Alone in the Kitchen With an Eggplant. Born out of a summer spent subsisting largely on cereal and water while finishing up her MFA in fiction at the University of Michigan, Ferrari-Adler wanted to explore what comfort food, solo food, meant to her favorite writers. Collected here......

Bright Eyes Shows Off His Friends Okay Conor, we get it: you have cool friends. This week, during the Bright Eyes 7-night run at Town Hall, the band promised a special guest each night. So far he's brought out the likes of Lou Reed, Steve Earle, Jenny Lewis, Norah Jones and Ben Kweller. Each played a few songs of their own mid set before joining in jamming with the rest of the group. On the......

How do you get Boston Red Sox fans in a tizzy? Well, being a Yankee fan seems to do the trick. We have to wonder how those in Beantown feel about New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady wearing a Yankees hat. That's what Brady was caught doing yesterday in the West Village with his girlfriend, Gisele Bundchen. If we were Red Sox fans, we wouldn't get our panties in a bunch just yet. Think logically......

The Jets and the Giants took very different approaches to the draft on Saturday, but when the day was over, both had primarily upgraded their defenses. Five of the six selections made by the locals were defensive players and both teams hope they addressed some key needs. The Jets had a clear idea of what players they wanted and went after them, trading up in both rounds. In the first round, New York traded......

The rain may be keeping people in, but by the looks of theNY Times Weddings announcements, many local weddings were yesterday. otal Number of Weddings: 32 (including Vows column) Total Number of Same-Sex Weddings: 0 Youngest Bride: 25 Oldest Bride: 54 Youngest Groom: 22 Oldest Groom: 54 Biggest Age Difference: 14 years Number of Couples Where Bride and Groom Are the Same Age: 3 (two couples are all 25, one is 29 ) Number of......