An Indiana woman plead guilty to forgery and fraud in a successful attempt to get Barack Obama on the presidential primary ballot in 2008, WISH-TV reports.

“At the center of this story is Butch Morgan, a longtime Democratic Party leader who lost his post as St. Joseph County chair when the scandal broke. Morgan is accused of telling three people to forge names on a ballot petition including Bev Shelton who pleaded guilty to forgery and fraud. She has agreed to testify against the others.”

Cate Edwards, the eldest daughter of John and Elizabeth Edwards, spoke to NBC News about the extramarital affair that tore apart her family and destroyer her father’s political ambitions.

Said Edwards: “He told me. I guess he and my mom decided that that was, you know, how it needed to be done. So yeah, I was devastated. And I was disappointed. I mean, these are my parents. I had grown up with a lot of love in my family. And it was hard to see them go through this.”

The full interview will air on Friday.

Josh Green reports that a team of top Obama donors decided to surprise Hillary Clinton — “and thank her for her loyal service” — by raising enough money to pay off her 2008 campaign bills.

“The challenge was tougher than it may appear, since it required a particular kind of donor. In order not to run afoul of campaign finance laws, the Obama team had to find people who had not already given Clinton the 2008 maximum primary donation of $2,300 or maxed out their total federal candidate donations during the 2012 cycle ($46,200). And of course, those people also had to be warmly disposed toward Clinton and still have plenty of free cash on hand.”

“In the end, it took the checkbooks of about 120 people and several months to retire the debt… And as it turned out, the Obama folks substantially overshot the mark. Clinton’s campaign, which has not yet formally been shut down, now shows a surplus of about $205,000.”

The Cloakroom: 5 moments when Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton weren’t so friendly.

The Fix: “One source close to the situation suggest that the relationship’s evolution from rivals to friends stems from simply spending lots (and lots) of time together over the past four years — particularly on foreign travel. Familiarity, in this case, bred camaraderie not contempt, it seems.”

“When the detente began exactly is somewhat hard to trace although one Democrat suggested that it all started when Hillary and Bill Clinton both spoke at the 2008 party convention.”

More than four years after Hillary Clinton lost the Democratic nomination for president, her 2008 presidential campaign is finally debt-free, Politico reports.

CNN: “A federal law known as the Hatch Act prohibited Clinton and other
federal government employees from personally soliciting or accepting
political contributions. The law does allow others to raise funds on
Clinton’s behalf, without her direct involvement. Former President Bill
Clinton periodically sent out fundraising appeals to his wife’s campaign
email list to help retire her debt.”

From a must-watch Frontline airing tonight: “On the night of Barack Obama’s inauguration, a group of top GOP luminaries quietly gathered in a Washington steakhouse to lick their wounds and ultimately create the outline of a plan for how to deal with the incoming administration.”

[Read more…]

“What I’ve said to them is that I believe that God created the universe and that the six days in the Bible may not be six days as we understand it … it may not be 24-hour days, and that’s what I believe. I know there’s always a debate between those who read the Bible literally and those who don’t, and I think it’s a legitimate debate within the Christian community of which I’m a part.”

— Sen. Barack Obama, quoted by Slate in April 2008, when asked if the Earth was created in six days.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) was widely criticized for dodging a similar question this week.

An instructive video clip shows Joe Biden previewing his vice presidential debate with Sarah Palin in 2008.

[Read more…]

Former Vice President Dick Cheney told ABC News he wouldn’t comment on the advice he gave Mitt Romney on picking a running mate but he was harsh in his assessment of Sen. John McCain’s decision to pick Sarah Palin four years ago.

Said Cheney: “That one, I don’t think was well handled.”

He added: “I like Governor Palin. I’ve met her. I know her. She – attractive candidate. But based on her background, she’d only been governor for, what, two years. I don’t think she passed that test…of being ready to take over. And I think that was a mistake.”

ABC News digs up video of Mitt Romney admiting in a January 2008 Republican presidential debate that the individual health care mandate he passed in Massachusetts was indeed a tax.

CHARLIE GIBSON: Governor, you imposed tax penalties in Massachusetts…

MITT ROMNEY: Yes, we said, look, if people can afford to buy it, either buy the insurance or pay your own way; don’t be free-riders and pass on the cost to your health care to everybody else…

“I think the mistakes made in 2008 will have a big effect, as they should in 2012. The 2008 process was evaluated almost entirely through a political prism.”

— GOP strategist Steve Schmidt, quoted by the Washington Post, who oversaw Sen. John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate.

The FEC released a report saying John Edwards’ defunct presidential campaign must repay the U.S. Treasury $2.1 million within 30 days.

The AP notes that “even though the campaign ended more than four years ago, it has kept spending money, reporting $836,712 in 2011 expenses that went to airfare, hotel rooms, and other bills.”

“The idea that the Republicans have to be organized before Labor Day or they will be out of the race I think is a fundamental misunderstanding of television, the internet, you know YouTube, all the things we now communicate with. A very exciting Republican Party that actually talked about ideas and actually had a fight over the platform based on real ideas, I think might be a more interesting party than one which nominates somebody who’s boring for five months.”

— Newt Gingrich, in ABC News interview on January 13, 2008, advocating a brokered convention.

Just published: Defeat at Waterloo: Fighting on the Front lines of the Hillary Clinton Presidential Campaign by Amanda Wilkerson.

Even though Shepard Fairey already settled his case with Associated Press over using their photo as the basis for his iconic Obama “Hope” poster early, the Los Angeles Times reports the artist today entered a guilty plea to related criminal charges.

Fairey was charged with criminal contempt for destroying documents and manufacturing evidence, once again proving the cover up is almost always worse than the crime.

He now faces a maximum of six months in prison.

Here’s a must-read: The Magic Number: Inside Obama’s Chase for the Presidential Nomination by Jeff Berman, who led the effort to create and execute the delegate plan that Barack Obama used to capture the presidential nomination in 2008.

Ben Smith: “Rich in procedural detail, the book will be a textbook for the small cadre of mechanics who steer the arcane process of delegate selection. But The Magic Number …is also a kind of secret history of the Obama campaign and an antidote to the sweeping narratives that suggest Obama was the inevitable product of historical forces. Berman’s account is the tale of the little things that could have gone wrong but didn’t, and the small but crucial victories that, taken together, won the White House.”

The Albuquerque Journal reports a federal grand jury is investigating whether former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D) violated campaign finance laws during his unsuccessful 2008 presidential bid by raising money to settle a threatened lawsuit by a woman who worked in state government.

“Several people familiar with some aspects of the investigation have mentioned similarities to pending criminal charges against former presidential candidate John Edwards on allegations that his campaign supporters paid to shield the candidate from a public scandal.”