Matt Continetti, writing for the Washington Free Beacon: 

This morning on CNN, Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz was asked, "Why is it not hypocrisy for the president to take campaign donations from private equity when he's attacking private equity making that an essential part of his campaign?"

In 1964, when President Lyndon Johnson inaugurated his “War on Poverty,” he travelled to the heart of coal country in eastern Kentucky, one of the poorest regions in the country. It was, until recently, most reliably Democratic: In the 20^th century when Democrats won the presidency, they almost always won Kentucky, thanks to strong support from the east.

With just days until the May 29 Texas Republican primary for U.S. Senate, former state solicitor general Ted Cruz is focused on one thing: denying his opponent, Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst, the 50 percent share of the vote needed to win the GOP nomination outright. "Politically, the only thing that matters is, does this race go to a runoff?," Cruz says in an interview with THE WEEKLY STANDARD.

Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren refused to answer local reporters' questions about her claims to Native American heritage and minority status in a tense exchange in Brookline.

Looking at the electoral map this cycle, the focus has mostly been on Ohio, Florida, and Virginia. But what about the Mountain West? The assumption is that Obama has a virtual lock on Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico, but is this valid?

In an interview with Reihan Salam for Vice magazine, pornographer Larry Flynt reveals that he's now a hardcore supporter of President Obama's just two years after calling Obama an "ineffectual wimp" for giving in too much to Republicans.

St. Cloud, Minn.
An anxious hush falls over the crowd early Friday evening at the Minnesota state Republican party convention. The hum of chatter has died down as the delegates whisper to each other in anticipation. They all know what’s next on the agenda. Ron Paul is coming.

More Democrats seem to be distancing themselves from President Obama. Politico finds this nugget from a debate between Democrat Ron Barber and his Republican opponent, Jesse Kelly, in Arizona's Eighth Congressional District (Gabby Giffords's home district):

Increasingly, pundits are incorporating statistical models into their analysis of the 2012 election. While I was once a purveyor of such predictive models, I really am not anymore. I don't want to bore you with all the wonky details of my flip-flop, but I do want to give you an example of why you should feel comfortable evaluating these models yourselves, based on common sense.

Hours after Tom Cotton won the GOP nomination for the open seat in Arkansas' Fourth Congressional District, and became a strong favorite to win the general election in a district that went 58 percent to 39 percent for John McCain in 2008, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sent out a news release that suggests they're more or less throwing in the towel on the race.

A new poll from Suffolk University shows incumbent Republican senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts remains neck and neck with his Democratic challenger, Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren. Forty-eight percent of likely voters support Brown, placing him in a statistical tie with Warren, who earned 47 percent support. A Suffolk poll from February showed Brown with a more substantial lead, 49 percent to Warren's 40 percent.