The executive board of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced today that Chicago is one of four finalists to host the 2016 Summer Olympics. The city’s three remaining competitors are Madrid (Spain), Tokyo (Japan), and Rio de Janeiro (Brazil).

The most recent evaluation report put Chicago third behind Madrid and Tokyo. But early rankings don’t necessarily mean much; London was originally ranked third behind Paris and Madrid for the 2012 Olympics before going on to win the bid in 2005.

“I feel relieved, exhilarated and very much honored,” Chicago bid leader Patrick Ryan said, according to the Associated Press. “We are going to study the report and we’re going to learn from that and correct all the deficiencies.”

Six U.S. cities have hosted the Olympics eight times. (Los Angeles and Lake Placid have each hosted twice.) Chicago was supposed to host in 1904 but the Games were relocated to St. Louis to coincide with the St. Louis World’s Fair. The first International Special Olympics Games were hosted in Chicago in 1968.

Tokyo hosted the Games in 1964, and Madrid placed third in the bid for the 2012 Olympics. Rio would be the first South American city to host the Olympics.

The finalist cities will now compete in a 16-month race; after the final four submit detailed bid files to the IOC by Feb. 12, 2009, a panel of IOC experts will visit each of the cities. The panel will release an evaluation report and the full IOC will vote by secret ballot on October 2, 2009.

According to the Chicago 2016 Web site, a special event is planned for Friday, June 6, at 11:30 AM in Daley Plaza to celebrate the selection of Chicago as a finalist.

Everyone knew when today began where it would end up; it was just a matter of how we’d get there.

The Associated Press tally, which included 11 delegates Senator Barack Obama was guaranteed as long as he gained 30 percent of the vote in South Dakota and Montana, declared Obama the winner in the early afternoon. Other news outlets were more cautious, though FoxNews.com and MSNBC.com (among others) ran banner headlines like, “AP: Obama Clinches Democratic Nomination With Superdelegates,” prescribing the credit to the AP. (A good strategy considering FoxNews’ history in this particular area.) As of 7:45 p.m. CST, even the Wikipedia page about the election stated that Obama was the Democratic nominee. (Hey, if relationships aren’t official until they’re on Facebook, then election results aren’t official until they’re on Wikipedia, right?) At around 9 p.m., CNN “projected” Obama to be the winner.

Obama will claim victory in a speech in St. Paul, Minnesota later this evening. The Drudge Report leaked the text of the speech, in which Obama declares, “Tonight, I can stand before you and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States.”

It won’t become official official until Obama accepts the nomination at the Democratic National Convention on August 28, which is also the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech. But with over 2,118 committed delegates as of Tuesday night, it’s about as official as it gets: Obama will go up against Senator John McCain as the first ever African-American to run on a major party ticket.

Clinton campaign officials are confirming that Hillary Clinton will concede in a speech tonight that Barack Obama has enough delegates to win the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. According to the officials, Clinton won’t formally suspend her campaign so that she may maintain leverage to negotiate with Obama, including the possibility of securing a VP spot. Whispers have been getting louder in the last week that Clinton would accept such an offer if Obama asked, and Obama said yesterday that he wants to meet with Clinton “once the dust settles…at a time and place of her choosing.”

Obama is currently 42 delegates short of the nomination, while Clinton is still 201 delegates shy. Primaries today in South Dakota and Montana will divide 47 delegates, and around 200 superdelegates are still undeclared, though a number are expected to pledge to Obama tonight, pushing him over the edge and securing the nomination.

UPDATE, 10:52 a.m. CST: Clinton’s campaign co-chair is denying the reports that Clinton will concede to Obama tonight. Nonetheless, Obama still may be able to claim victory pending a rush of superdelegate endorsements after the last two Democratic primaries today.

UPDATE, 2:08 p.m. CST: Obama is now 35 delegates away from the nomination, having picked up six superdelegates so far today. He also picked up six of the 13 Florida delegates pledged to John Edwards. (Some of the delegates only get a half a vote, as per the decision of the Democratic Rules Committee this weekend.)

UPDATE, 4:00 p.m. CST: Clinton told New York lawmakers today that she’d be willing to accept the VP spot next to Barack Obama. The question is now whether he’ll offer it.

UPDATE, 6:03 p.m. CST: Obama is ten delegates away from clinching the Democratic nomination, according to CNN. Meanwhile, the Associated Press decided two hours ago that Obama has already clinched the nomination, though the campaign doesn’t appear to have broken out the bubbly quite yet.

According to Political Radar, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) said today that the Democratic primary “will be ended a couple days after June 3rd.” Reid, who is himself an uncommitted superdelegate, told KGO Radio in San Francisco this morning that he spoke to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and DNC Chairman Howard Dean and all three agree that they don’t want a fight at the convention.

The Democratic Party’s rules and bylaws committee is meeting this weekend to decide the fate of Michigan and Florida delegations. In addition, Democratic leaders will put pressure on uncommitted superdelegates to make a decision after the last Democratic primary is held next Tuesday, June 3 in Montana and South Dakota, well before the Democratic convention in August.

“The time has come to make a decision. I think we need a general election that’s 5 months. I don’t think August is enough time,” Reid said.

So who will represent the Democrats in the general election this fall?

Reid said that “simple math indicates” that Barack Obama is the likely nominee.

May has been a great month for gay rights. New York Governor David Paterson’s spokewoman announced yesterday that the governor sent a memo on May 14 ordering New York state agencies to recognize same-sex marriages performed in states and countries where they are legal. The memo was sent the day before the California Supreme Court struck down a ban on gay marriage.

The governor’s decision came after a New York state appeals court found in February that failing to recognize such legal marriages is a violation of the New York human rights law. The issue of gay marriage has had a long and convoluted history in New York; the state was one of the first testing grounds of legislation brought about by proponents of same-sex marriage back in 2004. Courts have ruled, stayed and struck down various rulings going every which way. In 2006 the New York Court of Appeals ruled that there is no constitutional right to same-sex marriage under the New York Constitution. But in February, 2008, a panel of judges ruled that because New York legally recognizes out-of-state marriages of opposite-sex couples, it must do the same for same-sex couples.

At this point two states — Massachusetts (in 2004) and California (earlier this month) — have legalized gay marriage. When the Massachusetts law was passed in 2004, it stated that gay couples need not be state residents to wed; however, then-Governor Mitt Romney resurrected a 1913 law banning non-resident marriages in the state if the marriage would be prohibited in the partners’ home state. (That law was originally passed in order to thwart interracial marriage.) Subsequent court and agency decisions determined that only residents of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Mexico could marry in Massachusetts, unless the parties said they planned on moving there after the marriage.

According to the directive, New York will also begin recognizing gay marriages that were performed outside the country, such as in Canada.

Marriage licenses for gay couples in California could be available as soon as June 17. Four states — New Hampshire, Vermont, New Jersey and Connecticut — currently permit civil unions. A number of other states recognize some rights for gay couples. The debate about the right of same-sex couples to marry is partially hinged on the benefits of such unions: family health care plans, tax breaks, stronger adoption rights and property inheritance, among others. Proponents argue that to limit gay marriage is to restrict basic rights of a group of citizens, while defenders of the “one man, one woman” idea argue that marriage is an institution based in a religion that considers homosexuality “unnatural” and sinful.

In a book titled “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception,” former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan writes that the current Bush administration relied on an aggressive “political propaganda campaign” instead of the truth to sell the American people on the Iraq war. While this isn’t exactly news to us, it’s still rather damning for the lame-duck administration; a former high-ranking aide reveals the sordid innerworkings of one of the most unpopular administrations in history. According to McClellan, Bush carefully managed the situation in Iraq so that it was “almost guaranteed that the use of force would become the only feasible option.”

Current Bush Press Secretary Dana Perino issued a statement today saying that McClellan is “disgruntled” and that she and her colleagues were “puzzled” by his words.

McClellan (the second of four Bush press secretaries) insists in the book that, despite the fact that he lied to the American people over and over again — in his words, some of his assertions from the podium were “badly misguided” — he kept his mouth shut out of a sense of duty. “When words I uttered, believing them to be true, were exposed as false, I was constrained by my duties and loyalty to the president and unable to comment,” he says. “But I promised reporters and the public that I would someday tell the whole story of what I knew.”

The book discusses, among other things, the CIA leak scandal surrounding Scooter Libby and Karl Rove; the administration’s use of “propaganda” to sell the war; and how the press corps were too easy on the administration during the run-up to the war.

Quotes from the book were first reported Tuesday night by Politico.com. The memoir is scheduled to go on sale June 1. (PublicAffairs, $27.95)

“I still like and admire President Bush,” McClellan writes. “But he and his advisers confused the propaganda campaign with the high level of candor and honesty so fundamentally needed to build and then sustain public support during a time of war. …In this regard, he was terribly ill-served by his top advisers, especially those involved directly in national security.”

Former U.S. Rep. Bob Barr is the Libertarian candidate for president.

Former Georgia Rep. Bob Barr was chosen today as the Libertarian Party’s candidate for president. The former Republican won in the sixth ballot round at the Libertarian Party convention in Denver, beating out research scientist Mary Ruwart.

Barr was elected to the U.S. House as a Republican in 1994 and represented a conservative district of the Atlanta suburbs for four terms. In 2006 he left the Republican Party to become a registered Libertarian, and last month he formed a presidential exploratory committee. The Washington Post speculated last week that Barr could act as the “new Nader,” drawing votes from the conservative base of the Republican Party away from John McCain in the general election. Libertarian candidates in the last two elections drew less than 400,000 votes each.

History & Platform
Barr was born in Iowa and attended USC, George Washington and Georgetown Universities. He worked for the CIA from 1971 to 1978. While he was in Congress, he was regarded as one of its most conservative members; in 2002 he was described by the Athens Banner-Herald as “the idol of the gun-toting, abortion-fighting, IRS-hating hard right wing of American politics.”
- Consistent with the Libertarian platform, Barr believes in small government and minimal government intrusion. He supports cutting federal spending significantly and adopting a “consumption tax,” like a national sales tax, to replace the IRS and all federal income taxes (essentially overturning the 16th Amendment).
- Though he has been dubbed an “anti-drug warrior” because of his support for the War on Drugs, Barr flipped positions last year and began lobbying for the legalization of marijuana. He has said that he’s not pro-drug, just anti-government intrusion.
- He was the main author and sponsor of the Defense of Marriage Act, which states that same-sex marriages cannot be federally recognized and that states don’t have to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states.
- Barr led the charge to get President Bill Clinton impeached both before and after the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke.*
- He sat on the Board of Directors for the National Rifle Association from 2001 to 2007.
- He has been outwardly critical of the Bush administration. In 2007 he helped form a group called the America Freedom Agenda in order to bring to attention the “abuses and losses of our fundamental, constitutionally guaranteed liberties since 9/11.”
- He favors a withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

Fun fact
Barr appeared in the movie “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.” He met with Borat’s character in the U.S. Capitol, where he was given cheese that was (allegedly) made from the breast milk of Borat’s wife. Watch the bit here.

*This article originally stated that Bob Barr had led the charge only after the scandal broke. Thanks to Lance Brown for pointing out the error.

The Associated Press, among others, is reporting this morning that Barack Obama has asked former Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson to begin vetting potential vice presidential picks. The Senator hasn’t confirmed these reports; in fact he has repeatedly declined to discuss possible running mates before the end of primary season.

But with just 60 delegates needed to secure the Democratic nomination, anonymous Democratic officials are saying that he’s begun the search by engaging Johnson, who did a similar job for John Kerry in 2004 and Walter Mondale in 1984.

For a good breakdown of Obama’s probable criteria and choices, check out this article at the Huffington Post.

Some big things happened across the country today, and we at the Breaking News Blog aim to keep you up to date. It’s like the local nightly news, but minus the big hair and flag pin chatter. Here’s a breakdown of today’s top stories:

Senator Ted Kennedy, the second-longest serving current U.S. senator, was diagnosed today with a malignant brain tumor. The news came after he was struck by a seizure last Saturday and went in for further medical examination. The 76-year-old lawmaker suffers from malignant glioma, which according to the National Cancer Institute is the most common primary brain tumor. Kennedy will remain in the hospital while doctors decide on the best course of treatment, which could include chemotherapy and radiation.

As expected, Hillary Clinton won the Democratic primary in Kentucky, adding fuel to her fire and leading her to vow to fight on. Clinton received 65 percent of the vote to Obama’s 30 percent, but Obama racked up enough delegates to give him over half of the pledged delegate count nationwide (1,627 out of a total of 3,253, according to CNN). At this point neither candidate is expected to reach the magic number of total delegates (2,025) by the time primary season ends June 3, which leaves the election in the hands of Democratic superdelegates. Oregon also held its primary today, although voting continues until 11 pm PST tonight. Obama is expected to win handily in the Beaver state.

In a 2-1 decision, a Richmond federal appeals court today struck down a Virginia law banning a type of late-term abortion. The law, which banned “partial birth infanticide,” was ruled unconstitutional despite the law’s similarity to a federal ban that was upheld by the Supreme Court last year in Gonzales v. Carhart. According to the majority opinion, the two laws differed in that the federal law imposes criminal charges only if the doctor intends to perform the prohibited procedure, while the Virginia law punished doctors for performing the procedure by mistake. For instance, if the doctor set out to perform a regular abortion procedure but “accidentally deliver the fetus to an anatomical landmark” and thus must cause “fetal demise” in order to complete removal. Twenty-seven states have passed late-term abortion bans, but according to the Center for Reproductive Rights, 16 of those have been overturned.

The Democratic National Committee announced in a press release today the launch of McCainpedia.com, an “electronic encyclopedia” containing “raw facts and research of John McCain’s record” compiled by the DNC. Unlike many other wikis, McCainpedia is run by the DNC’s Research, Communications, and Internet teams, and only DNC staff will be able to edit the content (as opposed to public wikis, like Wikipedia).

Articles on McCainpedia are divided by issue, and users can browse articles by categories such as “Iraq,” “Middle class” and “Bush Tax Cuts.” One category, titled “Anger,” logs the Senator’s displays of a “divisive and angry attitude.” The site appears to preach to the choir, and there is little to no attempt at bipartisanship. But for Democrats looking for some anti-McCain fodder, it could prove useful.

The new site joins a number of other Web sites in the race between the two major parties for complete Internet saturation. In addition to McCainpedia, the Democratic Party also runs FlipperTV, which catalogues video from McCain’s campaign taken by Democrats. On the Republican side, CanWeAsk.com offers users a chance to submit questions to Barack Obama. (It doesn’t say whether the questions will actually be offered up to the Senator.) The title of CanWeAsk.com is a response to the Obama-centric music video, “Yes We Can.”

As the light at the end of primary season tunnel gets brighter, both parties are beginning to focus their efforts on defeating the presumptive nominee from the other side. There is no doubt that McCain will be the Republican nominee, and despite the fact that he is still does not have the 2,025 delegates needed to secure the Democratic nomination, Obama’s 1,908 delegates puts him within striking distance, and many — including, judging by the articles on their main Web site, the GOP — have accepted him as the presumptive nominee. Nonetheless, Hillary Clinton took time to remind Obama today that the primary season is not over and there is not yet an official nominee.

If you don’t count Florida and Michigan, Clinton trails Obama by 189 delegates. There are still 235 delegates up for grabs in Kentucky, Oregon, Puerto Rico, Montana and South Dakota. Primary season ends June 3.

Osama bin Laden could be entering the sad, lonely world of the has-been. He has reportedly released two audio tapes this week, both of which urge Muslims to “liberate” Palestine and incite resistance to the existence of the Jewish state. Bin Laden is quoted as saying that there is “no way to liberate Palestinian territories without violence.” The second tape, released Sunday, coincided with the 60th anniversary of the establishment of Israel.

But the thing is…no one really cares. At least, not in the U.S.

Bin Laden has released his fair share of tapes, both audio and video, for the better part of a decade. The tapes have become the main — really the only — form of communication between the leader of Al Qaeda and the outside world.

But as former FBI agent Brad Garrett told ABC News, the tapes no longer send U.S. officials into a frenzy. “It seems just more of the same,” Garrett said. “He has an opinion, sure, but nothing he says surprises anyone anymore.”

The most recent tapes seem to indicate that bin Laden is continuing to shift his attention toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and away from the removal of U.S. forces from Saudia Arabia, which were the focus of many of his earlier tapes.

The release of the second tape also coincided with the last day of President Bush’s Middle East trip. Bush angered a lot of Palestinians with a speech he gave on Thursday in which he praised the Jewish state as the “homeland of the chosen people.”

The authenticity of the new bin Laden tape has yet to be confirmed by U.S. officials, but according to the ABC News story, sources “familiar with bin Laden’s voice” have said there was no doubt it was his.

Rumors have been flying since before McCain had the nomination clinched that he might choose former candidate and social conservative favorite Mike Huckabee as his running mate. McCain hasn’t made a move to choose a running mate, but that hasn’t stopped the whispers in the media.

ABC News has reportedly assigned a slew of reporters to cover a number of possible picks, including Huckabee. Other people on that list include Condi Rice, Mitt Romney, presidential bro Jeb Bush, first Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, and a bunch of governors (including Bobby Jindal).

The media can’t seem to contain its curiosity — even TheSpoof.com is getting in on the fun — but McCain has remained tight-lipped about who his pick will be. Maybe his cameo on the season finale of SNL this week — he hosted the show in 2002 but hasn’t been back since — will prove the perfect place for him to make an announcement…or not.

In California, marriages are no longer defined as a union between a man and a woman. Today in a 4-3 ruling, the California Supreme Court struck down the state’s ban on same-sex marriage as unconstitutional, citing discrimination against same-sex couples. The ruling makes California the second state to legalize gay marriage; same-sex couples have been able to wed in Massachusetts since 2004.

The ruling stated that the state law’s language “limiting the designation of marriage to a ‘union between a man and a woman’ is unconstitutional.” The court ruled that the state must allow marriage to be available to both opposite-sex and same-sex couples. The LA Times reports that the ruling will affect more than 100,000 same-sex couples living in California.

“I’m incredibly excited to see this decision, as a lesbian and as a California resident,” said NU Rainbow Alliance co-President Jessica Kaiser. “And it’s obvious that it’s exciting for many of my friends in the LGBT community–I’ve already received 3 text messages about it!”

But, she said, this doesn’t mean the end of the fight. “I’d like to be optimistic about what this decision means for California and for the rest of the country, but I think even in California this will be met with a lot of opposition,” Kaiser said. “This is the first step down that road [to greater equality], and I’m glad we’re taking it.”

On the other side of the fence, those in favor of the ban were not pleased with the decision. Petitions are already circulating among California groups to introduce a November ballot initiative that would amend the state Constitution to ban gay marriage, and an appeal of the California court’s decision to the federal Supreme Court is likely.

The California state legislature has twice voted to authorize same-sex marriage, but the Governator has vetoed both times. Four states—Vermont, New Jersey, New Hampshire and Connecticut—allow civil unions, and more than a dozen other states give gay couples some legal rights. Twenty-seven states have constitutional amendments banning gay marriage.

This is starting to get ugly, folks. Despite all hopes for a Clinton-Obama dream ticket, neither candidate has made a move in that direction. Both candidates have said that it’s too early to discuss possible VP picks, though the closer we get to the Democratic Convention without a clear winner, the bigger the rift in the party is becoming.

A recent poll from Quinnipiac University (yeah, we’d never heard of it before either) shows that both Democrats would beat John McCain if the election were held today. But CNN reported that West Virginia exit polls from yesterday indicated that majorities of both candidates’ supporters would not support the other Democratic candidate in the general election—and that’s where the problem lies. Whoever the Democratic candidate is, they’re going to need their fallen opponent’s supporters in order to win. The longer this fight continues, the bigger the rift in the Democratic party will get and the harder it will be to bring the two sides together behind either Obama or Clinton.

That same poll reported that 45 percent of Democrats want Obama to be the nominee and 41 percent want Clinton. But 63 percent said Clinton should keep running, and 60 percent said Obama should pick her as his running mate if he is the nominee, so basically we can conclude that the American people (or at least the Democrats) don’t really know what they want.

In any case, Hillary Clinton is fashioning herself as the underdog, and now that she’s won West Virginia she’s “more determined than ever” to keep on fighting. Media outlets can’t decide how to react; some insist that her win in West Virginia was a big deal, while others are saying that in the grand scheme it really doesn’t matter because Obama has the nomination sewn up.

I’m going to go take a nap. Someone wake me when we’ve picked a Democratic candidate.

At about 4:37 a.m. this morning, starting from its epicenter in West Salem, Ill., an earthquake rattled through the Midwest, but fortunately did not cause much damage. Tremors were felt in Chicago early on Friday.

The earthquake was measured to be a 5.2 on the Richter Scale, which typically can induce “moderate damage in well-built structures.” Several follow-up temblors shook through the Midwest Friday morning, the strongest of which registered at 4.5 on the Richter scale around 10:15 a.m., according to the Chicago Tribune.

Newsweek reported that the earthquake was felt as far as “Milwaukee, Des Moines, Iowa, and Atlanta, nearly 400 miles to the southeast”.

Not a typical seismic zone, like California for instance, most reactions to the earthquake were of surprise.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the largest historical earthquake in the region shook southern Illinois in 1968 at a magnitude of 5.4.