Republican third-party groups are sharpening their knives in anticipation of an Obama nomination, Newsweek reports.

The immediate effect of yesterday's primaries on the race was predicted to be murky, given expectations that Clinton would win Indiana and Obama would win North Carolina. Today, after Obama won North Carolina handily and Clinton barely squeaked by in Indiana, many headlines are portraying Clinton as essentially down for the count.

Sen. Barack Obama's controversial pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, just won't seem to go away.

On the eve of the Pennsylvania primary, the Clinton campaign continued to hammer Obama's alleged lack of experience, running ads highlighting images of Osama bin Laden and Pearl Harbor and other threats supposedly frightening to Clinton's unnamed opponent. (Who might that be?)

Having failed to get Florida and Michigan to re-do their primaries, the Clinton campaign now plans to focus on winning over the hearts and minds of the superdelegates as their last best hope of winning the nomination, reports US News and World Report's Kenneth Walsh.

The Clinton campaign has gotten rather cheeky - or is sneaky a better word? - with the Obama campaign, suggesting recently that Obama would be a great VP on a Clinton-led ticket.

More tough comment is being directed at Hillary Clinton's campaign team for her reportedly fading campaign.

Based on an apparent assumption that Obama wins the nomination -- though of course that is not a given -- McCain in various campaign trail appearances has been calling on Obama to honor a pledge he had made last year that Obama would take only public funding if a Republican rival agreed to do the same.

Media talk on the day of the "Chesapeake primaries," in Virginia, Maryland, and DC, focused on the momentum of Obama, who was expected to win these states, as was McCain.

The consensus in the media appears to be that McCain will have the nomination all but sewn up after today's raft of primaries, leaving Romney in his wake, while the race between Obama and Clinton is just "too close to call."