Free At Last

• Today marks the 40th anniversary of Martin Luther King's assassination in Memphis. [ Washington Post ]

• The brief, unsuccessful Iraqi-led offensive in Basra leaves everybody looking like they got caught with their pants down. [ Washington Post ]

• Compounding the problem: over 1,000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen deserted their posts in the last week. [ New York Times ]

• Government crackdowns yesterday in Zimbabwe suggest that the country may not be getting a new leader this time, either. [ New York Times ]

• Hillary Clinton's edge in committed superdelegates continues to slip. [ Los Angeles Times ]

• Junior members of Congress fear that committing their superdelegate vote to either Clinton or Obama will make them unpopular with voters, and because they cannot yet harness the vast power of incumbency to get re-elected they actually have to pay attention to their voters' opinions. [ Politico ]