Briefs | Evan Bayh playing key role for Clinton

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. — At times Thursday it was hard to tell who was running for president in Indiana — Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton or the man who never left her side, popular Sen. Evan Bayh, perhaps the former first lady’s best hope for winning the state’s May 6 primary.

He introduced her to crowds, handled two questions during her brief news conference and talked up her candidacy at every opportunity.

Surrogates have proven especially vital to Clinton in her bid to stop Barack Obama’s momentum in late-voting industrial states.

Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland helped Clinton win his state this month, and Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell’s all-out support is helping her stay ahead in polls there.

No surrogate appears more essential than Bayh, the former Indiana governor, who toyed with the idea of running for president himself in 2006. At times during Clinton’s three-city tour of Indiana on Thursday, Bayh practically pleaded with voters to share his enthusiasm.

• Michigan delegate split debated

WASHINGTON — The drive for a second Michigan presidential primary collapsed Thursday, and a fresh dispute broke out between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton over the fate of the state’s 128 national convention delegates.

Obama’s campaign said a fair resolution would be to split them evenly with Clinton. Aides to the former first lady instantly rejected the idea and said they would consider a mail-in primary — even though Obama has raised concerns about the security of a vote by mail organized so quickly.

Obama leads the overall competition for convention delegates, and Clinton has been leading the effort to hold a revote in Michigan. For holding its primary early in violation of party rules, state Democrats were stripped of their delegates. Clinton won the primary, but most other candidates’ names, including Obama’s, were not on the ballot.

• McCain lauds UK troops in Iraq

LONDON — John McCain on Thursday hailed the bravery of British and U.S. soldiers yet refrained from calling publicly for Britain to slow the pace of its troop withdrawal from southern Iraq.

McCain discussed Iraq with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in their first-ever meeting.

Brown has said he hopes to cut British forces, based near the southern city of Basra, from 4,000 to about 2,500 in coming months.

McCain said this week, however, that pulling out of Iraq quickly would be a mistake that would boost Iran and al-Qaida.

The visit to London was part of McCain’s weeklong tour of the Middle East and Europe. He also had a $1,000 per person fundraising lunch in the city.

• Aide suspended for relaying video

WASHINGTON — Republican John McCain’s campaign suspended a staffer who sent out a provocative video linking Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama to the comments of his spiritual mentor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

The staffer, a low-level aide named Soren Dayton, sent out a link Thursday to the YouTube video — titled “Is Obama Wright?” — on the social messaging Web site Twitter.

The campaign suspended him a few hours later, although it wouldn’t say for how long.

The video mixes Wright’s most incendiary remarks with snippets from Obama speeches and interviews.

• Judge allows questions in suit

WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Thursday forced the National Archives to undergo questioning by a conservative group seeking the release of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s telephone logs during her years as first lady.

U.S. District Judge James Robertson authorized a lawyer for the group Judicial Watch to explore in coming weeks why the archives processes some requests — for documents on reported UFO sightings, for example — before others.

The Clinton presidential library has hundreds of pending requests for the release of records. On Wednesday, the archives disseminated more than 11,000 pages of Mrs. Clinton’s daily calendars from her White House years, immediately rekindling disputes on issues such the degree of her involvement in policy and her early support of the NAFTA agreement.

The Associated Press