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• Lev Gudkov, head of a respected independent Moscow-based polling agency, says the propagandist tone of Russian state television has reached new levels.
• "For intensity, comprehensiveness and aggressiveness, this is like nothing I have ever seen over the whole post-Soviet period," Gudkov said.
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RNC chairman Priebus defends changes to primary process as 'rebuilding,' heralds Florida win
• BURLINGAME, Calif. (AP) -- Planned changes to the Republican Party's presidential selection process are part of a rebuilding process that will strengthen the GOP brand and hopefully make its presidential nominee more competitive in 2016, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus told California Republicans on Friday, calling the GOP's current primary process "a complete disaster."
• Priebus said shortening the primary process by moving up the national convention at which the nominee is typically selected to June and cutting the number of debates are "not an establishment takeover. This is using your brain. Everything's not a conspiracy."
• "I think a traveling circus of debates is insanity in this party," Priebus told about 200 delegates. "We're proposing to have fewer than 10, and this time around, we're going to pick the moderators."
• Priebus is proposing to hold just 10 debates for the would-be GOP nominees in 2016, compared with the 27 held ahead of the 2012 race in which former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney was eventually selected as the party's nominee.
• The chairman also touted a key victory this week in a hard-fought Florida congressional race that is seen as a possible bellwether of November midterm election. Republican David Jolly defeated Democrat Alex Sink in a special election Tuesday that largely turned on President Barack Obama's health care law.
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Records opened: Clinton feared 1994 losses; team later gave conflicting advice on response
• WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sensing a Republican tidal wave, President Bill Clinton worried in the summer of 1994 that Republicans were energized heading into the midterm elections while his Democratic base was deflated. "There's no organization, there's no energy, there's no anything out there," Clinton said of his own party.
• "They're organized and they're working," the president observed of conservative (Continued on page 31)
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