* This Obama profile from the AP follows the standard formula, which was concocted months ago. Liberal state Senate voting record, ability to work with Republican colleages in Springfield, quotes from his poker-playing buddies, questions about his experience, comments from Sen. Donne Trotter, who also ran against Bobby Rush when Obama tried to move up. You may not want to bother even reading it because it’s all rehash. You’d think the AP’s “top” national political reporter could come up with something new. You’d be wrong.

* But this Sun-Times story does move the ball forward, and may cause Obama more headaches…

During his 12 years in politics, Sen. Barack Obama has received nearly three times more campaign cash from indicted businessman Tony Rezko and his associates than he has publicly acknowledged, the Chicago Sun-Times has found.

Obama has collected at least $168,308 from Rezko and his circle. Obama also has taken in an unknown amount of money from people who attended fund-raising events hosted by Rezko since the mid-1990s.

Go read the whole thing. Now that the NY Times has jumped on the Rezko story, dutifully followed by the AP and the cable nets, any new Rezko revelation could create problems.

*** UPDATE *** This statement by Barack Obama, distancing himself from the D-Punjab hit piece on Hillary Clinton, has no credibility…

“It was a screw-up on the part of our research team,” Obama told editors and reporters with The Des Moines Register, according to the paper’s Web site. “It wasn’t anything I had seen or my senior staff had seen.”

More…

“That particular quote was a joke, I think, that Hillary Clinton made to an Indian-American audience,” Obama told the Register. “The research team thought it would be clever to put that at the top.”

Obama continued, “I thought it was stupid and caustic and not only didn’t reflect my view of the complicated issue of outsourcing … it also didn’t reflect the fact that I have longstanding support and friendships within the Indian-American community.”

Sorry, but there’s just no way that D-Punjab memo went out without “senior staff” seeing it and approving it. No way. The research director isn’t “senior staff”?

Also, all campaigns, large and small, have protocols for this sort of stuff. If something is distributed to bigtime reporters, then the communications director has to see it first. That’s his/her “constituency.” And from what I’m told, there was no breach of protocol here.

Either Obama isn’t telling the truth, or someone on his staff isn’t coming forward with the whole story.