The Note: Mitt's moment

On the Democratic side, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., isn't worried about anyone else's finances -- quick, someone let her staff know. "It would mean nothing to my campaign. Nothing at all," Clinton said yesterday when asked what it would mean if Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., raises more money than she does in the second quarter.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani announced Wednesday that they will not compete in Iowa's Straw Poll, leaving former Gov. Mitt Romney, R-Mass., as the Iowa frontrunner.

But Clinton is working hard to make sure that doesn't happen: Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times reports that Senator Clinton and President Clinton scheduled 26 fund-raisers over the last 31 days of the quarter, and predicts a Clinton haul of at least $20 million in the second quarter -- with Obama likely to exceed $25 million, if not the $40 million figure that's been making the Washington rounds. This is not an expectations game Obama wants to be winning.

Also in the news:

President Bush's visit to Capitol Hill -- aimed at resuscitating the immigration bill and revivifying his presidency -- doesn't appear to have accomplished much. "Bush did not emerge from the meeting as cheerfully as he'd entered," ABC's Jake Tapper reports. This sounds brutally final: "I don't think the president and his top advisers understand the fundamental flaws in the bill. They just don't," said Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff is dialing up the pressure on GOP senators, writing in a letter sent to nine die-hard opponents after Bush's meeting: "As the President said today, the status quo is unacceptable. Failure to act on this legislation will deny the country the safety and security provided by these enhanced enforcement measures."

Obama wrote letters to local officials on behalf of a project controlled by indicted real-estate dealmaker Tony Rezko, the Chicago Sun-Times' Tim Novak reports. "The letters appear to contradict a statement last December from Obama, who told the Chicago Tribune that, in all the years he's known Rezko, 'I've never done any favors for him.' " (The Obama camp is casting it as an attempt to increase housing for seniors.)

On a day that Obama gave a speech calling for a new low-carbon fuel standard, his past support for coal-derived fuel (a heavier polluter than conventional fuels) got new scrutiny -- and prompted a "clarification" from the Illinois senator's office. Reports Peter Wallsten of the Los Angeles Times, Obama "backtracked from his long-held support for a controversial plan to promote the use of coal as an alternative fuel to power motor vehicles."