Good Friday morning. There's a snow storm hitting the Northeast, and once again Washington is just a little too far south to get anything but freezing rain. Here's what a freezing, wet Washington is watching today:

-- The Senate holds the final pro forma session of the President's Day recess, meaning the body has been in continuous session since at least August, if not earlier. It remains remarkable that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has so little trust in President Bush. Both chambers will reconvene on Monday. The President, back from Africa, is spending the day recuperating, and in the House, the chief administrative officer has revoked approval for the domain name "earmarkreform.house.gov," CQ reports, and GOP leader John Boehner is not happy.

-- Democrats met in Austin last night for their second-to-last debate before voters head to polls in Ohio and Texas, and once again, Hillary Clinton failed to knock Barack Obama's socks off. But this event was different from others, in which Clinton attacked Obama outright or, as in the debate three weeks ago in Los Angeles, the two professed only pleasantries to one another: This time, Clinton didn't go for the jugular, and she passed up repeated opportunities to hit Obama on any number of issues.

-- Clinton has more troubles than Obama's momentum and her inability to stop it. Mark Penn and other top Clinton consultants raked in $5 million in January, as the campaign doled out $100,000 for party trays in Iowa and $25,000 for hotel rooms in Las Vegas, the New York Times fronts. That out of control spending, they write, has donors concerned. Top communications ace Howard Wolfson picked up $267,000 in January alone, while Mandy Grunwald is up to $2.3 million. That Clinton would spent millions on consultants was always assumed, and now, perhaps predictably, those consultants have become the targets of donor complaints. If Clinton doesn't pull off the nomination, Penn will be the target of more than a few jabs.

-- Recent polls are showing Clinton clinging to only a narrow lead in Ohio and Texas, which her husband has admitted are must-win states for her. Clinton leads by ten in the latest RCP Ohio Average, but she's up by just a 2.8-point margin in the RCP Texas Average. Her leads in both states once topped twenty points.

-- So consider the total picture: Clinton's lead is shrinking, she can't stop Obama's momentum and she's got few resources left in the bank. Obama can spend millions and, perhaps even more importantly, a lot of time in Ohio and Texas in coming weeks and steal those small leads right out from under her nose. Add in the fact that she didn't try to attack Obama at last night's debate, and that her last answer struck some as wistful -- "No matter what happens in this contest, I am honored, I am honored to be here with Barack Obama." It's hard not to conclude that the Clinton campaign is starting to acknowledge the possibility that her campaign might come to an end before the convention.

-- The Republican National Committee may have come to a similar conclusion. During the debate last night, the RNC did not send out releases hitting Clinton at all. "What we do is a reflection of political reality," RNC comms chief Danny Diaz told Marc Ambinder.

-- Clinton has one more chance to make a real impact, at a debate on Tuesday in Cleveland. Debates, at the moment, are her only chance to get anywhere near back in the race, as they are the only opportunity she has to knock Obama down a few pegs. Otherwise, she has to wait for Obama to slip, and he hasn't done so throughout the whole campaign. Relying on the other guy to screw up is never a good campaign tactic, as John Edwards found out, and when that becomes the only way to win, the meat of the contest may already be over.

-- Notice one thing we haven't talked about today? After dominating cable news coverage yesterday, after buzz on every political website and in every newspaper, the story involving John McCain and a Washington lobbyist, as published by the New York Times, is well off the front page today. Part of the credit goes to the Old Gray Lady herself, which seemed on the defensive from the first moments the story appeared on its website. But the lion's share ought to go to McCain strategists, who executed a textbook crisis response, as Martin and Allen write. McCain's team questioned the Times and successfully made it the story, not lobbyist Vicki Iseman.

-- McCain's morning press conference yesterday exhibited several noticeable and noteworthy traits that should warn anyone running against McCain about his political skill. First, he answered every question reporters threw at him for almost twenty minutes, and he answered them with unequivocal denials, essentially putting his reputation on the line. Wife Cindy McCain, too, stepped up to the mic, and her response was as strong and polished as his. McCain joked he should have just let his wife do all the talking.

-- Bad Idea Of The Day: From an internal email sent to students at The George Washington University: "Due to a winter storm warning issued by the National Weather Service, George Washington's Annual Birthday Bonfire will be moved to the indoor rain site at the Continental Ballroom." Despite faculty and staff's best efforts, to the best of this author's knowledge the building still stands.

-- Today On The Trail: Clinton has rallies slated for Dallas and Fort Worth before jetting off to rallies in Columbus and Toledo. Obama meets students at UT-Pan American in Edinburg, Texas, before delivering the stump speech at events in Corpus Christi and Austin. McCain has a town hall meeting and a fundraiser in Indianapolis before heading back to Washington.