Good Wednesday morning. Half a decade ago today, the United States started a war in Iraq that defined the Bush presidency and, for better or worse, the U.S. as a whole in the eyes of the world. On a gray morning, here's what Washington is watching:

-- The House and Senate are still on recess, and will be until the end of next week. The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee will be hard at work, though, assessing the impact of climate change on the Hawaiian Islands during a hearing in Honolulu. Tough work, but someone has to do it. President Bush will discuss the five-year anniversary of the war in Iraq at the Pentagon this morning, then meets the President of Georgia at the White House.

-- Barack Obama's speech on race relations in America, delivered yesterday morning in Philadelphia, won praise for its candor and insight while drawing criticism from some on the right. First, the positive: Obama took a risk akin to Mitt Romney's speech on Mormonism, and while Romney came out of the speech looking alright, Obama reestablished himself as a post-racial candidate, which is exactly what he needed to do. The speech "was temperate and built on logic, not fiery or built on passion," Politico's Roger Simon wrote. The key, to Slate's John Dickerson, was that the speech was "deeply personal." Ben Smith thinks the address, and Obama's style, echo Walt Whitman.

-- What if the speech helps Obama in the primary, among Democrats and left-leaning independents, but wounds him in a general election matchup against John McCain? Many whites, some Democrats fear, could be just looking for an excuse to avoid voting for Obama, and while his statement that he can no more throw Rev. Jeremiah Wright under the bus than he can his own white grandmother was a nice turn of phrase, it might not have gotten through that way. TNR's Michael Crowley thinks the speech needed to convince those working-class white voters, and Obama may have missed the mark. Conservative reaction to the speech bent in the same direction, for a different reason: They wanted a loud condemnation of Wright, and they didn't get it.

-- The last link above, to National Review's Jim Geraghty, gets to a common theme Obama is going to have to find a way to circumvent in the general election. One of Geraghty's readers is offended by Obama's statement that the first experience in a black church can be "jarring to the untrained ear," and that invoking a curse on the country is probably jarring to any ear. Whether it's a failure to completely disassociate himself with Wright, or the absence of a flag on his lapel at all times (which he asserts is no measure of his patriotism), or rumors flying about his refusal to put his hand over his heart during the pledge of allegiance (not true), people who do not follow the campaign closely -- that is, a large number of voters who are going to be making up their minds in mid- to late-October -- actually question Obama's love of country. Matched up with McCain, that drumbeat is only going to get louder.

-- Hillary Clinton did something yesterday she hasn't done since early February: She won not one, but two super delegates, when a West Virginia party official and Pennsylvania Rep. John Murtha each threw their support behind the former First Lady. Murtha had said as early as last month that he wouldn't back a candidate, the Johnstown Tribune-Democrat writes, but his district, in the mining company of southwestern Pennsylvania, is expected to go heavily for Clinton when the primary rolls around. Too, the endorsements are a page-turner, making it okay, once again, for super delegates to back Clinton over Obama.

-- But neither Clinton nor Obama wants to win based on super delegates. They will happily do so, but they'd rather get over the top thanks to pledged delegates. Clinton's hopes of doing that are fading, along with re-vote hopes in Michigan (where plans are on life support) and Florida (where plans are already six feet under). To highlight the Michigan factor, Clinton will actually make a stop in the state this morning, where in Detroit she will call for a re-vote. Clinton's team, including delegate guru Harold Ickes and spokesman Phil Singer, have charged the Obama campaign with dragging its feet, the New York Times writes, while Obama advisers maintain they're still considering the plan and blamed Michigan legislators.

-- More trouble for Clinton: After a long delay, 11,000 pages of Clinton records from her years as First Lady will be released by the National Archives this morning, the New York Times writes, prompting a new round of stories about the scandals of the 1990s. Inevitably, there will be one or two meetings on the list that Clinton never disclosed, generating a new round of conspiracy-theory hatred and outrage, all of which, at this point, the Clinton camp really wants to avoid. The goal was to release the documents after the primary had finished, but that didn't happen. And with Clinton's tax documents set to be released on April 15, there's going to be another round of bad stories a week before the Pennsylvania primary.

-- But, a hint that something's turning a corner in HillaryLand: The campaign has hired Geoff Garin, of the polling firm Garin-Hart-Yang, to join chief strategist Mark Penn in crafting a message for Team Clinton, NBC's Chuck Todd scoops. That move, in which Garin is said to be working alongside Penn instead of replacing him, could go over very well for everyone involved. Donors who don't like Penn will be mollified, and Garin has experience in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, and partner Fred Yang is the most prominent Indiana pollster in the business.

-- Amendment Of The Day: Hundreds lined up for hours outside the Supreme Court building yesterday, just blocks away from Politics Nation Plaza, to get their seat for the first Supreme Court case to tackle the issue of gun rights since 1939. The discussion, of District of Columbia v. Heller, ran twenty minutes over the alloted time, the NYT reports, and justices seemed generally to agree that there is a personal right to own handguns. Whatever the court's decision, it will likely change the way the courts see guns in the future.

-- Today On The Trail: Clinton hits Detroit this morning, followed by stops in Charleston and Huntington, West Virginia. Obama starts with a major speech on Iraq in Fayetteville, followed by a town hall meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina. John McCain, who yesterday visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, continues his tour through the Middle East and Europe.