Good Wednesday morning. The day Tim Donaghy accuses the NBA of fixing finals matches in 2002 and 2005, referees in last night's ballgame sure looked like they had it out for Kobe Bryant. Politics Nation has no rooting interest in these finals, but we're just saying. Here's what Washington is watching this morning:

-- The Senate meets today to continue work on an energy bill, a cloture motion on which Republicans blocked yesterday. The House is also in session, having endured three and a half hours of reading impeachment resolutions introduced by Rep. Dennis Kucinich, which wrapped up just after midnight last night. The resolution will likely be sent to the Judiciary Committee this morning, though it is unlikely to see the light of day after that. President Bush is still in Europe, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is on her way to Paris to join in the fun. Vice President Dick Cheney will address the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's board of directors today in Washington.

-- Vice presidential madness is heating up, and it promises to be a big story until both nominees just make their decisions already. Barack Obama's veep search team, headed by Jim Johnson, former Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder and Caroline Kennedy, floated as many as twenty names while meeting with Hill Democrats, Senator Kent Conrad told CNN yesterday. Those names included everyone from the obvious -- Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, and, of course, Hillary Clinton -- to the out-of-the-box choices, like General James Jones, former Supreme Allied Commander of Europe and commandant of the Marine Corps.

-- One who will not be joining Obama's ticket: Ohio Governor Ted Strickland. Strickland surprised many yesterday by issuing the closest thing to a Shermanesque statement so far this year. "If drafted I will not run, nominated I will not accept and if elected I will not serve," Strickland told NPR's All Things Considered, per ABC News. Strickland, a big backer of Hillary Clinton in the primaries, has already donated his top political adviser to Obama's general election efforts, but the one-time vice presidential front-runner is himself no longer interested, he says, in serving as the second in command.

-- Meanwhile, Obama will take his continuing economic tour to Ohio, alongside Strickland, on Friday, the Boston Globe reports today. Obama was supposed to be in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, today, but his campaign canceled the trip, worried that interference could have disrupted clean-up efforts from the region's recent floods. The economic tour, which has stopped in North Carolina and Missouri in its first two days, will continue in Kaukauna, Wisconsin, a state John McCain has put high up on his target list and where Obama will have to play serious defense, on Thursday.

-- Obama met yesterday with religious leaders from all over the political spectrum, including Catholic attorney Doug Kmiec, who has endorsed the Illinois Senator, and Dallas-based mega-church pastor T.D. Jakes. The meeting, which took place in Chicago, shows Obama is trying hard to woo evangelical voters despite their disagreement on the abortion issue, CBN's David Brody writes. The news comes a day after Brody reported on the Obama campaign launching a so-called Joshua Generation project, which would seek to woo younger evangelical voters to the Democrat's side based on issues like climate change, the humanitarian crisis in Darfur and human trafficking.

-- Obama's outreach to evangelicals, it looks like, is a serious threat, and John McCain, he of the personal shyness about discussing his own faith, is going to have to do something about that. Or does he? Evangelical voters are rallying to McCain at a healthy clip, Beliefnet.com president Steven Waldman writes at the Wall Street Journal. It's only a few of the leaders who remember McCain's thorny "agents of intolerance" speech who are still holding a grudge. In fact, McCain won the Republican primaries, Waldman writes, because of his better-than-expected performance among evangelical voters -- he virtually tied Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee among those voters in both New Hampshire and Florida.

-- McCain is also making a concerted push for Hispanic voters, as this reporter wrote today. McCain is up with new advertisements in South Florida, running in Spanish, that bolster the GOP candidate among a decidedly GOP constituency. The shot at Obama: "While some support a dialogue with Raul Castro, John McCain believes we should support the courageous men and women who continue to stand up for freedom in Cuba," the narrator, a Cuban political prisoner for almost three decades, says, per Politico's Ben Smith. That's an argument that could work well among Cuban voters, from whom McCain will need a big boost to guarantee a Florida win.

-- Drip Of The Day: First, Florida Rep. Tim Mahoney refused to endorse Barack Obama. Now, it's Oklahoma Democratic Rep. Dan Boren, who tells the Associated Press that he will abstain from endorsing his party's presidential nominee, but will vote for him at the convention in Denver as well as in November. (So, he's voting for the guy, twice, but he's not endorsing him? Sort of an odd technicality, no?) Democrats always seem to have more defections than Republicans (See: Mississippi Rep. Gene Taylor, and several others, who did not cast ballots for Nancy Pelosi for Speaker), so this is the first of what's likely to be more than a few uncomfortable moments for Obama. Oh, and will someone please ask: Why hasn't Al Gore endorsed yet?

-- Today On The Trail: McCain is making his own stop in blue territory he thinks could be red, hitting the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia for a town hall meeting. That's the same place Obama endured nearly an hour of questions over his patriotism, his flag pins and his pastor before hearing the first policy question at a debate on April 16. The Illinois Senator is at home, his Iowa trip having been canceled by floods, but he'll make the best of his time, hosting a roundtable on credit cards and predatory lending at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago.