Senior Obama advisor David Axelrod and Communications Director Robert Gibbs hosted a conference call with reporters Sunday, while the senator himself spent the day with his family. The intent of the call was to focus on Senator Clinton’s lack of transparency. Gibbs outlined four questions directed towards Senator Clinton:

1.    Will the Clinton campaign release their full tax returns, including schedules?
2.    Will Senator Clinton release all of her earmark requests?                                                                  3.    Will the Clinton campaign release the names of all donors to the Clinton foundation and to the Clinton library, and if not, why?
4.    Will the Clinton campaign instruct the Clinton Library to release all of their records?

“The Clinton campaign has made a premium out of making sure that candidates are vetted, that transparency is full, and their failure to continue to answer these questions simply brings us another series of questions, which is what is Senator Clinton hiding and what is lurking in those documents that she believes voters don’t have a right to know?” Gibbs asked.

But during the question and answer period of the call, the reporters switched gears, focusing the latest hot topic in the Democratic race - Obama’s relationship with the controversial Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

Axelrod stressed Obama had  been forthright on the controversy and had condemned Wright’s statements, pointing out this was a personally difficult time for Senator Obama. “As you know Reverend Wright married him, introduced him, as [Obama] said, to the church, brought him into the church, into Christianity, baptized his children. So this is a painful thing for him because he condemns the things that Rev. Wright said, but he also knows him as a person, so it’s a difficult matter for him.”

When asked if the story would damage the campaign, Axelrod observed, “Reverend Wright is gone from the church now; he’s no longer the pastor of the church and I think people will hear Senator Obama on this issue, and…they understand that these do not represent his views, and they don’t represent the sum total of what Rev Wright has done over the years or their relationship. I think that this will pass, but we understand there’s a lot of interest in it now.”

Axelrod then asked Gibbs, “Robert, do you have anything to add?” Gibbs replied, “No, I think that covers it.”

Barack Obama cancelled a town hall meeting outside of Pennsylvania today to return to the U.S. Senate to vote. It is the first time the senator has come back to the nation’s capitol since February 12th, when he voted on cloture on FISA. Today the majority leader requested the presence of both Obama and Senator Clinton to be present for a series of budget votes, including a measure that would ban congressional earmarks for one year - something that Obama and the other two candidates have said they will support, although it’s expected the measure will not have the needed votes to pass.

On the votes, Obama said, “We now have another effort to extend the Bush tax cuts, another effort to eliminate and drastically reduce the estate tax. These are all steps that John McCain rightly said were irresponsible when they first came up. That certainly were unprecedented at a time of war. He made a decision to reverse himself on that. That was how I guess you got your ticket punched to be the Republican nominee. But he was right then and he is wrong now. The notion that we would pile up more mounds of debt, literally borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars to pay for tax breaks for people who don’t need them and weren’t even asking for them I think is unfortunate. And I think it’s an example of the kinds of flawed fiscal policies that have gotten us in such a hole under this administration and a Republican Congress.”

The last time he and Senator Hillary Clinton were in the capitol together for the State of the Union, when there was much ado about Obama snubbing Clinton on the floor of the House of Representatives.

What can we expect this time? In a press gaggle on his flight from Chicago to Dulles Airport this morning, Obama laughed. “You know, I’m sure we will both be effusive and make sure that we shake hands.” When asked if there was anything they might discuss, Obama didn’t exactly answer, but offered, “I’m sure that both she and I are probably glad that we can step back from the one primary a week pace and actually think a little bit, which is something that has been hard to do. It’s been so phrenetic. Now’s a good time to be able to step back and you know, think about where we’ve been and I would say make mid-course adjustments, but it’s not mid-course,” he said with another laugh.

Burlington, VT — Calling on Sen. Barack Obama to live up to his call for more transparency in government, Sen. John McCain chided the Illinois Senator for failing to release some of his personal earmark requests.

While Obama has publicly released his 2007 earmark requests to the Senate Appropriations Committee, he has not released his letters to the committee from 2005 and 2006, according to a Thursday Washington Post story. The Post reported that Obama helped secure $91 million for the projects in the Land of Lincoln in 2007, which McCain said “isn’t chump change.”

“The Senator from Illinois, who says that he wants transparency in government, will not reveal the number of earmarks that he received in 2006 and 2005. Is that transparency in government? I don’t think so. I don’t think so,” McCain said during rally in Vermont–a March 4th primary state. “So I call on the Senator, Senator Obama from Illinois, to go ahead and tell people how much money in earmarked projects and pork barrel projects that he got for his state and what they were for.”

“One of the reasons the American people have lost trust and confidence in us. One of the reasons is because of earmark projects, the pork barrel spending,” McCain added. “My friends, examine my record on pork barrel projects and you will see a big fat zero.”

While Sen. Hillary Clinton secured $340 million for her home state, placing her in the top 10 in the Senate for 2007, McCain spent more time going after Obama Thursday.

During a media availability on his plane en route to Rhode Island, McCain said he is more directly focussed on the Illinois Senator because of what he feels is Obama’s “non-specificity.” In contrast, he noted Clinton has even been criticized, “for talking too much about specific programs.”

Additionally, he said he still believes he has an equal chance of facing either Democrat, and is not counting Clinton out.

“I (don’t) underestimate the challenge of Senator Clinton, and again in all due respect to the experts and the pundits that I read and see, I remember the night before New Hampshire she was going to lose, I mean that was just a fact and everybody accepted it. I even drank that Kool Aid,” McCain said. “I thought that Senator Obama was going to win (New Hampshire). He didn’t. She out-worked and out-campaigned and won that. So I think it would be really a mistake to sort of discount the vitality of her candidacy. I am not an expert on this. I know she’s very, very smart, very, very tough campaigner, and I think she’s proven.”

At a rally in Bangor, Maine, today co-Democratic frontrunner Barack Obama talked more than usual about the likely Republican nominee, John McCain.

“I honor John McCain’s half century of service to this country and you know, he has done some heroic stuff,” he started pleasantly enough. “But his basic proposals are to perpetuate the failed Bush domestic policies and the failed Bush foreign policies,” Obama continued to applause from the 7,000 in the Bangor Auditorium. Obama then spent several minutes knocking McCain on the economy, earmarks, and the Iraq war, before bringing his chief Democratic rival back into the fray.

“Awhile back [McCain] was interviewed and he said, ‘You know what? I’m not really good with the economy.’ He said, ‘I bought Alan Greenspan’s book. I’m reading up to find out what’s going on.’ You don’t need to read Greenspan’s book, you need to go to Nicky’s Diner and talk to folks and find out what’s been happening in the economy here in the United States of America,” Obama said, referring to the local diner where earlier in the afternoon he met with four locals to talk about middle class tax fairness. “You don’t need to read a book. Talk to some of those workers who’ve been laid off. Talk to those retirees who are, have to figure out how to pay for the heating bill. You know, John McCain used to oppose the Bush tax cuts. He said it was it was irresponsible to cut taxes for the wealthy when we were going into war. And then he started running for president and suddenly he’s for ‘em. I’m happy to have that debate, because he was right the first time and he is wrong now and we are gonna convince the American people that we need a new direction.”

The crowd erupted into applause, but Obama wasn’t done yet. “I am happy to have a debate with John McCain about fiscal responsibility,” he continued. “He goes out there and complains about earmarks, but it was his party, the Republican Party under George Bush and a Republican Congress, that presided on the biggest increase in pork barrel spending that America has ever seen, and that is what we’re gonna change when I’m president of the United States of America.”

He saved his biggest criticism of McCain for last. “And when it comes to foreign policy, John McCain says he wants to fight a 100 year war! ‘A hundred years,’ he said. ‘As long as it takes.’ That is not designed to make us safer. That is simply stubbornness. That is designed to try to make a bad decision look better,” Obama declared.

And then he remembered that candidate he has to overcome before he has that much-talked about debate with McCain. “By the way, you know, it is gonna be a lot easier for me to have that debate with John McCain than Senator Clinton ’cause she supported the war. So, you know, John McCain won’t be able to say that I supported the war in Iraq ’cause I didn’t. He won’t be able to say that I gave George Bush the benefit of the doubt when he was beating the war drum against Iran because I haven’t given him support on that the way Senator Clinton did. We can offer a clear contrast on foreign policy in this next election and move us in a new direction. That’s why I’m running for president of the United States of America.”