Defcon 2 Confirmed!

UPDATE: Hillary Clinton's campaign today acknowledged plans to try to win seating of the disputed Michigan and Florida delegations to the Democratic Nation Convention at a meeting of the party's Rules and Bylaws Committee on May 31.

In a statement issued in response to a story on The Huffington Post (look past the men in tights below), the campaign declared: "There is no secret plan.... The Clinton campaign has been vocal in stating that the votes of 2.5 million people must be respected. Hardly a day goes by when a Clinton official doesn't publicly declare that the votes of Michigan and Florida count and that the delegations from those states should be seated."

The campaign's public assertions stand in contrast to its response to inquiries prior to publication of the story. At that point, Clinton aides insisted on keeping all comments either off the record or on deep background, or did not respond to questions at all. The campaign statement appeared to be designed to try to reduce the significance of the story.

In a more typical reaction to the story, political analyst Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia said: "Wow. The nuclear option will yield nuclear winter for the Democratic Party."