Dan Gearino thinks a USA Today ranking misses North Carolina's corruption.

The conservative blogger notes the newspaper's recent attempt to rank state corruption by comparing population with the number of corruption convictions won by federal prosecutors from 1998 to 2007.

With 179 convictions and a population of nine million, North Carolina came out in the bottom third.

North Carolina had 2 convictions per 100,000 people, a lower ratio than all but 16 other states. My problem is that we don't get credit for the quality of our political crooks. North Carolina's corruption is top-shelf stuff, and we’re not getting recognized for it.

He notes, for example, that disgraced former House Speaker Jim Black went to prison for accepting bribes in public bathrooms.

"By my reckoning, one House speaker selling out the integrity of the state in toilet stalls is worth ten small-town councilmen who get caught fixing traffic tickets or trading votes on zoning matters in return for Caribbean vacations," he writes.

Joe Trippi says North Carolina could be the decider.

In an article in USA Today, the Democratic political consultant says that he believes the state's May 6 primary could be the end of the presidential race.

"I really believe May 6 has the potential to be everything," says Joe Trippi, a strategist for the presidential bids of former North Carolina senator John Edwards this year and Howard Dean in 2004. "Every day you see increased pressure on Hillary Clinton about why she's staying in, and if she could win in North Carolina it would shut down that kind of talk and open up the possibility she could get there" to the nomination.

"But if he wins in North Carolina," Trippi says of Obama, "I think you're going to see things close up very quickly. You'll see a lot of superdelegates line up behind him."