"CLINTON LOANS HERSELF $5 MILLION, STAFF SKIPS PAY [UPDATED]"

Ari Melber (The Nation):

In a post-Super Tuesday bombshell, Hillary Clinton announced on Wednesday that she loaned her campaign $5 million last month. Spokesman Howard Wolfson told The Atlantic:

Late last month Senator Clinton loaned her campaign $5 million.The loan illustrates Sen. Clinton's commitment to this effort and to ensuring that our campaign has the resources it needs to compete and win across this nation.

The timing suggests that the campaign has been much tighter on cash than most observers realized. If Clinton had the resources to compete through February, she could have delayed the loan by a few days, and federal rules would not have required its disclosure until March. But announcing the loan now -- after narrowly losing Tuesday's delegate battle and watching Obama raise $32 million from over 220,000 new donors in January -- projects financial weakness at a pivotal time for Clinton.

The loan will also likely stoke increased scrutiny of both Clintons' financial records. The Politico recently reported that Bill Clinton has "implied that he would not use his own funds to support his wife's candidacy," criticizing policies that allow politicians to self-finance their campaigns. Yet Clinton backers are sure to emphasize that the Democrats last presidential nominee, John Kerry, infused his flagging campaign with a loan before he roared back to win the primary.

Update: Time's Mark Halperin reports a rumor that I've heard circulating among campaign sources for weeks: Top Clinton aides are working without pay to save the campaign money. Hard times call for hard measures. While this is generally a bad sign for a campaign's bank account, it's not always a bad thing. It can separate loyalists from fair-weather operatives and turn bloated, consultant-run operations into lean, focused machines. Just ask John McCain, who pulled a similar maneuver earlier this cycle.