Did Rush Limbaugh’s Hillary-voting Republicans break Ohio law? In Ohio, voters who switch parties and lie about their sincere commitment to the party’s principles are committing “election falsification,” a felony punishable by a six to twelve month jail sentence and a $2,500 fine. Fortunately for crossover voters, the law is unenforceable.

Obama wins Mississippi. Exit polls showed racially-polarized voters, with only 9% of black voters going for Clinton and 27% of white voters supporting Obama. Exit polls also showed that Clinton voters seem less attached to their candidate: 15% said they’d be disappointed if she was the nominee, while 4% of Obama voters said they’d be disappointed.

Geraldine Ferraro played racial politics this week for Hillary Clinton, who dumped her in the controversy. Ferraro told Daily Breeze, “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. … He happens to be very lucky to be who he is.” Mickey Kaus says Ferraro’s right. Ta-Nehisi Coates says she’s racist. Jonathan Cohn says it’s best to ignore her.

New York loses a governor and Hillary Clinton loses a superdelegate as Eliot Spitzer falls.

Democrats nixed the idea of a mail-in revote for the Florida primary. Michigan Democrats are deciding whether or not to have a revote in June.

The Pew Research Center conducted a pre-March 4 poll that found Barack Obama “riding high.” However, voters question his toughness and say he hasn’t provided policy specifics. News that may help John McCain: voters seem to be more optimistic about Iraq.

In news of religious leaders, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins says McCain should work harder to get social conservatives excited about his candidacy. Obama’s pastor stirs up controversy with inflammatory remarks about America — remarks Obama says “I vehemently condemn.” Read WoW’s coverage here and here.

Barack Obama has won the Magnolia State’s Democratic primary, picking up 90 percent of the state’s black vote, while Hillary Clinton captured three-quarters of the white vote. The number of delegates Obama wins is dependent on his final margin of victory. Now it’s on to Pennsylvania on April 22.

Oh, and John McCain won Mississippi’s Republican primary. The state, by the way, has been solidly red in every presidential election since 1976.

After today’s vote in Mississippi, we’ll have to wait until the Pennsylvania primary on April 22 for our next political fix. This gives us the opportunity to stand back and ask some basic questions: What, if anything, is the 2008 campaign revealing about American culture, politics and media?

I’ve recently been teaching Alexis de Tocqueville’s classic from the 1830s, Democracy in America, so I’d suggest two R’s that arise from his analysis. De Tocqueville wrote that Americans tend to be restless and religious, and in the 21^st century that is still the case. I’d then add two more R’s: reality-based and journalistically rambunctious.

Let’s start with restless: De Tocqueville wrote that “In the United States, a man will carefully construct a home in which to spend his old age and sell it before the roof is on… He will settle in one place only to go off elsewhere…. If his private business gives him some time for leisure he will immediately plunge into the whirlwind of politics.”

This year, restlessness has started at the top. John McCain is from everywhere and nowhere: Born in the Canal Zone, he moved frequently with his military family and during his own military career. As analyst Michael Barone notes, McCain when elected to Congress to represent Arizona had spent far more time in a Hanoi prison than in his new state.

Obama and Clinton each have several states they could call home, but their unrootedness is far more than geographic, especially in Obama’s case where transcendence of roots is a campaign centerpiece: He says “the choice in this election is not between regions or religions or genders. It’s not about rich versus poor; young versus old; and it is not about black versus white. It’s about the past versus the future.”

This strikes a powerful chord in America, where we’re ready to cheer on Obama transcending racial divisions and Clinton breaking the glass ceiling for women. And the restlessness is deeper than that. Obama is the leading crier for “change” — he used the word 33 times in a speech last month after winning the Wisconsin primary — but all three candidates have turned the six-letter word into an applause line. That’s strange: Why, when America is the most affluent society in history, is “change” a plus – especially since one possible change in the next decade is a U.S. city destroyed by a terrorist’s nuclear weapon?

Beatles and Christians can answer that question by noting that money can’t buy you love. The “change” mantra taps into a sense of alienation, a recognition that we are wanderers. It suggests that politics, if we choose the right change agent, can do what only God can do.