Bowing to the inevitability of Gustav's havoc and sensitive to appearance, the Republican National Committee has canceled first day festivities. Patrick Ruffini suggests (via Twitter) that "Media should have to ... Read More

Reuters reports that US refineries in the Gulf have "shut nearly all offshore oil production and were racing to bring down flood-prone Louisiana refineries on Sunday ahead of Hurricane Gustav's ... Read More

Photo: NOAA - Click Image For Larger View With Hurricane Gustav taking aim at the Gulf, in general, and New Orleans, in particular, residents of New Orleans are responding in ... Read More

Data from Katrina Livability Statistics It's been three years since Hurricane Katrina wrecked havoc on the US Gulf Coast, especially New Orleans. Although there are signs of recovery (unemployment rate is ... Read More

Photo: Getty Images Update 3 Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, 44, is the Republican vice presidential nominee, setting up a contest in November that gives voters a chance to make history, no matter ... Read More

Click Image to See Larger View Using Wordle, I've created a visual analysis (comparable to a tag cloud) of Barack Obama's acceptance speech. Wordle is a simple tool that allows us ... Read More

If you had any doubt that politics today is almost indistinguishable from entertainment, this long-shot of the "stage" where Barack Obama delivered his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention ... Read More

Click Image To View YouTube Clip Tonight the McCain campaign is airing a 30 second ad -- on cable and in key states -- congratulating Sen. Barack Obama on his nomination ... Read More

Wednesday (sorry, I'm a day late!) would have been Lyndon Baines Johnson's 100th birthday. From May 1964: "The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all. It demands an ... Read More

Photo: Getty Images There had been rumors that staunch Hillary Clinton supporters might force a Democratic Convention floor fight. Instead, when it was the state of New York's turn, Clinton ... Read More

Sen Hillary Clinton & Chelsea Clinton on Day 2 of DNC. Photo: Getty Images Text - Hillary Clinton Speech, 26 August, Democratic National Convention Hillary Clinton: "No Way, No How, No McCain" ... Read More

What are your memories -- or knowledge -- of probably the most infamous Democratic National Convention, the August 1968 event in Chicago? Memorialized in lyrics by Brit Graham Nash (Chicago), the ... Read More

The dueling ads produced by the Obama and McCain campaigns about their homes do a disservice to voters of conscience and reason. With the median value of a home at ... Read More

Sen. Joe Biden campaigns for president in 2007. Photo:Getty Images Update 5 Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) is the Democratic vice presidential nominee, and the liberal blogosphere is gnashing its collective teeth over ... Read More

Premier Election Solutions has acknowledged that its voting machines have had for 10 years "a critical programming error that can cause votes to be dropped while being electronically transferred from ... Read More

If you thought the national political party conventions consisted solely of legions of people corralled into a large venue to hear one politician after another drone on ... think again! ... Read More

Photo: Getty Images At least eight Americans as well as other Western nationals have been detained by the Chinese government, according to Reuters, for expressing political speech related to Tibet. We ... Read More

The total household income of the upper 1% in 2005 was almost five times greater than that of all households in the bottom 20%, which is the area underneath that ... Read More

Blog Action Day, 15 October 2008, is an annual nonprofit event designed to unite the world's bloggers, podcasters and videocasters to discuss the same issue on the same day. Think ... Read More

Zogby International reports that 55% of "likely voters" think Libertarian Presidential nominee Bob Barr should be part of the 2008 Presidential debates. Almost half -- 46% -- also think Ralph ... Read More

As I noted on Saturday, this weekend Senators and presumed presidential nominees John McCain and Barack Obama were part of a made-for-TV "joint" appearance at Saddleback Church. About.com's Guide to ... Read More

State governments in California, Florida, Iowa, Maryland, New Mexico and Tennessee are abandoning practically new electronic touchscreen voting equipment, according to McClatchy. The replacement? Optical scan equipment, meaning that ... Read More

Information architect Sean Tevis is running for the state house in Kansas. He has no political experience, just a died-in-the-wool idealism. He launched an online fundraising campaign on 16 July. ... Read More

On 18 August 1963, James Meredith graduated from the University of Mississippi, the first African-American to do so. His degree: bachelor of arts in political science. Read more about Meredith ... Read More

© Disney/Pixar About.com's guide to movies, Rebecca Murray, calls WALL-E the "first guaranteed Oscar nominee of 2008." This accolade also passed through my mind at today's matinee. One friend had simply said, ... Read More

Photo: Getty Images PNC In an op-ed in the NYTimes this week, political analyst and consultant Garrett M. Graff talks about why Barack Obama plans to announce his vice presidential choice ... Read More

Rick WarrenPhoto: Getty Images Campaign 2008: The Role of Faith On Saturday night, presumptive presidential nominees Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama are making a joint made-for-TV appearance at Rick Warren's ... Read More

In July, I wrote about two related movements that, together, are different sides of the same "culture war" symbolized by legal access to abortion. On Sunday, the Houston Chronicle weighed ... Read More

Age and experience are helping McCain. By a two-to-one margin (54% to 27%), voters say the phrase "personally qualified to be president" applies better to McCain than to Obama. McCain's ... Read More

Protests Erupt As Olympic Torch Relay Winds Through San Francisco In April. The protests, primarily over Chinese rule of Tibet, disrupted the torch route and ceremonies. Photo: Getty Images. :: ... Read More

Photo: Getty Images Attorney General Michael Mukasey has declined to prosecute Bush Administration appointees who used political party affiliation and public policy litmus tests when hiring civil servants. In an intriguing ... Read More

A new Barack Obama ad released on YouTube contends that John McCain supports giving "additional" billions to oil companies. Let's flash back three years, shall we, to the vote on ... Read More

Seattle's KING-5 TV tackles campaign finance on Sunday's episode of Up Front. In the second segment, I talk with Dennis Bounds, KING-5, and David Postman, Seattle Times, about campaign ... Read More

Strangebedfellows -- a diverse left-right coalition -- is conducting a money bomb today, using the services of ActBlue. Why 8 August: On this day in 1974, Richard Nixon resigned for ... Read More

The Bush Administration suffered another setback in its handling of Guantanamo Bay prisoners Thursday when a military jury sentenced Osama bin Laden's driver to only 5.5 years -- and the ... Read More

The controversial Commission on Presidential Debates has named the moderators for the 2008 general election presidential and vice presidential debates. Friday 16 September, President Jim Lehrer, Executive Editor and Anchor, ... Read More

Executions In The United States Related: An Overview of the Death Penalty, Texas Case Highlights Death Penalty Inequity (August 2007) , Texas defies World Court, executes condemned Mexican (5 August 2008) :: Wordless Wednesdays ... Read More

During his last run for the presidency, in 1999, McCain supported the drilling moratorium, and he scolded the "special interests in Washington" that sought offshore drilling leases. Yesterday, he announced ... Read More

In January (a lifetime ago), Sen. Barack Obama's campaign insisted that votes in Florida and Michigan primaries were irrelevant -- the combined 366 delegates would "have no bearing on the ... Read More

A federal judge has rejected an "unprecedented" claim that Bush aides are protected by executive privilege in their refusal to respond to Congressional subpoenas. U.S. District Judge John D. Bates ... Read More