An affidavit, filed by a Nevada law enforcement investigator in connection with the seizure Tuesday morning of a voter registration group's computers and files, alleges that the group contracted last summer with an agent for the Nevada Bureau of Corrections to employ work-release inmates as registration gatherers as part...

The involvement of the U.S. Attorney's Office in a Tuesday morning raid on the Las Vegas offices of Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now ("ACORN"), the community organization involved in registering more than 80,000 new Nevada voters, has raised suspicions that political pressure motivated the action.

The...

In an escalation of a dispute between the Democratic and Republican parties over voter suppression, a Michigan G.O.P. official, with the backing of the Michigan Republican Party, has filed a defamation lawsuit against the Michigan Messenger blog. The suit arises from a September 10 story by the Messenger,...

The Republican National Committee, following the McCain-Palin campaign's decision earlier today to effectively surrender Michigan's 17 electoral votes to Barack Obama and shift its staff and advertising dollars to other states, is likewise ceding Michigan to the Democrats.

In an email to this writer this evening, RNC spokeswoman...

In a press conference call Thursday, the chief counsel and the communications director for the Republican Party warned Wisconsin voters that registering to vote could expose them to identity theft, citing the criminal records of seven workers among the hundreds employed there by a national registration-gathering group. The McCain spokesmen...

(Updated below.)

In a perfect storm of overexuberant campaigning by a state party, unclear reporting by a local TV station, panicky overreaction by the right-wing blogosphere, self-serving misinterpretation by a Republican politician, and cynical politicking by the Republican National Committee, a small and inaccurate story aired last week by a...

The Blogospheres was abuzz yesterday with discussions of John McCain's self-declared "suspension" of his campaign, which he appears to be honoring more in the breach than in the observance.

The Republican Presidential candidate announced the suspension Wednesday, issued a press release indicating that fundraising and advertising activities also...

(Update below)

Both John McCain and Barack Obama, struggling to responsibly help the country through the ongoing financial crisis and to display leadership and bipartisanship to voters, made efforts today to work together to help craft a Wall Street bailout deal that would meet the most important concerns of both...

Some of my posts take a good deal of research. Others are so easy it feels like cheating. And then there's this one, which mainly consists of passing along a press release which to my jaundiced eye doesn't even pass the laugh test -- but decide for yourself:

An arm...

The controversy over Michigan Republicans' reported plans to identify people whose homes are in foreclosure and publicly challenge their right to vote on Election Day -- a report that Republican Party officials now deny -- is continuing to escalate.

Today, the Michigan Messenger news blog is reporting that...

In a press conference call Saturday morning, the Republican National Committee's chief counsel sweepingly denied that the Republican Party has engaged in vote "caging" or other wrongdoing, and even appeared to deny that the G.O.P. is subject to "consent decrees" restricting its activities, despite the facts that the RNC...

Every day, my inbox is filled with twenty or thirty or more press releases from the presidential campaigns and their surrogates. Some communicate important factual information or make newsworthy position statements; at least half are just toss-off cheap shots or blatant spin on ephemeral and forgettable events.

Sometimes, though,...

In a conference call Tuesday, the Democratic National Committee's top election lawyer announced a lawsuit filed in federal court in Michigan to enjoin the Republican Party from pursuing plans, first reported by a Michigan blog, to challenge voters whose homes were in the process of foreclosure.

Yesterday (Wednesday), the...

During the Democratic primary campaign, Barack Obama held a rally and town hall in the livestock pavilion of a fairground in rural Albany, Oregon. As I sat in the back of the hall listening to the speech with the other credentialed press, an Obama aide came quietly along the rows...

By M.S. Bellows, Jr. and Gabriel Beltrone

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins ...." - H.L. Mencken.

The bloody and disturbing video shown Thursday night at the...

In the two main convention speeches Wednesday night -- the big night, Sarah Palin night -- the Republican Party revived a major theme of the Clinton primary campaign and made it a centerpiece of the general election, turning what was a contest between candidates, parties, and arguably genders, into one...

MSNBC's Willie Geist has been sampling the food at the Minnesota State Fair, which is running concurrently with the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis/St. Paul, and developed a love/hate relationship with deep-fried, chocolate-dipped farm products on a stick:

There was no Colorado State Fair to visit last week during the Democratic Convention in Denver, but the DNC threw a party for the 15,000 assembled members of the media at Elitch Gardens, a Six Flags amusement park near the Convention venue that (pre-Six Flags) also hosted the delegates to the 1908 Dem convention.

Molson/Coors provided the beer and volunteers served hors d'oeuvres, including Rocky Mountain Oysters, "Colorado's True Delicacy." I asked one server to describe the local treat and how they're prepared:

Food, of course, can be both a metaphor for politics ("porkbarrel spending") and a substantial policy driver ("let them eat cake," "bread and circuses"). So it makes sense to look for the policy implications of the two conventions' food choices.

The RNC clearly is sending both "get the government off our backs" and "buy American" messages: if we want to eat pork triglyceride bombs (slaughtered and packed in Chicago) coated in high fructose corn syrup-based faux chocolate (from Iowa corn) coated in cornstarch (Iowa again) and deep-fried in corn oil (what, does Iowa have an early caucus or something?) heated with all-American natural gas, then we damn well should be allowed to.

If food = politics, though, then what message are the Democrats sending by feeding the media plucked, sliced, and pounded bull testes? Maybe it's an in-your-face rebuttal to an earlier segment by Geist on Tucker Carlson's show, in which Geist showcased Hillary Clinton Nutcracker dolls (from a Minnesota company) and Carlson made his infamous "I involuntarily close my legs when she speaks" comment.

Or maybe it's just that Democratic men are self-confident enough around powerful women to be OK with eating bull testes -- though as we learn more about the Republican vice presidential nominee, that may be changing, too.

[Update: we've learned that a humorous image previously shown here, of Gov. Palin in a stars-and-stripes bikini and holding a hunting rifle, was Photoshopped. A real photo of the candidate in that getup would be fair game, but in the interest of honesty, it's been removed, with apologies to Gov. Palin.]...

As the American people learn more about the person John McCain believes is the best choice to be one (72 year old cancer survivor's) heartbeat away from the Presidency, it can be hard to unpack the complicated, intersecting story lines that are Sarah Palin.

The narrative airing on cable...

In a television commercial released today designed to improve voter's perception of him as a kindly bipartisan and to immunize himself from attacks by Democrats during the culminating night of the Democratic Convention, John McCain looked directly at the camera and promised Barack Obama that he would not engage in...

In a television commercial released today designed to improve voter's perception of him as a kindly bipartisan and to immunize himself from attacks by Democrats during the culminating night of the Democratic Convention, John McCain looked directly at the camera and promised Barack Obama that he would not...