Spinners and Winners Mia Love is unlike any Congressional candidate ever -- she is African-American, she is Mormon, and she is conservative. Republicans have deemed her race in Utah's newly drawn 4th district one of the top ten most important races in the country, vowing to spare no expense to get her to Congress. If she wins, Love would be the first black Republican woman ever elected to the House of Representatives. Check out this week's Spinners and Winners to hear Love's first order of business should she get to Washington, and her response to people who say her race is playing an out-sized role in all the attention she is receiving from the Republican party. Continue reading →

NEW GENERATION MOVES UP AT NYT: David Leonhardt, 38, who writes the “Economic Scene” column for The New York Times, will be named Washington bureau chief today during a state visit to the bureau by Jill Abramson, who becomes executive editor on Sept. 6. The surprise selection reflects Jill’s imperative to build a new generation of leaders at the paper. David, a former Yale Daily News editor and father of young children, is a favorite of Publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., who considers him the wave of the future. David is respected in the bureau for not talking a lot in meetings, but saying something smart when he does speak up. --BEHIND THE CURTAIN: The national security focus at the bureau has left economic coverage ... Continue reading →

Jim Herrington "There is a certain heaviness that you can get from just the right groove," says JD McPherson. "Even if it's not a really fast groove." How does a former punk rocker raised on an Oklahoma cattle ranch end up sounding like a classic rockabilly singer? JD McPherson found his groove in the style of 1950s rhythm and blues, rock and rockabilly. To help create that vintage sound on his debut album, Signs and Signifers, he used vintage mics, old amplifiers and a Berlant reel-to-reel recorder from the '60s — all analog. McPherson's love for this classic sound all goes back to a record store in McAlester, Okla. "There was a girl working there. And she was cleaning out the clearance items, and she ... Continue reading →

May 18, 2012 3:51pm Arizona Secretary of State Wants to See Obama’s Birth Certificate Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett wants you to know that he is not a birther, but he says he wants proof of Barack Obama’s citizenship before putting his name on the Arizona ballot. In a radio interview today, Bennett said he is just doing his job of making sure “that those people whose names are on the ballot have met the qualifications for the office they are seeking.” He says he has been trying for eight weeks to get documents from Hawaii. In a statement just released, Bennett says: “First, I have been on the record since 2009 that I believe the President was born in Hawaii. I am not ... Continue reading →

May 17, 2012 1:32pm A $36 Million Taxpayer Boondoggle for Politicians Tom Coburn has heard enough posturing about that $800,000 conference the Government Services Agency held in Las Vegas. He’s got a bigger target: The $36 million taxpayers will spend on the Democratic and Republican conventions this summer. The national party conventions have received public financing since 1976 as part of the post-Watergate campaign finance reforms designed to get dirty money out of politics. (The parties now also receive millions of dollars from corporations and special interests for their conventions, but that is another story.) As of May 3, the Republican and Democratic parties have each received checks from the U.S. Treasury for a total of $36.5 million to be spent on their conventions in ... Continue reading →

May 17, 2012 1:32pm A $36 Million Taxpayer Boondoggle for Politicians Tom Coburn has heard enough posturing about that $800,000 conference the Government Services Agency held in Las Vegas. He’s got a bigger target: The $36 million taxpayers will spend on the Democratic and Republican conventions this summer. The national party conventions have received public financing since 1976 as part of the post-Watergate campaign finance reforms designed to get dirty money out of politics. (The parties now also receive millions of dollars from corporations and special interests for their conventions, but that is another story.) As of May 3, the Republican and Democratic parties have each received checks from the U.S. Treasury for a total of $36.5 million to be spent on their conventions in ... Continue reading →