President Bush's nominees to be the next U.S. attorney for Florida's Middle District and to fill a U.S. district judgeship for the area won approval Thursday from the Senate Judiciary Committee. ...more

September 26, 2008

President Bush's nominees to be the next U.S. attorney for Florida's Middle District and to fill a U.S. district judgeship for the area won approval Thursday from the Senate Committee on the Judiciary. ...more

September 25, 2008

Here's the latest evidence that Florida - and Tampa, especially - is a key presidential battleground: the amount of money Barack Obama and John McCain continue to spend on TV ads. ...more

September 19, 2008

Now that the political conventions are over and the presidential campaign is in full swing, it's time for my quadrennial civics lesson. After listening to the two candidates' acceptance speeches, they might need a refresher course themselves. ...more

September 14, 2008

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) -- Invigorated by back-to-back political conventions, Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama grappled for the mantle of change Friday as the fall race for the presidency took off in states teeming with the independent voters they needed to win. ...more

September 5, 2008

To hear the harshly partisan speeches of the Democratic and Republican national conventions, you'd think the opposing candidate wanted to ruin the country. ...more

September 4, 2008

For the last fortnight, the political conventions have been providing their usual fare: lots of stagecraft, non-stop schmooze-control, celebrity scrutiny, "defining-moment" speeches and over-analysis fodder for pundits and partisans. The ambience is equal parts pep rally, infomercial and Rotarian reunion. Time was when these conventions actually chose a presidential candidate. Back when smoke-filled back rooms were no mere metaphors. Now these gatherings rubber-stamp and coronate candidates. Which explains, in part, why some of Hillary's Harridans won't concede. The other part is that for those women who have outsourced their identities to Hillary Clinton, this election is no longer about the party and the country – it's about them. But enough, at least in this space, on that. ...more

September 3, 2008

It comes around every four years, all the sputtering to the effect that the political conventions are a big, noisy waste of time and money, muscling in on eight precious prime-time TV hours that would be better given to reality shows that, fake as they are, are still more real than the staged politics. ...more

August 30, 2008

There was a time when political conventions were judged by their balloon drops and big hats. This Democratic convention will definitely not be one of those years. This year the Democrats will meet with a seriousness of purpose that reflects the great challenges that lay before our nation. We believe that our nominee will be the next president. But we also believe that Sen. Barack Obama will inherit looming foreign challenges, a country that is badly divided and a domestic economy in disarray. So our burden will be to not merely excite the party faithful, but to reach out and articulate the kind of serious change that so many right-thinking Americans yearn for. ...more

August 24, 2008

R U curious to know Obama's VP choice? The names of vice presidential candidates are typically announced at news conferences or political conventions. But sometime before the opening gavel of the Democratic National Convention next Monday, Sen. Barack Obama plans to break the mold by doing it with a text message. ...more

August 18, 2008