Spending in this year’s presidential election cycle by all campaigns and affiliates has already surpassed $900 million - that’s more than double the total spent in the 2000 primaries ($430 million), the last time both parties had competitive primary races.

This New York Times…

Perusing al-Jazeera’s Arabic-language website the other day, I saw an article from mid-June about the presidential contest between John McCain and Barack Obama, specifically over statements they had made about their views on terrorism.

I thought it might be interesting to translate…

Barack Obama sparked considerable controversy in recent weeks when he announced that he would not commit to public financing for the general election campaign, despite his earlier pledge to do so. This makes Obama’s the first completely privately-financed general election campaign since the…

The hand wringing has reached a fever pitch (is that even possible?) at Talking Points Memo, the liberal political blog and website.

TPM solicited thoughts by Missouri readers about recent polls which show John McCain with a healthy lead in the…

From the Washington Post.

And an effort to combat it.

Though we are still a little over four months away from the presidential election, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at the “scenarios for victory” put forward by strategists at both the Obama and McCain campaigns…

Obama seeks support from Hillary Clinton’s donors, gets the cold shoulder (via TPM media).

And  he takes heat from the netroots about his support of telecom immunity (via Huffington Post).

It doesn’t get much funnier: Karl Rove is spearheading an effort to…

Not satisfied with his already low opinion among Democrats who blame him for costing them the election in 2000, Ralph Nader is apparently shooting for a special level of hostility:

“There’s only one thing different about Barack Obama when it comes to being a…

The Barack Obama campaign Tuesday retired the Great Seal of Barack, saying it had been created for “one-time use” only at a Democratic governor’s meeting last Friday. Right, and the “Mission Accomplished” banner was the Navy’s idea.

The seal got bad…

The telecom immunity bill surfaces again. Sens. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., and Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., vow to filibuster. That’s a promise we’ve heard before. Read it here, via Huffington Post.

And she returns like royalty. Politico reports on HRC’s return to the Senate.…

The Senate this week is expected to give final passage to an overhaul of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The bill restores some measure of the privacy protections that the Bush administration trashed — even as it helps cover…

Just about everyone is aware that President Bush’s approval rating has been hovering right around 30 percent for some time now. This is nothing new for most reasonably informed observers — Bush’s approval rating is cited in just about every single news story about the presidential race between Barack Obama and John…

For the 2008 election, the Christian Science Monitor has unveiled its “Patchwork Nation” project — which has classified each county in the United States as one of eleven different types of “communities.” These range from “Boom Towns” to “Evangelical Epicenters” to “Monied ‘Burbs.”

The…