Patrick Ruffini goes all in with this one: I might be setting myself for a healthy serving of crow on November 3rd, but I get a distinct feeling that the GOP may be headed toward to a seat gain in the House of epic proportions — somewhere over 50 seats and well above the historical [...]

Reagan apostles Craig Shirley and Donald Devine take to the WaPo editorial page to argue that Karl Rove is not a conservative. From William F. Buckley Jr. to Barry Goldwater to Ronald Reagan, the creators of the modern conservative movement always taught that excessive concentration of power in government leads inevitably to corruption and the [...]

Chief Justice John Roberts says he’s not sure why the Supreme Court still attends the State of the Union address, indicating that perhaps it was time for that tradition to end. U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said Tuesday the scene at President Obama’s State of the Union address was “very troubling” and the [...]

Mickey Kaus, who was blogging before there was a blogosphere, has taken steps to run against California Democrat Barbra Boxer for the U.S. Senate. Pioneering political blogger Mickey Kaus took out papers filed to run for U.S. Senate in California, he told LA Weekly. The Venice resident said he’ll run this year against Barbara Boxer [...]

After reading an interview about Bill Gates’ plans to hook up Third World farmers with Coca-Cola, Matt Yglesias observes, What always leaves me scratching my head about uber-rich philanthropists is why so many of their activities are so depoliticized. The state plays an enormous role in the economy and in people’s lives—much larger than any [...]

In a landmark decision, the Supreme Court today ruled that the right of corporations to engage in political speech, including campaign and issue advertising,  is protected by the First Amendment. AP, “Justices Block Key Part of Campaign Law” The Supreme Court threw out a 63-year-old law designed to restrain the influence of big business and [...]

I agree with Josh Marshall that the parallels between 1994, when the Republicans shocked the world by taking over both Houses of Congress two years into the presidency of a charismatic Democrat, and next year are “significantly overstated.”   He’s right, I think, that “The main cause of the Dems 1994 rout was structural.” He argues, [...]

It appears that Sonia Sotomayor will be an activist judge after all. During arguments in a campaign-finance case, the court’s majority conservatives seemed persuaded that corporations have broad First Amendment rights and that recent precedents upholding limits on corporate political spending should be overruled. But Justice Sotomayor suggested the majority might have it all wrong [...]

Tomorrow, the Supreme Court is hearing a case that could overturn two recent precedents allowing the restriction of political speech by corporations for the purpose of curbing the appearance of undue influence.  There’s an excellent chance they will do so. That raises ageless questions about the role of stare decisis — the court’s custom of [...]

Democratic contender Scott Murphy made a novel use of Google AdSense during the closing hours of the very tight race for New York’s 20th Congressional District, Kate Kaye reports for Tech President. Call it the “Google Surge” or the “Google Network Blast,” the ad tactic has piqued the interest of old-school political media consultants typically [...]

Megan McArdle and Mark Kleiman go round and round on recent National Journal and NYT reports that the Obama campaign was routinely accepting credit card donations from fake donors while the McCain campaign was rejecting them automatically using simple software applications.   Kleiman points out that the reporters in question were technically committing wire fraud, Megan’s [...]

Yesterday’s announcement that Barack Obama had raised a staggering $150 million in the month of September has been largely overshadowed by news of the Powell endorsement.  There has been, though, a bit of whining in Republican circles, including from John McCain himself, about how unfair it all is. Obama, meanwhile, is, to paraphrase Sean Connery’s [...]