The Federal Election Commission made it official on Thursday: Stephen Colbert can form his own super PAC. This means that the satirical newsman joins the 100-odd similar committees who can raise (and spend) unlimited amounts to support or oppose candidates in the 2012 elections. The FEC ruling also had implications for media companies …
Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann formally announced her presidential candidacy on Monday morning in her hometown of Waterloo, Iowa, before heading on a tour of early-primary states. (Yes, she already announced her run …
The leaders of American Crossroads, the conservative super PAC formed last year under the watch of Karl Rove, sat down with reporters at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast in D.C. this morning. The subject of the discussion was, of course, money: the role deep-pocketed super PACs will play in 2012 and the specific spending plans of …
In three congressional terms, presidential contender Michele Bachmann has made a name for herself as a formidable fundraiser. As of her latest filing with the Federal Election Commission, Bachmann had $2.8 million cash on hand …
The amount of money the state of Alaska and news organizations are spending on the Sarah Palin e-mails — copying costs, shipping costs (or flight costs), man-hour costs, and opportunity costs — should inspire some skull-clutching. It’s all the more extravagant considering how much of the content has been redacted, how old the e-mails …
Political strategists Roger Stone and Ed Rollins go way back. Both have ties to Nixon. Both worked to put Ronald Reagan into the White House in the 1980s. Both worked on Jack Kemp’s failed 1988 presidential bid. And they both got bad press for their involvement with Bob Dole’s 1996 effort. The similarities also extend to style, as …
The Public Religion Research Institute released a report on Thursday about the Millennial generation (roughly those ages 18 to 29) and where they stand in today’s culture wars, particularly concerning abortion and religion. One finding was that Americans in general, and particularly Millennials, have “decoupled” part of the traditional …
Ed Rollins, a veteran strategist newly attached to Rep. Michele Bachmann, has a deceptively simple LinkedIn profile. Only two jobs are publicly listed: his current position as a fellow for CNN and Hofstra University and a stint …
In a speech at the National Press Club on Friday, AFL-CIO head Richard Trumka drew predictable contrasts between the mega-union’s members and its political enemies
(e.g. firefighters running into burning buildings vs. the Scott Walkers of the world), but he also took aim at Washington’s behavior on the whole—suggesting that Democrats …
The Hawaii Department of Health, unlucky keeper of President Obama’s long-form birth certificate, has been bombarded with hundreds of demands for information since the birther fervor heated up in 2008. According to Janice Okubo, the department’s public information officer, many of those requests come from the same people over and over …
Last October, Farooque Ahmed was arrested in a FBI terrorism sting. Working with operatives he believed to be members of al-Qaeda, Ahmed helped plot attacks on D.C. Metrorail stations by passing on information designed to cause the most casualties. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced Monday to 23 years in prison, with 50 years supervised …
Members of Congress may have landed themselves a budget deal on Friday, but their actions and reactions leading up to the accord will likely resurface as campaign-ad fodder. As with every cycle, some of those ads will be negative. But only some of those, ranging as they do from petulant mudslinging to polite objections, will have the …
