Politico’s Mike Allen swears he wasn’t taking a shot at FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver in this morning’s Playbook newsletter.

Sociologist and author of What Unions No Longer Do Jake Rosenfeld takes a look at the failed attempt to unionize a Volkswagen plant in Tennessee and takes away some lessons from the attempt.

This story has it all: a politician, a Ponzi schemer and loads of cash for the politician’s alleged mistress. And of course, it’s happening in Florida.

A couple days ago, CNN anchor Don Lemon wondered aloud whether “the supernatural power of God” made the missing Malaysian airplane disappear. Last night, he stepped up his game by raising all of the internet’s crazy theories about the disappearance.

Remember when the GOP issued that big “autopsy” report on the 2012 elections a year ago promising to do better with LGBT people, Hispanics, and women voters? Yeah, they don’t either.

Breaking reports say a news helicopter has crashed in Seattle near the Space Needle.

Chris Christie’s former campaign strategist doesn’t seem to have been hurt much by BridgeGate. He just landed a plum new job at a top GOP firm.

Lauren Rankin points out over at TPM Cafe that welfare reform, like the kind that Paul Ryan has championed, has actually hurt women the most.

A real interesting discussion this week at TPMCafe’s Book Club about What Unions No Longer Do by Jake Rosenfeld. I’d urge you to start with Rosenfeld’s post on the big shift in the labor movement from private sector to government employees and how that has changed unions in fundamental ways.

Local news reports say Fred Phelps has been excommunicated from Westboro Baptist Church, the hate group he founded.