Akin finally admits it’s the Republican party, not the liberal media, trying to kick him off the ballot.

Scenes from the Ron Paul mini-revolt from today on the convention floor and what all the fighting was actually about.

I’ve been talking about this for a few days. The Romney campaign’s welfare ad is demonstrably false. Everyone seems to concede that. And the Romney campaign is pushing it so hard for one reason: to find an angle to inject the president’s race into the campaign. The accepted phrase ‘playing the race card’ is too trivial and glib to pass muster. Let’s call it what it is — appealing to racial bigotry, fear of black people.

Mainstream media types are chronically unwilling to, shall we say, call a spade a spade in cases like this. It’s too radioactive. And the charge once leveled isn’t one that can easily be treated in the comfortable he said/she said narrative of political reporting.

But maybe something’s changing. At least a bit. Or at least for a few. Read More

Who is speaking and when.

The biggest cheers of the day so far in Tampa go to this guy.

The Ron Paul acolytes at the RNC let loose today, and the Romney counter-chanters went into full U-S-A! chant mode to try to drown them out. Watch.

Within moments, we can all drop the use of the word “presumptive” when describing Mitt Romney as the GOP nominee.

Photos from Tampa: Tonight’s main attraction and today’s main disruption.

NYT says reporter made a mistake in sending an advance copy of a Maureen Dowd column to the CIA — without her knowledge — to help her check a fact.

Federal judicial panel blocks Texas Republicans’ redistricting plan for being purposely discriminatory.

To put a sharper point on this, most of the cases — the vast majority even — brought under the Voting Rights Act in the last half century have involved redistricting maps that have a discriminatory “effect.” It’s much less common for the courts to find discriminatory “intent.” But that’s what the courts found here, in the second largest state in the country, with a large and rapidly growing Hispanic population, whose Republican governor was running for president.

So it’s a big deal.