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.
Gabriela Saucedo Mercer, a candidate for Congress in Arizona, is an immigrant from Mexico herself but when it comes to “Middle Easterners”, Chinese and apparently various brown-skinned people who don’t come from Mexico, she doesn’t want them here “legally or illegally” because they mix in and look like Mexicans.
The welfare ‘waiver’ policy which Mitt Romney has now made a centerpiece of his campaign against President Obama was made in response to requests from five governors — two of whom are Republicans. So what do those two Republican governors say now?
They’re doing their best to say they didn’t ask for what they asked for.
LA Mayor: “You can’t just trot out a brown face or a Spanish surname and expect people are going to vote for your party.”
Shorter Jan Brewer: The real race-baiting in this election is coming from President Obama.
Tropical Storm Isaac hasn’t gone through the explosive strengthening that sometimes happens when cyclones tap the warms waters of the Gulf of Mexico. It’s still forecast to grow into a hurricane (perhaps as soon as the next National Hurricane Center advisory) before it makes landfall tonight along the Louisiana coast, with a substantial storm surge, high winds and torrential rains. But if the immediate coastal area avoids the extreme effects of a more powerful storm — and if New Orleans’ new levees and, more importantly, it’s new pumping systems, hold up — Isaac’s copious tropical moisture may actually be a good thing on balance, bringing some long-awaited relief to the drought stricken areas of the southeast and mid-Mississippi Valley.
Here’s the most recent national drought map: Read More