Both sides of the political aisle have made a major issue out of the problem of the 11 million people inside the US illegally or presently undocumented. The president has said this is a priority and Florida senator Marco Rubio has agreed. Read more »

A petition calling for legislation to legalize unlocking cell phones has passed the magic 100,000 mark, mandating a White House response -- and guess what? The Obama administration says it agrees that consumers should have the right to reprogram their phones to work on any carrier's network.Read more »

I like Robert Reich; he's one of the smartest economic thinkers in the country and can explain everything that's wrong with the economy in two minutes. And I really want to believe that he's correct in his latest essay, and that President Obama really is poised to under the Reagan Revolution (or at least, the Reagan Republican Coalition).Read more »

Second inaugration speeches are hard; you have to be political without sounding partisan, inspiring without being divisive -- and promise change and progress even if you haven't accomplished what you wanted in the first term. The Obama address surprised me: He went left, making clear that he wants economic and social equality to be his final legacy. Read more »

There's no doubt that Mitt Romney got a nice, juicy bounce from the first presidential debate. There's no doubt that President Obama's performance was so bad that even his friends call it a world-class fuckup.Read more »

I realize Romney lied, over and over. I realize that the Democrats are trying to point that out, and the president is trying to spin his way out of it. And some people actually think Obama "won" the debate. But debates are about image as well as substance, about appearing confident and presidential -- and speaking in a way that reaches the average undecided voter. That means using stories and simplifying things and delivering information in an understandable, linear way. Romney did that, beautifully. Obama did not.

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Other than not making any stupid mistakes, the presidential candidates have one goal for the Oct. 3: "debate" -- and it's the reason not much of substance is going to come out of either one's mouth.

See, this isn't a national campaign at this point; it's all about winning over a few hundred thousand undecided voters in about nine states. Which means that Romney and Obama are going to be talking to a few hundred thousand people mostly in Pennsylvania, Florida, and Ohio.Read more »

Lots of fun with convention democracy on Day Two, when the chair of the event, LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, got caught up in the scam that happens almost every year, when the party rank-and-file doesn't want to do what leadership says, and the unruly hordes have to be tamed. I've seen this happen at the state level (where Art Torres pulled a classic years ago to cut off party reformers at the knees) and it happens at the national level, too -- typically not in prime time.Read more »

Talk about a contrast.

Tonight was all about the two sides of the Democratic Party, the two visions of how the party should approach policy, two utterly divergent approaches to the world that can hardly even be called "wings" of one party. And yet, they both got rousing cheers -- and even the progressives were all hot about ol' Bill.Read more »