Thaddeus McCotter, former Republican presidential candidate and current Michigan congressman, recently warned about the GOP establishment maneuvering the 2012 presidential campaign toward a brokered convention in which party insiders hand pick a “new face” nominee.

This is one of those bombshell stories with multiple facets that branch off into all manner of areas: gay rights, immigration & border control, potential abuse of power, sexual assault by a priest, and a mediagenic sheriff about to run for Congress.

Sacramento lawmakers spend inordinate amounts of time arguing about the budget, pensions, education, unions, water (and most everything else) without ever seeming to accomplish much. Budget problems lurch forward each year, zombie-like with no resolution. Unfunded pension liability, the elephant in the room that hardly anyone mentions, grows bigger each year. The infrastructure needs repair and the once-stellar California education is slipping badly. So what’s going on?

Though Independents remain skeptical of the Obama administration's handling of economic issues, as Christopher Guzman reported here at IVN last week, President Obama's standing among Independents has clearly begun to benefit by comparison with the narrowing field of candidates in the Republican primary.  As the Republican candidates continue to spar for the support of the party's base, they have begun to turn off Independents, who are more likely to identify themselve

GM’s record earnings announced just ahead of the Michigan GOP primary have put Republicans in general and Mitt Romney in particular in a political bind.  Romney famously opposed the GM and Chrysler bailouts saying that failing companies should be allowed to fail.  In recent days, Romney has been forced to defend his view that the free market should have been allowed to work in the case of the U.S.

Heading into the weekend, the Republican presidential candidates scatter themselves throughout Georgia, Michigan, Ohio, and Idaho, while President Obama returns to Washington after a short visit to Los Angeles.

On the campaign trail...

President Barack Obama may be gradually regaining the favor of Independent voters in the midst of a Republican dogfight, but that doesn’t mean that the influential voter demographic still isn’t skeptical of the steps he’s taken to revive the nation’s economy.  The latest survey released Thursday by the Pew Research Center, taking into account Independents’ evaluation of the impact of the president’s economic policies, hints that

An audit of hundreds of foreclosures in San Francisco by the city's assessor-recorder reveals that 99 percent of loans contain at least one irregularity. Auditors uncovered "what appear to be one or more clear violations of law" in a vast majority (84 percent) of cases.