The McCains, the Palins and the Johnston meet on the tarmac in Minneapolis. Via The New York Times.

- The Reverend Debra W. Haffner, director of the Religious Institute on Sexual Morality, Justice and Healing, makes a good argument on the limits of family privacy when there are important public issues at stake. In a column reprinted at RH Reality Check, Haffner writes that the unplanned pregnancy of Gov. Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old daughter “raises [...]

CNN’s Campbell Brown on Monday interviewed a spokesman for John McCain about what experience Sarah Palin, McCain’s pick for VP, has to be commander in chief. The interview began with a discussion of when McCain knew about the pregnancy of Palin’s 17-year-old daughter and whether Palin had thought about the ramifications of putting her daughter in [...]

Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now! radio program, was arrested Monday afternoon in St. Paul. According to a press release, Goodman was attempting to free two Democracy Now! producers who had been arrested on suspicion of rioting. Video of the arrest is available here. Glenn Greenwald is keeping up with scenes of the protests. The excerpt [...]

Following Deanna today, we learned of the newly launched Hurricane Gustav Wiki, a centralized site for links to information everywhere else on the web. There’s also the Gustav Information Center, an online community for coordinating volunteer knowledge-sharing related to Hurricane Gustav.

Our hero Anne Elizabeth Moore is blogging from the Republican National Convention at the Feministing Community and Code Pink. You can also follow her on Twitter. “So what does it take to have an entire city — a traditionally progressive blue collar one, but drifting toward the conservative of late — and the majority its intellectuals, [...]

Before I go join Drinking Liberally to watch tonight’s historic event, a few interesting items on race and the Democratic National Convention: - Writing in The New York Times earlier this week, Alessandra Stanley notes that while one first was celebrated, another was almost swept under the rug: “Tuesday night was tailored to pay homage to [...]

“Once upon a time, about a month ago, Senator John McCain was mocking the celebrity of his rival, Senator Barack Obama, comparing him in a television commercial to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears,” writes Michael Cooper at The Caucus. “But on Monday Mr. McCain showed that he was not against bold-faced-types, per se, hobnobbing in [...]

Just heard on MSNBC …Chris Matthews and Tom Brokaw both gave props to the new host on the block, Rachel Maddow, for using the word “post-rational” to describe Hillary Clinton supporters who won’t support Barack Obama. It’s a word Maddow has used before — to describe Clinton’s own campaign hopes. On another note, it was quite nice [...]

How thrilled are you that political commentator Rachel Maddow is replacing Dan Abrams in the 9 p.m. slot on MSNBC? “MSNBC has put heavy emphasis this year on presidential election coverage (it has given itself the tag line “The Place for Politics”), and it has turned to Ms. Maddow frequently both as a guest and as [...]

The following is a new book review by Richard C. Crepeau, posted at PopPolitics magazine. Those who heard the voice of the late Jim Corder, professor of English at Texas Christian University, will hear it again in these five essays and one poem contained within “The Heroes Have Gone: Personal Essays on Sport, Popular Culture and [...]

So you think sipping that mint julep today — Southern bourbon, sugar, mint and crushed ice — connects you to tradition? Jeff Burkhart, a bartender and writer, notes that the recipe for the first mint julep was quite different: Professor Jerry Thomas, the original celebrity bartender, took on the subject in his 1862 bartending treatise “The Bon [...]

What Tom Shales said. More from AJR, CJR, Greg Mitchell and Will Bunch, who concludes: Quickly, a word to any and all of my fellow journalists who happen to read this open letter: This. Must. Stop. Tonight, if possible. I thought that we had hit rock bottom in March 2003, when we failed to ask the tough [...]

We’ve just moved eight years of articles and blog entries over to shiny WordPress. There are a few kinks that we’ll be fixing over the next few days — including adding an updated blogroll and other resources — but feel free to drop me a note if you can’t find what you’re looking for or [...]

It’s not every day that a small, important book ends up in the hands of a big, well-known star, sunning, in a bikini, in Malibu. This week the stars aligned, as Pamela Anderson was spotted reading “Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity,” a book Kirkus called “a work of honesty and, yes, integrity.” Close-up: Let [...]