Dennis Hastert, Lobbyist.

Get ready to fork over something serious for air conditioning. Deregulation is still working, right?

Music and politics are arguably the two biggest interests I have, and in 2004 I wrote a bit about the art and science of choosing campaign songs. In all the research I did for those pieces, I never came across what undoubtedly has to be the best one ever: "Get On A Raft With Taft."

Hary Reid and Nancy Pelosi want you to know that they are working very hard to have this whole nomination thing wrapped up fast, and the Rules and Bylaws meeting this weekend presents a good opportunity to tie up a lot of loose ends.

Oklahoma Republican Senator Tom Coburn said yesterday that, because the GOP has abandoned fiscal responsibility, they will not only lose seats in the Senate in November, but that they deserve to lose seats in the Senate.

A former Bush staffer (get this, a Republican technologist / eCampaign director, live and in the wild) comes to McClellan's defense, saying that he's more or less being punished for telling the truth.

Regular contributor Chris Bell announced today that the website for his project, Faith In Texas, is now online. Go have a look.

Barry Nolan's story is one you might not be familiar with, but he is a long-serving journalist who was recently fired by Comcast for publicly protesting a planned Emmy Award honor that was winging its way to one Bill O'Reilly.

As the Democratic Primary comes to a conclusion, the new media focus will inevitably shift entirely to superdelegates. Just over 200 of them have yet to endorse a candidate as of this morning. If you are interested in keeping up with the superdelegates (or maybe collecting them and trading them with your friends), you may find this well-tended list quite useful.

Politico has an interesting piece up about how some recent votes in the Senate show that no one is running the store on the GOP side. We learned today that Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has his own problems to worry about back home in Kentucky, so he isn't likely to be much of a guiding influence before November. As much as I've hollered about the schism at the top of the national Republican Party, I didn't expect it to be so overt, so obvious, so soon.