But after an election in which Democrats rode a wave of minority support to keep the White House and Senate, party activists should wonder about one of the founders for whom that event is named. If branding matters, then the tradition of honoring perhaps the most systematic violator of human rights for America’s nonwhites should finally run its course.

Renowned journalist T.D. Allman’s gripping "Finding Florida: The True History of the Sunshine State" argues that brutality was a habit of mind for party icon Andrew Jackson long before he laid the groundwork, as president, for the Trail of Tears, the thousand-mile death march that killed 4,000 Cherokees in 1838−39.

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The bilingual first-generation former Navy SEAL is a Harvard Business School graduate with a successful business career, some moderate political stances, and a penchant for running marathons. He crossed the finish line at the Boston Marathon just a few minutes before the bombs went off last month. While stationed in South America in the early 1990s he met his furutre-wife, who was working in the Peace Corps at a school for students with special needs. “I’m exactly what the American dream is all about,” Gomez said in an April GOP debate against two other Republican challengers.

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The question is how much longer he'll be able to straddle.

Weiner's professional political life began in 1991, when he ran his maiden race for City Council. As Steve Kornacki detailed for Salon, he won a long-shot bid as a 27-year-old, in part by anonymously sending mailers linking his opponent to African-American figures (namely, Mayor David Dinkins and Jesse Jackson) unpopular in his white district. Appealing to the white ethnic constituency, he cultivated an identity in office as an outer-borough moderate, focusing on issues like graffiti, airport regulations and fire alarm boxes.

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When Gillibrand -- a hot topic in political circles this week, as a potential liberal presidential candidate and a champion for addressing sexual assault in the military -- was appointed to Hillary Clinton's Senate seat in 2009, Nate Silver wrote, "This is not a terrific outcome for progressive Democrats," because "Gillibrand, statistically speaking, has been one of the more conservative Democrats in the House. Moreover, she is a somewhat proud conservative, being a member of the Blue Dog caucus. In a state like New York, which is capable of electing and re-electing a very liberal senator, that’s a somewhat underachieving result for the Democrats."

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Had people voted last November at the same rates they did in 2004, when black turnout was below its current historic levels, Republican Mitt Romney would have won narrowly, according to an analysis conducted for The Associated Press.

Census data and exit polling show that whites and blacks will remain the two largest racial groups of eligible voters for the next decade. Last year's heavy black turnout came despite concerns about the effect of new voter-identification laws on minority voting, outweighed by the desire to re-elect the first black president.

William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, analyzed the 2012 elections for the AP using census data on eligible voters and turnout, along with November's exit polling. He estimated total votes for Obama and Romney under a scenario where 2012 turnout rates for all racial groups matched those in 2004. Overall, 2012 voter turnout was roughly 58 percent, down from 62 percent in 2008 and 60 percent in 2004.

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It’s just as bad an idea now as ever.

Just to briefly remind everyone why it’s such a bad idea, it really comes down to this: The federal government is going to develop policies. Liberal policies, conservative policies, whatever: The government will develop and carry out choices about public policy. Each of these choices winds up being a struggle among a whole lot of players: the president; members of the House and the Senate; the political parties; interest groups; the permanent bureaucracy in executive branch departments and agencies.

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So, if you want to support Obama’s agenda, and you want to make the most efficient donation you can, should you send money?

Nope. Here’s the thing. There are basically two reasons to support OFA, and both of them, I’d argue, can be better accomplished by putting your money elsewhere.

The first purpose of OFA would be to directly help the president’s agenda in Congress. It’s not particularly likely, however, that OFA, no matter how much money it can raise, could do that. Political scientists have found very little success for the presidential strategy of going over the heads of Congress in hopes that voters can pressure their representatives to do what the president wants.

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As the coverage of Margaret Thatcher's death this week reminds us, the 1980s still define us in so many ways. The National Geographic Channel poll, timed to the Sunday premiere of the channel's three-night "The '80s: The Decade That Made Us," is chock-full of revealing findings about why exactly that is.

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All of this was a key Republican strategy in taking back the House, and while there were lots of reasons the Democrats lost and Pelosi was dethroned, it achieved the desired result. Since the next big electoral battle will be control of the House in 2014, and a Democratic win would presumably put Pelosi back in charge, expect to see more Pelosi boogeyman-ing.

"It didn't bother me, I figured they thought I was effective and therefore they had to take me down," Pelosi told Salon at the premiere Thursday night of "Fall to Grace," her daughter's HBO documentary on former New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey. Still, she worries about the message it sends to other women who might be considering a run.

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Last Monday, the Supreme Court declined to hear a case challenging the century-old ban on direct corporate contributions to federal election campaigns. That counts as good news in a month that included the court’s earlier decision to hear a case that challenges the aggregate contribution limits in campaign finance and Obama strategist David Axelrod declaring that he would prefer a system of unlimited contributions with full disclosure. Almost all Republicans, the Supreme Court, and a powerful faction of the Democratic Party now fall somewhere on the spectrum between skepticism and vehement opposition to limits on contributions. The flimsy remains of the post-Watergate system of campaign finance regulation are on the verge of collapse.

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Last week, I participated in a symposium at Iowa State University entitled “Social Science, Presidential Campaigns and Political Reporting.” Among those who examined last year’s presidential election, the consensus seemed to be that the actual influence of the things we call “the campaign”—including advertisements, candidate visits, volunteer activity, etc.—was very small. The outcome of the election was very well explained by “the fundamentals,” including the economy, conditions of foreign policy, and other aspects of the political environment over which the candidates have little to no power. This is all very consistent with decades of political science research suggesting that campaigns only have minimal effects on voters.

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“I’ve experienced how none of us go through life without mistakes,” Sanford says in the ad. “But in their wake we can learn a lot about grace, a God of second chances and be the better for it. In that light, I humbly step forward and ask for your help in changing Washington.”

Watch:

Sanford left office in disgrace in 2009 after revelations that he was conducting an affair with an Argentinian woman, which came to light after he disappeared from his state. He is running for his old congressional seat, recently vacated by Republican Tim Scott after Scott was appointed to Sen. Jim DeMint's senate seat.

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Like the nonprofit groups that poured money into last year’s elections, the decade-old State Government Leadership Foundation has been able to keep the identities of its funders secret. Until now.

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I'm a fan of laughing instead of crying -- especially when it comes to the ceremonial excess of Feb. 14 -- so I bring you this year's 10 worst attempts to capitalize on Cupid's holiday.

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“By the way,” Obama said in his election speech. “We have to fix that.”

But how to fix it remains unclear.

Though new research on states’ performance in the November election reveals long lines kept thousands from voting, there’s still much we don’t know about what would best speed up the process.

Victor’s home state of Florida had the longest average wait time of any state at 45 minutes. Victor waited for three hours. Other Floridians reported standing in line for up to 7 hours.

Not every voter had Victor’s stamina: Professor Theodore Allen at Ohio State University estimated that long lines in Florida deterred at least 201,000 people, using a formula based on voter turnout data and poll closing time. The number only includes people discouraged by the wait at their specific polling site, and not those who stayed home due to “the general inconvenience of election day.” The real number, Allen says, is likely much higher. One study also showed that black and Hispanic voters nationwide waited longer on average than white voters.

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The creation this month of Organizing for Action, which will promote the president’s second-term agenda, appears to be the fourth reversal by Obama on major money-in-politics issues since 2008.

“No big bank or corporation will donate million-dollar checks to OFA without the expectation that it will impact which issues they engage on, and that’s very troubling,” said Adam Green of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

The Washington Post noted that in reorganizing his campaign as a tax-exempt social welfare group, the president is embracing a structure that has been criticized for allowing anonymous money into politics.

Conservatives who’ve been attacked by the Obama camp for their reliance on such “dark money” groups called out the president’s “brazen hypocrisy.” Neither the White House nor Organizing for America responded to requests for comment.

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December’s payrolls were up 155,000 and the unemployment rate held steady at 7.8 percent.  Factories and construction sites added jobs — 25,000 and 30,000, respectively — an improvement over recent months.  On the other hand, the public sector shed another 13,000 jobs, driven exclusively by local governments, the continuation of a longer-term negative trend as localities struggle with budget constraints.

Hourly wages and average weekly hours got a bit of a bump up as well, so weekly earnings are up 2.4 percent over the past year.  Since inflation recently has been tracking at around 2 percent, that’s a slight gain in real pay (important, because starting this month, most workers will take a 2 percent hit to their paychecks due to the expiration of the payroll tax break, a casualty of the fiscal cliff deal).  There was also some evidence of more folks moving from part-time into full-time jobs.

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Kate says about her top 5: "The weird thing about my five favorites is that there are nine of them. In no order": 

"Bunheads" (ABC Family)
"Mad Men" (AMC)
"Breaking Bad" (AMC)
"Real Housewives of Orange County" (Bravo)
"Grey’s Anatomy" (ABC)
"Game of Thrones" (HBO)
"Parenthood" (NBC)
"Justified" (FX)
"The Good Wife" (CBS)

Special Categories:
1. What was the show of the year? This category is the only one I’m having a problem with; I love all my shows, including ones that would have made the list if you’d asked for my Top 50, for different reasons! I’m going to pick "Mad Men" because I was so impressed and moved by Season 5, and thought that Jon Hamm, Elisabeth Moss, Christina Hendricks, John Slattery, Vincent Kartheiser and Jessica Paré did incredible things.

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My suggestion: Buy some women’s magazines. No, really. Or at least some women’s Web sites…

For $150 million, you could buy or start a lot of women’s Web sites. And I’d hardly change a thing in the formula. The nine articles on sex, shopping and exercise could stay the same. The 10th would just be the reverse of what’s there now.

For the pro-Republican stuff, well, just visit the “Real Mitt Romney” page at snopes.com, or look up the time Mitt Romney rescued a 14-year-old kidnap victim, to see the kind of feel-good stories that could have been running. For the others, well, it would run articles on whether Bill Clinton should get a pass on his affairs, whether it’s right that the Obama White House pays women less than men, and reports on how the tax system punishes women.

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The couple were fighting outside a bar just after 1 a.m. on Dec. 1 when "Moran allegedly slammed his girlfriend's head into the bar's metal trash can cage," according to Washington City Paper:

After the attack, police described Moran's girlfriend as "bleeding heavily from her nose and also observed that her nose and right eye were extremely swollen." One of the ambulance technicians who transported her to Howard University Hospital told police that Moran appeared to have broken her nose and given her a skull fracture under her right eye.

Moran was arrested for felony domestic violence assault, but pleaded the charge down to simple assault today. He was sentenced to probation.

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