Rolling Stone National Affairs

A few more items to add to the list we drew up while the balloons were still falling early Wednesday morning: Christine O’Donnell was even less electable than Alvin Greene. Despite never actually campaigning and displaying even more bizarre behavior than O'Donnell, the South Carolina Democrat outdrew the Delaware Republican ...

If you compare the exit polls from last night and the midterm election in 2006 there was clearly a surge in the angry, old fogey vote. Senior citizens carved out a 23 percent share of the electorate, up four points from four years ago. The well-heeled also turned out, with ...

While voters in the rest of the country were clamoring to take the country back(ward), Golden State voters showed a steady commitment to the future last night. The state handily defeated Prop 23, the ballot measure, bankrolled by Texas oil money, that would have rolled back the state's ambitious clean-energy ...

Proposition 19 -- the California ballot measure that would have legalized marijuana possession and cultivation -- has gone up in smoke. The initiative, which led in the polls through much of the summer, fell flat everywhere in the state but in the Bay Area, and among every demographic group except ...

The big headlines were clear well before midnight: Republicans were retaking the House, while Democrats would hold the Senate. The big questions -- what will President Obama do now, and how far to the right will the Tea Party drag Speaker-to-be John Boehner and the rest of the caucus -- ...

The polls say it’s going to be a bad-to-very-bad night for Democrats. But until the actual polls -- the ones that voters actually vote at -- close, it is still possible for Democrats and likeminded independents to hope all those polls are wrong. They are probably not (early intel on ...

For Democrats, preserving control of the House looks like a lost cause. For Republicans, a Senate majority is still within reach -- but barely. Where Congress is concerned, that means the big question for election day is: How many nut jobs are we going to be stuck with in the ...

It has been noted that American Idol finales can draw more votes than American Presidents, a bit of fuzzy math (American Idol voters can vote more than once, and when ballots for losing candidates are included, presidential elections have tens of millions more participants) that has a way of sounding ...

As befits these fractious times, reaction to President Obama’s appearance on The Daily Show last night has split along predictable lines. If you like Stewart and Obama, you generally liked it. If you’re part of the president's disenchanted base, you found Obama’s answers insufficiently enchanting. If you’re a hater, hey, ...

California is looking increasingly like a breakwater against the GOP wave of 2010. And if the polls hold and former (and future) governor Jerry Brown and embattled liberal Democrat Sen. Barbara Boxer overcome their respective challenges by Silicon Valley Republicans Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, the following ads -- three ...

It's been one week since Rolling Stone and CBS independently spotlighted the failure of the Gulf governors to mobilize the National Guard to combat the oil inundating the region's marshes and beaches. (Read: Dereliction of Duty). The spectacular failure of these governors to step up as commanders in chief continues. ...

This ad from VoteVets.com targeting Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina for taking Big Oil's campaign cash sets the standard for not letting a serious crisis go to waste:

Rolling Stone editor Eric Bates discussed our bombshell Stanley McChrystal story with Charlie Rose last night. Watch the full episode above, and check out the rest of our McChrystal coverage here: • The Runaway General: Read the Full Story • McChrystal and Us by Matt Taibbi • Replacing McChrystal: Can ...

A federal judge in Louisiana this morning enjoined the administration's six-month moratorium on deep-water drilling, ruling that it is likely to be found "arbitrary and capricious." The decision is shocking at first blush. How, in the shadow of the ongoing catastrophe in the Gulf, could a judge conclude the administration ...

Be careful how much you read into last night's election results. November is poised to be a national election — a referendum on the Obama presidency and the effectiveness of Democratic rule. What we saw Tuesday night was a collection of local races — each compelling in its own story ...

Last week we learned that BP and the Coast Guard's estimate of the volume of oil leaking into the Gulf ? 5,000 barrels per day ? is a joke. Independent scientific analysis solicited by NPR of the lone video of the gushing pipe on the sea floor put the flow ...

After all of the whispering, here at last is some reporting that Elana Kagan is not gay. I'm frankly baffled that so many on the left were eager to put a discussion of Kagan's sexuality off limits. Either a nominee's biography and identity are germane to judicial outlook or they ...

Based on this Lady Gaga remake, apparently made by American soldiers based in Afghanistan, the Pentagon may need to revise DADT to become, Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't 'Telephone.' Awesome.

The Good SEC brings “securities fraud action” against Goldman Sachs for its role in subprime meltdown. The Bad Goldman Sachs execs whinge about the views from their new $2.1 billion headquarters. The Scary Move over vampire squids, hello Tyrannobdella Rex, that is to say, tyrant leech king — a species ...

Mark Fiore is a first rate political cartoonist who’s innovative use of Web animation won the self-syndicated lampooner a Pulitzer this week. But while Fiore is the toast of the interwebs, you can’t see his work on your iPad. And not only because Steve Jobs broke the Internet with his ...