The family trees of American politicians - There are those with very long blue blood pedigrees, and there are those with very short and unknown pedigrees. There are also some surprises, like a certain Democratic senator and possible '08 Veep pick being somewhat closely related to the current Veep, or that certain ex-mayors have family trees that were apparently a bit inbred back in the old country. Other fun tidbits: Newt Gingrich's father was illegitimate, John Kerry is related to the rabbi who created the Golem of Prague, Pat Buchanan is related to both FDR and Marilyn Manson, Wesley Clark's father was a Kohan, Martin Luther King was born Michael Louis King, and Gary Hart was born Gary Hartpence, which was in turn derived from an ancestor named James Eberhart Pence. (more non-politicians here)
posted by Asparagirl on Oct 3, 2005 - 18 comments

Yulia Timoshenko (her personal website) is the new premier of Ukraine (bio). She is the hippest politician I've ever laid my eyes on. Here is a picture of her giving a speech to the Ukrainian parliament when it approved her nomination to the premiership. Here's another picture of her being insufferably hip. Russia has issued an international arrest warrant for her through Interpol, but who cares when she's this cool? Don't you wish you had politicians who dressed like that? Strike that. Don't you wish you had politicians who could dress like that?
posted by Kattullus on Feb 5, 2005 - 89 comments

Truly meta. We've had posts about outing gay politicians. We had a post about Dick Cheney's gay daughter. We had a Metatalk post about revealing blogs that the author might want to keep private.

Now they're all tied togther in the story of a politician's possibly gay daughter being outed by a blog that she might or might not have been keeping private. My head hurts.
posted by Armitage Shanks on Sep 27, 2004 - 29 comments

Top 25 Celebrities Turned Politicians
posted by Rastafari on Jul 19, 2004 - 8 comments

The American People. Greg Knauss' latest offering let's the Americans know who is speaking on their behalf. Nifty use of RSS technology. [via msippey]
posted by riffola on Mar 5, 2004 - 8 comments

Statesman or Skatesman "Last Christmas my Dad and me had a big argument. He'd found a picture of Enoch Powell on a pogo stick and claimed that politicians weren't as interesting as that any more ... " Jason Whiley disagreed and wrote to as many politicians as he could asking them if they'd ever used similar transport, such as skateboards, gokarts, BMX bikes and Space Hoppers. Over Eighty responded including "three Prime Ministers, five Chancellors, six Foreign Secretaries, four Home Secretaries, and three Speakers of the House of Commons. " [via B3ta]
posted by feelinglistless on Aug 15, 2003 - 5 comments

It's fun to watch your tax dollars put politicians in office. "Cheney has been the White House road warrior this year, hauling in more than $22 million for Republicans in 74 campaign appearances"
posted by the fire you left me on Oct 23, 2002 - 14 comments

Wouldn't it be awesome if there were a web site where you could see the actual voting records of elected officials?
posted by snakey on Mar 9, 2001 - 19 comments

Al Gore has decided on Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) as his VP nominee, sez someone who ratted to the AP. I suppose there's a small chance they're just leaking this now to test public and media reaction before making a final fianl decision, but I doubt it.
posted by aaron on Aug 7, 2000 - 11 comments