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One of the surprise stars of Wednesday night was brought to us by none other than Rush Limbaugh.Sandra Fluke, the recent Georgetown Law School grad and liberal activist, rocketed to fame this year when her advocacy on behalf of requiring insurers to cover birth control prompted Limbaugh to call her a slut.

Kucinich ‘Disappointed’ by Obama’s Jobs Record The former Ohio congressman, long known as an independent voice within the Democratic Party, told Beast TV that he wishes the president had done more to create jobs in America.

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You can’t swing a dead cat here in Charlotte without whacking an anti-abortion protester brandishing giant posters of bloody, dismembered fetuses. What can you do? It’s the Democratic convention. The party is proudly pro-abortion rights.

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Rahm Emanuel has a simple explanation for why President Obama hasn’t accomplished more in office.It’s “the radicalization of the Republican Party,” the Chicago mayor says in a video interview here in Charlotte.“They have become more ideological and more rigid.

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Cognitive dissonance? What cognitive dissonance? “What I’m concerned about is the same issue that concerns every other American—and that’s ‘How am I gonna survive next week?’—because we’re all living under economic uncertainty,” says gay Republican activist Jimmy LaSalvia, explaining why he prefers the party that wants to curtail his rights over the party that explicitly supports same-sex marriage.

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When Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a pit bull in pinstripes, hit the Democratic National Convention stage Tuesday, he briefly left behind hometown problems that might just complicate the reelection of his former boss.President Obama can’t avoid at least one of those problems—the economy—since it’s a national problem as well.

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In the words of that old rocker Rod Stewart: “Every picture tells a story, don’t it?”On the opening night of the Democratic National Convention, the TV cameras spent almost as much time focused on the faces of the conventioneers as they did on the faces of those delivering keynote speeches.

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President Obama may have dodged a metaphorical mess.It has rained relentlessly here in Charlotte since the Democratic convention began. Most delegates and journalists were utterly soaked on the way to the area Tuesday night, stripped of their umbrellas because they are deemed a dire security threat.

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My television tuned to PBS on one side and my computer streaming live from Charlotte, N.C., on the other, I settled in for the launch of the Democratic National Convention. If the tinny speakers didn’t reproduce the ecstatic high of being there, it provided an interesting insight into the power of media filters.

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The Democratic Convention wrapped up its first night with a couple of speeches that blew the roof off the joint.In terms of sheer oratorical skills, Julián Castro and Michelle Obama are as good as anyone in politics today. While much of the country probably asked, "Julián who?" and "Why him?" when they heard he was to deliver the keynote speech, they are wondering no more.

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Seventy-three-year-old Denise Potter had hip-replacement surgery in May, but she boarded her Memphis church’s bus Sunday and rode 600 miles to Charlotte, N.C., all the same, just to be in the same room as Michelle Obama.Potter says she supports President Obama in part because she really loves his wife, and she knew the first lady would deliver a message well worth hearing in her opening-night speech at the Democratic National Convention.

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1. Richard Trumka President of the AFL-CIO, labor leader Richard Trumka will try to rally America’s hammer wielders and hard hats behind President Obama on Wednesday evening. The mustachioed Trumka has taken a decisive line against Republican candidate Mitt Romney, saying in July that the Bain Capital founder “doesn’t care about hard work and responsibility.

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Last night in Charlotte, the Democratic Party made history as the first national party to offer a platform endorsing marriage equality for all Americans.The move followed, of course, President Obama's personal endorsement of same-sex marriage in May.

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Sen. Sherrod Brown knows which side his omelet is hot-sauced on.After a fundraiser in the parking lot of the Cleveland restaurant Moxie, Brown, Ohio’s senior senator, pulled Planned Parenthood chief Cecile Richards aside to thank her for headlining—and to seek her blessing.

San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro was overshadowed Tuesday night—no, not by first lady Michelle Obama, who threw down like no other presidential spouse ever has at a political convention. (Sorry, Hillary Clinton.)The first Latino to deliver a keynote convention speech lost some of his historic star power to his 3-year-old daughter, Carina Victoria.