Pollsters have been busy lately--here are some highlights from their new polls.

This issue of Political Report covers party convention votes, candidates' spouses, the economic pulse, and more.

For more than a quarter century, news organizations have been surveying convention delegates.

For months, pundits have been eyeballing poll numbers and spinning the story that Mitt Romney has a solid, unchanging base of support, and that the other candidates are taking turns being the "Non-Romney" of the day. This consensus view is based on a faulty premise. If eyeballing of the data were enough, God would not have given us econometricians.

The governments in Russia and China very much want to uphold the principle that every now and then the state must crush people who want freedom. That is why they worked together to veto a fairly toothless United Nations resolution condemning the regime in Syria and calling for President Bashar Assad, the lipless murderer who runs the place, to step down.

We must abandon the mirages, to which Obama still clings, that Iran might negotiate an acceptable "solution" to its nuclear weapons program, or merely that economic sanctions will somehow force Iran to negotiate. No wonder the Iranian regime mocks us for weakness and willful blindness.

AEI stepped into new territory in 2011 when it co-hosted a Republican presidential debate, focused on foreign policy and national security, with CNN and the Heritage Foundation.

The controversy over TSA and its new policy is overdone and the outrage seems misplaced.