Inside and outside of Oakland

Before the Nov. 6 election, there's just one little housekeeping item....

  And that's on Sept. 5, when Republicans in Michigan's current 11th Congressional District will pick a nominee to succeed U.S. Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, the Livonia Republican who quit Congress abruptly in July, forcing a special election to fill his seat for a matter of weeks from the Nov. 6 election to the end of the year.

Races to watch: A whole bunch

  There's many races to watch today, dozens of ballot questions and a couple hundred candidates on the ballot, but there's none so compelling as these:

Twitter launches presidential political index


   Twitter is taking a shot at measuring the sentiment towards President Barack Obama and his presumed Republican challenger Mitt Romney.
  The social media giant has launched the Twitter Political Index,  which seeks to measure the sentiment towards the two presidential candidates based on the 400 million tweets sent each day.
  You can track it daily here.