Here are five of the events in PartyBuilder for the coming week. You can add your own event or find one near you.

1. State Democratic Convention (Columbia, MO) - We are needing more volunteers to assist with ushering and other things at the convention. Please contact the local chapter for more information on helping.
2. Iowa Democratic Veterans' Caucus (Fairfield, IA) - See you in Fairfield for our next State Vets Caucus meeting on Saturday, May 10 at 10 AM.
3. Fish Fry (Frankfort, IN) - ALL YOU CAN EAT Fish Fry with all the fixin's (including homemade desserts!) Sponsored by the Roosevelt Kennedy Club as a fundraiser for local democratic candidates.
4. Drinking Liberally Monthly Meeting (Reno, NV) - Come on out and join in Reno's newest and most fun social club!
5. Political Leadership: Examining Local, State, and Federal Issues (Orlando, FL) - Join the Orlando area's top Young Professionals for an outstanding evening of networking, new business connections, promotions, great food, and dynamic speakers.

Not just your mom. But my mom. And your mom's mom. In fact, every mother in America. Republicans, unhappy with the Democratic majority, have been using such procedural tactics as this all week to bring the House to a standstill, but the assault on mothers may have gone too far. House Minority Leader John Boehner, asked yesterday to explain why he and 177 of his colleagues switched their votes, answered: "Oh, we just wanted to make sure that everyone was on record in support of Mother's Day." By voting against it?

'You Scratch My Back I'll Scratch Yours' McCain pushed key land deal for fundraiser: Sen. John McCain championed legislation that will let an Arizona rancher trade remote grassland and ponderosa pine forest here for acres of valuable federally owned property that is ready for development, a land swap that now stands to directly benefit one of his top presidential campaign fundraisers. Initially reluctant to support the swap, the Arizona Republican became a key figure in pushing the deal through Congress after the rancher and his partners hired lobbyists that included McCain's 1992 Senate campaign manager, two of his former Senate staff members (one of whom has returned as his chief of staff), and an Arizona insider who was a major McCain donor and is now bundling campaign checks. When McCain's legislation passed in November 2005, the ranch owner gave the job of building as many as 12,000 homes to SunCor Development, a firm in Tempe, Ariz., run by Steven A. Betts, a longtime McCain supporter who has raised more than $100,000 for the presumptive Republican nominee. Betts said he and McCain never discussed the deal.

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John McCain is taking a ferry ride down the East River from New York City to Highland, New Jersey tomorrow. Sounds like a great photo op, no? Turns out, McCain's tour will pass a series of landmarks he opposed funding for or even voted against. Bon voyage, Senator McCain! Details below:

Some folks at the Democratic Party crunched the numbers and put together some pretty remarkable findings about the record turnout this election cycle. It's transforming the Democratic Party and allowing us to compete everywhere, with tons of new voters being registered, so I'm recommending that all of you check it out. Read it here. Not only did registration increase 65% over the same period in 2004, but turnout increased as well. In Kansas, turnout increased 2,549 percent in Kansas. We're making gains with young people, in "battleground" states, in unconventional states, and in every region in the country. Again, check out the memo. It's pretty exciting to watch the excitement on our side while Republican turnout is pretty stagnant.

• McConnell "spikes" White House FEC request.
• Layoffs at the New York Times.
• FBI seeking Condoleeza Rice ethics probe records.

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Both on Wall Street: The improving picture on Wall Street has fed the widespread belief that the Federal Reserve will end its nine-month rate-cutting campaign at its June meeting, as it eyes the growing threat of inflation. And with the public: The poll suggests that inflation is the top economic issue for most Americans, with 47 percent of those questioned identifying it as the biggest economic problem.

From CNBC: The number of US workers filing claims for initial jobless benefits fell more than expected last week, according to a report Thursday that suggested the labor market, while soft, was not deteriorating rapidly. First-time jobless claims fell to 365,000 in the week ended May 3 from an upwardly revised 383,000 for the prior week, the Labor Department said. The good news, according to the economist quoted in the article, is that things are bad but not "dramatically" worse. UPDATE: First version said "jobs" instead of "jobless."

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From today's Washington Post online chat with Karl Rove: Columbus, Ohio: "You boldy predicted that Bush’s approval ratings would rebound — instead he is, according to Gallup, the most unpopular presdient [sic] in history. Will you finally admit that your vision for this nation has been overwhelmingly rejected by the majority of the people?" Karl Rove: "Get your facts right — there are at least three president who had worse approval ratings, Truman, Johnson and Nixon." 1. That's his defense? 2. Rove is wrong, anyway.

The Arizona Republic, John McCain's hometown newspaper, examined the presumptive GOP nominee's voting record and found that "when it matters most, he seldom bucks the party" on Senate votes since 1999. It is more evidence that John McCain's rhetoric on the campaign trail just doesn't match his Bush-like record in Washington. But an Arizona Republic analysis of his Senate votes on the most divided issues in the past decade shows that McCain almost never thwarted his party's objectives. The presumptive Republican nominee arguably cast the decisive vote 14 times since 1999 to ensure Republicans got their way, and he had five other close cases where his vote may have made a difference, Senate records show. By comparison, McCain effectively handed Democrats a win on roll-call votes four times in the same period. On one of those occasions, Republicans could still have won if Vice President Dick Cheney had cast a tie-breaking vote. According to Congressional Quarterly, John McCain sided with President Bush's wishes more than 90 percent of the time in five of the last seven years. The study found that in 2007, John McCain sided with President Bush 95 percent of the time, and with the GOP 90 percent of the time. The voting pattern seems at odds with the popular narrative that McCain's maverick tendencies make him an unreliable conservative. "He is a conservative who votes conservative on most issues," said Keith Poole, a political scientist at the University of California-San Diego. "By no means is he a liberal or even a moderate." John McCain: The Bush president Bush Republicans have been waiting for.

• $123
• More on those missing White House emails.
• "Back issues" preventing testimony?

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UPDATE BY MIKE LINK: The RNC whines that an opinion piece isn't fair to cite because it's somebody's opinion. And apparently they also don't realize that the person's bio is identified at the webpage we linked to. The health care system would be put on "life support" under McCain, according to a piece over at the Hill: More important, rather than relieving the burden weighing down middle-class Americans, the McCain-Bush plan squeezes them further. McCain’s “solution” to the problem of rising healthcare costs is for Americans to pay even more and get less. By ending employer-sponsored health insurance and replacing it with an individual market in which everyone buys their own policy, McCain’s plan will drive up costs for families. Ending employer-sponsored coverage is itself playing with fire.

"Election Disaster?" Shellshocked House Republicans got warnings from leaders past and present Tuesday: Your party’s message isn’t good enough to prevent disaster in November, and neither is the NRCC’s money. The double shot of bad news had one veteran Republican House member worrying aloud that the party’s electoral woes — brought into sharp focus by Woody Jenkins’ loss to Don Cazayoux in Louisiana on Saturday — have the House Republican Conference splitting apart in “everybody for himself” mode. “There is an attitude that, ‘I better watch out for myself, because nobody else is going to do it,’” the member said. “There are all these different factions out there, everyone is sniping at each other, and we have no real plan. We have a lot of people fighting to be the captain of the lifeboat instead of everybody pulling together.” Republicans have lost recent special elections in very "red" areas that previously we haven't even been competitive in. There's another special election coming, too, in Mississippi. The White House has reportedly sent out their greatest hope to save the day... Dick Cheney. And with that, members of the GOP leadership are starting to worry about keeping their jobs.

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Good news for all of us who just can't get enough Governor Dean -- he'll be on MSNBC with Keith Olbermann tonight at 6:10pm ET. And for those who missed it, here he was on the network earlier today: