My 5 favorite Political News Sites

Before you read this, note that the sites that I visit most often have a bit of a liberal bias and focus primarily on U.S. politics.  I'm often overwhelmed by the amount of news and research on the internet, so it can be difficult to find a few sites that are consistently interesting.  All of the sites are also free.

• The Huffington Post has a great politics section with intriguing headlines and pictures to go with the newest articles.  It gives the option of a quick view so that you can read the first few sentences of an article before opening it in a new tab, and it offers many short clips from youtube, television and news stories that are accompanied with a few paragraphs describing the video.  This way if you don't have time or the ability to use sound on your computer all of the time, you still get a good description of the video along with some thoughts on its impact..  It also links to various other news sites, so you do have various perspectives available on many topics.

• Media Matters frequently targets Fox News, and rightly so, but they also expose any lies recently covered on other popular news outlets.  They include clips of the TV news shows that they write about, and provide concrete evidence of any political bias and deception. They also have a great weekly radio show on the Sirius XM Progress Channel.

• Think Progress has articles on all types of interesting topics that affect Americans every day, and always have something worth reading that includes facts and statistics to back up any theory.  I'm a fan of their Tumblr site for the excellent infographics that entice you to read their articles.

• The Nation offers a weekly print edition that I subscribed to for awhile that certainly offered interesting reads, but now I visit their website instead.  Their articles are well written and well researched, and are often on topics that mainstream newspapers and news sites choose to ignore.  I really appreciate their willingness to report the truth even when it is uncomfortable.

• Politifact.com is not perfect and is sometimes a bit lenient on what they allow politicians to call "the truth," but if you want a quick analysis of a lie from a campaign commercial or an often repeated lie by any officeholder, this is a good site to reference.  If you are sick of someone you know touting a lie to discredit a politician that you support, a link to this site will often give you enough evidence to (at least) keep them from repeating the lie again in your presence.

I tend to keep up with my favorite news sources by following them on Twitter and Google+.  To read through headlines quickly and open up articles that seem interesting, I have created a Twitter list of my favorite news sources.  I've found that Twitter is the best place to get an an overview of what is in the news without getting too much commentary, pictures or opinions which can take awhile to look through. Google+ is great if I want to get pictures and details of the news stories before I read them, so I tend to be more selective in the news sources that I choose so I am not scrolling forever without finding many unique stories.

If you have a Kindle and haven't downloaded the "Send to Kindle" button for your browser, I definitely recommend doing so.  You can send any article that you don't have time to read at the moment directly to your Kindle allowing you to read it later.  This allows me to save articles as I see them and then curl up in the evening with my Kindle to read all of the articles I didn't have time to read earlier at once.