Welcome Inkblot, Domino, and Kevin Drum

Remember 2002? There was no war, house prices could never go down, and the Olsen twins had a kids' show. That's when a recovering marketing executive in Orange County opened a Blogspot account, dubbed himself Calpundit, and began posting daily political commentary, often interspersed with his own data-crunching and graphs. He soon drew a following, and within a couple of years was widely known as one of the pioneers of the political blogosphere (and also the inventor of Friday catblogging). That guy, of course, was Kevin Drum, and this Friday, August 22, marks both his sixth anniversary as a blogger and his first day at motherjones.com. For almost as long as he's been blogging, Clara and I have been fans of Kevin's; since we took the helm of Mother Jones, we've been fortunate to have him contribute to the magazine fairly regularly, and we always thought that he'd be a great complement to our growing investigative reporting team. So we're thrilled to welcome him.

Kevin's coming over from Washington Monthly, where he'll be replaced by Steve Benen of the Carpetbagger Report and Hilzoy of Obsidian Wings. He'll have his own blog at motherjones.com while MoJoBlog will remain a group effort powered by the entire MoJo team, including Washington bureau chief David Corn and the prolific Jonathan Stein.

Kevin comes on board as our web team is busy completely overhauling the site. Before the election, you'll see a whole new motherjones.com—a new look, a much improved community commenting system. Kevin's gotten a sneak peek at the design-in-progress and says it "should look great"—which, coming from a guy not known for hyperbole, is pretty close to unbridled enthusiasm.

Click below to hear Kevin talk about his cats, blog trends, and why he's not going to the conventions: