A friend of mine (and fellow blogger) is preparing to launch a really innovative and exciting website that will be focused on politics.  He wants to start it up in Pittsburgh and a few other cities around the burgh (I’ll keep you posted as features become available).  While he’s a native Burgher he has since migrated away and lost his pulse on the Pittsburgh political scene.  Last week he asked me to put together a list of great political sources that might help him catch up.

As I said when I created the blogroll, I want to keep the blogroll on this blog very limited.  The lack of political blogs should not be misconstrued to imply that I don’t follow a ton of Pittsburgh Political blogs though.  Here’s my list (with comments) that I prepared for my friend:

• Start for sure with 2 Political Junkies:  http://2politicaljunkies.blogspot.com/.  They’ve been at it for YEARS and are known not just locally but nationally too.  Lots of content, liberal tilt.
• Pittsblog 2.0 http://pittsblog.blogspot.com/ is a blog that’s not mostly political.  In fact it rarely talks about politicians, but it frequently talks about policy related ideas.
• Nullspace http://nullspace2.blogspot.com/ similarly rarely focuses on politicians (though he does have a fetish for the vote breakdowns in all the voting districts after every election).  This is my favorite purely Pittsburgh blog (though likely not the most applicable one for you).
• Pittsburgh City Paper is sort of an indy newspaper.  You’ll want to subscribe to their news RSS only probably http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Section?oid=oid:14781&category=oid:14791.
• MET Blogs (Pittsburgh) is not the most frequently posted to blog ever and has a tendency to cover mostly transportation issues.  Transportation issues are very political, though.  This is especially true lately with the city considering selling the parking garages and PAT cutting back routes left and right.
• Reform Pittsburgh Now http://reformpittsburghnow.com/about/ is the blog of RPN which is a PAC started by Councilman Bill Peduto.
• The Angry Drunk Beauraucrat mostly posts “onion” style stories but most are related to Pittsburgh politics or politicians.  http://angrydrunkbureaucrat.blogspot.com/
• The Busman’s Holiday is the blog of Bob Mayo (MSM reporter).  His posts aren’t all political, but when they are they tend to be very well researched and informative.  http://thebusmansholiday.blogspot.com/
• Infinonomyous.  This is a riskier blog, often controversial.  I wouldn’t present this one as news per se, but lots of good rumors and insightful discussion. http://infinonymous.blogspot.com/
• Utterly Opinionated is the blog of Eve Picker, an influential urban architect in Pittsburgh.  She doesn’t post that often but when she does her ideas often have policy implications.  http://www.utterly-opinionated.com/
• The Post-Gazette also has two blogs that are useful for politics:
  • Early Returns has a lot of great political content:  http://community.post-gazette.com/blogs/earlyreturns/default.aspx
  • The Radical Middle:  Chad Herman’s blog title may say radical middle, but it tilts right.  As often as I disagree with him, he is a gifted writer and is frequently good for sparking debate if nothing else.  http://community.post-gazette.com/blogs/radicalmiddle/default.aspx
• Honorable mention to Bram R. who was the best in the business till he hung’em up.  http://pghcomet.blogspot.com/