HT RCP:

Poll:

With the annual ritual of filing federal income taxes just behind them, 52% of U.S. voters now believe they pay more than their fair share of taxes, up seven points from earlier this month.

But 54% of the Political Class don’t think they pay too much, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

This is hardly reassuring, however, since 55% don’t think most members of Congress pay all the taxes they owe.

Just 29% of all Americans say they don’t pay their fair share in taxes, and 19% are not sure.

Sixty percent (60%) of voters nationwide believe tax cuts help the economy, while 15% say they hurt and 14% say they have no impact.

Erick Erickson:

See this from the Washington Times.

President Obama is losing a member of his press shop just shy of his first 100 days in office.

Ellen Moran, White House communications director, will become chief of staff for Commerce Secretary Gary Locke.

Mr. Obama issued a statement through the press office commending her service thus far.

The Commerce Department ostensibly controls the census and keeps politics out of it. However, Ellen Moran is a far left radical. She’s the former ED of Emily’s list, worked for DNC, DCCC, and AFL-CIO. Her resume is straight out of left-wing activism, not communications.

Putting a loyal lieutenant standing behind Gary Locke is the perfect way to ensure the Census makes up inaccurate numbers to better help the Democrats in the coming census.

Survey USA asks for one of three options:

Results:                                                            All      18-49    Over 50     GOP     Dem     Unaffiliated

Nation-wide law in favor of gay marriage         29%      31          26            16       37            31

Federalism, allowing each state to decide         19%      18          20            16       17            25

Banning gay-marriage nation-wide                   50%      47          53            64       43            42

Redstate:

Poor Keith! First the big kids refuse to invite him into their little club, and now they’re trashing him out in the open!

On cable news, I am a fan of Keith and Rachel. But he wastes too much time p***ing on Bush and his deposed cronies. She is smart and charming but her writers are dreadful and the less cutesy she is, the better. She did an excellent interview with Colin Powell recently. The next night, I missed that tougher, less avuncular Rachel. A while back, the idea of sitting down at another screen and getting my evening news seemed unappealing. Now I sit and watch Rachel and Keith while I do my e-mail and read Slate and HuffPo online.

But something has changed again. I’m back to buying the Times. I think others should get back to buying and reading a newspaper, too.

RCP blog:

A Public Policy Polling survey also finds that the two-term incumbent has just a 28 percent approval rating, with 54 percent disapproving. Republican Secretary of State Trey Grayson, mentioned as the most likely Bunning alternative for the GOP, has a fav/unfav rating of 46/19, with 36 percent unsure. The survey was conducted on April 2 and 3, surveying 610 voters. The margin of error is +/- 4 percent. (more…)

HT Club for Growth.

Chris Edwards at NRO:

There are now a staggering 1,804 subsidy programs in the federal budget. Hundreds of programs were added this decade, and the recent stimulus bill added even more. The result is that we are in the midst of the largest federal gold rush at taxpayer expense since the 1960s.

Politics Nation:

Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway (D) announced today that he will seek the Democratic nomination for Senate next year. Conway’s entrance, the Louisville Courier-Journal reports, indicates that state Auditor Crit Luallen and Rep. Ben Chandler will back his candidacy rather than run themselves.

Conway becomes the second major Democratic candidate to announce he will challenge Sen. Jim Bunning (R). Lt. Gov. Daniel Mongiardo, whom Bunning narrowly defeated for re-election in 2004, announced his candidacy in January.

NY Times:

He will be replaced on NBC’s Sunday night games by Cris Collinsworth, who has been the network’s primary analyst on the “Football Night in America” pregame program. He will give up his role as an analyst for the NFL Network.

Madden, 73, became a near-immediate hit as a broadcaster and commercial pitchman after retiring in 1979 as a Super Bowl-winning coach of the Oakland Raiders.

Race42012.com:

Today, Bobby Jindal outlined a proposal for fiscal reform in Louisiana:

“It is critical that we roll up our sleeves now,” he said during a press conference at the LITE Center, “and immediately begin the hard work that must be done to streamline our government and make government more efficient, so we can better protect critical services such as health care and higher education.”

He will propose five major reforms to the upcoming legislative session.

The first is a new funding formula for higher education.

The second is creating a commission to look at downsizing state government.

Third, he will propose civil service reforms to eliminate “bumping,” reduce job classifications and tie merit increases to performance and reviews.

The fourth major reform focuses on fiscal reforms, including automatic “sunsets” for dedicated funds beginning July 1, 2010.

Finally, Jindal proposes changes to statutory dedications that will allow cuts to agencies other than higher education and health care.

I like what I see here.  Performance-based compensation for government employees and funding for universities have become long overdue.  Under Jeb Bush’s watch, Florida effectively utilized sunset programs as a means to cut government waste and inefficiency (FL has the lowest number of state gov. employees per capita in the country).  If Jindal can implement these changes, he’ll add to his already impressive resume.

Reuters:

TEHRAN, April 9 (Reuters) - Iran is now running 7,000 uranium enrichment centrifuges, a senior official said on Thursday, an announcement likely to increase Western concerns about the Islamic Republic’s disputed nuclear plans.

The Atlantic:

http://72.3.233.244/pdfs/safefree/olc_08012002_bybee.pdf —  a Top Secret memo by OLC’s Jay Bybee to CIA counsel John Rizzo about torture techniques used on Abu Zubaydah, August 1, 2001.
http://72.3.233.244/pdfs/safefree/olc_05102005_bradbury46pg.pdf — a Top Secret/SCI memo from the OLC’s Steven Bradbury to Rizzo about waterboarding and other techniques, 1995
http://72.3.233.244/pdfs/safefree/olc_05102005_bradbury_20pg.pdf — a Top Secret/SCI memo from Bradbury describing the techniques that could be used in combination with each other.
http://72.3.233.244/pdfs/safefree/olc_05302005_bradbury.pdf

Club for Growth:

According to this Reuters article, a bureaucrat and an academic have written a new report advocating a tax on sugary drinks. Below are the opening two paragraphs to the article as read through my eyes [my edits are in BOLD]:

A penny-per-ounce tax on sugary drinks could help fight obesity by cutting consumption [and liberty] and raising billions of dollars to help state and local governments pay for [inefficient] programs, two experts [busybodies] said on Wednesday.

Taxes have been shown to reduce smoking and are just as likely to help force adults and children [to] choose healthier drinks, which are now usually more expensive than sodas and other sweetened beverages [thus, making people more poor as a result of this tax], the experts [busybodies] wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Rasmussen today:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows that 34% of the nation’s voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-two percent (32%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of +2 (see trends). On the Generic Congressional Ballot, it’s all tied-39% for the Democrats, 39% for the Republicans.

Most voters continue to believe that the financial and auto bailouts were a bad idea, but the Political Class disagrees. Sixty percent (60%) now believe the federal government has too much power and too much money.

The Star:

California knows something about recalls of public officials.

So let’s go to the land of golden sunlight and surfer dudes for an example of an ouster that worked.

And then, let’s compare that to the fledgling effort now underway to oust Mayor Mark Funkhouser.

The quick conclusion: Funkhouser should survive to fight another day.

Why?

Let’s count the reasons.

Money. The Dump-the-Funk brigade doesn’t have any.

“Zero, zero, absolutely zero,” organizer Susan Ramirez told me Friday

Politico:

Democrats are confident that Al Franken will prevail in the Minnesota Supreme Court appeal, but they’re still hedging a bit on whether a high court victory means Franken could quickly be seated.

There’s no guarantee - even with a state high court win - that Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty will certify Franken as the winner.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) would only say “we’ve said there is a requirement for the governor to sign. I hope Gov. Pawlenty signs” a certification document that declares Franken the victor.

Coleman, who decisively lost his lower court battle in the recount case last week, filed a notice of appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court on Monday, and the Franken campaign has asked for the court to expedite its decision.

AFP:

Bloomberg, running for a third mayoral term at the end of this year, said that proposals from unions so far were “nowhere near what is adequate.”

The possible job cuts, first announced Wednesday, would be on top of 1,300 already proposed and another 8,000 that could be axed through attrition.

Department heads have until Monday to propose cuts and Bloomberg must present the city budget by the end of the month. The city is barred by law from running deficits.

“Law, Feelings, and Religion at the Bar in Iowa” — The Supreme Court of Iowa’s decision to redefine marriage abandons reason and replaces it with feelings as the standard of public consensus.

What happens when judicial arrogance becomes so habitual as to become second nature? This past Friday, April 3, the Supreme Court of Iowa provided an answer: judicial arrogance transforms into smug self-deception. This is not the question the court thought it was answering. It claimed to be addressing the question of whether “exclusion of a class of Iowans from civil marriage”-namely the “class” of “gay and lesbian people” who wish to marry others of the same sex-can be justified by the state. But the opinion for a unanimous court in Varnum v. Brien, written by Justice Mark Cady, actually says very little about matters of such justification. By contrast, it speaks volumes about the extent to which American judicial power, having burst free of all constraints, is now in the grip of a banal routinization of tyranny so complete that the tyrants do not recognize their own character as they blandly overturn many centuries of civilization in a day’s work.

Washington Times:

Forget media bias. That’s just slanting the news. The liberal press judges stories before investigating them. That’s prejudice, which sums up how the anti-tax tea parties were covered this week.

Marc Cooper compared tax protesters to glue-sniffing lunatics in the Los Angeles Times. “Whip out your Lipton and don your tinfoil hat and join the protest against … against … against what exactly?”, he ranted. MSNBC talking heads Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and Chris Matthews dismissed the protesters as crackpots or stooges doing the bidding of GOP Svengalis.

Chris Simcox’s site is here. Video:

RCP:

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) on President Obama’s business practices: “But something that comes to mind when I see this image, too, is here are two world leaders that have both, within the last month, nationalized huge private-sector companies,” said King. “In the case of President Obama, General Motors and Chrysler, at least in effect if not in actuality, and moved it down that path, when he fired the CEO of General Motors, and when he ordered that Chrysler merge with Fiat.”

“Those two have done the same thing to private business,” King added, “and I think that image also will soak into the minds of investors around the world, and where they want to put their money.”

The Star:

A half-day program on job-preparation and job-hunting skills will be offered from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. April 24 to college students in the Kansas City metro area.

Politico:

Rep. Spencer Bachus, the top Republican on the Financial Services Committee, told a hometown crowd in Alabama today that he believes there are several socialists in the House.

Actually, he says there are exactly 17 socialists in the House of Representatives. according to the Birmingham News:

But he said he is worried that he is being steered too far by the Congress: “Some of the men and women I work with in Congress are socialists.”

Asked to clarify his comments after the breakfast speech at the Trussville Civic Center, Bachus said 17 members of the U.S. House are socialists.

Searching the POLITICO style book and the official U.S. House listings, we don’t see a category for socialists - just a lot of Ds and Rs next to lawmaker names. And Bachus didn’t name names of the socialist 17.

Deroy Murdock:

Despite being “a skeptic of vouchers,” candidate Barack Obama promised this would not prevent him from “making sure that our kids can learn.” As he told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, “You do what works for the kids.”

Last January 21, his first full day in office, President Obama declared, “My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government.”

Just 10 weeks later, Obama has broken both these promises. And poor-but-promising minority kids suffer the consequences.

These 1,714 children — 90 percent black and 9 percent Hispanic — enjoy the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program. They each receive up to $7,500 for private or parochial schools outside Washington, D.C.’s dismal government-education system. Since its 2004 launch, 7,852 students have applied for these grants, or more than four children per voucher.

HPJ.com:

Using equipment not all that different from what a runner might take on a jog, veterinary researchers at Kansas State University are working to make life more comfortable for cattle.

A jogger’s heart rate monitor and an instrument similar to a pedometer are a few of the tools K-State researchers are using to measure discomfort in cattle undergoing two routine procedures, castration and dehorning.

Hans Coetzee, assistant professor of clinical sciences, is working with David Anderson, professor of clinical sciences, and Brad White, assistant professor of clinical sciences. They are developing a model that can evaluate pain management drugs for cattle. Although producers and veterinarians sometimes use aspirin and other anti-inflammatory drugs, there are no pharmaceuticals approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration specifically for pain management in cattle. It is also unknown what doses are appropriate and how well they work.

Poll:

The fallout from the Rod Blagojevich scandal continues in Illinois.

Sixty-two percent (62%) of Illinois voters say Roland Burris, the man the disgraced governor named to Barack Obama’s Senate seat, should resign. Just 24% believe Burris should remain in the Senate, according to a new Rasmussen Reports survey of voters in the state.

Fifty-four percent (54%) say they will definitely vote against Burris if he chooses to run for a full six-year term in the Senate in 2010. Only four percent (4%) say they will definitely vote for him. Thirty-nine percent (39%) say it depends upon who he is running against.

Only 19% have a favorable opinion of Burris. Seventy-three percent (73%) view him unfavorably, including 44% whose view is Very Unfavorable.

RCP:

The Star:

SECAUCUS, N.J. | Two days after her Louisville Cardinals were beaten by Connecticut in the national title game, Angel McCoughtry became No. 1 - in the WNBA draft.

McCoughtry was taken No. 1 overall by the Atlanta Dream.

One of her new teammates will be Kansas State guard Shalee Lehning, who was selected with the 25th overall selection in the draft’s second round.

From Drudge.  WTOP:

VIENNA, Va. — David Kellermann, acting chief financial officer of Freddie Mac, committed suicide in his Hunter Mill Estates home Wednesday morning.

Fairfax County Police spokeswoman Mary Anne Jennings tells WTOP Kellermann, 41, police responded to the home after family members called police around 5 a.m.

“We were called from inside the house to come investigate an apparent suicide,” Jennings says.

“We’re not going to give you details of the condition of the body, except to say it was an apparent suicide.”

Because of legal ramifications, Jennings says she can’t describe the nature of the suicide. A medical examiner will make the final determination that the death was a suicide.

The Daily Mail:

A controversial doctor has claimed to have cloned human embryos and transferred them to four women prepared to give birth to the first cloned babies.

Fertility specialist Panayiotis Zavos sensationally broke the sacred taboo of human individuality by cloning 14 embryos and placing 11 of them into the wombs of four women, he told The Independent.

A British woman was alleged to be among the one single and three married patients who were said to be happy to become pregnant with the first cloned embryos specifically created for the purpose of human reproduction.

HT Drudge.

SurveyUSA poll:

–                       All       18-49    50+    Con    Mod    Lib    Pro-life    Pro-choice

Brownback         64 %         71      56         73     51      48       73              54

Thornburgh       17 %         10      23         12     21       38       10              27

Unsure               20 %         19      21         15     28       14       17              19

HT Bagyants.

The following letter is from Jim McVay of Great Bend, KS:

My name is Jim McVay, and I hail from Great Bend.  In the capacity of Finance Chair, I have joined the Leadership Team to elect Rob Wasinger to Congress, and here’s why.  I support Rob because, now more than ever, we need strong conservative values in our nation’s capital.  The principles that made America the greatest economic power and the freest people on earth are endangered by those who hold a political philosophy that gives all power to the government rather than to the people.

The lesson of history, taught to all of us at great cost over the last century, is that bloated government inevitably becomes more tyrannical as it reaches into every facet of our lives.  The modern Democratic Party has refused to heed these lessons, and presses on creating an increasingly intrusive government that wantonly redistributes wealth and aims to control how we live.

It’s time to fight these forces, and Rob Wasinger will do just that.  Our party and our nation lack a strong, conservative elected voice, one that will lead the people and articulate the virtues of liberty and free enterprise, hard work, personal responsibility and self-reliance.  Rob can be that voice, and because I believe he will be that voice, I am happy to announce my endorsement of Rob Wasinger for Congress.

I hope you’ll join us at www.robwasinger.com.

Politico:

Social conservatives tolerated John McCain as the party’s nominee, but never trusted him, and he now appears to be facing a serious primary from the right in Arizona next year.

Chris Simcox, the founder of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps and a prominent figure in the movement to clamp down on illegal immigration, will be announcing tomorrow at an event on the Mexican border that he’s resigned from the group to run in the 2010 Senate primary.

From a forthcoming release:

“John McCain has failed miserably in his duty to secure this nation’s borders and protect the people of Arizona from the escalating violence and lawlessness,” Simcox said. “He has fought real efforts over the years at every turn, opting to hold our nation’s border security hostage to his amnesty schemes. Coupled with his votes for reckless bailout spending and big government solutions to our nation’s problems, John McCain is out of touch with everyday Arizonans. Enough is enough.”

Column by at MJ Akbar in The Times of India:

If necessity is the mother of invention then politics is often the father. Barack Obama has invented a phrase that did not exist on January 20, the day he became president. Anxious to win a war through the treasury rather than the Pentagon, he has discovered something called the “moderate Taliban” in Afghanistan. Joe Biden, his vice president, has found the mathematical coordinates of this oxymoron: only 5% of the Taliban are “extremists”.

Welcome to Obama’s first big mistake.

The war in Afghanistan and Pakistan is not simply against some bearded men and beardless boys who have been turned into suicide missionaries. The critical conflict is against the ideology of a chauvinistic theocracy that seeks to remould the Muslim world into a regressive region from which it can assault every aspect of modernity, whether that be in political space or the social sphere.

Rasmussen:

For the second straight week, Democrats and Republicans are tied on the Generic Congressional Ballot.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 39% would vote for their district’s Democratic candidate while 39% would choose the Republican.

Last week, the parties were tied at 38%, representing the lowest level of support for Democrats to date.

The GOP took its first small lead in recent years in mid-March, but that didn’t last and the Democrats pulled slightly ahead for several weeks before last week’s tie. It’s important to note that Republicans have not been gaining support. Rather, Democrats have been losing ground. Democrats began the year holding a six- or seven-point lead over the GOP for the first several weeks of 2009. Over the past year, Democratic support has ranged from a low of 38% to a high of 50%.

KMBC:

“This is about the people, and someone needs to remind the government that they work for us — we don’t work for them,” Darla Jaye said.

“I think government is out of touch, and we need to tell them who really runs the show,” Benjamin Hodge said.

SurveyUSA poll here.

RCP:

Rasmussen:

Democrats are more likely to have favorable view of the United Nations than Republicans. Thirty-six percent (36%) of Democratic voters, for example, view the U.N. as an ally, compared to 14% of Republicans and 29% of unaffiliateds.

While 71% of Democrats say America should continue to participate in the U.N., just 47% of Republicans - and 59% of unaffiliated voters - agree.
Seventy percent (70%) of Democrats have a favorable view of the United Nations, a view shared by 47% of unaffiliated voters. But, a plurality of Republicans hold an unfavorable view.

From an ideological perspective, 83% of liberals say the United States should continue to participate in the U.N. Just 44% of conservatives agree.

Only 31% of Americans had a favorable opinion of the United Nations in a survey in September 2006. Forty-five percent (45%) viewed the international organization unfavorably. It’s important to note, though, that in this earlier survey respondents were given only the options of “favorable” and “unfavorable.” The new survey breaks responses down into “very favorable,” “somewhat favorable,” “somewhat unfavorable” and “very unfavorable,” which tends to produce fewer undecideds.