Kansas Liberty:

In a full reversal, the state Ethics Commission dropped its complaint against Kris Van Meteren for speaking to the press about a complaint he had filed against State Sen. Dwayne Umbarger, R-Thayer.

The commission did so after being informed by the attorney general’s office that the law was clearly unconstitutional and that they had violated Van Meteren’s free speech rights with its prosecution.

But in the rush of celebration, there should also be continued questioning by state officials as to why the law is being so selectively applied. At the heart of the matter is why the commission is more interested in pursuing fines against a private citizen rather than its own staff for violation of the same statute.

Van Meteren was fined by the commission for speaking to the Topeka Capital-Journal and Kansas Liberty. The Capital Journal article that the commission accepted as evidence at Van Meteren’s hearing included this information disclosed by Carol Williams, executive director of the Ethics Commission.

It’s not clear based on this report whether this is taxpayer money or from private individuals.  Prime Buzz:

Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster announced the settlement this afternoon in the long-running legal battle between Scott Eckersley, former aide to Matt Blunt, and Blunt and other members of the former governor’s office.

Eckersley will get $500,000.  In a joint statement, all parties said they believe their cases are strong but settled to avoid future expenses.

Eckersley claimed defamation when he was fired from the governor’s office, allegedly because he warned the governor about improper destruction of internal e-mails.

NRO:

The Los Angeles Times reports:

The union representing Los Angeles police officers is pressuring the owner of San Diego’s main newspaper to change the paper’s editorial stance on labor issues or to fire its editorial writers.

The  feud is rooted in the recent purchase of the San Diego Union-Tribune by Platinum Equity, a private Beverly Hills firm.

Platinum relies on a $30-million investment from the pension fund of Los Angeles police officers and fire fighters, along with large sums from other public-employee pension systems around the state, to help fund its acquisitions of companies. As League President Paul M. Weber views it, that makes the League part owner in the flagging Tribune and League officials are none to happy with the paper’s consistent position that San Diego lawmakers should cut back on salaries and benefits for public employees in order to help close gaping budget deficits.

“Since the very public employees they continually criticize are now their owners, we strongly believe that those who currently run the editorial pages should be replaced,” Weber wrote in a March 26 letter to Platinum CEO Tom Gores.

Nate Silver:

Although there have been a series of recent polls suggesting declining support for abortion choice — see our previous coverage here — another new poll from CNN comes to an apparently contradictory conclusion:

The 1973 Roe versus Wade decision established a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion, at least in the first three months of pregnancy. Would you like to see the Supreme Court completely overturn its Roe versus Wade decision, or not?

30% Yes, overturn
68% No, not overturn

The 68 percent level of support for upholding Roe v Wade is the highest of any poll I can find in the PollingReport.com database, although opinion on this question — like most others on abortion — has historically changed very little over time:

AP:

HONOLULU - Voting has ended in what is being touted as the nation’s first all-digital election, and city officials say it has been a success.

Some 115,000 voters in Honolulu’s neighborhood council election were able to pick winners entirely online or via telephone. The voting, which started May 6, ended Friday.

City officials say the experiment appears to have generated few problems; it has even saved the financially strapped city around $100,000.

“It is kind of the wave of the future,” said Bryan Mick, a community relations specialist with the city Neighborhood Commission, “so we’re kind of glad in a way that we got to be the ones who initiated it.”

Web voting, which produces no paper record, cannot be used in city council or state elections because state law bars voting systems that do not include a vote verification process, said Warren Stewart, legislative policy director for Verified Voting Foundation, a nonpartisan advocacy group.

AP:

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama’s top military adviser says Iran’s objective is to obtain nuclear weapons - and that threatens the region.

Adm. Mike Mullen says he’s worried about Iran and what U.S. intelligence agencies don’t know about the Tehran government. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says the United States and its allies must work to engage Iran’s leaders.

Mullen says there’s a narrow window in which to work to block Iran from achieving nuclear capabilities.

Politico:

In the latest round of the increasingly heated intra-GOP feud, former Secretary of State Colin Powell Sunday defended his Republican credentials and fired back at radio host Rush Limbaugh and former Vice President Dick Cheney, saying the party had to expand beyond its conservative base.

“Rush will not get his wish and Mr. Cheney was misinformed - I am still a Republican,” Powell said in a much-anticipated interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation” two weeks after Cheney suggested on the same show that the retired general had left the party by endorsing Barack Obama last fall.

AFP:

Iran’s former Revolutionary Guards chief Mohsen Rezai warned on Sunday he could stop Israel with “one strike” and said it would not dare to threaten the Islamic republic if he is elected president.

“My government… understands missiles and tanks as well as foreign policy and knows exactly where Israel’s sensitive spots are. It could stop them forever with one strike,” Rezai told a news conference.

“If government falls into our hands Israel will not dare threaten Iran because the Israelis and the Americans know us and our friends,” said Rezai, who is one of three candidates challenging President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the June 12 election.

AFP:

Just over half of Israelis back an immediate attack on the nuclear facilities of arch-foe Iran but the rest want to wait and see the results of US diplomacy, according to a poll released on Sunday.

Fifty-one percent support an immediate Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear sites, while 49 percent believe the Jewish state should await the outcome of efforts by the US administration to engage with the Islamic republic, said the survey published by Tel Aviv University.

But 74 percent of those questioned said they believe that new US President Barack Obama’s efforts will not stop the Islamic republic from acquiring atomic weapons.

AP:

JERUSALEM (AP) - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that Israel will continue to build homes in existing West Bank settlements, defying U.S. calls to halt settlement growth.

The comments came days after a contentious visit to the White House and threatened to widen a growing rift with the Obama administration. The U.S. considers the settlements - home to some 280,000 Israelis - obstacles to peace since they are built on captured territory the Palestinians claim for a future state.

Reuters:

JERUSALEM, May 24 (Reuters) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday rebuffed U.S. calls to impose a freeze on all settlement activity in the occupied West Bank, setting the stage for friction with President Barack Obama. “We do not intend to build any new settlements, but it wouldn’t be fair to ban construction to meet the needs of natural growth or for there to be an outright construction ban,” Netanyahu told his cabinet, according to officials. The note of defiance came less than a week after Netanyahu held talks in Washington with Obama, who wants Israel to halt all settlement activity, including natural growth, as called for under a long-stalled peace “road map”. Netanyahu’s comments reaffirmed a position he took in his bid for the premiership in a February election. By natural growth, Israel refers to construction within the boundaries of existing settlements to accommodate growing families. Obama was expected to prod Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to resume long-stalled peace talks during a major speech in Cairo early next month.

Ed Whelan:

Wood is aggressive in pursuing her ideological agenda.  Her willful lawlessness on remand in NOW v. Scheidler is the starkest example.  But consider also her behavior at oral argument in a case presenting the question whether a law school violated the rights of a Christian Legal Society chapter by revoking its official status as a student organization because of the chapter’s membership policies.  Wood viciously maintained that the CLS chapter viewed homosexuals as “less than fully human,” conspicuously turned her back on CLS counsel as he explained CLS’s orthodox Christian beliefs, and turned back around to exclaim “Goodness!”

In his Notre Dame speech last week, President Obama encouraged “fair-minded words” and opposed “reducing those with differing views to caricature.”  That’s hardly what Wood’s conduct in the CLS case demonstrates.

More broadly, President Obama says that he wants to find “common ground” on abortion and other culture-war issues, and he says that he opposes same-sex marriage.  If so, he wouldn’t nominate Diane Wood to the Supreme Court.

(For more detail on Wood, see my Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 and this post on Jeffrey Rosen’s praise for Wood.)

Newt Gingrich:

Americans should look carefully at the anti-politician, anti-government mood exhibited in California this week. Just as Proposition 13 and the anti-tax movement of 1978 were the forerunners of the Reagan presidential victory, so the results of Tuesday’s vote are a harbinger of things to come.

The repudiation of the California establishment in the series of initiative defeats could hardly have been more decisive. Five taxing and spending measures were rejected by 62.6 to 66.4 percent of the voters. That is a consistent majority of enormous potential. An even larger majority, 73.9 percent, approved the proposition limiting elected officials’ salaries when there is a deficit.

This vote is the second great signal that the American people are getting fed up with corrupt politicians, arrogant bureaucrats, greedy interests and incompetent, destructive government.

The elites ridiculed or ignored the first harbinger of rebellion, the recent tea parties. While it will be harder to ignore this massive anti-tax, anti-spending vote, they will attempt to do just that.

Check out RoyalIntent.blogspot.com.

Benjamin Hodge at Race42012.com:

While I write this, I’m listening to Switchfoot on iTunes on my new $40 Kensington bluetooth wireless headphones with the help of a $20 tiny bluetooth 2.0 USB adapter that can be permanently left in the USB port:

One the themes of life that didn’t really begin to sink in until a few years ago for me, with much help from sites like the Club for Growth and Mark Perry, was the fact that 98% of meaningful progress is due to technology; and that 98% of technology is developed by the private sector.  Quite literally, government and government programs that “do things for us” are virtually inconsequential, in the long run.

From K-State:

4) News release prepared by: Katie Mayes, 785-532-6415, kmayes@k-state.edu

K-STATE COLLEGES RECOGNIZE SEVERAL FACULTY, SUPPORTERS FOR EXCELLENCE

MANHATTAN — Several colleges at Kansas State University are recognizing faculty for excellence in teaching, service, research or advising. (more…)

CNN:

Called “Daisy,” the RNC’s new 30-second Web ad uses footage of the now-infamous 1964 Lyndon Johnson commercial by the same name that showed a young girl picking off the petals of a flower as a nuclear explosion is heard in the background.

That ad, which only ran once but was widely criticized as being extreme, ends with the image of a mushroom crowd and Johnson declaring, “We must either love each other, or we must die.”

The new RNC ad splices the image of the girl with Obama’s earlier declaration suggesting that closing Guantanamo Bay is “easy.” This time the girl asks “To close it? To close it not?” as she picks off flower petals.

It also shows Senate Democrats - including Majority Leader Harry Reid - appearing to take issue with proposals to relocate current Guantanamo detainees in the United States.

Rolling Stone:

After Adam Lambert’s killer performance with Queen on Wednesday night’s season finale of American Idol, rumors flew that he had already been offered a job singing with the band. That’s slightly premature, according to the band’s guitarist, Brian May. “Amongst all that furor, there wasn’t really a quiet moment to talk,” May tells Rolling Stone in an e-mail interview. “But [drummer Roger Taylor] and I are definitely hoping to have a meaningful conversation with him at some point. It’s not like we, as Queen, would rush into coalescing with another singer just like that. It isn’t that easy. But I’d certainly like to work with Adam. That is one amazing instrument he has there.”

AP:

WASHINGTON (AP) - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Friday she won’t talk any more about her charge that the CIA lied in 2002 about using waterboarding on terrorism suspects.

“I have made the statement that I’m going to make on this,” she told reporters at a Capitol Hill news conference. “I don’t have anything more to say about it. I stand by my comment.”

But Republicans aren’t letting this one slide.

AP:

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) - Linda Fleming was diagnosed with terminal cancer and feared her last days would be filled with pain and ever-stronger doses of medication that would erode her mind.

The 66-year-old woman with late-stage pancreatic cancer wanted to be clear-headed at death, so she became the first person to kill herself under Washington state’s new assisted suicide law, known as “death with dignity.”

AP:

SEOUL, South Korea - Former South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun - whose hard-won reputation as a corruption fighter was tarnished by bribery allegations that drew in his family and closest associates - jumped to his death Saturday while hiking in the mountains behind his rural home. He was 62.

After leaving his family a suicide note, Roh threw himself off a steep cliff around 6:40 a.m., police and lawyer Moon Jae-in said in the southern port city of Busan.

“I’m indebted to too many people. Too many people are suffering because of me,” Roh wrote in the note left on his computer. “Don’t be sorry; don’t blame anybody. It’s destiny.” He asked to be cremated and a small gravestone erected in his hometown.

A self-taught lawyer who lifted himself out of poverty to reach the nation’s highest office in 2003, Roh had prided himself on being a “clean” politician in a country with a long history of corruption. Recent allegations that he accepted $6 million in bribes from a Seoul businessman were deeply troubling to the ex-leader.

NRO:

The California Supreme Court has announced that its decision in the challenge to Proposition 8 (California’s marriage amendment) will be issued on Tuesday, May 26. This is the case in which activist groups are arguing that the amendment is a substantial revision of the state’s constitution so the California Legislature should have had to approve it before voters did; and the attorney general is arguing that it’s not a revision, but that redefining marriage is a right so fundamental that voters cannot even amend their state constitution to preclude it. This is a chance for the Court to step away from the brink.

The Star:

Most people don’t rush toward bombs, but someone has to do it.

Mark Vargo of the Overland Park police bomb squad said bomb technicians actually enjoy it.

“It takes a certain frame of mind,” he said, one that follows vast training.

“It’s not I’m too afraid to go,” he said, “It’s I want to go, I want to go.”

Other Johnson County police departments called in his squad twice within days this month to handle first a pipe bomb and then a tennis-ball bomb.

The Overland park squad is among seven in the metropolitan area. The Olathe Fire Department also has a bomb squad as do police in Kansas City and Kansas City, Kan.

Source:

EVANSTON, Ill, May 18, 2009/Manufacturers’ News, Inc./– Industrial employment in Kansas fell 3.2% over the past twelve months according to the 2009 Kansas Manufacturers Directory, an industrial guide published annually by Manufacturers’ News, Inc. (MNI) Evanston, IL. MNI reports Kansas lost 7,490 industrial jobs and 44 manufacturers between March 2008 and March 2009, the first time MNI has reported a loss for the state.

“As with the entire nation, weakening demand continues to hit many of Kansas‘ core sectors,” says Tom Dubin, President of the Evanston, IL-based publishing company, which has been surveying industry since 1912. “MNI had previously reported net increases in Kansas‘ industrial employment, but gains earned over the past few years have been largely erased by losses weathered by the state during the recession.”

The Directory reported a 1% gain in employment between 2005 and 2006, an increase of 2.1% between 2006 and 2007, and a 1.5% rise over the 2007-2008 survey period.

Manufacturers’ News reports Kansas is home to 4,790 manufacturers employing 227,333 workers. MNI profiles companies of all sizes including start-up companies with just a few employees.

The Star:

The deal is expected to improve security and reduce contraband while reducing staff time screening regular mail. There is no cost to the state, and the department will make money from commissions when inmates use the services. E-mails will cost inmates 43 cents each.

Reuters:

GENEVA, May 22 (Reuters) - The world must be ready for H1N1 swine flu to become more severe and kill more people, World Health Organization chief Dr. Margaret Chan said on Friday. A genetic analysis of the new virus showed it must have been circulating undetected for some time, in pigs or perhaps in other animals. The WHO is poised to declare a full pandemic of the virus, which has infected more than 11,000 people in 42 countries and killed 86. And U.S. health officials released $1 billion for companies to get started on a vaccine in case it is needed. The virus must be closely monitored in the southern hemisphere, as it could mix with ordinary seasonal influenza and change in unpredictable ways, Chan told the WHO annual congress in Geneva. [ID:nLM945575] “In cases where the H1N1 virus is widespread and circulating within the general community, countries must expect to see more cases of severe and fatal infections,” she said. “This is a subtle, sneaky virus.”

The Scorecard:

Republican Rob Portman now looks like a lock to win the GOP nomination for Ohio’s Senate seat, after state Auditor Mary Taylor formally announced today that she’s not running..

Taylor had kept her name out as a possible Republican candidate, but the party establishment rallied behind Portman, making it difficult for her to mount a serious primary challenge. Portman already has over $3 million cash-on-hand, much of it from his old Congressional campaign account.

Fred Malek at Redstate:

1. Mitt Romney - The almost-nominee with the established organization, fundraising network, time, and talent to get the nomination this time. He does retain an image problem with some Republicans, who are not sold on his conservative credentials or upset with him for changing his emphasis of issues from his time as governor to presidential candidate. But he is self-aware and very smart. I believe he will start reintroducing himself early on, and possibly be in the best position when the serious campaigning begins in early 2011.

2. Mark Sanford - Mark is the soft spoken but thoughtful and challenging leader of RGA. He could be a challenger to Mitt or on the ticket if he decides to go that way. His leadership on the stimulus funds was extremely important to the integrity of our small government values by rejecting the federal bailout in the first place and solution-minded innovation by agreeing to accept the money if and only if the South Carolina legislature used it to pay down the state’s debt. At a time when the Republican Party needs to offer creative solutions, Mark is doing exactly that. (more…)

Neil Stevens at Redstate:

At the turn of the 20th century, the experts believed that Physics was a settled science. We were either at a solution, or very close to one. There was simply nothing new to learn in physics, was the consensus. As soon as the loose ends were tied up, our understanding of the universe would be complete.

Then light acted up. Oops. Physics is still reeling from the relativistic and quantum effects discovered since.

Likewise, we’ve been told that climate science is settled. It’s a consensus. Shut up. Man-made effects will be magnified by oceanic currents, and the world is doomed.

Then the ocean acted up. Oops. It turns out that not only was our model of the ocean vastly oversimplified and our predictions on its behavior were wrong, but researchers believe the correct oceanic currents may be more difficult even to reach and study.

It sounds to me like every climactic model has to be rewritten, and if it were an honest science, it’d be reeling for some time. As one commenter at Slashdot put it, “Who would have ever guessed that we would have trouble forming an accurate model of a vast, complex, chaotic system?”

Link to USA Today article here.

Mike Celizic:

Delaware wants to allow sports betting for one very good reason: The state budget is $800 million in the red, and sports betting will rake in an estimated $50 million to help bridge that gap.

Despite what Goodell says, the harm to the great sport of football will be exactly zero. Nevada has been running big-time sports books for a long, long time, and NFL football has survived. Two other states, Montana and Oregon, also allow sports-based gambling. Anybody who wants can place bets with offshore sports books on the Internet. And there remains a vast illegal gambling network in this country run by organized crime. So it’s not as if one more state is going to make a difference.

WSJ:

For more than 80 years, Yankee Stadium was the most revered sports venue on the planet. The new Yankee Stadium’s fate is yet to be determined.

Since it opened in April, scads of empty seats in prime locations have compelled the team to cut prices. Tickets to a recent Boston Red Sox game, usually a hot item, were selling for $8 on StubHub, the online reseller. Home runs are flying out of the place at an alarming rate (the park’s average of 3.62 per game led the majors before Thursday night). The Yankees absorbed a 10-2 loss in the park’s first regular-season game and allowed a stunning 22 runs in its third.

As the Yankees return Friday for their third homestand at the new “Taj Mahal,” as outfielder Nick Swisher calls the park, here’s a sobering thought for the franchise and its fans: What if this $1.5 billion ballpark doesn’t help the team? Is it possible that this magnificent facility could fail?

Team President Randy Levine says he’s untroubled by the park’s early negative reviews, or the notion it could go down as a failure. “The old Yankee Stadium, the cathedral of baseball, had 83 years of history. This stadium has been open a month,” he says. “We believe this stadium will have its own great life and great memories.”

McClatchy Watch blog:

The Kansas City Star has posted a photo gallery from “men’s magazine” Maxim on its web page.

And publisher Mark Zieman brags the Kansas City Star is the area’s “preeminent source for news”?! (See it here.)

NY Times:

And neither India nor the cellphone will be the same after the pairing. India now adds more cellphone connections than anyplace else, with 15.6 million in March alone. The cost of calling is among the lowest in the world. And the device plays a larger-than-life role here - more so, it seems, than in the wealthy countries where it was invented.

Of course, in so vast a country, India’s nearly 400 million cellphone users still account for only a third of the population. But the technology has seeped down the social strata, into slums and small towns and villages, becoming that rare Indian possession to traverse the walls of caste and region and class; a majority of subscribers are now outside the major cities and wealthiest states. And while the average bill, of less than $5 per month, represents 7 percent of the average Indian’s income, enough Indians apparently consider the sacrifice worth it: if present trends continue, in five years every Indian will have a cellphone.

The Star:

Thanks to mobile phone applications, you can lighten the load around your tool-belt toting hips.

That’s because now there’s an application - or app as it’s commonly called - for a multitude of household devices. So far there isn’t one that turns a phone into a hammer, but we predict that’s next.

“I’m amazed at all that’s out there,” says Gretchen Holy, an interior designer for BNIM Architects in Kansas City, who took the leap from flip phone to iPhone. “It’s crazy. Each day, there’s a new application. There are hundreds.”

More precisely, 35,000 in the App Store alone, which sells apps for iPhones and iPod Touch, a portable media player used for music, surfing and games. Apple offers the lion’s share of apps, which are software for games and tasks. But many apps are available for other mobile phones and are ever increasing as phones get smarter. Locally based tech giant Sprint is expected to release app-happy Palm Pre phones by this summer.

VD Hanson at Real Clear Politics:

Most who called for invading Iraq long ago abandoned their own zeal and advocacy- and loudly blamed the Bush administration for the violence of the postwar occupation. (Now, they are largely silent about the quiet in Iraq that the Obama administration inherited.) (more…)

Samuelson:

WASHINGTON — Just how much government debt does a president have to endorse before he’s labeled “irresponsible”? Well, apparently much more than the massive amounts envisioned by President Obama. The final version of his 2010 budget, released last week, is a case study in political expediency and economic gambling.

Let’s see. From 2010 to 2019, Obama projects annual deficits totaling $7.1 trillion; that’s atop the $1.8 trillion deficit for 2009. By 2019, the ratio of publicly held federal debt to gross domestic product (GDP, or the economy) would reach 70 percent, up from 41 percent in 2008. That would be the highest since 1950 (80 percent). The Congressional Budget Office, using less optimistic economic forecasts, raises these estimates. The 2010-19 deficits would total $9.3 trillion; the debt-to-GDP ratio in 2019 would be 82 percent.

NY Times:

Events have been changing so quickly that we teachers are having trouble keeping up. Syllabuses are often planned months in advance, and textbooks are revised only every few years.

But there is another, more fundamental reason: Despite the enormity of recent events, the principles of economics are largely unchanged. Students still need to learn about the gains from trade, supply and demand, the efficiency properties of market outcomes, and so on. These topics will remain the bread-and-butter of introductory courses.

Nonetheless, the teaching of basic economics will need to change in some subtle ways in response to recent events.

Video at Real Clear Politics.

Column at Rasmussen:

In what has become a daily deluge of policy shifts, high-level pronouncements, and mindless personality cult trifles, it is understandable how such a small thing gets overlooked. So, for those who missed it, the Associated Press reported on Monday that the Obama Administration plans on spending another king’s ransom to prod officials to close failing schools and reopen them with new teachers, principals and facilities.

The Obama Administration claims it wants to end failing public schools. Their commitment is deep, $5 billion deep. All sorts of promises are being made and goals set. And, in the end, it will all be just another failed exercise in government hubris and waste.