CJ Online:

It has been nearly four years since Topeka police Sgt. Bill White was struck while on duty riding his motorcycle.

On July 4, 2005, White was westbound on S.E. 29th on his police motorcycle shortly after 11:30 p.m. when he was struck by a 1999 light-colored Lincoln Continental four-door that was westbound on S.E. 29th after turning from Michigan. Witnesses reported the driver backed up and went east on S.E. 29th.

White knows as the weather heats up, the number of motorcycle accidents rises.

AP:

(AP) Thousands of troops, backed by hundreds of tanks, artillery and other heavy weaponry, began rumbling through the North Caucasus on Monday, as Russia began its largest military exercises since last year’s war with Georgia. (more…)

Reuters:

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea is acquiring 40 U.S.-made missiles for an Aegis destroyer this month to boost its defences amid reports North Korea may soon test-fire missiles, Yonhap news agency on Sunday quoted a military source as saying. (more…)

AP:

SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea criticized the U.S. on Monday for positioning missile defense systems around Hawaii, calling the deployment part of a plot to attack the regime and saying it would bolster its nuclear arsenal in retaliation. (more…)

Source.

Times:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Monday said he is concerned about U.S. forces withdrawing from Iraqi cities within 24 hours. (more…)

The AP.

NEW YORK - A federal judge rejected Bernard Madoff’s plea for leniency Monday, sentencing the 71-year-old swindler to spend the rest of his life in prison for an “extraordinarily evil” fraud that took a staggering toll on thousands of victims. (more…)

Telegraph:

Google CEO Schmidt said he hoped that the use of websites such as Twitter, YouTube and Facebook to spread information about events such as the Iranian election protests - and the international scrutiny the coverage created - would “moderate an overreaction by the government”. (more…)

AP:

Toyota’s system, developed in a collaboration with researchers in Japan, is among the fastest in the world in analyzing brain waves, it said in a release Monday. (more…)

Wall Street Journal:

BERLIN — German Chancellor Angela Merkel defended her plan to cut taxes despite the country’s soaring budget deficit as she introduced her conservative alliance’s manifesto ahead of national elections in September.

Lower incomes taxes would “provide motivation” and encourage economic growth, Ms. Merkel told a conference of her party, the Christian Democratic Union, and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union.

“It would be wrong not to do what is right and necessary for growth, and so prevent ourselves emerging quickly from this crisis,” Ms. Merkel said in her conference speech.

Reuters.

CBS.

AP:

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court signaled Monday that it could overturn decades-old laws on how money is spent on federal elections,raising the stakes in a case about a scathing documentary aboutHillary Rodham Clinton. (more…)

The Post:

The Supreme Court today narrowly ruled in favor of white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., who said they were denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision by Judge Sonia Sotomayor and others that had come to play a large role in the consideration of her nomination for the high court. (more…)

AP:

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court has refused to allow victims of the Sept. 11 attacks to pursue lawsuits against Saudi Arabia and four of its princes over charitable donations that were allegedly funneled toal-Qaida. (more…)

NY CBS.

The Star.

Financial Times.

Fox News:

A top Republican senator has ordered an investigation into the Environmental Protection Agency’s alleged suppression of a report that questioned the science behind global warming. (more…)

Reuters.

Washington Post.

Politico:

In a sign that the Supreme Court is seriously considering overturning one of the underpinnings of modern campaign finance rules, Chief Justice John Roberts on Monday announced that justices would rehear a case challenging restrictions on corporate-funded campaign ads. (more…)

RCP:Despite the narrow victory, the distribution of the House vote actually suggests that the climate bill will have a tough road ahead in the Senate, as the following analysis will show. To start, let’s break down the House vote by state caucuses. The following map does this. If a state’s House caucus voted in favor of the bill on Friday (i.e. a majority of House members in the state voted yea), it is shaded green. If its caucus voted against (i.e. a majority voted nay), it is shaded red. (more…)

The Journal:

WASHINGTON — Some Republican members of Congress want the U.S. Census Bureau to end a 2010 Census partnership with Acorn, the community organizing group that was hit by accusations of voter-registration fraud in the 2006 and 2008 elections. (more…)

Powerline:

The Competitive Enterprise Institute has obtained an EPA study of the “endangerment” to human well-being ostensibly caused by carbon dioxide emissions, together with a set of EPA emails indicating that the study, which concludes that carbon dioxide is not a significant cause of climate change, was suppressed by the EPA for political reasons. (more…)

Politico:

Mitt Romney says publicly he’s not considering another presidential campaign, most recently on Sunday during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” But many of his loyalists expect one and remain at the ready for2012.

When dozens of former Romney aides and advisers convened on the terrace of Charlie Spies’ fashionable Penn Quarter loft earlier this year on a warm February night, the purpose was ostensibly to help raise money for the Virginia state House race of Romney strategist Barbara Comstock.

RCP:

President Obama has nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor to replace Supreme Court Justice David Souter and the confirmation process is underway. Under the Constitution, the Senate exercises its role of advice and consent as a check on the President’s power to appoint. This division of authority requires the Senate to determine whether Judge Sotomayor is qualified, by experience and especially by judicial philosophy, to sit on the Supreme Court. (more…)

NY Post:

IS Barack Obama approaching the end of his masterly run?

Starting with his win in the Iowa caucuses in January 2008, he has been, if not the one we’ve been waiting for, the one best suited to tap the wellsprings of public sentiment and capitalize on political circumstances for his own and his party’s benefit.

Washington Times:

Both the money supply and federal spending have increased at breathtaking rates over the past year, unprecedented in peacetime. The policy decisions made by the Federal Reserve Board and Congress virtually assure we will enter a period of 1970s-like stagflation. (more…)

Politics Daily:

Someday quite soon, like maybe tomorrow, this mess of an economy will belong to Barack Obama and his administration. He will own it, not his predecessor. (more…)

The Prospect.

RCP:

In fact, President Obama has made this claim several times. This statistic about Medicare’s low administrative costs has become one of the linchpins in the argument for a “public option” on health care. The only problem, not surprisingly, is that it’s hogwash.

The explanation is really quite simple, and it’s provided here by Robert Book of the Heritage Foundation. The statistic cited by Alter and Krugman uses “administrative costs” calculated as a percentage of total health care costs (For Medicare it’s roughly 3 percent and for private insurers its roughly 12 percent).

But here’s the catch: because Medicare is devoted to serving a population that is elderly, and therefore in need of greater levels of medical care, it generates significantly higher expenditures than private insurance plans, thus making administrative costs smaller as a percentage of total costs. This creates theappearance that Medicare is a model of administrative efficiency. What Jon Alter sees as a “miracle” is really just a statistical sleight of hand.

RAce42012:

Mason-Dixon Florida 2010 Senatorial Survey

GOP Senatorial Primary

• Charlie Crist 51% (53%)
• Marco Rubio 23% (18%)
• Undecided 26% (29%)

Among GOP voters who recognize both candidates

• Charlie Crist 33%
• Marco Rubio 31%
• Undecided 36% (more…)
  

Human Events:

Iran’s post presidential election protests are not evidence of a brewing revolution; rather they unmask a power struggle among the ayatollahs.  The fracturing of the leadership has resulted in clear winners and losers internally and externally. (more…)

Rasmussen:

Just 18% of U.S. voters now say Congress is doing a good or excellent job, down from 23% in May. (more…)

Reuters.

The AP: LOS ANGELES (AP) - After just five days, “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” is halfway to $400 million domestically, a box-office milestone only eight other movies have reached. If it climbs that high, the “Transformers” sequel will be by far the worst-reviewed movie ever to make the $400 million club.
Critics and mainstream crowds often disagree, but “Revenge of the Fallen” sets a new standard for the gulf between what reviewers and mass audiences like. (more…)

Commentary:

The Supreme Court’s ruling this morning on the New Haven firefighters’ lawsuit is a reminder of the vital role a sane majority on the high court plays in protecting the rights of citizens against the dictates of liberal ideology.

The 5-4 ruling, which reverses a decision endorsed by Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, validated the complaints of a group of firefighters who took and passed a promotion test but wound up being told that the exam was invalid because no minorities had done well enough on it. Though no one could credibly allege that the test was biased or that any discrimination had actually taken place, the city of New Haven threw out the test (thus rendering the efforts of the firefighters who had passed it worthless) because they feared that they would nonetheless be sued by the affirmative action bar, which views any result other than the one sought for minorities as inherently discriminatory.

Rasmussen:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows that 33% 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 +1 (see trends).

NewsObserver.com:

Lombard owns the home with another man, according to Durham County property records. The pair bought the home, which sits at the end of a narrow path lined with trees and multicolored homes, in May 2007, the records show. The co-owner has not been accused of any wrongdoing.

A bag of baseball equipment, a pair of tennis rackets, a skateboard and a child’s bike lay on the home’s front porch Saturday. No one answered the door as a dog barked inside. (more…)