• VDH: Loud+Weak=War
  
• Obama Moving The Goalposts On Obamacare Enrollment Again
  
• Dem Senate Candidate In Iowa Imploding
  
• What Rand Paul And Bill Clinton Have In Common
  
• The Right Not To Be Implicated
  
• IRS Says Bitcoin Should Be Considered Property
  
• MSNBC's Worst Chyron Fail Ever
  
• Should Unborn Babies Be Used To Heat Hospitals?
  
• In Defense Of Nazi Analogies
  
• Funny Dog Video
  
• The Government And The Branch Davidians
  
• Sowell: How Republicans Can Win Black Votes Back
  
• Every 25 Year Old Should See This Chart
  
• The Liberal Mindset As It Relates To Guns
  
• Harry Reid Has An FEC Problem
  
• Obamacare Raised Taxes For Some Children
  

Follow me on twitter.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:00 AM | Comments (303)
Post contains 113 words, total size 2 kb.

How about some content?

It's almost that time of year again -- Tax Day! So it's probably a good time to ask yourself which states are the best and worst on taxpayers' wallets? Courtesy of Wallet Hub, here's a ranking of all 50 (or 57) states, plus the District of Columbia. The results probably won't surprise anyone here.

Top (best) five: Wyoming, Alaska, Nevada, Florida, and South Dakota.

Five worst: New York, California, Nebraska, Connecticut, and Illinois.

Make sure to follow the link as they actually do a number of different break outs in terms of types of taxes as well as adjustments relative to cost-of-living.

How did your state fare?

(Hat tip @gahome1 on Twitter.)

Posted by: Open Blogger at 03:05 PM | Comments (349)
Post contains 124 words, total size 1 kb.

Since Hot Air's traffic shouldn't suffer just because Ace isn't around to link to them I'll just leave this and this for you.

Posted by: DrewM at 02:32 PM | Comments (125)
Post contains 27 words, total size 1 kb.

I blame the Koch brothers.

Senate Democrats on Tuesday dropped their demands that International Monetary Fund reforms be included in a Ukraine aid package.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced the change, saying he wanted to ensure that Congress could pass the package quickly.

...

“As much as I think a majority of the Senate would like to have gotten that done with IMF in it, it was headed to nowhere in the House,” Reid said.

Reid acknowledged the White House was not happy with the decision.

“Of course, they’re disappointed. We have to get IMF reformed but we can’t hold up the other [parts of the legislation],” he said.

In case you missed it earlier, I blogged about why the IMF language was a deal breaker for Senate conservatives (well, most of them anyway) and House Republicans.

The highlights:

-The Obama administration negotiated changes to the IMF management rules would have weakened US control, while empowering developing countries.

-Potentially exposed the US to greater exposure when new bailouts are needed.

-Taken money from the US Army and Navy budgets to pay for new IMF spending.

Now, all of these things may still happen but the House GOP is trying to get something in return, a delay in Obama's anti-free speech IRS regulations.

I hope the Republicans who vote with Reid yesterday are feeling proud today.

Posted by: DrewM at 12:24 PM | Comments (315)
Post contains 244 words, total size 2 kb.

Charles Cooke says this spot has the greatest opening line in the history of political ads. Personally I think "I'm Joani Ernst" is kind of meh but that next line is by far the greatest second line ever in the history of political ads.

And just to be *that guy*, we need to get beyond the idea that pork spending, no matter how annoying, isn't the problem. It's the entitlements, stupid. Also, does she include farm subsidies, wind power credits and the ethanol mandate as "pork" or is that good old fashioned necessary "investments"?

Still...funny ad. Which was sort of the point of this post before it got away from me for a second.

Since I'm swiping that video from Cooke you should check out his post on how the left turns on its rising stars the second they dare go off script.

Posted by: DrewM at 11:34 AM | Comments (318)
Post contains 169 words, total size 1 kb.

Jonathan Karl of ABC asked Obama a question today that wounded Obama's vanity so he answered it like the petulant man-child he is.

“In China, in Syria, in Egypt, and now in Russia, we’ve seen you make strong statements, issue warnings that have been ignored,” Karl began. “Are you concerned that America’s influence in the world, your influence in the world, is on the decline?”

“In light of recent developments, do you think that Mitt Romney had a point when he said Russia is America’s biggest geopolitical foe?” Karl continued.

...

“Russia is a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors, not out of strength but out of weakness,” Obama asserted, as though he was talking about the psychological insecurities that plague the average playground bully.

“The fact that Russia felt compelled to go in militarily and lay bare these violations of international law indicates less influence, not more,” Obama insisted.

"A regional power"?

I'm going to guess Obama has never looked at a globe and noticed that Russia stretches across many regions...Europe, it's very near the Mideast and encompasses central Asia and reaches to the Pacific.

As Greg Pollowitz notes, if you have a fleet of ICBMs, you're pretty much by definition beyond "a regional power".

They are also making noises about establishing bases in Latin America.

Is Russia a hyper-power like the US or even the superpower it was during the, dare I say, "original", Cold War? Not really. But that doesn't mean they aren't capable of making trouble in many parts of the world for the US.

I am decidedly in the non-interventionist camp when it comes to places like Libya and Syria. I'm also very skeptical of our ability to do much if anything about Russian designs on Ukraine or non-NATO areas of the former Soviet Union but that doesn't mean we can afford to take Russia lightly.

We need to make it clear that NATO boundaries are real and can not be crossed. I don't think we show resolve by drawing lines in areas like Ukraine where our interests are more theoretical than real and our ability to enforce our position is questionable at best.

Critics will say that if we don't make a stand in places like Ukraine Putin won't believe our resolve somewhere like the Baltics. My feeling is it's better not to make a stand if the reality is you will back down when push comes to shove. No one thinks we'd go to war over Ukraine so why pretend we would? Having your bluff called is real weakness that will invite further probing by an adversary.

What should we be doing? If you want to sanction Russia and send military aid to Ukraine, fine. The real aim of our efforts should be showing friendly governments in places like Poland and the Baltics we are serous since they are the ones most open to Russian intimidation. We should be conducting military exercises with the Polish Army and Air Forces. We should be sending US Navy warships to Baltic port visits. In fairness, we are doing things like this.

We should also remember that China is watching and we need to make clear our commitment to Japan, while encouraging the Japaneses to continue their defense build up.

If you missed it earlier, I spoke with Noah Rothman of Mediate about these subjects for a podcast posted earlier today.

Listen: [Stream with Stitcher] [Download]

Unlike Rothman, I think US allies have to carry a greater load of our collective defense efforts. Politically it's just a reality that the US isn't going to keep spending a disproportionate share of defense spending. It's also important that other countries have skin in the game. We can't incur all the costs and run all the risks in confronting Russia while the Europeans use the money they save to compete with us economically and do business with the Russians.

At the very least we need to do more to make it possible for Europeans to buy energy from us and not Russia.

Obama's world view is very much informed by liberal elites who are unconcerned with how the world actually operates. They insist that it should conform to their post-nation state, cosmopolitan, citizen of the world nonsense. These self-styled elite insist that global actors who don't share this view change their outlook and actions to conform to the faculty approved version of reality. Obama actually said today that he's not very interested in the motivations behind Russia's recent actions. People like Putin eat these guys for lunch every time.

Posted by: DrewM at 10:32 AM | Comments (438)
Post contains 775 words, total size 6 kb.

Ilya Shapiro seems optimistic.

Washington Post has a fairly neutral write-up. It appears that some of the justices were hung up on the "Parade of Horribles." That would be Lie 2 on my list.

The transcript should be up this afternoon.

Consider this an open thread.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 09:39 AM | Comments (194)
Post contains 60 words, total size 1 kb.

Well, I've been feeling rundown for a while and today I just feel unwell.

I'm going to put up some very light stuff (lighter even than my recent blow-off stuff) but pretty much I'm taking the day off.

Posted by: Ace at 08:38 AM | Comments (367)
Post contains 42 words, total size 1 kb.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that the Supreme Court will today hear the contraception mandate cases, popularly styled Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby. Politically, these cases hit a bunch of fraught notes on sex, power, religion, and free speech. I covered that, with emphasis on the lies leftists will tell, yesterday. Legally, however, these cases also raise important questions, and I want to cover that today.

As I've written before, these cases won't bring down Obamacare. But they will determine how government will interact with religious individuals for decades to come. Here are the most important legal questions the Supreme Court will have to consider today.
more...

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 06:59 AM | Comments (316)
Post contains 1101 words, total size 7 kb.

• Indiana Becomes The First State To Withdraw From Common Core
  
• Six Lies The Leftist Media Tells About The Contraception Mandate Cases
  
• Lefties Blaming Washingtinton Mudslide On Global Warming
  
• Harry Reid Says GOP May Have Helped Russia Annex Crimea
  
• Sects And Drugs
  
• Editor Leaves Bloomberg Citing China Coverage
  
• Cost Conscious Obama Travels To Belgium With 900 Member Entourage
  
• Alaska Dem Senator Polling Behind Republicans For The First Time
  
• Canada Probes Possible Ebola Case
  
• Republican Congressman Wants To Bring Back Earmarks
  
• Walmart Makes Official Its Reliance On Food Stamp Recipients For Profits
  
• Obamacare: A Cascade Of Failures
  
• Would America Go To War With Russia
  
• Ukraine Marines Betrayed By Russian Raid
  
• I Have A Feeling This Will Be A Quick Hit Topic
  

Follow me on twitter.

Posted by: Open Blogger at 05:23 AM | Comments (230)
Post contains 131 words, total size 3 kb.