Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, the former trial lawyer lobbyist who looked out for the interest group while in the state’s highest office — even though doing so meant preventing decreased costs and increased access to care within her own state’s health care system — has a tax problem.

According to this letter from Sebelius to Senators Max Baucus (D-MT) and Charles Grassley (R-IA), the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, respectively, the Kansas Democrat and her husband hired a CPA to “conduct a thorough review” of their tax returns for 2005, 2006, and 2007 “in preparation for [her] confirmation process as the nominee for Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.”

While conducting his review, the CPA found that the Sebeliuses owed $7,040 in federal taxes, which was paid along with $848 in interest.

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1. Scott Murphy (D) is ahead by 65 votes.  Nobody’s calling this race just yet.
2. There are somewhere between six and ten thousand absentee ballots that need to be counted.
3. They’re not being counted tonight.  They’re not being counted for another week. (Via AoSHQ)  You see, we do, in fact, actually learn from our mistakes.
4. The deadline for overseas absentee ballots is actually April 13th.
5. All that being said, just because we haven’t lost yet doesn’t mean that we’ve won, either.  Don’t assume that the absentee ballots are going to flip this race dramatically.
6. If you still have nervous energy to work off, Rosanna Pulido (the candidate for IL-05) would love your help.

I believe that covers it. So everybody have a bite to eat, or something.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Several of us were involved today in what has become a bi-weekly conference call with Congressman Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). Today’s guests were John Campbell (R-CA), Patrick McHenry (R-NC), and (in a surprise to everyone included Rep. McCarthy) Paul Ryan (R-WI) (via a phone-in from somewhere else in the buildings).

The main topic was once again The Budget….

Some reporting below the fold….

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610/610: +65 Murphy, and the election will now not be over for another two weeks. The deadline for absentee ballots is April 13th, and if you think that either candidate is not going to insist on every second of that time… HAH!

609/610: 81 vote difference. Heck, this may go to a runoff.

607/610: Murphy takes lead with 200 votes; it’s going to the absentee ballots, folks.

591/610 Tedisco down to 30 votes+; I assume that means recount.

At 505/610, Tedisco is ahead by 1100 votes. As it stands, he will win Saratoga & Delaware Counties, and lose Columbia County. I don’t think Murphy can make up those votes in Columbia.

At 386/610: if this holds up, and the Saratoga results hold up… Tedisco wins.

At 312/610, 51/49 Tedisco/Murphy.
And with Warren County’s results in… not enough there to make it up for Murphy.

Still 52/48 at 168/610.
Saratoga County’s showing a 3K vote lead there with 43% in.

At 90/610 districts: Tedisco/Murphy 52/48

Very minimal this time: I’m still trying to find a results page.

OK, Constant Reader SE-779 come through with some:

The Saratogian.
Times-Union.
Post-Star.

Way to go, General Motors! You’ve staked your survival on electric cars, hybrid cars, and high-mileage cars - apparently reading tea leaves and thinking that was what Obama and Congressional Democrats wanted. Instead, it turns out Barack Obama thinks you did it all wrong. Even more surprising, it’s GM’s high-tech, environmentally-friendly, crown jewel car of the future that was your biggest mistake.

The Chevrolet Volt may wow the media when it arrives in dealerships next year, but the Obama administration believes the plug-in electric car will cost too much and won’t attract enough buyers.

“While the Volt holds promise, it will likely be too expensive to be commercially successful in the short-term,” the administration said in its evaluation of General Motors Corp.’s restructuring plan. The car “is currently projected to be much more expensive than its gasoline-fueled peers and will likely need substantial reductions in manufacturing cost in order to become commercially viable.”

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Moe wrote about the Washington State lunacy the other day. To recap:

Spokane County became the launch pad last July for the nation’s strictest ban on dishwasher detergent made with phosphates, a measure aimed at reducing water pollution. The ban will be expanded statewide in July 2010, the same time similar laws take effect in several other states.

As the Associated Press notes, there’s just one problem:

Many people were shocked to find that products like Seventh Generation, Ecover and Trader Joe’s left their dishes encrusted with food, smeared with grease and too gross to use without rewashing them by hand. The culprit was hard water, which is mineral-rich and resistant to soap.

Washington State has turned its residents into a group of drug runners — crossing state lines to buy dish washer detergent with phosphate.

At what point do the people tell the politicians to go to hell? At what point do they get off the couch, march down to their state legislator’s house, pull him outside, and beat him to a bloody pulp for being an idiot?

At some point soon, it will happen. It’ll be over an innocuous issue. But the rage is building. It’s not a partisan issue. There is bipartisan angst at out of control government made worse by dumb bans like this and unintended consequences like AIG’s bonus problems.

If the GOP plays its cards right, it will have a winning issue in 2010. But it is going to have to get back to “leave me the hell alone” style federalism where the national government recedes and the people themselves will have to fight to take their states back from special interests out of touch with body politic as a whole.

Were I in Washington State, I’d be cleaning my gun right about now waiting to protect my property from the coming riots or the government apparatchiks coming to enforce nonsensical legislation.

One look at the deficit projections below shows you that the House GOP budget will be superior to Barack Obama’s. Obama has no plan to bring the national debt under control until… well, ever. His plan is for the federal debt to skyrocket off the chart, with no attempt ever made to get it back under control. It’s a plan for hyperinflation and eventual collapse of the currency. It is unsustainable.

How bad is Obama’s budget? Note that Ryan is showing an unusual chart; this is publicly-held debt as a percentage of GDP, from 1940-2080. In budget debates policymakers typically focus on the shorter term: what the numbers look like over the next 5-10 years.

According to Ryan’s chart, publicly-held debt as a percentage of GDP increases slowly under the GOP plan until about 2050 and does not return to the current level until after 2070. Even this seemingly modest achievement is far, far better than Obama’s blueprint. If Ryan and the House Republicans can’t produce a budget that goes to balance for decades, it is because Obama has so wrecked the nation’s finances that he is content to allow deficits and debt to skyrocket until the children of today have grown old and died.

More details from Ryan here:

HT: Phil Klein

How slick and nefarious are the operatives of the torture and assassination branch of Bush/Cheney/HitlerCo? They’ve infiltrated Hugo Chavez’s Venezuelan regime and replaced Miss Universe with an incredibly sexy fembot duplicate. What other explanation is there for her singing from the Bush/Cheney songbook?

A “relaxing, calm, beautiful place” may not be everyone’s description of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the United States holds about 240 prisoners in a detention center that has drawn condemnation from around the world.

But this was the opinion of reigning Miss Universe Dayana Mendoza of Venezuela, who visited the U.S. naval facility in eastern Cuba this month on a trip organized by the United Service Organizations (USO) which supports U.S. troops…

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[Libertarian]: “Voluntary taxation” = You can choose whether or not to participate in the tax system.

[Liberal]: “Voluntary taxation” = You calculate and send in your taxes, instead of your employer. And, oh, yes, you don’t have to pay taxes on a house if you don’t want to own one.

Watching an example of the former explain the definition to an example of the latter - and watching the liberal completely reject the definition without even remotely understanding it - in the following video will no doubt amuse you. Or make you want to throw a brick through the screen. Or both.

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New Jersey and Virginia elect governors this year, and Republicans stand a good chance of taking both. In the Garden State, the GOP likely has a very strong challenger in former U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie, if he makes it through the primary against former Mayor of Bogota (Bergen County), Steve Lonegan. Christie made his name putting corrupt Democratic politicians in jail, so the primary should be little more than a formality and a tune-up for the eventual fall campaign against a very well-funded and powerful Democratic machine in the state. Christie has an excellent chance of unseating Governor John Corzine (D) if he can prove himself competent on issues other than public corruption.

It is on that issue, however, Christie’s strength, that some Democrats are trying to attack him. They would love to paint Christie as one of a kind with their corrupt crowd. Democrats know that for Republicans, hypocrisy is a campaign-killer, even as it seems to be a resume enhancement for them. But their first venture down this line of attack will fall flat, if Christie continues to follow his instincts.

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Today’s Ed Morrissey Show features special guest Congressman Eric Cantor.

Today, on the Ed Morrissey Show (3 pm ET), Andrew Malcolm returns in his new Tuesday slot to discuss media and politics. In the second half, Rep. Eric Cantor joins us to talk about Barack Obama’s economic policies. We’ll also have Tommy Christopher and Caleb Howe debate the videotape allegedly depicting Joe Biden’s adult daughter using drugs. Legitimate news story, or irrelevant political attack? We’ll go into bonus minutes to find out! We’ll also talk about Keith Olbermann and Twitter, Caleb’s exclusive look into the anchor’s hypocrisy on social networking.

You can find my Olbermann story here, Erick on Biden here, Ed on Biden here, and Tommy on Biden here. You can watch live and participate below the fold.

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By now you’ve all heard that Ashley Biden is a cokehead . . . or at least was caught on video snorting coke. Just like Barack Obama.

In the process of writing about the Vice President’s daughter, the media just can’t help drag Barbara and Jenna Bush into this or Bristol Palin.

Let’s catch up:

Barbara and Jenna were underage drinkers. Their father allegedly snorted cocaine, but there has neither been a videotape nor an admission of such actions — that hasn’t kept the left/media from speculating.

The bottom line, though, is this: Ashley Biden is a private citizen. As are Barbara and Jenna Bush. As is Bristol Palin.

The fixation on this and those stories says more about the media than it does about the individuals, who I’m sure have problems of one sort or another shared by many, many Americans.

What is more troubling is how the media has sought to use the Ashley Biden story to transition back into Palin bashing and Bush bashing, none of whom are on the national stage anymore.

If the media wants to use the “everybody does it” story line they love, perhaps they should instead focus on Barack Obama, who admits to snorting coke.

But more preferably, perhaps the media should drop it altogether. Ashley Biden never asked to be in the national spotlight. Neither did Barbara nor Jenna Bush. Neither did Bristol Palin whose exposure on the national stage was probably more brutal than the treatment of any of the others I’ve mentioned and is still ongoing.

It is a tragedy, but not a national tragedy. The media would have us believe it is a national tragedy, but only to sell more ads, sell more papers, and trash George Bush and Sarah Palin some more — cowardly using their children as proxies.

But let me take this opportunity to remind you of one important thing the media prefers not to talk about: for all the accusations without evidence against George Bush, we know for certain Barack Obama snorted coke. Just like Joe Biden’s daughter.

Do we really want to turn this into a big story?

Instead of the blue screen of death, let’s call it the blue span of death. Like the bridge to nowhere, Microsoft has somehow gotten its hands on $11 million of the stimulus dollars to build a bridge that will connect Microsoft to . . . well . . . Microsoft.

This is another example of Obama deciding he knows what’s best and us winding up with a raw deal.

According to CNN:

“It’s going create just under 400 jobs for 18 months constructing the bridge,” says Redmond Mayor John Marchione. “It’s also connecting our technical sector with our retail and commercial sectors so people can cross the freeway to shop and help traffic flow.”

Marchione applied for federal stimulus money after costs jumped on the project from $25 million to $36 million. Marchione says the increase in costs were due to a rise in construction prices and because the bridge will be built on a diagonal in order to connect Microsoft’s original East campus with a newer West campus that are split by a public highway.

Microsoft is hardly getting the bridge for free. The company is contributing $17.5 million or a little less than half the tab of the $36 million bridge, which would be open for public use.

In other words, the taxpayers of this nation are buying Microsoft a bridge that Microsoft could afford to buy itself.

Let’s hope the bridge doesn’t crash like Vista or it really will be a span of death.

The NRCC needs our help. They are only $50,000 away from their March 31st fundraising goal. Please help them reach their goal by making your contribution before Tuesday at midnight.

John Boehner, Pete Sessions, Eric Cantor, Mike Pence and Kevin McCarthy, have pledged to match the first $50,000 in contributions to double their strength - meaning every dollar contributed up to $50,000 will be doubled.

So go here and give what you can. Remember, spending laws start in the House. We take it back, Obama’s budget is DOA.

“We cannot continue to excuse poor decisions” and “cannot make the survival of our auto industry dependent on an unending flow of taxpayer dollars.”

Thus Barack Obama, on the subject of General Motors. This was in the course of a speech given yesterday, which indeed rewarded poor decisions by giving the company 60 more days to keep operating on taxpayer life-support.

Obama is the Revolution of Circumlocution. Whenever you want to know what he actually means, just reverse his statements 180 degrees.

I am not personally convinced the birth certificate is an issue, but I have to say, I have no leg to stand on but my “feeling” that it isn’t relevant because we’ve not seen actual birth certificate to butress my “feeling.” So, what do I tell people that insist this is an important issue?

I have nothing logical to tell them to disabuse them of their notion because I can’t prove them wrong.

So, why won’t Obama just publish the real birth certificate?

According to election fraud lawyer Heather Heidelbaugh, The New York Times decided suddenly to drop all efforts last October to publish stories about the Association for Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) because it came to light that ACORN was a big donor to then presidential candidate Barack Obama’s campaign. The Times is said to have told ACORN insider Anita Moncrief that they were dropping the story because it was a “game changer” for the election and might hurt Obama’s campaign.

Heidelbaugh, who worked for the Penn. Republican State Committee in a vote fraud lawsuit against ACORN, told a House Judiciary subcommittee on March 19 that she had found a close link between ACORN, Project Vote and the Obama campaign through the inside information from former ACORN worker Anita Moncrief.

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During the final years of Bush’s presidency, the House Oversight Committee was abuzz with activity as Democrats used the power of the committee and it’s generous budget to “get” President Bush. Chairman Henry Waxman used the power of his committee chairmanship to subpoena Bush administration officials at the drop of a hat and his committee was deemed indispensable by Democrats for holding government accountable.

That was then.

Now, the House Oversight Committee is suddenly not so important to the Democrats. In fact, it is so unimportant that its budget has been afforded the smallest budget increase of any other committee.

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Here is something that you NewsBusters fans can help me with because I am having difficulty deciding what is going on with this one. We have a shooting incident in Minnesota perpetrated by three Muslim Somali immigrants but for some reason almost every single media report about the incident omits the names of the shooters, names of obvious North Africa or ethnic origin. So, the question is, did the Old Media in Minnesota purposefully leave the names unreported so that they could cover up the fact that the criminals were Somali immigrants? And, if so, why would they do this?

We start with the Minneapolis Star Tribune that reports that “three suspects were in jail Sunday following a shooting in Lakeville that injured four other people.” Apparently one of those arrested took umbrage at being told to leave a party and began shooting up the place as he and his friends left. But, all we get from the StarTrib is “three suspects.” No names or descriptions.

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