One Chart that Tells You Everything You Need to Know about State and Local Government Pay

Big Government  "Every labor economist, right or left, will agree that higher “quit rates” are much more likely in sectors that are underpaid and lower levels are much more likely in sectors where compensation is generous.
"Not surprisingly, this data shows state and local bureaucrats are living on Easy Street. As the chart illustrates, private sector workers are more than three times as likely to quit their jobs."

Wisconsin Assembly Passes Bill Curbing Collective Bargaining

Bloomberg.com  "The Assembly in Madison early today voted 51-17 over the shouted objections of some legislators, and 28 lawmakers failed to cast their ballots. The measure still must be considered in the Senate, which has been unable to muster a quorum since last week after its 14 Democrats fled the state to stall the measure."

Next Step in Congress’ Fight for Marriage

boston.com

Heritage  "DOMA was enacted by overwhelming majorities of both houses of Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996. DOMA has two core provisions. First, it defines the words marriage, spouse, husband, and wife wherever they appear in the U.S. Code as referring only to the union of a man or a woman. Second, it defends the right of each state not to be forced to accept the redefinition of marriage in a handful of other states as a result of state court decisions or laws. Nearly 40 states have enacted state-level DOMAs, and 31 have embraced traditional marriage in their state constitutions. No state’s voters have ever voted to the contrary."

Exposed: Obama’s 23-Year Pastor Jeremiah Wright Travelled to Libya to Meet With Gaddafi in 1984…

Weasel Zippers   "Jeremiah Wright, former pastor of Obama’s longtime Chicago church, went with Farrakhan to visit Gadhafi in 1984.
"During the 2008 presidential campaign, Wright himself noted the trip could cause problems for Obama.

“When [Obama’s] enemies find out that in 1984 I went to Tripoli to visit [Gadhafi] with Farrakhan, a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell.”

"Farrakhan, a close friend and associate of Wright, has been financed by Gadhafi, including with a $5 million interest-free loan in 1985."

More on the Saudi Jihadist Arrested in Texas (Updated)

Andrew C. McCarthy   "Aldawsari also e-mailed himself instructions on how to convert a cellular phone into a remote detonator and how to prepare a booby-trapped vehicle using items available in every home. One e-mail allegedly contained a message stating that “one operation in the land of the infidels is equal to ten operations against occupying forces in the land of the Muslims.”" I suppose the press would call him a "Texan" .

The Arrest of a Would-Be Bomber in Texas and the Limited Anticipatory Scope of Criminal Law in Lone Wolf Cases   "In another e-mail titled “NICE TARGETS 01,” Aldawsari allegedly sent himself the names of 12 reservoir dams in Colorado and California. In another e-mail to himself, titled “NICE TARGETS,” he listed two categories of targets: hydroelectric dams and nuclear power plants. On Feb. 6, 2011, the affidavit alleges, Aldawsari sent himself an e-mail titled “Tyrant’s House,” in which he listed the Dallas address for former President George W. Bush. The affidavit also alleges that Aldawsari conducted research that could indicate his consideration of the use of infant dolls to conceal explosives and possible targeting of a nightclub with an explosive concealed in a backpack."

A New America in a New World Order

Victor Davis Hanson   "A strengthened US role in the UN has come to nothing. Did we gain anything by humiliating Israel in 2009? Are Venezuela and its axis moderating their efforts to turn Latin America into a Marxist utopia? Has America ever before joined Mexico — or any other foreign government — in efforts to sue one of its own states that simply wanted federal law enforced? Was Russia really all that eager to help an appeasing US diplomatically? When the US provided serial numbers of British nuclear weapons to Putin’s Russia, and when Europeans like Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy have to lecture the West about the failures of multiculturalism, we are reminded that the Europeans should have been careful of what they so loudly wished for during the 2008 presidential campaign."

http://townhall.com/cartoons/garymccoy

Wisconsin Unions vs. The Tea Party: A Classic Double Standard

Newsbusters   "A story-by-story analysis by the Media Research Center shows the Wisconsin protests are a perfect case study in the media’s longstanding double standard favoring left-wing causes while demonstrating much more hostility to the Tea Party and conservative protest."

Bill Whittle’s scathing indictment of the Obama foreign policy (video)

Bookworm Room  "You know, there comes a point where – no matter how you try to offer the benefit of the doubt – evidence builds up to such a degree that you can no longer deny that the evidence is trying to tell you something. And halfway through his first term, the foreign policy decisions made by Barack Obama and his administration are so appalling, and so destructive in the long term; they no longer can be credited to inexperience or even incompetence. They are so consistent that they must be due to ideology."

Obama takes a stand on Libya   "The day before Obama firmly came out on the side of world peace via Libya, his press secretary had informed the world that Obama's 9 day silence on the Libyan inferno was due to "scheduling conflicts." Now that Obama has made time in his schedule, he has finally made a decision. America is going to let the United Nations handle the problem."

Obama's Libya Silence  Quoting Charles Krauthammer:

"This is a President who went around the world in the first year in office saying he would he was raising the moral standard of the United States in the world after the travesties as he saw it or the Bush Administration. Here he is, he has nothing on what's happening in Libya which is a case of brutality and mere genocide to use the word of one of Gaddafi's own diplomats. The shooting of demonstrators from helicopter gunships, the strafing of demonstrators from bombers is astonishing."

U.S. Fears Tripoli May Deploy Gas As Chaos Mounts

Wall Street Journal  "The George W. Bush administration reached a key agreement with Tripoli in 2003 that called for Libya to scrap its weapons of mass destruction programs in return for normalized diplomatic relations. The deal followed the toppling of Saddam Hussein and was viewed as a major victory in the push to rid the Middle East of advanced weapons."
Thank President George W. Bush that the nuke-ninnies Hussein and Ga-whatsit have been disarmed and are not part of the current equation.

http://townhall.com/cartoons/glennmccoy

Hide and Seek: White House hides meetings with lobbyist offsite

Another Black Conservative  "Politico: Caught between their boss’s anti-lobbyist rhetoric and the reality of governing, President Barack Obama’s aides often steer meetings with lobbyists to a complex just off the White House grounds – and several of the lobbyists involved say they believe the choice of venue is no accident.
"It allows the Obama administration to keep these lobbyist meetings shielded from public view — and out of Secret Service logs collected on visitors to the White House and later released to the public."

Wisconsin governor urging others to take stands against unions

Washington Post  "Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, whose efforts to curtail the rights of public-employee unions have thrust him into the national spotlight, is pushing other new Republican governors to follow his lead.
"He said he communicates regularly with Ohio Gov. John Kasich and has spoken with Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval. And Walker has suggested that his counterparts in Michigan and Florida seek to address their budget problems in part by demanding major concessions from public workers.
"There's a lot of us new governors that got elected to do something big," Walker said this week. "This is our moment."
"His comments about his GOP brethren came in an unusual forum: a recorded telephone conversation with a liberal blogger purporting to be conservative financier David Koch."

Obama Bows Out on the Defense of Marriage Act

National Review  "The Holder letter concludes: “Our attorneys will notify the courts of our interest in providing Congress a full and fair opportunity to participate in the litigation in these cases.” It would have been fuller and fairer for President Obama and the Justice Department to have done that from the beginning when the DOMA suits were filed in Massachusetts. The silver lining is that the way has now been cleared for a real adversarial process. The law enacted by Congress and the views of the American people finally will have a champion in court."

Volokh Conspiracy on DOMA   "So I take the Obama Administration to task not for asserting executive review here, which is at least arguably proper, but for trying to split the baby in half, and declaring that it won’t defend an unconstitutional law, but will enforce it. And not just any unconstitutional law, but one regarding which the Administration claims there are no “reasonable” supporting arguments."

More from Volokh Conspiracy:  "I also agree that there is a big difference between declining to enforce a law and declining to defend it. ... First, my sense is that it is not clear that others can step in to defend DOMA, and if so, how that would work. ...And second, the decision not to defend DOMA is likely to trigger a tit-for-tat that will have significant repercussions for the role of the Executive branch in defending legislation in the future."