These are my links for March 7th from 10:02 to 10:59:

• NV-Sen: Sen. John Ensign to Announce Retirement – Sen. John Ensign is expected to announce at an afternoon news conference in Las Vegas that he will retire rather than face a brutal 2012 re-election campaign, according to knowledgeable sources.
  The Nevada Republican, who has been embattled since revealing he had an affair with the wife of a former aide, was facing a possible primary challenge from Rep. Dean Heller (R). Heller is now expected to run for the open Senate seat.
  Roll Call Politics rates this race as a Tossup.

  +++++++

  What a disgrace.

  Don't let the door hit you in the ass as you go out.

• ObamaCare’s March Madness – Sports fans relish this time of year for the NCAA Championship Basketball Tournament, aka "March Madness." But this year the tournament has a serious contender for that title. March is also ObamaCare's anniversary month.

  Last year, President Obama gave Congress an arbitrary deadline to pass his health-care takeover legislation before the Easter recess at the end of March. This forced lawmakers to hurry their votes on a deeply flawed bill that very few of them had read. Worse, many made false promises to secure final passage.

  We're already seeing ObamaCare's madness in its first year of implementation, which is why the American people continue to call for defunding, repealing and replacing it with more sensible reforms. Here are a few examples of the mayhem.

  • More than half the states—28 and counting—are challenging the law in court, saying that it violates the constitutional rights of their citizens and the sovereignty of the states. A new study from the Senate Finance and House Energy and Commerce Committees found that as a result of ObamaCare, budget-strapped states face at least $118 billion in unfunded mandates during the first 10 years after the law takes effect.

  • Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has handed out nearly 1,000 waivers to allow select companies, unions and states to escape, at least temporarily, some of the burdensome new insurance rules she has created. This is a continuation of the trend of the "Cornhusker Kickback" and the "Louisiana Purchase" that Senate Democrats used to get the law passed in the first place, and that so disgusted the American people.

  • Independent experts have shown that the cost of health insurance will rise faster than it would have without the law. The Congressional Budget Office expects the price of a family policy in the individual market to be $2,100 higher by 2016 than it would have been had the law not passed. In at least 20 states, it's now impossible to buy child-only health insurance because of Ms. Sebelius's onerous new rules.

  • Seniors are at risk of losing access to physicians and medical care. Medicare actuaries say that the cuts built into the law will force as many as 40% of providers to eventually stop seeing Medicare patients or go bankrupt.

  • Many thousands of people are already losing the health insurance they have now as companies are exiting markets for individual, small group and Medicare Advantage coverage.

  • The former director of the Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, says that the costs of ObamaCare are set to explode when employers opt to drop coverage and send their workers to the new, federally subsidized health exchanges for coverage. He estimates that this will drive up the cost of the law by $1 trillion or more in the first 10 years.

  The list goes on and on. It's time to stop the ObamaCare madness before it becomes another entrenched entitlement program.

  ++++++++

  Defund it first and then repeal this bad law.

• Environment, House budget bill: House GOP spending bill aims to slash environmental regulation – Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, called the budget resolution a "slash-and-burn proposal" and "a backdoor attack on our national landmark environmental laws."

  The delta and San Joaquin River sections were written by Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Tulare), who represents parts of the San Joaquin Valley and has previously introduced legislation to waive protections for salmon and the delta smelt and ramp up pumping from the delta, one of California's major sources of water.

  Nunes said his budget language was a "simple attempt to try to get some of our water back so we can put people back to work." He added that if his proposal died in the Senate, he would keep pursuing it.

  "Every chance that we have to amend a bill or pass a bill, we will be doing it," said Nunes, who on his House blog last year complained that "environmental radicals operating in the name of Gaia, Mother Earth, the Wiccan religion and a host of other cult-like organizations have litigated, legislated and extorted away the water needed for San Joaquin Valley communities."

  Terry Anderson, executive director of the Property and Environment Research Center, which promotes a free-market approach to environmental problems, said the cuts were driven more by political than budgetary concerns. And he argued that even if they went into effect, they would have a limited impact.

  "The regulations that won't be enforced haven't been the biggest drivers in improvements in environmental quality in recent years," Anderson said. "We have a clean environment, and we'll continue to clean it up because of technology. And that is largely a function of economic growth."

  +++++++

  If you don't have the money and regulations are stifling economic growth, what is prudent for the House to do?

  Spend American into Bankruptcy?

  And, Sen. Barbara Boxer is so far out there in LEFT field nobody listens to her anyway.