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In the wake of the PATRIOT Act reauthorization defeat last night, the conventional wisdom has held that it was the Tea Party freshmen who played a crucial role in preventing it from passing. But in reality, the Republican opposition was much more mainstream – and was joined by two Republicans who have their eyes on the Senate in 2012.

Both Reps. Connie Mack (R-Fla.) and Dean Heller (R-Nev.) were among the 26 Republicans who voted against the reauthorization. Mack is seriously mulling a Senate campaign, and has been positioning himself as a center-right candidate on immigration as he prepares for a race. Nonetheless, he has a solid conservative voting record in the House – with a 100 percent ACU score in 2008.

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Both solid candidates for U.S. Senate

Deepening a rift ahead of the largest annual gathering of conservative activists in Washington this week, some of the movement’s top leaders have circulated a private memo urging that conservatism’s founding principles be recast to exclude gay rights groups from the Reagan coalition of economic, defense and social conservatives.

The memo, obtained by The Washington Times, was signed by about two dozen leaders, and was released just as the Conservative Political Action Conference is set to begin its most contentious session in years, riven with divisions over a gay rights Republican group that is helping sponsor the conference and the social conservatives who are trying to keep it out.

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I don't think this impasse will be easily resolved

The company that fired Reagan for speaking out against big government is celebrating the seminal speech in which he does the same, while the company’s CEO enjoys his spot in President Obama’s inner circle.

Reagan mythology comes from across the political spectrum and we will likely never agree on his political legacy. But Reagan was a clear and outspoken critic of government-driven corporatism. GE’s misappropriation of Reagan’s iconic speech reveals just how far they’ve strayed from his message. It’s representative of either a company that has gone entirely tone deaf or an acrobatic attempt at a revisionist Reagan history.

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Ge is all over the place as long as there is $$$ in it for them.

The U.S. House of Representatives will vote on whether to block funding for President Barack Obama's signature healthcare overhaul when it takes up a budget plan next week, House Republican Leader Eric Cantor said on Tuesday.

"I expect to see one way or other the product coming out of the House to speak to that and to preclude any funding to be used for that," Cantor said at a news conference, referring to an effort to block implementation of the health-care law.

House Republicans aim to pass a spending measure next week that would immediately cut at least $32 billion from the government's $3.7 trillion budget in an effort to trim record budget deficits.

Republican lawmakers are expected to unveil details of the spending-cut package on Thursday ahead of a wide-ranging debate on the House floor next week.

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Three prong effort to repeal ObamaCare: Repeal, Courts,Funding

Even as the pressure intensifies on him to consider a 2012 bid, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush indicated that he's not reconsidering his decision to not run for president.

"Yes," Bush wrote in an email when asked if the door remained firmly shut on a White House campaign next year.

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Unhappy with the presidential field as it appears now and increasingly nervous about finding a candidate who can unite the party and beat Pres. Obama, high-profile conservatives have begun going public with their pleas for the Floridian to run.

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And, no it should be

While this would be slightly less bad than ObamaCare, it's important to realize that it still wouldn't do much to alleviate the significant problems with the law that Daniels' outlines at the start of the piece. Nearly all of the spending in the national health care law comes from expanding Medicaid and offering subsidies to individuals to purchase insurance on these government-run exchanges, and this wouldn't change that. And while getting rid of benefit mandates would provide individuals with more choice in the exchanges, it would still be hard to contain the growth of premiums as long as there's a requirement that insurers cover those with pre-existing conditions. Furthermore, given the raft of new regulations introduced by the law, you aren't going to get anything close to aproximating a consumer-driven system. What this article really does is reinforce why repealing the law is so crucial.

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The best course of action is to repeal ObamaCare

Saying it received an "onslaught of personal attacks," a Colorado nonprofit announced in a news release today that it was canceling a scheduled May appearance in Glendale by former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.

Palin, the former Alaskan governor and possible 2012 Republican presidential candidate, was to be the keynote speaker at the May 2 Patriots & Warriors Gala at the Infinity Park Event Center in Glendale.

The event, sponsored by the Sharon K. Pacheco Foundation, was announced to the media on Friday. The group said today the event had been canceled because of "safety concerns resulting from an onslaught of negative feedback received by the organization."

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Now, Sarah Palin has an open date for the NBC Presidential debate at the Reagan Presidential library.

Will she participate?

The fate-turning spectacle of the Iowa caucuses will unfold a year from today – or even sooner – but where are the big names?

A string of prospects have visited Iowa in the past few weeks, dropping hints about their plans. Yet the three Republicans at the top of national presidential preference polls have left few clues in Iowa.

What's up with Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee? Despite their public silence, forces are in motion that could shape an Iowa strategy for Romney and lay the groundwork for a Palin campaign here. But Iowa and national strategists see few signs pointing to a sequel to Huckabee's 2008 campaign.

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Mike Huckabee is not going to run….

As of March 2010, 11.2 million unauthorized immigrants were living in the United States, virtually unchanged from a year earlier, according to new estimates from the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center. This stability in 2010 follows a two-year decline from the peak of 12 million in 2007 to 11.1 million in 2009 that was the first significant reversal in a two-decade pattern of growth. Unauthorized immigrants were 3.7% of the nation's population in 2010.

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I will have a further post on this report tomorrow

The White House expects Jon Huntsman, the U.S. Ambassador to China, to resign his post this spring to explore a bid for the Republican presidential nomination, top Democrats said.

GOP allies of Huntsman have already begun laying plans for a quick-start campaign should the former Utah governor decide to enter the ill-defined Republican field.

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I don't really see another rich Mormon doing very well running for President – especially since he has been part of the Obama Administration.

Looks like the political consultants have found another cash cow who covets the White House

Leaders of more than 70 Tea Party groups in Indiana gathered last weekend to sign a proclamation saying they would all support one candidate — as yet undetermined — in a primary challenge to Senator Richard G. Lugar, the Republican who has represented the state since 1977.
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If Tea Party activists can agree on one GOP/Tea Party challenger to Sen. Lugar he is gone.

Jimmy Carter will go down in American history as "the president who lost Iran," which during his term went from being a major strategic ally of the United States to being the revolutionary Islamic Republic. Barack Obama will be remembered as the president who "lost" Turkey, Lebanon and Egypt, and during whose tenure America's alliances in the Middle East crumbled.

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And, Tunisia and Turkey

The Working Group on Egypt , which includes Michele Dunne, Robert Kagan, Elliott Abrams and Ellen Bork as well Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch and Brian Katulis of the Center for American Progress, has put out a statement with some smart advice for Obama to pursue the following goals:

a call for free and fair elections for president and for parliament to be held as soon as possible.

amend the Egyptian Constitution to allow opposition candidates to register to run for the presidency.

immediately lift the state of emergency, release political prisoners, and allow for freedom of media and assembly

allow domestic election monitors to operate throughout the country, without fear of arrest or violence.

immediately invite international monitors to enter the country and monitor the process leading to elections, reporting on the government's compliance with these measures to the international community

publicly declare that Mr. Mubarak will agree not to run for re-election.

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Yes

The Bee's editorial praised legislation by Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner aimed at ending the so-called never-ending sales tax holiday granted to out-of-state Internet merchants.

The editorial cites an out-dated Board of Equalization analysis suggesting that the legislation might bring $150 million into state coffers. For perspective, compare this number to the estimated $42.2 billion in sales and use taxes Californians paid last year or the $25.4 billion deficit the state is currently facing.

One small problem: California isn't likely to see any of those $150 million. Instead Skinner's bill would cost jobs, hurt government revenue and drag taxpayers into costly litigation.

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Absolutely true.

The Amazon tax would contribute little to California's economy except grief.

Meanwhile, politicians fiddle at the edges of the tax system. Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley, for instance, has re-introduced legislation to tax Internet sales, seeking a way around the federal rule that Internet sellers without a physical presence in a state cannot be compelled to collect sales taxes.

However, it may be unconstitutional – New York has a similar law that's now being tested in the courts – and even if implemented would generate only a relatively tiny amount of money.

If California is to truly tame its budget beast, its politicians and voters must bite the bullet and realign its tax system with the 21st century economy.

Increasing tax rates or trying to tax Internet sales are at best short-term, feel-good remedies for California's endemic fiscal crisis, and such tinkering won't suffice in the long run.

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The State of California needs to cut social welfare and university spending.

Instead, the signs are that the Egyptian authorities have taken a very careful and well-planned method to screen off Internet addresses at every level, from users inside the country trying to get out and from the rest of the world trying to get in.

“It looks like they’re taking action at two levels,” Rik Ferguson of Trend Micro told me. “First at the DNS level, so any attempt to resolve any address in .eg will fail — but also, in case you’re trying to get directly to an address, they are also using the Border Gateway Protocol, the system through which ISPs advertise their Internet protocol addresses to the network. Many ISPs have basically stopped advertising any internet addresses at all.”

Essentially, we’re talking about a system that no longer knows where anything is. Outsiders can’t find Egyptian websites, and insiders can’t find anything at all.

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