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According to the latest Rasmussen poll.

Voters have mixed feelings about President Obama’s decision to use the U.S. military to help rebels in Libya and nearly half agree that he should have gotten Congress’ okay first.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 45% of Likely U.S. Voters support the president’s decision to take military action in Libya. Thirty-four percent (34%) disagree with that decision, and another 21% are not sure about it.

Fifty-five percent (55%) of Democrats and a plurality (42%) of voters not affiliated with either major party support the president’s decision to use U.S. military force in Libya. Just 36% of Republicans share that view.

Liberals agree more strongly with the president’s action than do moderates and conservatives.

Among all voters, 47% think the president should have gotten congressional approval before ordering the military into action in Libya. Thirty-four percent (34%) say the prior approval of Congress was not necessary, but 19% more are undecided.

If this conflict continues for too long, these approval numbers will fall. It is hard to make a case to intervene in a country where there is little national security interest.

These are my links for March 24th from 05:40 to 07:44:

• MO-Sen: Sen. Claire McCaskill sees tax bill increase – Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill's tax bill continues to grow, much to the delight of Republicans.

  The first-term Democrat will likely have to pay close to an additional $40,000 to St. Louis County to cover interest and penalties related to her failure to pay personal property taxes on a private plane stored at the Spirit of St. Louis airport.

  McCaskill has already sent the county's Department of Revenue checks for more than $287,000 to cover the personal property taxes owed on the plane for 2007 to 2010.

  That left her with an outstanding balance of $32,000, although that could change, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 

  The senator has yet to receive a final tax bill and has been making payments proactively to rectify the matter, according to her office.

  ======

  The private plane that keeps on giving

• In-Sen: There is a reason for a primary challenge to Sen. Dick Lugar – But NOT this Reason – Sen. Dick Lugar (R-Ind.) has never been a favorite of movement conservatives, and certainly not since President Obama was elected. He’s been a pushover on Obama’s extreme nominees (both on judges and on State Department picks such as Harold Koh, whose writings on deference to international law set off alarm bells on the right.) He’s flacked for the administration on START. But until now, he has not played the isolationist card. That appears to be changing. He’s put out yet another cringe-inducing statement on Libya:

  “There needs to be a plan about what happens after Gadhafi,” Lugar said. “Who will be in charge then, and who pays for this all. President Obama, so far, has only expressed vague hopes.”

  “Congress has been squabbling for months over a budget to run the federal government for a fiscal year that is almost half over,” Lugar said. “We argue over where to cut $100 million here and there from programs many people like. So here comes an open-ended military action with no-end game envisioned.

  With the Arab League already having second thoughts, and Turkey nixing NATO taking over, today there are even more questions. We also have to debate how all this effects the Saudis, Bahrain and Yemen.”

  “The facts are that our budget is stretched too far and our troops are stretched too far,” Lugar said. “The American people require a full understanding and accounting, through a full and open debate in Congress.”

  =======

  Sorry Jennifer, I cannot agree.

  There is NO national interest in involvement in Libya. Let Europe carry the ball.

  And, if Afghanistan does not turn around soon, I say get out of there too.

  This is not only a conservative position but the common sense one as well.

These are my links for March 17th from 12:53 to 15:00:

• Sen. Rand Paul Unveils 5-Year Budget Plan: Eliminates Four Federal Agencies – Senator Rand Paul, R-Ky., unveiled today his five-year path to a balanced budget, leaving several federal agencies behind. Among the items on the cutting room floor are the Departments of Education, Energy, Commerce and Housing and Urban Development.

  “There’s a lot of things in here that everybody could agree to, Republicans and Democrats, but nobody’s leading on the president’s side and on our side we felt we needed to put this forward to get the debate started, at the very least,” the freshman Senator explained at a Capitol Hill press conference this afternoon.

  The proposal also calls for the repeal of “Obamacare,” but leaves entitlements untouched.

  ======

  Hard to argue with this plan.

• OH, HILL NO – WWW.THEDAILY.COM – OH, HILL NO – Obama's indecision on Libya has pushed Clinton over the edge
• OH, HILL NO – Obama’s indecision on Libya has pushed Clinton over the edge – Fed up with a president “who can’t make his mind up” as Libyan rebels are on the brink of defeat, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is looking to the exits.

  At the tail end of her mission to bolster the Libyan opposition, which has suffered days of losses to Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s forces, Clinton announced that she’s done with Obama after 2012 — even if he wins again.

  “Obviously, she’s not happy with dealing with a president who can’t decide if today is Tuesday or Wednesday, who can’t make his mind up,” a Clinton insider told The Daily. “She’s exhausted, tired.”

  He went on, “If you take a look at what’s on her plate as compared with what’s on the plates of previous Secretaries of State — there’s more going on now at this particular moment, and it’s like playing sports with a bunch of amateurs. And she doesn’t have any power. She’s trying to do what she can to keep things from imploding.”

  Clinton is said to be especially peeved with the president’s waffling over how to encourage the kinds of Arab uprisings that have recently toppled regimes in Egypt and Tunisia, and in particular his refusal to back a no-fly zone over Libya.

  In the past week, former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton’s former top adviser Anne-Marie Slaughter lashed out at Obama for the same reason.

  The tension has even spilled over into her dealings with European diplomats, with whom she met early this week.

  When French president Nicolas Sarkozy urged her to press the White House to take more aggressive action in Libya, Clinton repeatedly replied only, “There are difficulties,” according to Foreign Policy magazine.

  “Frankly we are just completely puzzled,” one of the diplomats told Foreign Policy magazine. “We are wondering if this is a priority for the United States.”

  Or as the insider described Obama’s foreign policy shop: “It’s amateur night.”

  =======

  If the GOP can just nominate a decent candidate, they will have Obama for lunch in 2012.

  A big if though.

• President 2012 Video: Is Mitch Daniels Being Unfairly Attacked from the Right? | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – President 2012 Video: Is Mitch Daniels Being Unfairly Attacked from the Right? #tcot #catcot
• T-Paw v. Hee-Haw | The Weekly Standard – President 2012: T-Paw v. Hee-Haw
• Glenn Reynolds Interviews Mickey Kaus | Flap’s Blog – FullosseousFlap’s Dental Blog – Glenn Reynolds Interviews Mickey Kaus #tcot #catcot
• President 2012: T-Paw v. Hee-Haw – The skirmish between Haley Barbour and Tim Pawlenty on defense spending and Afghanistan is more enlightening for what it says about GOP 2012 politics than for what it says about the substance of foreign and defense policy.

  Barbour's comments, at a GOP dinner in Iowa, were … comments—and certainly didn't constitute any kind of serious presentation of a foreign policy agenda. His case for cutting defense spending was more political than substantive—"We can save money on defense and if we Republicans don't propose saving money on defense, we'll have no credibility on anything else,"—and not very smart politics, either. What's more, according to Kasie Hunt's report, "After the speech, Barbour told reporters that he couldn't identify specific programs that should be cut from the Pentagon budget." Barbour's only substantive argument seemed to be this: "Anybody who says you can't save money at the Pentagon has never been to the Pentagon." This is a) childish, b) slightly offensive, and c) raises the question of how much time Barbour has spent at the Pentagon—apart from time spent lobbying for defense contractors or foreign governments.

  =====

  Does anyone really consider Haley Barbour besides Haley Barbour a serious candidate for President?

These are my links for March 3rd from 10:49 to 10:55:

• Mitch Daniels’s ‘Truce’ Call Finds Strong Support in WSJ Poll – The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll appears to vindicate Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels‘s repeated insistence that the country needs a “truce” on fights over social issues while it grapples with its mounting economic challenges.

  Nearly two thirds of Republican primary voters said they would be “more likely” to vote for a GOP primary candidate who says the party should focus more on the economy and the deficit and less on social issues such as gay marriage and abortion. Only 8% said they would be less likely to vote for such a candidate. The rest said they were unsure.

  The call to focus on economic over social concerns was particularly appealing to suburban women, a key swing voting bloc, and to white men overall.

  Many Republicans have dinged Mr. Daniels since he called for “a truce” on the social issues in an interview with the National Journal last year. While mulling a potential run for the 2012 GOP nomination, the Indiana governor has continued to double down on the same theme, most recently in a prominent speech before the Conservative Political Action Conference last month.

  Many Republicans have said privately that they considered Mr. Daniels’ position politically unwise. But the WSJ/NBC poll would seem to prove them wrong.

  +++++++

  The demographic Daniels will need to win both the primary and a general election against Obama

• Gaddafi bombs oil areas, faces crimes probe – Rebels Call out for President Bush – Opposition activists called for a no-fly zone, echoing a demand by Libya's deputy U.N. envoy, who now opposes Gaddafi.

  "Bring Bush! Make a no fly zone, bomb the planes," shouted soldier-turned-rebel Nasr Ali, referring to a no-fly zone imposed on Iraq in 1991 by then U.S. President George Bush.

  +++++++

  Obama's inaction is stark reminder of how weak he is in the foreign policy arena.

• Air Force’s X-37B Space Plane Launching on Secret Mission – The U.S. Air Force's secretive X-37B space plane is poised to launch on its second mission Friday (March 4), though what exactly it will be doing once it leaves the ground remains a mystery.

  The robotic X-37B mini-shuttle is slated to lift off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Friday atop an Atlas 5 rocket, weather permitting. Its launch window opens at 3:39 p.m. EST (2039 GMT), according to the launch provider United Launch Alliance, which is overseeing the flight.

  This will mark the second space mission for the Air Force's X-37B space plane program — but the first for this particular plane. It is the second X-37B spacecraft built for the Air Force by Boeing and carries the name Orbital Test Vehicle 2, or OTV-2.