PrairiePundit

Houston Chronicle: With a sprawling oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico expected to reach the Louisiana shore by as early as Friday, the Coast Guard and BP stepped up efforts to brace for the impact and halt the advancing slick today by lighting portions of it on fire. (See a map of the spill here .) Teams scrambled to create a buffer zone from mouth of the Mississippi River in southern Louisiana to Mobile Bay in Alabama, with officials acknowledging in the frankest terms yet that the spill will likely reach shore. "It’s premature to say it’s catastrophic. I will say it’s very serious," said Rear Adm. Mary Landry, commander of the Coast Guard’s District 8, in a press conference. Meanwhile, BP officials said they remained unsuccessful in plugging a damaged well, a mile below the water’s surface, that is adding 1,000 additional barrels of oil to the spill each day. The huge slick — estimated to be 600 miles in circumference — began when the Deepwater Horizon drilli...

From the Washington Post: To woo voters, Democrats plan to cast selves as party of results Would that be the stimulus that did not stimulate or the health care law that voters really hate? Both of these big spending bills were a disaster and did not deliver the kind of results voters wanted or that Democrats promised. The Republicans should cast the Democrats as the party of bad results.

From AP: Illegal immigrants plan to leave over Ariz. law Isn't that what the legislature had in mind?

Washington Post: Every now and then, there comes a congressional race so fraught with history and symbolism that it becomes as much about sending a message as winning a seat. This year, Republicans are looking to hit the trifecta in the Senate. As things stand now, they are well within striking distance of winning President Obama 's old seat in Illinois; Vice President Biden 's former perch in Delaware, and toppling Majority Leader Harry M. Reid in Nevada. "I call them the trophy seats," said Sen. John Cornyn (Tex.), who heads the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Winning all three would affirm a GOP resurgence, and announce -- as Scott Brown did, when he won a January special election for the late Edward M. Kennedy 's Senate seat in Massachusetts -- that Democrats aren't safe anywhere anymore. As is the case pretty much everywhere in the country, Republican candidates in Cornyn's three "trophy" races are the benef...

Green Autoblog: ... ... the San Francisco Chronicle has compiled a list of seven popular hybrids along with estimates of how long it would take for each car to pay for its higher cost compared to non-hybrid models in gasoline savings. The winner by a long shot is the Ford Fusion Hybrid at a mere 5.6 years. Which car fared worst? The Nissan Altima Hybrid at a whopping 21 years. We have to wonder, 21 years from now, will they still be making batteries for a 2010 Altima Hybrid? ... I am not sure if the calculated replacement batteries which can be thousands of dollars. That probably comes before year seven. If you buy one, be prepared to trade it in year six. I do like the Fusion, but I would probably go with a conventional power train.

Independent: Angela Merkel moved to halt the deepening crisis in the euro yesterday by pledging German support for a controversial Greek bailout package. Despite her actions, fears that the shockwaves from Greece's debt crisis were spreading to the continent's other ailing economies grew after the credit rating agency Standard and Poor's downgraded Spain's rating. The risk of a wholesale collapse in the value of government bonds issued by the weaker eurozone nations is now becoming more real, and threatening the fragile recovery across the EU. The German Chancellor promised support for Athens after an urgent crisis summit in Berlin with the heads of the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank – the two key architects needed for any Greek rescue deal – as markets tried to recover from a dramatic slide sparked by the Greek debt. ... The decision on Spain reflects concern that is potentially far more s...

Guardian: The Taliban leader in Pakistan , Hakimullah Mehsud, survived an American drone strike in January and is alive and well, a senior official with Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency told the Guardian today. Mehsud was reported to have died in a CIA drone strike in South Waziristan in January but, although Pakistan's interior minister claimed he had been killed, the death was never confirmed by either US or Pakistani intelligence. Today the senior intelligence official said he had seen video footage of the missile attack on Mehsud but other intelligence had since confirmed the insurgent leader survived. He declined to elaborate further. "He is alive," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "He had some wounds but he is basically OK." ... I am not sure I believe this guy. It is out of character for Mehsud to stay silent this long. He has been doing a first rate imitation of a dead man up until now. After the fi...

Telegraph: ... Her mission, it is claimed, is to discredit prominent Kremlin critics by luring them into compromising situations using vintage KGB honey trap techniques. Offering her own body, sex, and drugs from cocaine to marijuana as an inducement, "Katya" as she is usually known has tried and often succeeded in bedding at least half a dozen high-profile Kremlin critics. The reputational damage she has inflicted has varied from serious to negligible depending on her victim's marital status and response. Her latest victim was Viktor Shenderovich, a journalist and the script writer on Russia's now defunct version of the Spitting Image TV satire. Mr Shenderovich, who is married and has a daughter, admits that he slept with Ms Gerasimova but claims he was set up by the Kremlin. Though he has tried to laugh the incident off, his credibility as an authoritative critic of Vladimir Putin, the prime minister, appears to have been at ...

Arab News: Five Emiratis and an Afghan national have received jail terms in the United Arab Emirates for funding the Taleban, local newspapers reported on Wednesday. The six men “were sentenced to three years in jail for funding the Taleban,” a Dubai-based English-language daily reported. Two men were acquitted of similar charges. The Afghan was given money by the other five “to channel it to Afghanistan,” the newspaper said. Two Emiratis, Rashid Dawood and Abdullah Hassan, were given an additional year for “attempting to set up an organization to enforce a strict code of Islam” which “the court said attacked civil liberties,” the paper said. Another daily said two Emiratis, whom it did not name, assaulted “three Emiratis and a Bangladeshi, leaving them disabled for about 20 days,” in connection with punishing “people for what they claimed were offenses.” ... There is more. I find this story unusual because it is the first I have seen where there is a prosecut...

Pew Research: ... Public perceptions of two of the federal government’s most sweeping efforts to right the economy could be contributing to the pessimism. More than six-in-ten (62%) say the economic stimulus package enacted by Congress last year has not helped the job situation, while about half (49%) say the government’s loans to banks and other financial institutions did not help prevent a more severe economic crisis. Meanwhile, the public sees little government progress toward fixing the causes of the financial crisis. About four-in-ten (42%) say they see just a little progress; 25% say they see no progress at all. Substantial majorities of Republicans (79%) and independents (69%) say that last year’s economic stimulus has not helped the job situation. Even among Democrats, opinions about the effectiveness of the stimulus are not overwhelmingly positive: 51% say it has helped the job situation while 42% say it has not. ... With lawmakers on Capitol Hill negotiating speci...

San Antonio Express-News: An unarmed reconnaissance drone soon will fly over Texas as drug violence continues to escalate on the U.S.-Mexico border, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told a Senate hearing Tuesday. Texas is the last border state to receive a Predator drone, and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said that has hurt the intelligence capabilities of federal, state and local law enforcement. “I'm concerned that some of the assets that could be deployed to help not only quell the violence but also keep our borders secure, are not being deployed because of unnecessary foot-dragging,” Cornyn said. Napolitano said Texas was the last Southwest border state to receive a drone because its “airspace is more crowded.” She said the timeline for placing a drone in Texas, which tentatively would be stored in Corpus Christi, remains a decision for the Federal Aviation Administration. “The FAA now has to go in and carve out, as I understand it, space for th...

From the LA Times: Calls grow to boycott Arizona over new immigration law If they could get the illegals to boycott they would not need the new law. It is amazing how many liberals do not care about the rule of law when it comes to immigration.

Charles Hurt: Carl "Shi- -y Deal" Levin knows one when he sees one. And when he finds a shi- -y deal, he likes to repeat "shi- -y deal" again and again and again. Eighteen times, to be exact. Casual observers may have been startled to hear a United States senator -- complete with silver comb-over and half-glasses perched on the end of his nose -- repeatedly say "shi- -y deal." Levin was just so excited, he was like a pig in, well, you know. In fact, Congress peddles shameful "deals" involving amounts of money so obscene, they would make a member of the Goldman Sachs compensation board blush. Take Fannie Mae, the shameless pusher of reckless housing loans that made Congress feel good by "helping" the poor but led to the financial meltdown and left taxpayers on the hook. Or, as Levin put it, "an American symbol of financial success and affordable housing." Now, that's putting lipstick on a pig. ...

Washington Times: Imagine a group of angry demonstrators toting swastika-festooned protest signs calling politicians Nazis, shouting obscenities and racial remarks and throwing rocks and bottles at police officers sent to keep order. No, these are not Tea Partiers. They are the mob that turned out last week to protest Arizona's new immigration-enforcement law. This group of liberal rowdies has been dubbed the Tequila Party. For the most part, liberal media coverage overlooked all the leftist violence. Typical headlines described the protest as "mostly peaceful," with media outlets avoiding details about why they had to use the qualifier "mostly." Reporting a near-riot by the opponents of the Arizona law doesn't fit the dominant media storyline. Some of the editorial bias is blatant. An Associated Press story about the Arizona immigration law quoted a 13-year-old Hispanic boy saying, "We can't be in the streets anymore without the pigs ...

NY Times: With Greece inching closer to the brink of financial collapse, fear that the debt crisis will spread rattled global markets for a second day on Wednesday as investors awaited a signal from financial leaders gathering in Berlin. Shares slumped 1 to 2 percent across much of Europe and Asia, and the euro briefly fell to its lowest level in about a year against the dollar , as investors worried that Portugal, Spain and even Ireland might not be able to borrow the billions of dollars they need to finance their government spending. Market sentiment began to steady in afternoon trading in Europe, with the FTSE 100 index in London turning positive. Stocks in the United States were expected to open higher, based on early gains in stock index futures prices. Sentiment was lifted by better-than-expected quarterly results from a wide array of companies, including Comcast , Corning , Northrop Grumman and Dow Chemical , The Associated Press reported. Investors have ...

AFP: US military scientists lost contact with a hypersonic glider nine minutes into its inaugural test flight last week, a defense research agency said on Tuesday. The unmanned Falcon Hypersonic Technology Vehicle 2 (HTV-2) is designed to fly through the upper reaches of Earth's atmosphere at speeds of up to Mach 20, providing the US military with a possible platform for striking targets anywhere on the planet with conventional weapons . The HTV-2 was launched last week aboard a Minotaur IV rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, according to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The test flight called for a 30-minute mission in which the vehicle would glide at high speed before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean, north of a US military test site at the Kwajalein Atoll. The glider separated from the booster but soon after the signal vanished, a spokeswoman said. ...

David Hirsayni : No. Legislators never would employ crude and simplistic sloganeering like those rowdy anti- gummint protesters. Just ask Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who this week offered up this eloquent gem: "A party that stands with Wall Street is a party that stands against families and against fairness." You know Wall Street; it lives to destabilize the family unit. Just scratch the surface and you'll find 8,500 companies trading on the New York Stock Exchange and another 3,200 companies listed on Nasdaq . Nearly 50 percent of households own some form of equities, and 21 million households own individual stocks outside any employer-sponsored plan. All working together against kids and fairness. Actually, what Reid's words reveal is an ideological disposition that is wholly unconcerned with creating a healthier Wall Street or a Wall Street scrubbed of crony capitalism and government-produced moral hazard. Using stale populist rhetoric, Democr...

Reuters: Americans are steadily losing confidence in their ability to get healthcare and pay for it, despite the passage of healthcare reform legislation , according to a survey published on Wednesday. The Thomson Reuters Consumer Healthcare Sentiment Index found that confidence lost three percentage points from a baseline of 100 in December to 97 in March. "Strikingly, Americans expect the situation to worsen significantly in the next three months," said Gary Pickens, chief research officer at Thomson Reuters . "The thing I thought was interesting was ... the level of sentiment about future expectations worsened more. The future outlook seems to be causing the people we interviewed angst." ... There is more. It seems pretty clear that the health care monstrosity is effecting peoples opinion of what they can expect from health care in the future and it is not good. This is going to be a continuing proble...

BBC: An American man extradited from the UK three years ago has pleaded guilty at a court in New York to conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists. Syed Hashmi was arrested in London in 2006 and became the first person to be extradited under laws brought in by the UK after the 11 September 2001 attacks. Hashmi, 30, was charged with sheltering an al-Qaeda operative in London between 2004 and 2006 and lending him money. The prosecution has recommended a maximum prison sentence of 15 years. Hashmi's guilty plea was part of a last-minute deal with prosecutors in which he admitted to certain charges in exchange for three other counts being dropped, thus avoiding a trial and up to 70 years in jail. For the last three years, Hashmi has been held in solitary confinement in a high-rise prison in Manhattan. A Pakistani-born US citizen, he came to the UK on a student visa in 2003 and joined the radical Islamist group, al-Muhajiroun. He was accused by prosecutors of sh...

Noemie Emery: o hear the media tell it, the Tea Party movement is one of the most mysterious forces ever to surface in national life. Since February 2009, when CNBC's Rick Santelli urged his listeners to dump unfunded derivatives into Lake Michigan to protest the developing culture of bailouts, they have been nothing but open about their fears of insolvency, their discomfort with increasing size of the government and their terror of deficits. The media listen closely to all these objections, and decide they must mean something else. They say they fear debt, and the media insist that they must fear Hispanics (why they hate Marco Rubio), that they fear blacks (why they hate Thomas Sowell), that they fear strong women (why they want Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin to be sent back to the kitchen in chains). ... "An aggrieved elite," Dana Milbank sniffed. "Race is part of the picture," E.J. Dionne noted. "The Tea Partiers aren't standing up f...