Jason Tolbert: Glenn Gallas of Hot Springs will run against Mike Ross for Congress. Gallas is the leader of the Garland County Tea Party and a Republican.

This is filing week for Arkansas candidates, so we will be able to see the lay of the political landscape by the time the week is over. Blanche Lincoln is in trouble, and three of four congressmen has announced retirements. The real question is what will Li Gov Bill Halter do. Will he run for Blanche's seat or will he run for Congress in the second district? Jason Tolbert has some thoughts. Last week was not a good week for Halter.

Chronicle of Higher Education: "Gloria Y. Gadsden, an associate professor of sociology at East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania, was escorted off the campus on Wednesday because of jokes she had made on her Facebook page about wanting to kill students."

Gina Loudon takes a look at how mainstream journalism has changed in the past, oh, 50 years.

Houston Chronicle: Texas is sending a lot of Lone Star dollars to support Blanche Lincoln's campaign for re-election in Arkansas.

This video of Paul Ryan's speech at the health care summit is a must-see. The source is here.

Charles Krauthammer: Toyota and the price we pay for modernity.

An article in the ADG this morning included this paragraph:

Circuit Judge Chris Piazza decided against immediately sentencing [Darnell] Morris, telling attorneys that he "wanted to get his calculator."

Megan McArdle discusses her reaction to the health-care summit. It is really hard to know what the meeting was really about, but she gives Republicans the win.

Byron York:  Health care is an issue that won't be settled until November.

Not sure why this is posted but here is the body of John D. Lee after his execution. He was the leader on the Mountain Meadows Massacre in 1857.

What to see Nikola Tesla's letterhead from 1900?

CBS News: Americans have run out of patience on health care reform. Would somebody please let the Democrats know about this?

Toyota can't apologize to Congress enough. I think the whole exercise has gone too far. "Under blistering criticism, Toyota President Akio Toyoda personally and repeatedly apologized to Congress and millions of anxious American car-owners Wednesday for deadly defects in popular models produced by his Japanese company. But angry lawmakers forcefully declared it was hardly enough," the AP says.

According to the Washington Examiner here's what's really going on.  The government is now the controlling owner of GM, Toyota's major rival in the U.S., and a related player is the United Auto Workers, which is strongly biased against non-unionized Toyota.

I own a Toyota Prius and there is nothing wrong with it. If I get a recall notice, I may ignore it.

AP: A middle school in Littleton, Colorado, was the scene of a recent shooting, in which a math teacher acted heroically. This school is located near Columbine High School, scene of a massacre 11 years ago.

According to the Pew poll, unions have seen their favorable rating fall dramatically. I would attribute this trend to the card check controversy and to the news that most union members are government employees.

AP: In the future you will deposit a check by taking a photo of it with your iPhone and emailing it to your bank. Cool.

The Corner looks at the possibility of passing health care via reconciliation. Nancy Pelosi does not have the votes. Marion Berry is listed as voting no.

CQPolitics: Some black voters are unhappy with Blanche Lincoln, further imperiling her re-election chances.

State tax revenues have fallen for five consecutive quarters. Arkansas shows a small increase.

Jennifer Rubin: Are we looking at the beginning of the end of ObamaCare?

Politico has a chat with Gov. Mike Beebe. He explains why he's doing so well in the polls and his views on health care.

Jason Tolbert: The Joint Budget Committee is considering a proposal that would slash the appropriation for Lieutenant Governor Bill Halter's office from $366,000 to $228,000. It sounds like payback to me, LOL.

Ann Althouse posted this YouTube video of Everett Dirksen explaining the difference between Democrats and Republicans in 1967. It still sounds familiar to me.

Rasmussen's latest polling data:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows that 22% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. That is the lowest level of strong approval yet recorded for this President.
Forty-one percent (41%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -19. The Approval Index has been lower only on one day during Barack Obama’s thirteen months in office (see trends). The previous low came on December 22 as the Senate was preparing to approve its version of the proposed health care legislation. The current lows come as the President is once again focusing attention on the health care legislation.

Charlie Cook: Health care is Obama's Iraq.

Evan Bayh explains why he is leaving the Senate. Ann Althouse has this reaction to Bayh's op-ed.

Business Review: Business groups successfully opposed Craig Becker's appointment to the NLRB. Becker is a union lawyer. Blanche Lincoln joined the opponents. The ADG today noted that she is moving to the right because it's an election year. Ben Nelson of Nebraska also voted no.

See also Politico.

Washington Post: Seniors are paying 14 percent more in premiums for Medicare Advantage Plans.

John Fund: "There's a simple reason an ambitious Democratic agenda is unlikely to pass Congress this year -- whether on health care or any other issue. Democratic incumbents are running scared and the fear factor is only intensifying."

Alexander Haig is dead at 85. He held top positions in the Nixon, Ford, and Reagan administrations.

I suppose he will always be remember for his statement after Reagan was shot: ''As of now, I am in control here in the White House, pending the return of the vice president.'' But I always thought the reaction in the media was overblown.

AP: Tiger Woods meets the press.

James Taranto quotes Henry Kissinger as saying, "Academic politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small." No, Woodrow Wilson said that. Wilson would have known. But others claim the quote as well, because it's so true.

Rasmussen: Only 21 percent say U.S. Government enjoys the consent of the governed. Count me in the group that says the government does not have my consent.

The ADG was full of good news this morning.

• The telephone industry continues to change. Pay phones are gone, it's been a long time since I've even seen one. More people are using cell phones AND dropping their landlines. No need for them, no need for the extra expense. That also means that phone books are shrinking. In fact, when I need a phone number I am more likely to search the internet for it, because that will give me a map as well. 
• Little Rock streets are full of potholes after our hard winter and record-setting 81.79 inches of rainfall last year. Some of the holes are as large as basketballs. Whole areas of the asphalt just disappear. 
• A study of Arkansas health shows wide variations across counties, and the way from Benton County, in NW Arkansas, which is ranked as most healthy, to Phillips County in the Delta, the least healthy. Well, we knew that. But the article contained other interesting comparisons. When I lived in rural Drew County, everyone -- you know, "everyone" -- said Little Rock doctors were better, you'd be better off living there. Drew is ranked 35th among Arkansas counties, about in the middle, but Pulaski County is ranked 31st. So Pulaski County is healthier than Drew, but not by much.  This study was done by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. See this USAToday article.

New York Daily News: Blanche Lincoln will file for re-election on March 1. No Bayh Bayh for her.

AP: Humana will cut 2,500 positions because of drops in its enrollment. The company has lost 24 percent in Medicare enrollment, presumably meaning its Advantage plans. It is also down 6 percent in commercial coverage.

Victor Davis Hanson:

The implosion of the Obama administration is newsworthy, but not as astonishing as this petulant liberal reappraisal of both popular political participation and the structure of American government.

Given that the people apparently don't want bigger deficits, more stimulus, statist health care, cap and trade, or "comprehensive" immigration reform, and given that the most influential members of the Obama administration think the people either do or should want those things, we are apparently left with blaming George Bush, or self-righteously blaming the people for their stupidity, selfishness, brainwashing, or racism. Yet all of those assumptions only exacerbate the problem, and if continually voiced will turn a mid-term correction into an abject disaster for Democrats.

Wall Street Journal: What's the real reason for Evan Bayh's retirement? It's not partisanship. The Democrats have had several tries and they can't govern from the left.

Americans have already sent one rebuke to Democrats in the form of Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts. Now Mr. Bayh, a senior Member of their own party, has sent another by skipping town and putting another Senate seat in play. Our guess is that it will take one more repudiation in November before Democrats relearn that you can't govern America successfully from the political left.

Jonah Goldberg discussing Amy Bishop and the toleration of weirdness in adacemia:

Walk through through the stacks in a college library sometime, some of those carrels are homes to some truly Tolkienesque creatures.

Dick Morris and Eileen McGann have some thought on Evan Bayh's retirement. Basically, who's next?

Evan Bayh says he is disillusioned with partisanship in the Senate and in Washington.

Glenn Reynolds has a post comparing ClimateGate with the Michael Bellesiles scandal. You can follow his links. Using probate and other data, Bellesiles claimed that the ownership of guns in early America was rare. He had faked his data, and his defenders made claims to authority similar to the defenders of global warming. It was just so good it had to be true, and we have peer review and all that.

Bellesiles lost his job at Emory and his Bancroft prize.

Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, a moderate Democrat, has announced that he will retire and not seek re-election.

Justice Jim Johnson, an Arkansas segregationist, is dead at 85. He was suffering from cancer and died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.

I came across a brief discussion of Lincoln biographies that compared David Herbert Donald and Benjamin Thomas. I had occasion to read them both many years ago, I still believe Thomas is the best, the standard on the subject.

Brick by brick the whole global warming hoax has crash in on itself.

John M. O'Hara's A New American Tea Party: The Counterrevolution Against Bailouts, Handouts, Reckless Spending, and More Taxes is out. You won't hear any of this from the mainstream media.

See also O'Hara's website. 

Peggy Noonan points to the Obama-Lincoln exchange a few days ago as critically telling. As he made clear, he thinks that moving to the political center is a losing proposition. He is also willing to settle for being a one-term president rather than change his political course. Politicians usually don't think like that. According to Noonan, Democrats are going to have to revolt against a potential one-termer who is willing to sacrifice them for his agenda.

You can find several versions of the Obama-Lincoln exchange on the web. See the Washington Post here.

The LA Times identifies Lincoln as one of the Democrats across the country who want to keep Obama out of their campaigns. 

Glenn Reynolds approves of the Tea Party movement and he says the Founding Fathers would too.

AP: A biology professor at the University of Alabama at Huntsville opened fire at a faculty meeting and killed three colleagues and wounded three school employees. The shooter was Amy Bishop, who was apparently upset over a tenure issue.

Rate My Professors has more on Amy Bishop.

The AP has a follow-up story here. And here. The story is unbelievable.

AP: John McCain is in a struggle to get the Republican nominate for the Senate. Voters are opposed to incumbents across the board. And rightly so.

Richard Brookhiser places the Tea Party movement within the American political tradition, comparing it to the opposition to Roosevelt's court-packing scheme. Oops, subscription required.

Try this link. My philosophy is never quit looking for a free link, lol.

Still more on the Tea Party movement. In one year this movement has come out of nowhere to be the most potent force in American politics.

I've seen several recent articles that try to understand the Tea Party movement -- or explain why the movement is misunderstood. Here is one of them. The tea partiers are clearly one of the most interesting political developments in recent years.

Here is another view that says the Tea Party movement is not going away. 

Michael Barone does his usual insightful job in analyzing where Obama and the Democrats went wrong. They just did not grasp that people do not want to expand the power of government. It's too large already. They underestimated the Tea Party movement, dismissing it out of hand.

FireDogLake: Blanche Lincoln has opposed the nomination of Craig Becker for the National Labor Relations Board. This was a critical anti-labor vote, and the labor movement is sure to throw their weight against her re-election. She is already known for her opposition to card-check.

This may increase the possibility that Lt. Gov. Bill Halter will enter the Democrat primary against her.

Lifenews: The proposed meeting between Obama and Republicans is a trick. Democrats have already decided on a strategy for ramming through ObamaCare. So claims a Pelosi aide.

Popular Mechanics puts the Toyota recall in perspective.

Chad Causey, Berry's chief of staff, has announced that the will run for his boss' seat, but he refused to tells us what he thinks about health care. Oh, there is a lot of common ground, etc, that we agree on.

They never learn.

Jennifer Rubin really sums up for me the health-care debate in Congress, especially Blanche Lincoln's role in it. She is a phony centrist, but an extreme left winger who could have and should have stopped this nonsense long ago. But she was more worried about Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi than the opinions of Arkansans back home.

Fox News: Congressman John Boozman, who recently announced he would oppose Blanche Lincoln for re-election, leads Lincoln by 19 percentage points.

In his column yesterday Pat Lynch suggested that Blanche was so far behind that she should turn over her seat to Mike Beebe in order to save the position for the Democrat party.

AP: Toyota is recalling 437,000 Priuses and other hybrids manufactured between April of last year and yesterday because of potential brake problems. It's official now.

Michael Barone: "For the first time in history, a majority of union members are government employees."

AP: Toyota will recall 300,000 Priuses that have been sold since May 2009 because of the brake problem.

Glen Reynolds reviews the recent National Tea Party Convention in Nashville, Tennessee. He's my favorite law professor.

Blanche Lincoln is buying into the new effort to push junk food out of schools, including vending machines. Too many kids are fat, so they will not have access to candy and colas in schools. I'd like to see some good studies of the impact of such policies. Blanche is willing to force everybody to do what she thinks is right. Government will make this a perfect world, or something.

I got up this morning and was surprised to learn that the Saints had defeated the Colts 31-17 in the Super Bowl. As I told someone, I had no dog in that fight but I am happy for the Saints fans. They and their city have been through a lot, and they deserved the victory.

My other surprise this morning was that snow was on the ground in Little Rock.

After playing around with Windows 7 more, I'm happy to find that it does come with the usual games that were on Vista. You just have to activate them. Start button, > Control Panel, > Programs, Turn Windows features on or off. You select them one at a time. They are installed, but do not show up until they are activated.

Windows of course always had Solitaire going back to the 1986 version, and it became one of the greatest time wasters ever devised. But probably the real purpose of it was to get people to use the mouse. 

Today is Super Bowl Sunday, Saints vs Colts. I believe the Colts will win it easily.

This AP story makes it partially clear that Toyota Priuses have more than one problem.

1. Defective gas pedal, the newest problem
2. Brake problem
3. Floor mat that sometimes got tangled up with the gas pedal. This problem is not included in recent reports.

Jason Tolbert: State Senator Joyce Elliott will run for Arkansas' Second Congressional District. She is in favor of Obamacare.

Google Earth shows amazing photos of World War II destruction.

The Christian Science Monitor lists Blanche Lincoln as one of the most endangered Democrats for re-election later this year. Ten GOP candidates have jumped into the race against her. Many Democrats don't like her either, including Obama himself.

Are PCs or Macs safer from internet security attacks? Of course PCs are widely considered the greater risk, but Macs are at risk more than is commonly known. This study says they face about the same problem with cybercrime.

My granddaughter has Macs at her school, and she says they crash all the time. Any school lab is probably a risky place.

Windows 7, which I installed yesterday, comes without an anti virus program, so I installed the free version of AVG, and if I like it I will upgrade.

In this post, Obama is described as "scolding" Blanche Lincoln. If I were her, I just would not accept that.

FDL: Blanche Lincoln is hinting that she along with other Democrats could join with Republicans on barring terrorist trials in the United States. Is this a trend now that she was snubbed by the president?

The Washington Post has a story about Blanche Lincoln's personal plea to President Obama to move toward a centrist position. He said no. Charles Lane, the author of the story, notes "how easily he appeared to write off Lincoln politically. Conceding nothing, he implied that her defeat was not only a foregone conclusion, but also an acceptable price to pay for staying the course on policy."

You can hear the exchange here, which is described as "polite but testy." 

David Paul Kuhn: Reagan's philosophy is making a comeback. Or did his philosophy ever leave?

I'm running Windows 7 Professional. The installation was easy, only about 30 or maybe 40 minutes. It seems to be fast, but it's a stripped down model:  It contains the usual Windows accessories, but no email and no anti-virus built-in. Other than that, so far, so good.

Instapundit: Scott Brown has been sworn in as Senator from Massachusetts. Well, it took a while.

Yes I've missed a lot of blogging time. But I'm back now.

Of the news stories I've been following is the brake problem with the Toyota Prius. I have not experienced it on my car, but the Prius Chat forum has a lot on it.

This is a no blogging day.

AP Report: Lawmakers in more than two-thirds of the states are pushing ahead with constitutional amendments to ban government health insurance mandates. Despite Scott Brown's election, many state lawmakers are stepping up their efforts.

I've never seen an issue that is more politically potent than health care.

Lloyd Marcus makes some amazing comments on Black History Month.

Michael Barone, the best political commentator in my view, says that bottom has fallen out of the Democrat party.

I want my clunker back

The ADG today reports that people with older SUVs and small pickups have seen their vehicle assessments shoot up. Older vehicles usually decline in value, of course. But the blame goes back to Cash for Clunkers, according to the article. There are fewer used vehicles available, and that jacks up their price and value. Hence, a higher market value equals a higher assessment.

Bad science, bad data

Wizbang notes that the U.S. media continues its silence on the ClimateGate scandal. On the other hand the Times UK has had terrific coverage. "Bad science done using bad data to start with is a recipe for disaster. Or, perhaps more to the point, is a recipe for being able to manipulate public opinion.