Politics and other nightmares

The Republican U.S. Senate primary is getting interesting. A new poll says former Sen. Dan Coats would beat Democrat Brad Ellsworth 54 to 33 percent, while former Rep. John Hostettler would beat him 50 to 30 percent, and state Sen. Marlin Stuzman would win just by a 41 to 36 percent margin. In a roundabout way, that makes Coats the front-runner, and none of it is good news for Ellsworth.

OK, Alanis, pay attention -- this is ironic:

Congress may be fined tens of millions of dollars a year under its own health-care law, in part because the bill dumps members of Congress and their staffs from their current health-care plans.

George Will says a VAT has possibilities, but only under one condition -- repeal of the 16 Amendment establishing the income tax:

Because the 16th Amendment will not be repealed, adoption of a VAT would proclaim the impossibility of serious spending reductions, and hence would be the obituary for the Founders' vision of limited government.

With all due respect to George, I think that corpse has been rotting in the ground for decades.

Saw in my Sunday New York Times this piece about the coming battle over the role of government that will emerge in battles between Barack Obama and John Roberts, "two of the smartest men of their generation":

Happy anniversary!

A little nuclear poker. President Obama opens

:President Obama is nothing if not ambitious -- which is why the new nuclear arms reduction treaty signed today is seen as a way station to his ultimate goal of a world without nuclear weapons.

Mahmoud Ahmadinijod raises:

What's wrong with this paragraph in The Journal Gazette's rather unremarkable lukewarm editorial endorsement of Dan Coats in the U.S. Senate GOP primary?

The question voters in the May 4 Republican primary should ask is not which candidate among the rather unremarkable field is the most conservative but which would be the best senator and has the best chance of winning in November.

Here's a way to get guns off the streets I suspect all sides in the debate can agree to:

Ernest R. Snow, 44, Indianapolis, was sentenced to 15 years in prison today by U.S. District Judge Larry J. McKinney following his guilty plea to being a felon in possession of a firearm.

[. . .]

The Journal Gazette this morning ran a long op-ed piece by Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute think tank to the effect that attacks by Newt Gingrich and other "Republican presidential wannabes" on Barack Obama as "a secular, socialist machine" and "the most radical president in American history" are nonsense:

You just have to read a story with a headline as intriguing and hard-hitting as "Governor eats breakfast in Garrett." Alas, the story fails to deliver:

 Penny Molargik got more than breakfast at the Railroad Inn Wednesday morning.