from the Columbus Disgrace

WASHINGTON — In a move likely to spark a searing debate in the Ohio races for governor and senator, the U.S. Senate yesterday approved a bill that extends investors’ tax reductions until 2010 and shields millions of Americans with above average incomes from a tax increase.

The Senate vote, 54-44, came a day after the House passed an identical bill. It now goes to President Bush for his signature. It will save taxpayers $70 billion during the next five years.

The votes provide Bush with a major political victory at a time when his job-approval rating is at the lowest level of his presidency.

But the tax bill also highlights a deep split between Ohio Republicans and Democrats on the issue of cutting taxes when the federal government is running $300 billion annual deficits.

Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, voted for the bill and a spokesman for Republican gubernatorial nominee J. Kenneth Blackwell praised its passage. Rep. Ted Strickland, of Lisbon, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee, and Rep. Sherrod Brown, of Avon, who is challenging DeWine, voted against the measure.

That "shields millions of Americans with above average incomes from a tax increase" is a reference to the "alternative minimum tax." It was created as a way to make sure government gets to tax wealthier people even more than they already do. But surprise, surprise!- Every year, the alternative minimum tax slowly evolves into a tax that more middle class americans have to pay.

And seriously... the capital gains tax is double taxation. You DO NOT encourage investment or economic growth by punishing investors so much. Someone needs to send Brown and Strickland an economics textbook asap.

The opposition to rather mild tax cuts, the support for this Ohio minimum wage increase effort and the obvious lack of understanding of basic economics by Ohio Democrats show the true failure of Ohio's public education system.

From the Ohio 2nd Blog

The right wing blog Right Angle Blog launched a Drupal community portal last week. Community portals are different than simple blogs in that every member has a diary where they can write content. It is up to the moderators if it goes onto the front page and site syndication feed. Probably the most famous local example of this is Ann Driscoll’s MyDD diary that got a nice mention recently in Kos’ book Crashing the Gates in relation to that whole Hackett broohaha that you might have heard about....

Personally I’ve enjoyed Right Angle Blog’s work in the past and look forward to an interesting dialog in the future

We thank you for those kind words. Look we poke fun of stuff and we try to have dialouge, but we don't try to resort to extremely nasty comments. We try to keep it civil, although we understand the commenters sometimes get out of hand.

Isn't that creepy? Why would anyone want their family pictures up on Strickland's website?

And since Ted Strickland is endorsed by NARAL, just think about all of the millions of children that could have submitted a picture but had their life taken away before they were born. Will Ted honor helpless unborn children too?

On Sunday, remember to buy your mother flowers, a gift and a card... And tell her that you love her. Don't waste time sending pictures to Ted.

By William Tucker in The American Spectator:

It's hard to remember now just how far removed Mississippi was from the rest of America in 1964. People were murdered all the time. James Cheney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner had already disappeared before most of the 1,000 volunteers boarded the buses to head south from Oxford, Ohio. When the FBI began investigating -- unprecedented at the time -- they turned up three or four corpses of other black men who had disappeared without anyone taking notice. Medgar Evers, a veteran of Normandy and the NAACP's first field officer in Mississippi, was murdered on his front lawn in Jackson only the year before.

Today, one of the major arteries through Jackson is named the Medgar Evers Expressway. There's also a statue of him downtown.

THINGS ARE NOW SO DIFFERENT IN Mississippi that it can be disorienting. "I'll have guys at the university say to me, 'Nothing has changed. It's just as bad as ever down here.' I say to them, 'Did you ever walk down the street with a white girl?' 'Sure,' they say. 'Well, then you don't know what it was like back then.'"

In 1964, Mississippi was mile after mile after mile of kudzu-covered forest exuding exotic menace, occasionally interrupted by tenant shacks where goats lived on the front porch and children had never worn shoes. Today the kudzu forests are interlaced with federal highways and chain restaurants. A Toyota factory almost two miles long sits just north of Jackson. One way or another, Mississippi has joined the world.

100 years of American history in just four paragraphs -- read the whole thing!