What to expect from Mitch Daniels’ State of the Union response

Popular Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels has been chosen to deliver the Republican response to President Obama’s State of the Union address tonight. Ideas about how best the government might respond to the limping economy and tackle the enormous federal budget deficit are sure to feature prominently in both speeches. Daniels comes to such a discussion with baggage, however, having headed the Office of Management and Budget under George W. Bush from 2001 to 2003, when the country’s projected budget surplus of $236 billion ran down a sink hole where it became a $400 billion deficit. More …

House GOP bill links payroll tax cut to oil pipeline approval, cuts to unemployment benefits

Alabama immigration crackdown snags Mercedes Benz executive

It’s well known by now that Alabama’s new immigration laws have proven once again that there are some jobs most Americans just won’t do, such as seasonal farm labor.

As immigrants flee the state and tomatoes rot on the vine More…, Republican politicians acknowledge that the law will take time

Ohio’s increasingly unpopular governor admits he doesn’t read newspapers, hates bad news

In a speech delivered Monday at the Columbus College of Art & Design, Ohio Gov. John Kasich More… reaffirmed his disdain for the press. “You should know, I don’t read newspapers in the state of Ohio,” he said. “Very rarely do I read a newspaper.”

Alabama immigration law panned by local and national media

With State Senator Russell Pearce’s dramatic recall in Arizona behind us, the nation’s immigration watchers turn their eyes to Alabama, now home to the nation’s fiercest immigration laws. More…
In Alabama, comparisons to the civil rights battles of the 1960s are hard to avoid. From local press to the New York

New Mexico fines prison company for inadequate staffing

The New Mexico Department of Corrections is fining GEO Group, a Florida-based private prison operator, $1.1 million for understaffing one of its prisons.GEO manages three of the four private prisons in the state, including Lea County Correctional Facility, where from September of 2010 to March of 2011 one out of More…

Chicago Fed President to his colleagues: Obey the law

The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago has unveiled a new webpage More… that explains the Federal Reserve System’s dual mandate of achieving maximum employment while keeping prices stable, and shows key indicators of whether the Fed is actually fulfilling that mandate.

Herman Cain: With SB5, Ohio GOP ‘may have tried to get too much’

After spending at least a month “right in the corner of (Wis.) Gov. Scott Walker 100 percent,” Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain told Milwaukee’s Journal Sentinel today that Ohio’s Senate Bill 5 More…, a wide-ranging anti-collective-bargaining bill that was trounced at the polls on Tuesday, may have been an overreach.