Capitol Hill Republicans are circulating this clip, and for good reason.  Watch in wonder as our Law Professor President's top spokesman breezily expresses "no opinion" over whether the US Senate should meet it's legal obligation to offer and pass a FY 2013 budget:
 

Oh, wrong answer, Jay.  Why would you lamely refuse to offer any opinion on the matter when your party has already concocted a dishonest insta-excuse to deflect Tapper's question?  And why do I know Democrats' fraudulent talking points better than the White House Press Secretary?  Pay close attention, Jay -- Schumer's a real pro:
 

Senate Democratic leaders on Friday said they do not intend to bring a fiscal 2013 budget up for a floor vote. "We do not need to bring a budget to the floor this year — it's done, we don't need to do it," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) told reporters on Friday. Reid and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) argued that the debt-limit agreement in August directs spending for the next year and said Senate Appropriations Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) has already asked the heads of the subcommittees to write their appropriations bills for fiscal 2013. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) has said he would probably mark up a budget resolution for 2013, but Reid recently told the Hill he didn't expect any floor action on a measure produced by the panel.

See?  "The Senate doesn't need to offer a budget this year because they've already done so," sounds so much better than an effective "no comment."  Carney does dissemble on the Budget Control Act a bit, quasi-suggesting that it's sort of a budget, but he doesn't quite own the lie the way Schumer and Reid do.  It is a lie, of course, because the debt deal only set forth general spending caps and targets; it in no way, shape, or form constitutes a budget.  Those contain detailed roadmaps on tax policy, specific appropriations priorities, and entitlement reforms.  Ask any business owner, homemaker, or Republican member of Congress whether their working definition of a budget involves "deeming" a spending celiling while offering zero details on how money is distributed.  Oh, and for the zillionth time, Congress is legally required to pass tangible budget resolutions every single year -- a task Reid's tribe hasn't even attempted in nearly three.  Carney may not care to weigh in on this elementary question, but Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke wasn't nearly as bashful during recent testimony before Congress:
 

 

More than 1,000 days of uncertainty -- resulting from craven political calculation -- hinders economic growth.  Go figure.  One doesn't have to be a Fed whiz to reach that conclusion; it's common sense.  And a solid growth strategy is precisely what our ailing economy needs at the moment, to say nothing of the legal requirement aspect of all this.  Never fear, Carney assures us, President Obama will release his own budget next week.  What could go wrong?

Believe it or not, 2012 is here, and today kicks off the 39th annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) at the Marriot Wardmam Hotel in Washington D.C. Over the next three days, conservatives leaders from all over the country, grassroots activists, filmmakers, bloggers, college students, writers, reporters, politicans and more, will express and discuss ideas and strategy about how to replace President Obama in November, while taking the country back to its conservative founding. CPAC is the largest annual gathering of conservatives.

Last year, CPAC attendance hit a record of 10,000. This year, it is expected 11,000 people will attend the conference, proving conservatism and the battle for small government ideas are alive and well. This year's schedule is packed with hard hitting speakers like Allen West, Sarah Palin, Reince Priebus, Scott Walker, Rand Paul, Michele Bachmann, Andrew Breitbart, Herman Cain, Bobby Jindal, Laura Ingraham and more. GOP presidential candidates will also speak at the event, surely in an effort to court conservative voters as the battle for the nomination rages on. CPAC is also an excellent opportunity for GOP candidates to speak with youth voters.

Stay tuned to Townhall for exclusive video interviews with the Townhall team and your favorite conservative minds. 

As the old saying goes, "It's impossible to be a little bit pregnant."  When it comes to the Obama administration floating a "compromise" for ObamaCare regulations' extremist trampling on religious liberty, it's also impossible to make a "compromise" that compels religious institutions to tell their employees where and how to access services that run counter to their religious convictions.

With a surprising sweep last night, Rick Santorum has jumped into second place in the race for Republican delegates and put substantial pressure on Mitt Romney.

Overall, Romney has 112 delegates, including endorsements from members of the Republican National Committee who automatically attend the party's national convention and can support any candidate they choose. Santorum has 72 delegates, Gingrich has 32 and Paul has nine.

The race for delegates is still in the early stages. It will take 1,144 delegates to win the GOP nomination.

There's a long road ahead, and Super Tuesday has become more imporant than ever. Texas alone will apportion more delegates on March 5 than any candidate has mustered so far, and that's just one of eleven contests that day. In between now and then, we'll go through the Arizona and Michigan primaries, with 59 delegates at stake between the two.

After having to contend with Newt Gingrich, Romney took the fight to Santorum today and acknowledged that his veil of inevitability had been pierced. "There's no such thing as coronations in presidential politics," Romney said. "It's meant to be a long process."

Political analysts have acknowledged that Santorum changed the race last night.

"I don't think this changes the title of front-runner (for Romney), but it underscores the fundamental problem he has with the party base," said Larry Sabato, the director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. "They just don't trust him, and they don't connect to him personally. He has serious, serious problems."

"After yesterday, I think everything's in play," said Jim Haynes, the president of the Phoenix-based Behavior Research Center, a nonpartisan market research and polling firm.

Whether or not Santorum can make significant inroads in the next month will have to be seen, but one thing's for sure: the road to the GOP nomination just got a little rockier.

How often do people get to use other people's money -- taken from them by force of law -- to benefit (directly or indirectly) the places where their relatives work?  The answer would be "never" . . . unless you're a member of Congress.

President Obama is unpopular.  His "signature accomplishment" is widely despised, his top economic initiative has flopped, and his re-election prospects are mixed, at best.  Unable to run on a record of failure, Obama is gearing up for an enduringly negative and blame-filled 2012 campaign.  A critical element of this effort will be a persistent, deeply ugly push by the president's allies to paint his critics as racists.  We saw some of this four years ago, of course, but then-candidate Obama had strong political headwinds and Operation HopenChange working in his favor in 2008.  This year, voters will be subjected to an endless drumbeat of race baiting -- an unholy political Hail Mary that Democrats hope will distract voters from real issues and force Republicans into a permanent defensive crouch.  Politico sets the table for the coming battle, offering helpful tips for Leftists on what sorts of things can be instantly racialized (hint -- it's everything):
 

The issue of race and American politics, never far beneath the surface during Barack Obama’s historic 2008 campaign, is making a loud, overt and surprisingly early appearance in the 2012 presidential race. And no one knows — least of all Obama himself — what impact the race card, always a wild card, will have on the president’s reelection prospects. In the past several months, Newt Gingrich has drawn sharp criticism for labeling Obama the “food stamp president” and for suggesting poor kids in New York’s majority-minority school system burnish their work ethic by picking up mops. First lady Michelle Obama bridled at the perception that she’s an “angry black woman.” Obama’s Chicago-based campaign has pushed back against stories that he’s more or less given up on the white vote.

But nothing has illustrated the potentially explosive political impact of race — an issue that Obama has downplayed throughout his career — like the firestorm around the image of Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer wagging her finger at the first black president of the United States. If there were any illusion that 2012 would be the post-racial election most Americans hoped for, it vanished with that single shake of a finger and 30 seconds of sniping lost to history in the turbine roar of Air Force One. The issue that sparked the tarmac showdown was nominally the ongoing battle between Brewer and the White House over immigration policy. But the brief episode infuriated African-American leaders, who saw the image of a white conservative berating Obama as the visual summation of all the disrespect shown to Obama by white antagonists from Joe “You lie!” Wilson to Glenn Beck to Gingrich.

Let's approach these pieces of evidence one by one, shall we?
 

(1) Empirically, President Obama is the food stamp president.  Food stamp usage has spiked to a record high during his presidency with nearly 15 percent of the US population -- white, black, and green -- receiving subsidies.  Nearly as many Americans have been put on food stamps during Obama's partial term as were added to the rolls during President Bush's two full terms in office.  Gingrich has also said that his goal is to transition millions of Americans (again, of all races) from states of dependency to self-reliance through the dignity of work, which also plays into Newt's controversial ideas about child labor  He's also dinged his GOP opponent Mitt Romney for his "little food stamp" mentality.  Is this also racist, somehow?

(2) In the context of this story, the term "angry black woman" was uttered by Michelle Obama herself, responding to unspecified criticisms she perceived in a book written about the Obama White House by a New York Times correspondent. 

(3) That Obama's abandoning the white working class report came from a New York Times piece written by Thomas Edsall, formerly of the Huffington Post. 

(4) Hopes for a post-racial election "vanished" when Gov. Jan Brewer pointing her finger at President Obama during a heated exchange that he instigated?  Does anyone at Politico actually read their own stuff?  The Obama Justice Department has been highly racialized from day one of this administration, and Obama partisans have consistently seen racism around every corner as a means of disqualifying legitimate dissent.  The Brewer finger-pointing incident has to be one of the silliest "racism" charges to date, yet Politico elevates it as some sort of a defining moment.  How ridiculous.

(5) Rep. Joe Wilson may have been out of line when he heckled the president during his 2010 healthcare address to Congress.  To ascribe his outburst to racism is baseless and slanderous.  And despite his poor form, he was right on substance: President Obama was not telling the truth in the passage that raised Wilson's ire. 

Every example Politico cites as a troubling omen of our incipient racial tempest falls into one of two categories.  Either they are factual statements being drowned out by people who abhor uncomfortable truths, or they're quotes and/or reports from liberals about liberals.  This is the game the media will play.  They'll establish a Democrat-friendly narrative ("why, this election is going to be wildly racial because our black president is up for re-election!") and then fill the "evidence" in later.  Someone gesitculates while disagreeing with Obama?  That's racial.  Someone else (accurately) accuses him of lying?  Racial.  The first lady denies she's an "angry black woman," based on a book written by a liberal?  Racial.  That's the beauty of the plan: It doesn't matter who's fueling the story.  The story in and of itself is the goal, designed to insulate Obama from the sort of attacks that characterize all contemporary political races.  As I've written before, this strategy is cynical and tragic.  It's cynical because it does lasting damage to the soul of the country by intentionally inflaming racial tensions, all in order to gain cheap, fleeting partisan advantage.  It's tragic because authentic racism does still exist in today's America, and crying wolf on matters of racial bigotry cheapens the accusation, rendering it less powerful when it is accurately leveled.

Parting thoughts: (1) As liberals -- including, disappointingly, the great Juan Williams -- lecture us about "dog whistles" and "code words," take mental note of how often Democrats and their allies mention Mitt Romney's religion, should he become the nominee.  Keep your eyes peeled for thumb-sucking MSM stories like this, which merely "raise questions" about Mormon Mitt Romney's Mormony Mormonism. (2) How will independents, who rallied to Obama in 2008 and pushed him over the top, react when they're incessantly informed by the Left that they've somehow morphed into knuckle-dragging racists over the last four years?

On Tuesday, the Washington Post released an investigative report that showed how thirty-three members of Congress allocated more than $300 million in earmarks to fund public projects within miles of their own property.

A U.S. senator from Alabama directed more than $100 million in federal earmarks to renovate downtown Tuscaloosa near his own commercial office building. A congressman from Georgia secured $6.3 million in taxpayer funds to replenish the beach about 900 feet from his island vacation cottage. A representative from Michigan earmarked $486,000 to add a bike lane to a bridge within walking distance of her home.

…

Under the ethics rules Congress has written for itself, this is both legal and undisclosed.

The Post analyzed public records on the holdings of all 535 members and compared them with earmarks members had sought for pet projects, most of them since 2008. The process uncovered appropriations for work in close proximity to commercial and residential real estate owned by the lawmakers or their family members. The review also found 16 lawmakers who sent tax dollars to companies, colleges or community programs where their spouses, children or parents work as salaried employees or serve on boards.

Indeed, power does have its privileges. On the other hand, this is perhaps one of the reasons why voters deeply distrust members of Congress and why their approval ratings have reached historic lows. Interestingly, in response to this sobering expose, Senator Scott Brown (R-MA) released a press release yesterday asserting he will not sponsor or support pork-barrel spending.

Today's Washington Post study is another disturbing revelation about the insidious role that earmarks play in our political system, and a classic example of why Washington is so distrusted by the American people. That is why I have refused to sponsor earmarks, and have co-sponsored legislation to permanently ban this wasteful and corrupting practice. Not everyone feels that way, unfortunately. I was disappointed in Professor Warren's comments that she would play 'the game' with respect to earmarks. This is what's wrong with Washington and why we need more leaders who will stand against earmarking, not participate in it.

Certainly, one of Scott Brown’s goals as the junior Senator from Massachusetts is to reestablish some semblance of trust between members of Congress and the American people. His decision to co-sponsor the Stock Act, for example, was a major step forward in preventing politicians from enriching themselves with insider information. More importantly, though, Elizabeth Warren’s pledge to deliver earmarks to Massachusetts -- as long as 'it is part of the job’ -- allows Scott Brown to draw another stark contrast between himself and his chief Democratic rival.

Granted, according to a Pew Research Center/National Journal poll conducted in 2010, 53 percent of Americans said they were more inclined to reelect a candidate if they had brought back money to their home state. That said, however, just 10 percent of Americans – according to a survey last year – trust Washington “always or most of the time.” Thus, his decision to abstain from the practice of pork-barrel spending – at the very least – could give his candidacy some much-needed momentum next November when he faces off against Elizabeth Warren.

Flashback:

Great moment on the campaign trail in McKinney, TX: