Well-known Johnson County liberal Steve Rose, who dropped out of a candidate forum earlier this week, has dropped entirely out of his brief run for the US Congress.  Rose claims that the stress from campaigning was aggravating his Crohn’s Disease.

According to The Kansas City Star’s Steve Kraske, “[Rose] added:’For whatever it’s worth, the preliminary polls showed I had a name identification of 60 percent of Republicans, with a two-to-one favorable vs. unfavorable rating. This would have been a great advantage in the campaign.’”

But many conservatives will find those polling results difficult to believe.  After being asked by KansasLiberty.com, Rose refused to release to the public the private campaign data that would verify the accuracy of the statement.

Meanwhile, former Kansas Representative Patricia Lightner continues her consistent campaigning, releasing on the Lightner for Congress Web site the most recent reply to a series called “Ask Patricia” (below).

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Nearly twice as many Republicans as Democrats have accounts on the social networking platform Twitter (101 compared with 57), and the GOP dominates Twitter usage by an even wider margin, according to a report released this week by the Congressional Research Service that analyzed two weeklong periods in July and August. During those spans, congressional Republicans posted 932 messages – or tweets – compared with 255 for Democrats, CRS analysts found.

ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis told Fox News Sunday on September 20 that her group “absolutely pays its taxes.” But her claim crumbles before the $548,213.25 federal tax lien that the Internal Revenue Service filed against the embattled New Orleans-based activist organization. Louisiana state tax officials also have slapped $334,121.43 in tax liens on ACORN since last October 29.

When I announced last week that I was leaving ABC for Fox, some readers complained about my “bias.” I replied: “Every reporter has political beliefs. The difference is that I am upfront about mine.”

Look at today’s burning issue: President Obama’s pledge to redesign 15 percent of the economy. Virtually every reporter calls his health care plan “reform.” But dictionaries define reform as “improvement.”
So before they present any evidence, reporters pronounce Obama’s plan an improvement. Isn’t that bias?

While in Pittsburgh, a sense of seemliness should prevent President Obama from again exhorting the Group of 20, as he did April 2 in London, to be strong in resisting domestic pressures for protectionism. This month, invertebrate as he invariably is when organized labor barks, he imposed a 35 percent tariff on imports of tires that China makes for the low-price end of the market. This antic nonsense matters not only because of trade disruptions it may cause but also because it is evidence of his willowy weakness under pressure from his political patrons.

If you want to know why Americans are so fearful of a government takeover of the health-care system, take a look at the results of a new Gallup poll on government waste released Sept. 15. One question posed was: “Of every tax dollar that goes to Washington, D.C., how many cents of each dollar would you say is wasted?” Gallup found that the mean response was 50 cents. With Uncle Sam spending just shy of $4 trillion this year, that means the public believes that $2 trillion is wasted.

Senate Republicans issued a blunt warning to their Democratic colleagues today: Don’t even think about using reconciliation to ram through a health care bill.

Our Best States ranking measures six vital categories for businesses: costs, labor supply, regulatory environment, current economic climate, growth prospects and quality of life. We factor in 33 different points of data to determine the ranks in the six main areas. Business costs that include labor, energy and taxes are weighted the most heavily. We relied on nine different data providers. Moody’s Economy.com is the most utilized resource.

Ask almost any Democratic politician the most important economic facts about income distribution in America, and you are almost certain to hear the following three points: (1) incomes have fallen substantially over the past ten years; (2) labor’s share of income has fallen significantly behind the pace of new productivity and innovation; and (3) income distribution has worsened dramatically over the past generation and over the past decade in particular, with people at the top getting a bigger fraction of total personal income.

PITTSBURGH (Reuters) - The United Steelworkers union, fresh from persuading President Barack Obama to restrict tire imports from China, filed a new case Wednesday asking for duties on coated paper from both China and Indonesia.

Maybe Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus should put a gag order on Douglas Elmendorf too. On Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office director told Mr. Baucus’s committee that its plan to cut $123 billion from Medicare Advantage-the program that gives almost one-fourth of seniors private health-insurance options-will result in lower benefits and some 2.7 million people losing this coverage.