Hodge writes at a RedState diary entry:

Sam Brownback cannot be taken seriously while ex-banker Lynn Mitchelson remains a campaign co-chair.

Some questions for future Kansas Governor Sam Brownback:

1. Why did you choose a provably corrupt public official to be a campaign co-chair?
2. Why is part of your campaign team giving a no-bid legal contract to the Democratic Party Chairman’s law firm, at the largest Kansas college, and when the college’s lawyer has clear ethical problems?
3. Are you trying to make Sarah Palin’s PAC look like a well-run organization?
4. Should we assume that you have given up hopes of becoming a future US President?
5. Is this how you plan on running the State of Kansas – through reckless acts of incompetence, corruption, and cover-ups, then followed by failed attempts to intimidate your critics (and even top news agencies)?  That’s what your choice of campaign co-chairs tells us.
6. Do you realize that for every one liberal “Republican” to whom your campaign is reaching out, you are losing – perhaps permanently – the support of two or three conservative voters?
7. Really, Senator? Really?

RedState readers, I can explain to you the national banking crisis, in three words:  Meet Lynn Mitchelson.

For 15 years, the ex-banker Lynn Mitchelson has been one of seven at-large elected trustees at Johnson County Community College.  In large part because he is now unelectable, Mitchelson will permanently retire from public office in 2011.

Mitchelson once had a reputation in Kansas City as someone who could “fix banks.”  Troubled banks would hire him as a temporary CEO, and, in theory, he would bring them back to health.   But now that his record in elected office is widely known, I’ll be surprised if he is ever again hired by a bank.  Why?  Because he is directly responsible for much of lawlessness, failed cover-ups, and retaliation that has become commonplace at JCCC.  The only thing more embarrassing than the corruption in which Mitchelson has participated, is that he has been so unsuccessful at carrying it out.  I did not properly understand the phrase “the cover-up is worse than the crime,” until I had witnessed first-hand Mitchelson at work.  Time and time again, Mitchelson’s actions have brought national embarrassment to this college, the largest college in Kansas.

I had not planned on writing about Mitchelson’s work, but today I’ve learned that JCCC leaders have made malicious, baseless legal threats directly to the top conservative news organization RedCounty.com, where I have written in detail about JCCC’s culture of corruption.

Inexplicably, the once-thought-to-be-conservative Sam Brownback months ago made Mitchelson a key part of Brownback’s 2010 campaign for governor, even though Mitchelson’s public record was already well-known.  Brownback campaign manager David Kensinger - who apparently is under the illusion that Brownback can literally do whatever he wants, and that Brownback then will automatically receive the enthusiastic support of conservatives – doesn’t want to talk about it.

Click here to read the rest of the article.

Daylight Saving Time begins early tomorrow morning, but, according to the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey, 47% of Americans don’t think the time change is worth the hassle. Forty percent (40%) disagree, and 13% more aren’t sure.
These figures are unchanged from our survey last October, when Daylight Saving Time for 2009 ended.
Men tend more than than women to think advancing the clock an hour to guarantee more sunlight in the afternoon and evening is worth the trouble. Adults 40 to 64 are more likely to feel the change is worth the hassle than those in other age groups.

Link.

As 120 million U.S. Census forms begin to arrive in mailboxes around the country, only 13% of Americans realize that it is illegal not to answer all of the Census questions.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 57% of adults think
- incorrectly – that it is not against the law to not answer all the questions on the Census. Another 30% are not sure.

Link.

Link.

March 15 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. and the U.K. have moved “substantially” closer to losing their AAA credit ratings as the cost of servicing their debt rose, according to Moody’s Investors Service.

The governments of the two economies must balance bringing down their debt burdens without damaging growth by removing fiscal stimulus too quickly, Pierre Cailleteau, managing director of sovereign risk at Moody’s in London, said in a telephone interview.

Gerstein posts a televised interview of Obama and John Walsh of America’s Most Wanted. The nation’s chief executive extols the virtues of mandatory DNA testing of Americans upon arrest, even absent charges or a conviction. Obama said, “It’s the right thing to do” to “tighten the grip around folks” who commit crime.

(Reuters) – A British pair caught kissing in public in Dubai face up to a month in jail in the Gulf Arab emirate for indecency after an Emirati mother complained her child had seen their indiscretion.

Link.

Google has drawn up detailed plans for the closure of its Chinese search engine and is now “99.9 per cent” certain to go ahead as talks over censorship with the Chinese authorities have reached an apparent impasse, according to a person familiar with the company’s thinking.

NEW YORK (AP) – Getting people to pay for news online at this point would be “like trying to force butterflies back into their cocoons,” a new consumer survey suggests.
That was one of several bleak headlines in the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s annual assessment of the state of the news industry, released Sunday.

NEW YORK (AP) – Concerns about China’s economy and a warning about the U.S. credit rating sent stocks modestly lower.
Credit ratings agency Moody’s said Monday that debt loads are stretched in the U.S. and Britain. The countries carry the top “AAA” rating. And a drop in the rating would make it more expensive for the government to borrow money.

JERUSALEM - Israeli-U.S. relations have hit a 35-year low over a West Bank settlement plan that threatens to derail peacemaking efforts with the Palestinians, Israel’s envoy to Washington was quoted as saying on Monday.

The comments attributed to Ambassador Michael Oren, a noted Middle East historian, clashed with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s assurances that the row resulting from a settlement announcement deemed “insulting” by the Obama administration was under control.

JERUSALEM (AP) – Israeli media reported Monday that the U.S. is pressing Israel to scrap a contentious east Jerusalem building project whose approval has touched off the most serious diplomatic feud with Washington in years.

Link.

MOSCOW, March 14 (Reuters) - Some 2,000 people protested against the release of what they said were toxic fumes in a small town on Russia’s Pacific coast on Sunday, one of a series of unusually large protests across the country in recent months.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruled that the adverts – which were based on the children’s poems Jack and Jill and Rub-A-Dub-Dub – made exaggerated claims about the threat to Britain from global warming.
In definitely asserting that climate change would cause flooding and drought the adverts went beyond mainstream scientific consensus, the watchdog said.

Baboons with a taste for Chardonnay grapes are terrorising farmers in South Africa’s Western Cape wine region, munching tonnes of grapes ready for harvesting, local media reported on Monday.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - “Alice in Wonderland” raced to a $430 million haul at the worldwide box office on Sunday, while Matt Damon’s new Iraq war conspiracy thriller “Green Zone” was one of the year’s first big flops.
Director Tim Burton’s 3D remake of “Alice” led the field for a second weekend after earning $138 million during the three days beginning on Friday, said distributor Walt Disney Co.