Open Thread

Today's starter topic: Are liberals more likely to be "girlie men?" According to a study out of Australia across a number of countries, men who are more masculine tend to be more likely to support conservative political ideologies.

If that claim is true, does it mean that liberal men are less likely to be physically strong or have lower levels of testosterone? Somehow it seems unlikely you'll see a study touting this idea. But while we're waiting, here's the Daily Telegraph's summary of the masculine men study:

In his column today, Fox Business Network host John Stossel makes an interesting observation: Americans are suspicious of government and yet they seem unable to resist the impulse to grow it. This despite the manifest record of failure that Big Government has racked up for itself:

After decades trying to drum up fear about the impending end of the world, top climate alarmist James Hansen has admitted that the public is becoming less convinced by the antics of the global warmongers.

Naturally, before doing so in a recent lecture, he had to trot out the mythical 'scientific consensus' notion, per this report from the Daily Telegraph:

The staff of NewsBusters would like to wish you and yours a happy Easter and Passover.

Today's starter topic: President Obama clearly isn't a believer in the phrase speak softly and carry a big stick. He took another angry shot at the Supreme Court yesterday, warning it not to throw out his dreadful health insurance law:

"And I'd just remind conservative commentators that, for years, what we have heard is, the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism, or a lack of judicial restraint, that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law," Obama said.

"Current TV said Friday afternoon that it had terminated the contract of its lead anchor, Keith Olbermann, scarcely a year after he was hired to reboot the fledgling channel in his progressive political image. Current indicated that he had failed to honor the terms of his five-year, $50 million contract, giving the channel the right to terminate it," New York Times's Brian Stelter reported this afternoon. For his part, Olbermann trash-tweeted Al Gore and the suits at Current on the way out the door, no doubt in an inspired manner kinda like this.

Let us have a brief moment of silence, followed by hours of exultation. Leave your comments below. Here's a topic starter, borrowed from a Twitter hashtag game (#nextjobforkeith), what will Olbermann's next job be?

Today's starter topic: With his chances of winning the GOP nomination decreasing as time goes by, former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum said in an interview that he would accept an offer to be the Republican vice presidential candidate if he were offered it by likely presidential nominee Mitt Romney:

Today's starter topic: While the Obama Administration has refused to approve the permanent job-creating Keystone XL pipeline in its entirety, it seems that officials are much closer to giving the nod to build a high-speed train connecting Las Vegas to a town in the middle of nowhere, 100 miles away from Los Angeles. And not just approve the project, they also are poised to "loan" nearly $5 billion to the project, which happens to be connected to Nevada Democrat and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid:

Watching the Elite Eight this weekend? Sound off on this thread about college basketball or whatever else you'd like.

GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney's campaign strategy is in focus with two stories highlighting it. The first is a remark that's now become infamous by an adviser named Eric Fehrnstrom who compared Romney to the children's toy Etch-a-Sketch, stating that in the general election, Romney would become a completely new candidate and not necessarily the conservative he's presented himself as. While trying to draw in centrists is something that almost every campaign tries to do after getting through the primaries, Fehrnstrom's remarks were so blatant that they've upset many.

Speaking of Romney's general election strategy (should he indeed win the nomination), National Review's Jim Geraghty argues that the main point to it will be Romney calling President Obama in over his head as an easier way of helping people who had voted for the president in 2008 reverse their choice this time. Rather than telling such voters they're stupid, the argument goes, they should be told that Obama has had his chance but just hasn't been up to snuff.

Despite their hasty and persistent denials, evidence keeps piling up that President Obama and his Administration aren't exactly displeased at the prospect of higher fuel costs. One of the best pieces of evidence has been Department of Energy secretary Steven Chu's remarks about wanting fuel prices here to be comensurate with Europe's higher rates.

While Obama himself has also famously said that he wanted the price of coal electricity to "necessarily skyrocket," until now, there hasn't been a video of him stating the same sentiment about gas prices. Now there is. Watch below the fold.

Three states voted yesterday in the GOP presidential primary with Rick Santorum winning the states of Alabama and Mississippi and Mitt Romney winning Hawaii. Things are more complicated than that, however, due to the fact that delegates to the RNC weren't given out on a winner-take-all basis. Thanks to his relatively close finishes in the two states won by Santorum and an additional victory in American Samoa, Mitt Romney actually came away with the most delegates last night. While Santorum and Romney did well, last night was a tough one for Newt Gingrich, who failed to win the popular vote in any of the contests. More below the break from the Washington Times:

Of all political groups, government employee unions have perhaps the greatest interest in growing government and staving off any political reforms. Many Republicans are unaware of this truth, but now it is New York Democratic governor Andrew Cuomo who is finding this out first-hand as he tries to restructure the awful mess that is the state's employee pension liability system. There are several reforms the greedy union bosses are fighting but the one they're most against is moving employees away from a defined benefit pension plan to the 401(k) plans that most Americans have. For the union 1 percenters, that is outrageous:

Today's starter topic of discussion is "Super Tuesday," a day when many states hold their primary elections simultaneously. In the past, the large number of primaries has been important in presidential campaigns. Not this year, according to Washington Times columnist Joseph Curl: