A federal appellate court said it wouldn't reconsider its ruling that former Attorney General John Ashcroft can be held personally responsible for misuse of the material witness statute after the Sept. 11 attacks.

House budgeters are budgeting, but the budget shortfall isn't budging.

Sen. Claire McCaskill tore into her party’s leadership in the Senate today, which has balked at her attempt to impose a limit on Congressional spending.

Shouldn't legislators abstain from votes on legislation that affects their personal income?

During this week's House debate on HB1472, Majority Leader Steve Tilley (R-Perryville) and Rep. David Sater (R-Cassville) spoke and voted against an amendment to require prescriptions to buy pseudoephedrine.  Under current law, the cold medicine is only sold behind counters at pharmacies, but amendment sponsor Jeff Roorda (D-Barnhart) wants to require prescriptions for use because it is abused to create methamphetamine.  After some debate, the House rejected Roorda's proposal.

Tilley and Sater are very familiar with how this change in law would impact pharamicists' bottom lines: Sater is a licensed pharmacist, and Tilley is married to a pharmacist. Kellie Tilley receives income from two companies in Perryville: Tricorex, Inc. and Convenient Healthcare Clinic.*  Tricorex is a pharmacy and wholesale drug distributor. 

Peter Kinder may be silent on how the state should restructure its budgets and programs, what that doesn't mean he's sitting out the budget process. Yesterday, he asked the public to "contact your local representatives and let them know how important [the Tour of Missouri] is to you."  Today, his spokesman unveiled Kinder's #2 priority: Preserving funding for the Missouri Veteran Stories program.  Via Kinder's preferred communication channel:

VIDEO: @PeterKinder and Missouri Veteran Stories. Ask your  legislators to support this important program.

On the MissouriVeteranStories.org website, you'll find the following "URGENT" message. 

The St. Louis Beacon has a story today reprinting excerpts from a Kit Bond press release accusing Democrats of finding "a loophole to our constitution" in their consideration of using "deem and pass" procedures to advance health care reform legislation.

Roy Blunt announced a $123,705 federal grant for the Nixa Fire Protection District this week. "The Assistance to Firefighters program has helped many area fire departments, like Nixa, to upgrade their services, equipment, training and effectiveness," Congressman Blunt said in a statement.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (stimulus bill) provided $210 for Assistance to Firefighters Grant, and the FY2010 Homeland Security appropriations bill included $810 million in Assistance to Firefighters Grant money.

Blunt voted against both bills; he was one of just 37 to vote against the Homeland Security budget. 

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee released a new "No New Jobs" ad highlighting GOP Senate candidates' opposition to the recently-passed jobs bill. 

Last night, as the House Budget Committee was debating drastic cuts to public education, Lt. Governor Peter Kinder made his first public request for support of the 2010 Tour of Missouri (TOM). 

Kinder and his spokesman directed folks to a new page on the TOM website, "Ten Ways To Support The Tour of Missouri." Beyond the standard requests to join an email list and sign on to a not-yet-functional petition, Tour organizers are also seeking donations, asking Missouri residents to "contact your local representatives" and calling for supporters to "write/call/email/or send smoke signals to the local media." 

Kinder and Tour staff have not yet specified how much public money they are seeking for the 2010 race.

The CBO analysis of the compromise health care reform legislation won't be officially released until 11am, but it's being leaked to various outlets.  Politico's topline summary:

The Congressional Budget Office has determined that the health reform plan will cost $940 billion over 10 years, but will trim the federal deficit by $130 billion in the first ten years and $1.2 trillion in the second ten years, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said. Those deficit numbers should help ease the worries of deficit hawks on the fence about supporting the bill.

According to Marc Ambinder, "the CBO says that the bill would reduce Medicare expenditures by about 1.4% per year, extending the solvency of the program by nine years. 32 million Americans will be covered -- about 95% of all those eligible."

Released late Wednesday:

Todd Akin sure looks silly in this new story from KWMU about House Republicans' very new outrage with "deem and pass" procedures: 

"It basically takes us down the primrose path of all these sniveling socialist states in Europe," says Akin. "They are struggling economically because they've got the government doing all these free hand outs and are a magnet for all kinds of immigrants from the Third World."

Despite the criticism the GOP is also no stranger to the "Deem and Pass" measure, using the same tactic dozens of times when they held congressional majorities.

Birther Rep. Ed Emery (R-Lamar) has an important message for the people of Missouri today: Barack Obama is more evil than you ever imagined. 

In this video Emery shared via Twitter and Facebook, I learned that Obama has subjugated the people; violated the constitution; confounded laws; seized private industry; destroyed jobs; perverted our economy; curtailed free speech; corrupted our currency; weakened our national security; endangered our sovereignty; compromised our nation's cultural, legal and economic institutions; ensured that our children will have terrible lives; stolen from cute children and murdered innumerable kittens. 

Emery calls this video a "solemn and profound reminder." Of what, I'm not sure.

The House Budget Committee is meeting tonight to start on what Allen Icet calls a "massive stack of amendments" to 2011 budget.

The Missouri Senate voted to ban the synthetic marijuana K-2.

Roy Blunt told Mike Ferguson and his radio audience on The Eagle yesterday that critics of his Washington record are confusing his "real record" with a "mythical record."  Blunt flatly rejected any criticism of his support for deficit spending and leadership during the Bush years, saying his record on spending is "pretty good."

FERGUSON: You mentioned the tea party activists, and the sorta fiscal conservative activism. And when looking back, there's a lot of criticism of you, not just for, like, the TARP vote and the bailout votes, but for your role in the leadership of the Republican Party at the time.  Do you regret any of those votes?  And what do you have to say to those folks who are skeptical -- at best -- because the Republican Congressional record on spending isn't all that great in recent years.

Ron Richard is The Man With A Plan. Before the legislative spring break, The Speaker told reporters he had a "plan" to "reform government top-to-bottom," but was unwilling to release it. Then Monday, House Budget Chairman Allen Icet said that House Republicans weren't even going to try to make the approximately $500M that will be required for next year's budget.

Some (including yours truly) thought this refusal to detail a full plan and reluctance to pass a reasonable budget meant that Richard was full of hooey.

But I was wrong, because Ron Richard does have a plan for cutting the state budget. In fact, his office has identified a whopping $787,000 in proposed cuts for FY11.  AND, Richard found $55,000 in savings for FY10 by eliminating cell phone reimbursements, and unspecified savings in reduced travel and photocopy costs. Impressive stuff!