Just a short note to inform everyone that I'm "playing hooky" today, and there will be no column. One, it's been a really nice spring day, and two, I was up late doing some behind-the-scenes work here at the site, fixing bugs and whatnot, so I think I deserve a day off. [Note: the "Email Chris" page is working again, woo hoo!]

To make it up to everyone, I promise to spend some time later tonight answering your comments from the past week or so, as I know I've been falling behind on answering folks here.

So, we apologize for the spring-induced interruption of columns, and invite you to join us here tomorrow for our regular Friday roundup.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

Three states held Republican primary elections yesterday, which makes it a good time to check in on the Tea Party and their preferred candidates, to see how things now stand (as well as where they could head), as we get closer to the midterm elections in November.

Now, the nebulous nature of who, exactly, is a "Tea Party candidate" -- as well as the decentralized nature of the Tea Party movement itself -- make it all but impossible to spot overall trends, or to make nationwide predictions. Some Tea Party candidates are self-professed Tea Partiers, but even some of these are rejected by Tea Party groups in their states. This leads to much confusion over who really is, and who is not, a Tea Party candidate. To complicate matters even further, everything changes from state to state, and from Tea Party group to Tea Party group. But even with those caveats, it's interesting to see how it is all playing out at the state level, mostly in contests for the U.S. Senate.

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Forty years ago on this day, Jeffrey Miller, Allison Krause, William Schroeder, and Sandra Scheuer were shot and killed on the campus of Kent State University in Ohio. The bullets which killed them (and wounded nine others) were fired by the Ohio National Guard.

Jeffrey Miller's body (this photo won a Pulitzer Prize).

The Kent State shootings instantly became a defining moment for America, for college students, and for the anti-war movement. The Crosby, Stills, and Nash song "Ohio" (with its angry refrain: "Four dead in Ohio") was on the radio within weeks of the event. Within days of the killings, there was the first and (to date) only nationwide student strike, which shut down over 400 campuses across America. Also within days, over 100,000 people demonstrated in Washington, D.C., which (bizarrely) prompted President Richard Nixon to drive out to the Lincoln Memorial at four o'clock in the morning to have a rambling debate with some of the protesters -- one of the strangest interactions between any president and any protest group in American history, I would venture to guess.

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More Of The Same

In the movie L.A. Story, there's a television weatherman (played by Steve Martin) who winds up one of his reports with: "Our next weather report will be in four days." The joke, for those unfamiliar with L.A. weather, is that Southern California doesn't have "weather," but rather a "climate." Things don't change much, in other words, therefore one weather report will do just fine for the next four days.

I'm starting to feel a little like Martin's character, I have to admit. Because President Barack Obama seems to have hit a plateau in his approval ratings, which have remained largely unchanged for the past three months now, and not significantly changed since last November. Could it be that we've all just made up our minds about the job the president is doing? Should I just end this with "next Obama Poll Watch column in three months...?"

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We are in the process of changing our advertising here on ChrisWeigant.com. This may lead to bugs in the layout in the immediate future, and may lead to days without ads. I know, I know, it'll be hard to view our site without the wonderfulness of advertising to enhance your viewing pleasure, but fear not, new ads will be appearing soon. This may lead to additional revenue for the site, to the point where it actually pays for itself (the Donate button should still be active through this process... cough, cough...). In any case, wanted to let everyone know that the site may look a little wonky for a while.

In other site news, I have noticed that a bug was fixed automatically, due to the recent code upgrade we performed. The "Search" function seems to be working correctly now, which it never has before. It used to require you to do a site-wide search from the main ChrisWeigant.com page, and would return "Not Found" if you tried searching from anywhere else on the site. It now appears (at least to me -- try it out...) to do a site-wide search no matter what page you do the search from.

I will leave this Program Note open to comments, in case anyone has any other problems or suggestions they'd like to share.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

Boy, Louisiana just can't seem to catch a break, can it? If it isn't Mother Nature walloping it with hurricanes, its a man-made disaster of enormous proportions about to bury its bayous and waterways under a blanket of foul-smelling muck.

We seem to be in the early days of what some are already cynically wondering might be "Obama's Katrina." It's looking more and more like a lot of valuable time may have been wasted at the very beginning of the disaster, and whether the Coast Guard or British Petroleum is to blame for this is a very open question. Perhaps nobody's to blame, and perhaps the disaster was unavoidable, given the situation. It's still far too early to draw any of these types of conclusions, which isn't stopping anyone from doing so, of course. As of right now it seems like help is on the way for the region, but may not get there in time, or may be too small to be very effectual. My heart goes out to any Gulf Coast residents who might be affected by this disaster.

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Charlie Crist just made the Florida Senate race a whole lot more interesting, by announcing he will run as an independent candidate, making it a real three-way race. This will make the election more interesting for political reporters, because it's always more fun to cover a three-horse race than a two-horse race (as it were). But the most interesting question to me is what happens if Crist actually wins and goes to the Senate -- with which party would he caucus?

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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid just showed Democrats what real leadership (and what bargaining from a position of strength) looks like. After three days of repeated cloture votes to bring Chris Dodd's Wall Street reform bill to the floor of the Senate for debate, it appears the Republicans are ready to blink. The Republicans successfully managed to block the debate, in three successive votes, but they know they're paying a political price for doing so. At this point, the only question is how many of them will jump the aisle and vote with the Democrats in the next vote.

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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid held a second vote today on whether to begin debate on the Wall Street reform bill put forth by Senator Chris Dodd. As expected, all the Republicans voted against openly debating the bill once again. Also as expected, all the Democrats voted to move forward. Except one.

Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska voted against opening the debate for the second day in a row. He was the only Democrat to do so, unless you count the technicality of Reid himself voting against the bill (which is necessary to bring the bill back up for another vote, which is now scheduled for tomorrow). But Nelson didn't vote against the bill because Senate rules forced him to (as with Reid), Nelson voted against the bill because he wants the bill changed before debate even begins.

You may remember Senator Nelson from the health reform debate. He was the guy who infamously held out his vote in exchange for Nebraska getting a sweetheart deal. Republicans immediately jumped on this backroom deal, and dubbed it the "Cornhusker Kickback." It was eventually removed from the final law, due to Democrats admitting that it was a mistake to give in to Nelson in the first place.

Now he's back again, and fighting for "Cornhusker Kickback II" or perhaps "Son of Cornhusker Kickback." Only, this time, Democrats are not exactly capitulating to his demands. Instead, they're leaving him hanging, to twist in the wind.

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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid just scored a political victory by losing a vote. That sounds counterintuitive, but it's true. By failing to bring the Wall Street reform bill written by Chris Dodd to the floor for debate, and by losing a cloture vote on the issue to Republican opposition, Reid has shown that the Democrats (and the White House) have learned a few lessons from the health reform debate. Because by refusing to back down, and refusing to "compromise" (read: water the bill down and add loopholes for Wall Street) with Republicans, Reid is showing real strength, and real leadership.

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