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Mack (R) compares Ariz. law to Nazi Germany

Rep. Connie Mack (R-Fla.) ripped into the new Arizona immigration law today, comparing it to Nazi Germany.

"This law of 'frontier justice' – where law enforcement officials are required to stop anyone based on 'reasonable suspicion' that they may be in the country illegally – is reminiscent of a time during World War II when the Gestapo in Germany stopped people on the street and asked for their papers without probable cause," Mack said in a statement.

"This is not the America I grew up in and believe in, and it’s not the America I want my children to grow up in," he added.

The Arizona law would allow law enforcement officers who come into legal contact with individuals to demand proof of citizenship if there is a "reasonable suspicion" that person may be undocumented.

Considered a potential candidate for statewide office in Florida, Mack's position may help with the state's large Hispanic population.

Marco Rubio has also criticized the bill.

Texas Reps Want to Import AZ Immigration Law

A Republican Texas lawmaker plans to introduce a tough immigration measure similar to the new law in Arizona, a move state Democrats say would be a mistake.

Rep. Debbie Riddle of Tomball said she will push for the law in the January legislative session, according to Wednesday's editions of the San Antonio Express-News and Houston Chronicle.

"The first priority for any elected official is to make sure that the safety and security of Texans is well-established," said Riddle, who introduced a similar measure in 2009 that didn't get out of committee. "If our federal government did their job, then Arizona wouldn't have to take this action, and neither would Texas."

The Arizona law would require local and state law enforcement to question people about their immigration status -- and make it a crime for immigrants to lack registration documents.

The measure is already making an impact in North Texas. Organizers for a rally against the immigration law said Tuesday they hope for 100,000 protesters to show up for a Saturday march in Dallas. Leaders of various groups are planning to attend.

"What I say to the African-American community: If they come in the morning for brown-skinned people, and we remain silent, they may come in the evening for us," Peter Johnson, of the Peter Johnson Institute of Non-Violence, said.

"This wholesale idea of just questioning everyone who looks differently or who has an accent or whose eyes look differently than ours is not the way to address this issue," said Cheryl Pollman, president of the National Council of Jewish Women.

The Dallas Tea Party said it will plan a counterprotest for another time.

Phillip Dennis, a member of the group's steering committee, said states have to step up because the federal government has failed to enforce immigration laws. He said he and his wife, who is a legal immigrant from Colombia, are familiar with the process of emigrating to the United States.

"We paid by the rules, we jumped through the hoops, and we paid the money -- thousands and thousands of dollars," he said.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told a U.S. Senate hearing Tuesday that a Justice Department review is under way to determine the constitutionality of the Arizona law.

State Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, a San Antonio Democrat and former president of the National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators, called the law "extremely damaging and hateful."

Van de Putte predicted failure for any similar measures in Texas and said the GOP would suffer politically for such a move.

Asked about the Arizona law, GOP Gov. Rick Perry and his Democratic challenger, Bill White, emphasized through spokespeople that immigration is a federal responsibility.

Jim Harrington, of the Texas Civil Rights Project, predicted any similar effort in Texas would fail because Texas has "a different relationship with the Hispanic community."

"You can take the political temperature by just looking at Rick Perry being quiet," Harrington said.

Patriots

ARLINGTON, Va. – Carrying loaded pistols and unloaded rifles, dozens of gun-rights activists got as close as they could Monday to the nation's capital while still bearing arms and delivered what they said was a simple message: Don't tread on me.

Hundreds of like-minded but unarmed counterparts carried out a separate rally in the nation's capital.

The gun-carrying protesters in Virginia rallied on national park land, which is legal thanks to a new law signed by President Barack Obama that allows guns in national parks. Organizers said it's the first armed rally in a national park since the law passed.

The District of Columbia's strict gun laws, however, generally make it illegal to carry a handgun, so rally participants there were unarmed.

Daniel Almond, who organized the "Restore the Constitution" rally in Virginia, said he wanted to convene in a place where "we can exercise our rights." He pointed in the direction of Washington and said, "Over there, the Constitution is being violated in that we cannot bear arms."

Among the speakers in Virginia was former Alabama Minuteman leader Mike Vanderboegh, who has been denounced in recent weeks after calling for citizens to throw bricks through the windows of local Democratic party headquarters across the country. Several such incidents occurred after Vanderboegh issued his call.

Vanderboegh said the broken windows are a wake-up call that many people feel threatened by an expanding federal government.

"We are done backing up. Not one more inch," Vanderboegh said to cheers, after telling the crowd that for too long Americans have acquiesced at the loss of liberty.

In an interview, Vanderboegh said he considers armed resistance justified only "when they send people to our doors and kill us."

But he suggested that an arrest at the hand of federal government is tantamount to a death sentence and that he would fight back in such a case. Specifically, he outlined a scenario in which people who refuse to buy health insurance under the new health reform law would be subject to arrest and that such confrontations could turn violent.

"If I know I'm not going to get a fair trial in federal court ... I at least have the right to an unfair gunfight," Vanderboegh said.

After his speech, gun control advocate Martina Leinz confronted Vanderboegh and called him a "small, little bully" and said the rally was designed to intimidate.

"If they wanted to have dialogue, they don't need to bring a big weapon with them," she said of the protesters.

The rally began in Fort Hunt Park and moved to Gravelly Point in Arlington, next to Reagan National Airport and just south of the nation's capital, with the Washington Monument and the U.S. Capitol in the backdrop. Departing planes frequently drowned out speakers, and reporters nearly outnumbered rally participants.

Ken Garvin of Newville, Pa., said he had never before attended such a rally but came Monday because he believes the government is out of control. He stressed that the people attending the rally "are not a bunch of crazed thugs. ... They're just people." He said all sides need to listen to each other's viewpoints.

"I don't hate the left. I just don't understand where they're coming from," he said.

Wes Wdzieczny of Essex, Md., said people are unduly alarmed if they see rallies like these as promoting violence.

"I don't think anyone here has delusions of storming the Capitol. ... People are just basically fed up," he said.

In Washington, signs reading "Which part of 'shall not be infringed' confuses you?" and bright orange stickers saying "Guns save lives" dotted the crowd at the Washington Monument.

Organizer Skip Coryell said he chose the date to mark the anniversary of the Revolutionary War battles of Lexington and Concord, and dismissed any associations with the actions of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. The bombing occurred on April 19, 1995.

"I think there are some people out there who have an agenda and they want to paint us as gun-toting, lunatic, militia types, and we're not that way," Coryell said.

The event also attracted 78-year-old Audrey Smith of Clearfield, Pa., who said she and a group of local Tea Party activists traveled to show their solidarity.

"We'll support anything that is in jeopardy of being taken out of our Constitution," Smith said.

U.S. Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., said in a statement that armed protests in national parks were a public safety concern. He also said that while the Second Amendment has become a rallying point for gun rights activists, "virtually every action the federal government has taken in the past decade has weakened commonsense gun laws already on the books."

56,000 Photos Taken By Student "Spy" Cams

Lower Merion School District employees activated the web cameras and tracking software on laptops they gave to high school students about 80 times in the past two school years, snapping nearly 56,000 images that included photos of students, pictures inside their homes and copies of the programs or files running on their screens, district investigators have concluded.

In most of the cases, technicians turned on the system after a student or staffer reported a laptop missing and turned it off when the machine was found, the investigators determined.

But in at least five instances, school employees let the Web cams keep clicking for days or weeks after students found their missing laptops, according to the review. Those computers - programmed to snap a photo and capture a screen shot every 15 minutes when the machine was on - fired nearly 13,000 images back to the school district servers.

The data, given to The Inquirer on Monday by a school district lawyer, represents the most detailed account yet of how and when Lower Merion used the remote tracking system, a practice that has sparked a civil rights lawsuit, an FBI investigation and new federal legislation.

The district's attorney, Henry Hockeimer, declined to describe in detail any of the recovered Web cam photos, or identify the people in them or their surroundings. He said none appeared to show "salacious or inappropriate" images but said that in no way justified the use of the program.

"The taking of these pictures without student consent in their homes was obviously wrong," Hockeimer said.

A federal magistrate judge is expected this week to begin the process of arranging for parents whose children were photographed to privately view the photos.

Hockeimer said the district's internal investigation is ongoing and that the numbers could change. He said the board authorized him to release the information in response to a new court motion filed last week by Harriton High School sophomore Blake Robbins, whose lawsuit contends the program invaded his privacy.

In the motion, Robbins' attorney, Mark Haltzman, argued that the now-disabled system had surreptitiously collected more than 400 photos of his client - including shots of him when he was shirtless and while he slept in his bed last fall - as well as thousands of images from other students' computers.

The numbers disclosed by the district Monday confirmed that assertion and added more clarity. The district's full report is due within the next two weeks.

Lower Merion began using the system after deciding to give each of its nearly 2,300 high school students their own laptop computer. The program started in 2008 at Harriton High School and expanded this school year to Lower Merion High.

In addition to the photos and screen shots, the technology also used the laptop's Internet address to pinpoint its location. The system was designed to automatically purge all the images after the tracking was deactivated.

Hockeimer said that attorneys from his firm, Ballard Spahr, and specialists from L3, a computer forensics firm, have used e-mails, voice mails and network data to piece together how often, when and why school officials used the technology.

The "vast majority" of instances, he said, represent cases in which the technology appeared to be used for the reasons the district first implemented it in 2008: to find a lost or stolen laptop or, in a few cases, whether a student took the computer without paying a required insurance fee.

About 38,500 images - or almost two-thirds of the total number retrieved so far - came from six laptops that were reported missing from the Harriton High School gymnasium in September 2008. The tracking system continued to store images from those computers for nearly six months, until police recovered them and charged a suspect with theft in March 2009.

The next biggest chunk of images stem from the five or so laptops where employees failed or forgot to turn off the tracking software even after the student recovered the computer.

In a few other cases, Hockeimer said, the team has been unable to recover images or photos stored by the tracking system.

And in about 15 activations, investigators have been unable to identify exactly why a student's laptop was being monitored.

Hockeimer said that the investigation found that administrators activated the tracking system for just one student this year who failed to pay the $55 insurance fee.

Robbins claims he is that student; Hockeimer declined to confirm or deny that.

About 10 employees at the district and its two high schools had the authority to request the computer administrators to activate the tracking system on a student's laptop, Hockeimer said.

Only two employees - information systems coordinator Carol Cafiero and network technician Mike Perbix - have the ability to actually turn on and off the tracking. Hockeimer said the district investigators have no evidence to suggest either Perbix or Cafiero activated the system without being asked.

But the requests were loose and disorganized, he said, sometimes amounting to just an brief e-mail.

"The whole situation was riddled with the problem of not having any written policies and procedures in place," Hockeimer said. "And that impacted so much of what happened here."

Robbins has claimed that an assistant principal confronted him in November with a Web cam photo of him in his bedroom. Robbins said the photo shows him with a handful of Mike & Ike candies, but that the assistant principal thought they were drugs.

His attorney, Haltzman, greeted the release of the numbers skeptically.

"I wish the school district would have come clean earlier, as soon as they had this information and not waiting until something was filed in court revealing the extent of the spying," he said.

New Immigration Law in Arizona

Lawmakers in the Arizona Senate voted 17 to 11 to approve the bill, widely regarded as the toughest measure yet taken by any U.S. state to curb illegal immigration.

The state's House of Representatives approved the measure last week. Governor Jan Brewer, a Republican, has five days to veto the bill or sign it into law.

Immigration is a bitterly fought issue in the United States, where some 10.8 million illegal immigrants live and work in the shadows, although it has been eclipsed in recent months by a healthcare overhaul and concern over the economy.

The law requires state and local police to determine the status of people if there is "reasonable suspicion" that they are illegal immigrants and to arrest people who are unable to provide documentation proving they are in the country legally.

It also makes it a crime to transport someone who is an illegal immigrant and to hire day laborers off the street.

"I believe handcuffs are a wonderful tool when they're on the right people," said Russell Pearce, the Republican state senator who wrote the bill.

We want to "get them off law enforcement and get them on the bad guys," he told Reuters.

Opponents of the Arizona law, some of whom held a vigil outside Brewer's home on Monday to urge her to veto the measure, say it is unconstitutional and would discriminate against Latinos.

"You cannot tell if a person walking on a sidewalk is undocumented or not ... (so) this is a mandate for racial profiling," said Pablo Alvarado, director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network.

Alvarado said his group would call on the federal government to intervene and was considering legal action to overturn the bill.

Interesting Case

I came across this case this morning. Looks interesting...and makes my head hurt at the same time!

Christian Legal Society Chapter v. Martinez (08-1371)

The Hastings Christian Legal Society (“CLS”) required that members agree with its core religious beliefs and pledge to live accordingly. Due to this requirement, the University of California-Hastings College of Law refused to recognize CLS as a registered student organization. Specifically, CLS’s membership requirement violated a nondiscrimination policy prohibiting registered student organizations from discriminating on the basis of religion or sexual orientation. CLS argued that Hastings violated its First Amendment right to free association and free exercise of religion by denying it an exemption from the nondiscrimination policy. The Ninth Circuit rejected CLS’s claims, holding that the school’s policy was viewpoint-neutral and reasonable in light of the school’s educational mission. The Supreme Court’s decision will settle a circuit split over whether a public school can require a religious student organization to open its membership to all students, regardless of their beliefs.

Question presented

Whether the Ninth Circuit erred when it held, directly contrary to the Seventh Circuit’s decision in Christian Legal Society v. Walker, 453 F.3d 853 (7th Cir. 2006), that the Constitution allows a state law school to deny recognition to a religious student organization because the group requires its officers and voting members to agree with its core religious viewpoints.

Issue
Whether a state law school may officially require that a student organization make its membership open to all students as a condition of receiving certain benefits associated with official recognition.

Recess

One of my favorite Uncle Jay episodes...EVER!
Enjoy!

Judge Orders Mississippi School District to Desegregate

The Justice Department accused the Walthall County School District in rural Mississippi of annually permitting more than 300 students, most of them white, to transfer to a school outside of their residential area, shifting its racial makeup.

Further, administrators at three other schools grouped most of the white students into their own classrooms "resulting in significant numbers of segregated all-black classrooms at each grade level," the U.S. government said in a court filing.

The case comes in a state that was at the heart of the U.S. civil rights movement in the 1960s. In 1964, three civil rights workers were murdered in Mississippi, an incident that helped prompt Congress to pass a law banning racial segregation in schools, work and public places.

The school district was ordered in 1970 to stop segregating its schools. But in the late 1980s officials were confronted by the Justice Department with concerns about student transfers to other schools that undermined the desegregation efforts.

While the district made some changes in the early 1990s, the Justice Department said the practices continued and the schools became "significantly more segregated." The district did not respond to the government's lawsuit seeking reforms.

In fact, the county school board in 2009 rejected a tentative settlement with the government that would have overhauled the district's transfer policy and prevented students being assigned to classrooms based on race.

LIMIT TRANSFERS

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Tom Lee, in Jackson, Mississippi, ordered the school district to significantly limit transfers. Lee also ordered the district to stop assigning students to classrooms that resulted in segregation, demanding that it use a software program to randomly assign them.

"It is unacceptable for school districts to act in a way that encourages or tolerates the resegregation of public schools," said Thomas Perez, assistant attorney general of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division.

In 2008, the Walthall district had about 2,550 students -- of whom about 64 percent were black and 35 percent were white.

At four schools, less than a quarter of the students were white while at least 73 percent of the students were black in 2008, according to the government court filing. In 1992, the racial makeup of those schools was between 59 percent and 70 percent black and at least 30 percent white.

Meanwhile at another school, Salem Attendance Center, 66 percent of the students were white while a third were black students in 2008. That was a dramatic shift from 1992 when a majority, 58 percent, were black and 42 percent were white.

The change in the school racial makeup was not because of population shifts, but rather "the product of unlawful district transfer policies that permit hundreds of white students" to transfer each year, the Justice Department said.

The superintendent for the district declined to comment on the judge's ruling.

State GOP Races Ready for Showdowns

AUSTIN – Lyndon Johnson was in the White House when Delwin Jones was first sworn in as a freshman member of the Texas House. Since then, he has been defeated by a fellow Democrat, switched parties to become a Republican, been appointed to powerful committee jobs and lost them.

One thing that has never changed is his taste for elected office. On Tuesday, the oldest member of the Legislature – at 86 – is asking West Texans to send him back for another term.

Jones is one of three longtime House incumbents whose careers are on the line in Texas runoff elections that will shape the November elections. All told, nine legislative races, seven congressional seats, a statewide Supreme Court race and an open spot on the State Board of Education are up for grabs.

First elected in 1964, Jones lost in 1972 and was re-elected in 1988 as a Republican.

These days, Jones stills drives around his five-county district in a 1995 Buick Le Sabre. Over his career, the Lubbock businessman figures he's handed out at least 800,000 emery boards – his favorite campaign giveaway.

His opponent, accountant Charles Perry, is a Tea Party conservative who surprised observers by making the runoff in a three-way race. Jones said the anti-incumbent Tea Party wave has been an "undercurrent" in his race, but he thinks his longevity will play to his advantage.

"I've got a lifetime of identity, and he's got to develop an identity," Jones said. "I would hope my identity will prevail."

Perry, 48, said Jones is out of step with the conservative district and predicted the same activists who are angry at the Obama administration will carry him to Austin.

"Politics as usual seems to be on its last leg," Perry said.

Meanwhile, Democratic Rep. Norma Chavez is fighting for her seat in a nasty runoff campaign marked by personal insinuations and accusations that each Democrat is more Republican than the other.

Democrat Naomi Gonzalez has received at least $276,000 in contributions from typically GOP donors to defeat Chavez, a 14-year veteran of the state House, according to the Texas Ethics Commission.

Chavez, 49, suggested in public forums that Gonzalez is a lesbian, but later said she should not have made her opponent's sexual orientation an issue. Gonzalez said Chavez's comments were just a desperate attempt to deflect attention from her own shortcomings.

A third incumbent, Rep. Fred Brown, R-College Station, faces Republican runoff opponent Gerald "Buddy" Winn, a former Brazos County tax assessor-collector.

Six other races feature Republicans duking it out.

In congressional runoffs, candidates hoping to challenge incumbents are squaring off in seven races – six among Republicans and one among Democrats.

Elsewhere, the conservative faction of the State Board of Education has lined up behind activist Brian Russell, a home-schooler, in the race to replace resigning Republican Cynthia Dunbar. Several high-profile Republicans have endorsed Marsha Farney, a former educator who calls herself the "common sense conservative."

There is only one runoff for statewide office. Former state Rep. Rick Green faces longtime family law judge Debra Lehrmann for the state Supreme Court seat being vacated by Judge Harriet O'Neill.

Nearly Half Pay No Income Tax

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Tax Day is a dreaded deadline for millions, but for nearly half of U.S. households it's simply somebody else's problem.

About 47 percent will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009. Either their incomes were too low, or they qualified for enough credits, deductions and exemptions to eliminate their liability. That's according to projections by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research organization.

Most people still are required to file returns by the April 15 deadline. The penalty for skipping it is limited to the amount of taxes owed, but it's still almost always better to file: That's the only way to get a refund of all the income taxes withheld by employers.

In recent years, credits for low- and middle-income families have grown so much that a family of four making as much as $50,000 will owe no federal income tax for 2009, as long as there are two children younger than 17, according to a separate analysis by the consulting firm Deloitte Tax.

Tax cuts enacted in the past decade have been generous to wealthy taxpayers, too, making them a target for President Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress. Less noticed were tax cuts for low- and middle-income families, which were expanded when Obama signed the massive economic recovery package last year.

The result is a tax system that exempts almost half the country from paying for programs that benefit everyone, including national defense, public safety, infrastructure and education. It is a system in which the top 10 percent of earners -- households making an average of $366,400 in 2006 -- paid about 73 percent of the income taxes collected by the federal government.

The bottom 40 percent, on average, make a profit from the federal income tax, meaning they get more money in tax credits than they would otherwise owe in taxes. For those people, the government sends them a payment.

"We have 50 percent of people who are getting something for nothing," said Curtis Dubay, senior tax policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation.

The vast majority of people who escape federal income taxes still pay other taxes, including federal payroll taxes that fund Social Security and Medicare, and excise taxes on gasoline, aviation, alcohol and cigarettes. Many also pay state or local taxes on sales, income and property.

That helps explain the country's aversion to taxes, said Clint Stretch, a tax policy expert Deloitte Tax. He said many people simply look at the difference between their gross pay and their take-home pay and blame the government for the disparity.

"It's not uncommon for people to think that their Social Security taxes, their 401(k) contributions, their share of employer health premiums, all of that stuff in their mind gets lumped into income taxes," Stretch said.

The federal income tax is the government's largest source of revenue, raising more than $900 billion -- or a little less than half of all government receipts -- in the budget year that ended last Sept. 30. But with deductions and credits, especially for families with children, there have long been people who don't pay it, mainly lower-income families.

The number of households that don't pay federal income taxes increased substantially in 2008, when the poor economy reduced incomes and Congress cut taxes in an attempt to help recovery.

In 2007, about 38 percent of households paid no federal income tax, a figure that jumped to 49 percent in 2008, according to estimates by the Tax Policy Center.

In 2008, President George W. Bush signed a law providing most families with rebate checks of $300 to $1,200. Last year, Obama signed the economic recovery law that expanded some tax credits and created others. Most targeted low- and middle-income families.

Obama's Making Work Pay credit provides as much as $800 to couples and $400 to individuals. The expanded child tax credit provides $1,000 for each child under 17. The Earned Income Tax Credit provides up to $5,657 to low-income families with at least three children.

There are also tax credits for college expenses, buying a new home and upgrading an existing home with energy-efficient doors, windows, furnaces and other appliances. Many of the credits are refundable, meaning if the credits exceed the amount of income taxes owed, the taxpayer gets a payment from the government for the difference.

"All these things are ways the government says, if you do this, we'll reduce your tax bill by some amount," said Roberton Williams, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center.

The government could provide the same benefits through spending programs, with the same effect on the federal budget, Williams said. But it sounds better for politicians to say they cut taxes rather than they started a new spending program, he added.

Obama has pushed tax cuts for low- and middle-income families and tax increases for the wealthy, arguing that wealthier taxpayers fared well in the past decade, so it's time to pay up. The nation's wealthiest taxpayers did get big tax breaks under Bush, with the top marginal tax rate reduced from 39.6 percent to 35 percent, and the second-highest rate reduced from 36 percent to 33 percent.

But income tax rates were lowered at every income level. The changes made it relatively easy for families of four making $50,000 to eliminate their income tax liability.

Here's how they did it, according to Deloitte Tax:

The family was entitled to a standard deduction of $11,400 and four personal exemptions of $3,650 apiece, leaving a taxable income of $24,000. The federal income tax on $24,000 is $2,769.

With two children younger than 17, the family qualified for two $1,000 child tax credits. Its Making Work Pay credit was $800 because the parents were married filing jointly.

The $2,800 in credits exceeds the $2,769 in taxes, so the family makes a $31 profit from the federal income tax. That ought to take the sting out of April 15.

Houston Businessman Supports ALL Local Republican Candidates

Bob Perry can't lose.

The Houston homebuilder was the single largest contributor to both Lubbock Republican primary races fighting to a close this week.

To both sides of both races.

Perry gave $20,000 each to Lubbock accountant Charles Perry - no relation - and business owner John Frullo.

He gave $15,000 to their opponents, Rep. Delwin Jones, R-Lubbock, and former Texas Tech regent Mark Griffin.

"He's the biggest donor to each of the statewide republicans, and he's working his way down the ladder, I guess, trying to be a donor in favor with every candidate," said Craig McDonald, director of the Austin-based government watchdog group Texans for Public Justice. "Looks like, in the Lubbock area, he's covering his bases."

Anthony Holm, Bob Perry's spokesman, said the donor had no comment.

The contributions to the District 84 race accounted for more than half of Frullo's more than $35,000 in reported fundraising, and about 17 percent of Griffin's more than $90,000.

House District 83 challenger Perry could trace more than 30 percent of his more than $64,000 in donations to the Houston homebuilder. And Perry remained the biggest donor in a crowded field to incumbent Jones's $121,000 war chest.

Perry's no novice at politics. The Texas Ethics Commission reports more than $22.6 million in donations associated with his name since 2000.

He was the top individual contributor in the nation in the 2004 and 2006 federal election cycles, and remained the top individual donor for Texas state races, mostly to Republicans, McDonald said.

"He's far and away the biggest Republican candidate's sugar daddy in the state of Texas," McDonald said.

Battle Begins for GOP 2012 Contenders

Every four years, in between presidential elections, conservative activists gather to take stock of some of the most prominent names in the Republican Party -- and consider which of them has what it takes for a successful run for the White House.

That gathering, the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, takes place this Thursday through Saturday in New Orleans. Among the speakers will be Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Bobby Jindal, Michael Steele, and Sarah Palin, whose speech will be closely watched for signs as to whether the former Alaska governor is serious about a presidential run or is opting instead a lucrative media career.

Notably absent, oddly enough, will be the only two prominent Republicans who have been doing the most staff hiring, fundraising, travel and networking to lay the groundwork for a 2012 run: Former Massachusetts governor and 2008 GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, who has elected to continue his book tour instead of coming to the conference, and Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who pulled out in order to attend a welcome home ceremony for members of the armed forces.

Both men are widely expected to jump in the race, but both have their liabilities. While Romney has worked hard to establish his conservative credentials after taking moderate positions on some issues as Massachusetts governor, some on the right continue to be skeptical of him. And the passage of a health care reform package that looks a lot like the health care bill Romney signed into law in Massachusetts has had the ex-governor straining to make the case that the Massachusetts model has legitimate differences with what conservatives derisively call "ObamaCare."

Pawlenty, meanwhile, is unknown to most Americans. While he has been making all the right moves to prepare for a presidential run, including raising money for and endorsing anti-spending Republican candidates, he has not come close to capturing the imagination of the GOP faithful. Perhaps in an effort to break through and generate a little buzz -- and also draw a distinction with Romney -- Pawlenty is pushing a lawsuit to overturn the health care bill. (He's also not skipping the conference entirely -- organizers tell Hotsheet he plans to send in a video address for the event.)

The current landscape means that many conservatives are hoping that a plausible alternative to Pawlenty and Romney emerges in the coming months -- perhaps spurred by a winning speech at the conference seen by many as the unofficial kickoff to primary campaign season.

Palin, seemingly the brightest light in the GOP, remains a polarizing figure who many Republicans believe could not win in a general election; she has also laid little groundwork for a presidential run. The activists gathered at the conference will be looking for signs that the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee is interested in a run and willing to do the necessary hard work to win -- or if she seems content to focus on her burgeoning media career, including her planned television show, "Sarah Palin's Alaska."

Jindal, the Louisiana governor, has steadily climbed back into the good graces of the GOP ran-and-file despite a disastrous response to President Obama's address to a joint session of Congress in February of last year. But his appearance may be more about continuing to build up goodwill than an attempt to set up a run that could be seen as premature.

Gingrich, meanwhile, seems an ever-present part of the presidential speculation who enjoys his image as an ideas man and elder statesman in the party. The former House speaker has said repeatedly he is considering a run -- though many GOP insiders believe Gingrich, who has past personal issues that would come under scrutiny if he were to enter the race, is simply trying to keep up his public profile and speaking fees.

Paul, of course, is a libertarian-leaning Republican who could well duplicate his 2008 run, but he is seen as a candidate with passionate but limited appeal within the party. Paul won the straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, though critics were quick to point out that the respondents were not necessarily representative of the GOP as a whole.

As for Steele, no one expects a presidential run from the Republican National Committee chair. But the speech is important regardless, since Steele has come under fire after a string of scandals, including, most recently, revelations that the committee paid a nearly $2,000 reimbursement for a group of young donors to enjoy a night out at a bondage-themed nightclub.

Money Flows into RNC, but Steele Still Hounded

Steele will be looking to convince activists that he is not running a free-spending organization and convince them to continue donating to the RNC -- and to not forsake the organization in favor of a shadow RNC group called American Crossroads or direct their donations primarily to candidates or campaign committees.

That brings us to the lesser-known speakers, some of whom are plausible candidates to eventually emerge their party's standard bearer. (Keep in mind, most Americans didn't know much about Barack Obama back in 2006.) Among them are Rep. Mike Pence, the House Republican Conference Chairman from Indiana who calls himself "a Christian, a conservative and a Republican, in that order." Pence has been traveling the nation, ostensibly to help House Republicans raise money. But the trips have driven speculation that he's been testing the waters for a 2012 run, possibly with the backing of many in the Tea Party movement.

Also speaking is former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who Pennsylvania political scientists G. Terry Madonna and Michael Young say may be laying the groundwork for push for the nomination; so is Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, the head of the Republican Governors Association, who has notably declined to shut the door on a run.

One key question going into the conference is what rhetoric Republicans will offer when it comes to the health care bill. While anger in the base has driven a push for repeal, many GOP lawmakers see risks of voter backlash in such an effort; the comments at the conference could set the tone for the GOP message on the bill going into the midterm elections. (One message now being floated is "repeal and replace" -- which comes with the implicit promise that the more popular of the bill's provisions, like bans on turning people away for pre-existing conditions, would not be eliminated if Republicans attain enough power to be able to repeal the bill.)

After listening to the speakers, attendees at the conference will vote in the straw poll; if Romney wins despite not attending (or comes in second behind Paul) it will be taken as a sign of his strength. But it's worth noting that the winner of the 2006 straw poll, Sen. Bill Frist, never even entered the 2008 race.

A victory by a more below-the-radar lawmaker such as Pence could help generate buzz and establish him as a strong alternative to Romney and Pawlenty.

On the flip side, a particularly poor performance would be taken as a sign that a candidate has little institutional support -- a fate Palin, who came in a distant third at the CPAC straw poll, will want to avoid if she is ultimately interested in taking the plunge.