Illinois Senate President John Cullerton is pushing a pension reform plan written, and supported by, Illinois’ public sector unions.

Pennsylvania leaders are sounding the alarm of a pension squeeze.

“America’s governor” Scott Walker stumps with Wisconsin Republicans at the Wisconsin GOP Convention.

Eric Boehm | Watchdog.org
HARRISBURG – An FBI agent in Florida shot and killed a man who was being questioned about his ties to suspected Boston bombers Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
But this was no bloody shoot out like the one that took place on the streets of Boston last month.  The man killed early Wednesday [...]

By Johnny Kampis | Missouri Watchdog

A few hundred Missouri residents participated in a rally in front of the local Internal Revenue Service on Wednesday in support of the tea party and other conservative groups who were targeted by the tax agency.

The protesters, holding signs as they chanted and sang, were met not by local police but officers with the Department of Homeland Security, who were on hand to keep the peace.

HOUSTON – True the Vote, the Houston-based secure elections organization, filed a federal lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service Tuesday, seeking damages over the agency’s handling of its application for nonprofit status and asking the court to grant it the 501(c)(3) exemption it applied for in 2010.
Since that application was filed, True the Vote’s founders, [...]

By Dustin Hurst | Watchdog.org
As scandal after scandal continues to unfold in front of the nation, President Barack Obama’s administration reels, struggling to defend itself, allay fears about government ineptitude and reset the narrative in the the president’s favor.
Unfortunately for the administration, the barrage of scandals is leaving a mark, at least in the news [...]

Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic candidate for governor in Virginia, has an Internet problem.
Ask former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum how much fun that can be.
Last week, McAuliffe launched Women for Terry, a political subgroup designed to bolster his credentials with female voters in Virginia. Unfortunately for the Democratic hopeful,  his campaign forgot to tie up the [...]

By M.D. Kittle | Wisconsin Reporter
MADISON — Since word hit that the University of Wisconsin System had accumulated more than $1 billion in reserves even as tuition continued to soar and state funding plummeted, the UW Board of Regents has gotten a lot suggestions on what to do with that money.
A lot of unhappy Republican lawmakers and [...]

By Nick Dranias | Goldwater Institute
In upholding the federal health care law’s individual mandate as a tax, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts reiterated Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’ promise that “[t]he power to tax is not the power to destroy while this Court sits.”
With the IRS’ recent targeted investigations of tea parties, balanced budget advocates, [...]

By Sagar Jethani | Cal Watchdog
After being threatened with contempt by a panel of federal judges for failing to sufficiently reduce the number of prisoners in California’s jails, Gov. Jerry Brown reluctantly unveiled a plan this month to further reduce the Golden State’s overcrowded prisons by another 9,000 inmates. Enthusiasm in Sacramento was in short supply.
Brown argued that court [...]

By Jarrett Skorup | Mackinac Center
With a push from Gov. Rick Snyder, the business community, public employee unions and most of the significant lobbying groups in the state, both branches of the Legislature have proposed budgets that significantly expand spending on early childhood education. Unfortunately, this spending will likely not result in any significantly improved educational [...]

By Ron Aiken | The Nerve
In the months leading up to reportedly the worst cyber-security failure in U.S. history at a state agency, South Carolina Department of Revenue officials deemed data encryption too costly on one hand while spurning offers of free cyber protection from another state agency with the other.
The result was an unprecedented [...]

By Christopher Goins | Maryland Reporter
Judge Pamila Brown saw a need for more civic education.
A few years ago, Brown, a Howard County district judge, attended an American Bar Association meeting where the organization discussed implementing a national civics and law program for high schoolers lacking civics education.
In 2011, the Maryland State Department of Education dropped [...]

By Audrey Spalding | Michigan Capitol Confidential
Though the Highland Park School District spent $19,634 per pupil in 2010-11, the highest in the state, district schools were so mismanaged that they had rodents in the classrooms, holes in the ceilings and walls, and horrendous filth in the bathrooms.
“I [saw] it in the media center,” DeCarlos, a junior at Highland Park Community High [...]

By Grant Bosse | New Hampshire Watchdog
A bill giving New Hampshire auto dealers the ability to tear up their existing contracts with the factory could land the state back in court.
SB 126 would not only strengthen the current Auto Dealers Bill of Rights to let local dealers ignore terms of their franchise agreements, but expand [...]

By Nic Horton | The Arkansas Project
Upon rereading David Ramsey’s piece on the genesis of the “private option,” it’s hard not to notice the flood of admiring compliments he bestows on the intellect of its creators. They are “clever,” “smart,” “open-minded,” and “pragmatic.” As they work in tandem with Governor Mike Beebe, they are “thoughtful and nuanced.”
In particular, Senator Jonathan [...]

By Warren Duffy | Cal Watchdog
What is going on with the California-based Ivanpah solar plant?
In April 2011, Brightsource Energy received a loan guarantee of $1.6 billion from the Department of Energy for the Ivanpah project. It’s located along I-15 at the California-Nevada border, 29 miles northeast of Barstow. The loan amount was three times that given by the DOE to the [...]