THE VISION THING. Too many people too soon forgot about John Boehner's laugh-out-loud hilarious campaign manifesto released back during his House leadership race, in which the Ohio rep. included epigraphs from Winston Churchill and Walt Disney and implored his fellow Republicans to reclaim their souls through a renewed commitment to spewing vacuous platitudes. For a liberal, one of the funniest things in the memo (PDF) was Boehner's enthusiastic call for a big caucus-wide powwow to figure out what Republicans stand for and what their core principles are.

HILLARY RAISES BIG BUCKS IN TEXAS BUSH COUNTRY. Senator Clinton did a great deal of fundraising around the country in March, and her private fundraising schedule -- which was passed along by a source -- shows that she raked in big bucks in that most impenetrable of red-state strongholds: Texas.

The schedule lists a dozen events in four states, in the space of just two months, March and April. This is very significant, because all the activity shows just how determined Hillary's advisers are to stockpile an enormous campaign warchest at a time when she is facing only token opposition for reelection in 2006 -- something which of course will only fuel speculation that her fundraising right now is also about scaring off potential Dem challengers in 2008.

"RED AMERICA": BLUE AMERICA'S FAULT? Rob Anderson's effort to cast liberal elites as the real bad guys in the Ben Domenech scandal does indeed seem more than a bit strained. Anderson speculates that Jim Brady hired Domenech precisely because he was a crude, unqualified caricature of conservative punditry that Brady, fogged by blue state elitism, perceived to be conservatism's true face.

THE DEMAND SIDE. As the immigration debate lurches forward, lots of folks have asked why there's so little focus on the demand side. Wouldn't it be easier to dry up the jobs than patrol the desert? My read is that you couldn't totally staunch the flow by patrolling employers, but you could sure put a dent in it, and today's comprehensive Los Angeles Times article tells you some of the reasons why:

IMMIGRATION JUJITSU. The estimable Mark Kleiman and the smelly Lizardbreath have both come up with a fairly elegant solution to illegal immigration: offer green cards to undocumented immigrants who turn their employers in. Long-term, you'd probably just see employers insisting on enough false identification to protect their plausible deniability, but the better documentation employers demand, the fewer illegal immigrants who'll be able to afford it, and so the fewer businesses will hire. So maybe it is a good idea.

HERE�S A QUESTION: Do the border guards in Gamboru, Nigeria, get to collect the $2 million bounty on Charles Taylor?

--Mark Leon Goldberg

BOLTEN'S FUTURE PLANS? BUSH DOESN'T KNOW. According to today's New York Times, here's part of what President Bush had to say yesterday about the promotion of Josh Bolten to chief of staff:

Asked in an interview with CNN Espa�ol whether more changes were coming, Mr. Bush replied: "Josh has just begun to take a look at the White House structure. And I haven't had a chance to talk to him about the future yet."