Awhile back, I suggested that President Barack Obama might have a problem winning Florida in November. The latest polls showed him with a significant deficit and emphasized the extent to which the Sunshine State has plenty of advantages for Republicans: Demographically, it’s an exceptionally favorable state, with a large population of older whites. Overall, among whites, Obama lost every age group by double digits; his best performance was among whites ages 18 to 29, whom he lost by 10 points, instead of 12.5 points for whites over the age of 45, and 22 points for whites ages 30 to 44.

Back in 2009, Michele Bachmann told an interviewer that she was refusing to answer any questions on the census form other than how many people lived in her household. It seems this passionate advocate of the Constitution as sacred text found Article 1, Section 2 incompatible with her small-government ideology. But that's the problem with seeing things through such narrow blinkers: when you are convinced that every question in public debate has but a single answer ("Government is bad!"), then your answers to some ordinary questions can become absurd.

So it was when the House of Representatives, a body now seemingly devoted to seeking out new ways to make itself look stupid when it isn't pushing the country toward economic calamity, recently voted to eliminate funding for the American Community Survey, a supplement to the decennial census...

The end of a campaign is too often treated like the death of a person—say something nice, at least for now, or keep your mouth shut. In the case of the much-belated official demise of Newt Gingrich’s presidential bid, the kid-glove treatment might be considered especially appropriate, given that it also represents the final passage of his long political career. But as Newt said himself, debating Mitt Romney, “Can we drop a little bit of the pious baloney?” As when a truly terrible human being expires, the only thing worth celebrating here is the death itself. And the thing to mourn is not the loss of Newt on the national political stage, but the time that he spent on it.

For further proof that young voters are still supportive of President Obama—and that Mitt Romney will need to do better if he wants to make inroads—look no further than the latest poll from Harvard’s Institute of Politics, which shows wide support among “Millenials” for Obama over the former Massachusetts governor:

During the February 22 Republican primary debate in Arizona, moderator John King of CNN set up a question about global instability and the president’s ability to affect gas prices by noting that “the American people often don't pay much attention to what's going on in the world until they have to.” The next day, Politico media blogger Dylan Byers flagged the question, describing it “as a comment that warranted explanation” even though it was “not necessarily wrong.” Later that day, King sent Byers a statement defending his question, claiming that he “did not ‘suggest’ and

This morning, I argued that President Obama’s poor performance in the New York Times/CBS News poll had more to do with the methodology of the survey than it did with any underlying change in Obama’s standing with the public. The Times oversampled partisan Republicans, and as such, guaranteed a skewed result. For further evidence of Obama’s stability, look no further than a trio of polls released today.