The White House in bloom:
On Friday, Michelle Obama will begin digging up a patch of White House lawn to plant a vegetable garden, the first since Eleanor Roosevelt’s victory garden in World War II. There will be no beets (the president doesn’t like them) but arugula will make the cut.
Agreed on the beets. There will also be honeybee hives. Cool!
Much to the relief of park rangers and refuge staff everywhere, a federal judge yesterday blocked implementation of the Bush midnight rule allowing people to take loaded, concealed weapons into national parks and wildlife refuges. What a relief.
NY-20: Between fundraising and personal loans, both Dem Scott Murphy and Republican Jim Tedisco have taken in over a million bucks apiece for the special election to replace Kirsten Gillibrand. Polls have been showing a tight race. Election day is March 31st. Click here to volunteer to help Murphy.
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal is rethinking those stimulus funds and may end up accepting them after all.
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar released the first ever State of the Birds report yesterday, and it's not good news:
In particular, it calls attention to the crisis in Hawaii, where more birds are in danger of extinction than anywhere else in the United States. In addition, the report indicates a 40 percent decline in grassland birds over the past 40 years, a 30 percent decline in birds of arid-lands, and high concern for many coastal shorebirds. Furthermore, 39 percent of species dependent on U.S. oceans have declined.
The Swing State Project has released presidential results by congressional district for all 435 CDs across the nation. SSP is the first (and so far only) outfit to release this data, which was compiled entirely by volunteers. And everything is completely transparent, too - check out this master database to see how we crunched the numbers for every district.