Good morning, welcome back, and Happy Opening Day. Welcome to Rand Paul's Week in the Sun Ted Cruz had his week in the sun, and judging from his ability to raise $4 million in eight days and a new PPP poll that has Cruz in third place nationally with 16 percent, he made the most of it. This coming week looks like it's going to be Rand Paul's: U.S. Sen. Rand Paul is expected to make an announcement on Tuesday that his camp is being hush-hush about but is among the worst-kept secrets in Washington, Kentucky, or just about everywhere. Really. What politician who is considering running for president, who has spent the past year traveling early primary and caucus states, rents out a hotel in his home state, invites all the national media in, just to announce he's not running for president? So it is on Tuesday at the Galt House in Louisville, Ky., that Paul, a former Pennsylvanian and former Texan, will join the likes of Abraham Lincoln, Zachary Taylor and Henry Clay and become a Kentuckian who is running for the presidency. Paul's choice to announce his decision at "Galt House" may sound like a subtle shout-out to Ayn Rand, but it's an iconic Louisville hotel with a big role in history: "Some notable visitors include Stephen Douglas, Edwin Booth, Charles Dickens, P.T. Barnum, Tom Thumb, and presidents Lincoln, Grant, Taylor, Hayes and Buchanan. In 1864, generals Grant and Sherman planned their military strategies at the Galt House. This strategy led to the capture of Atlanta." As the non-interventionist/isolationist/non-reflexive-hawk in the field, Rand Paul is going to get a lot of flak. When the media and political thinkers discussed the "Libertarian Moment," we didn't realize they meant it would last for just one moment. Rolling back the national-security state and our foreign interventions sounds great when the American people are transfixed by widespread NSA domestic snooping, drones in our skies, and the Middle East dominated by a messy extremist-vs–Bashir Assad fight with no good guys. It looks less appealing when we're watching the Islamic State behead Americans on national television, places like Libya and Yemen collapse and become too dangerous for U.S. special-operations forces to operate, and Islamists shoot up Paris magazine offices in the name of a vigilante-enforced blasphemy codes. Rubio will certainly go after him, and a few days ago Cruz took a shot at Paul for voting against an NSA reform bill. If John Bolton runs, Paul's isolationist instincts will face the full wrath of the mustache of fury.
Will he "shhh" his opponents in a debate? I suppose this is the biggest slam Lindsey Graham can imagine: Graham, R-S.C., and a potential presidential candidate, said a better alternative than to sign something now would be to wait until the next administration takes over, be it Republican or Democrat, and try again. He called the president "a flawed negotiator." "What I would suggest is that if you can't get there with this deal, is keep the interim agreement in place (and) allow a new president in 2017 -- Democrat or Republican -- take a crack at the Iranian nuclear program," Graham told host Nora O'Donnell. He added, "the best deal comes with a new president. Hillary Clinton would do better. I think everybody on our side, except maybe Rand Paul could do better." Perhaps Lindsey Graham and Rand Paul will cross paths in New Hampshire Wednesday: On Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky will attend a Republican rally at Milford's Town Hall at noon. Paul is expected to formally announce his candidacy for the GOP nomination the day before. U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina will also be in the Granite State on Wednesday. Graham is scheduled to attend a town hall meeting at Turbocam in Barrington, beginning at 5:30 p.m. Graham will then attend the Belknap County Republican Committee Meeting at the Top of the Town Restaurant in Belmont, starting at 7:30 p.m. Rand Paul is one of the few GOP contenders not scheduled to speak at Friday's NRA Convention in Nashville. He'll be in Iowa that day. Rand Paul needs the world to not blow up with any crises that make Americans want to intervene militarily for the next ten days . . . or maybe the next 20 months or so. But don't forget, he's got a big, big ally who effectively controls the Senate floor and what gets debated and when . . .
. . . and having the Senate majority leader behind you is a significant advantage. Good News for Florida, Pennsylvania Republicans This Morning Nothing surprising, and obviously really early, but somewhat reassuring for Republicans right now: Republican State Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater is the strongest candidate in an early look at the 2016 U.S. Senate race in Florida, getting 38 percent to 34 percent for U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy. Atwater leads another possible Democratic candidate, U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, 42 – 32 percent. In other possible matchups: Murphy gets 35 percent to 31 percent for Republican Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera; Lopez-Cantera gets 33 percent to 32 percent for Grayson. The percentage of voters for each of these candidates who don't know enough to form an opinion of them is 58 percent or higher. More reassuring news out of Pennsylvania: "If the 2016 U.S. Senate race in Pennsylvania is a rematch of the 2010 race, Republican incumbent U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey leads Democratic challenger Joe Sestak 48 -- 35 percent. Toomey gets a 49 -- 24 percent job approval rating and a 44 -- 23 percent favorability rating. For Sestak, 61 percent don't know enough about him to form an opinion." Sestak was the Democratic nominee for Senate in 2010. What, did everybody forget about him? In Ohio, Quinnipiac finds "former Gov. Ted Strickland, the Democrat, leads Republican incumbent U.S. Sen. Rob Portman 48 -- 39 percent." What's odd is that most analysts and race-watchers would have told you Toomey was more vulnerable in 2016 than Portman is . . . Are Taxpayers Getting Their Money's Worth from Animal Testing? My friend Liz Sheld had a big hand in this report on the Blaze asking whether a lot of federal government-funded animal testing amounts to a waste. (I must warn that if you're squeamish or uncomfortable with footage of animal testing, you're not going to want to watch the report.) One of the organizations featured in the report, White Coat Waste, argues that a lot of the research grants distributed by the National Institutes of Health, Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and other federal programs go to research that offers little or no useful knowledge or results. Some of the experimentation programs have gone on for 20 to 30 years. One of their featured examples: The taxpayer-funded Oregon National Primate Research Center (ONPRC) isolates frightened monkeys in tiny cages while feeding them fatty foods and sugary drinks. In its own words: "we are trying to induce the couch-potato style." (New York Times, 2/19/11) After this taxpayer-funded study is completed, ONPRC kills the monkeys to examine their brains. A particularly vivid example from a few years ago, mentioned in the report: The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), a division of the federal government's National Institutes of Health (NIH), has spent $3,634,807 over the past decade funding research that involves getting monkeys to smoke and drink drugs such as PCP, methamphetamine (METH), heroin, and cocaine and then studying their behavior, including during different phases of the female monkeys' menstrual cycles. This is a refreshing consensus-building argument beyond the "Do you think animal testing is cruel or necessary" debate. I suspect most people hate the thought of dead animals in the abstract, but would be willing to see a lot of dead monkeys or rabbits if the research led to a cure for cancer or AIDS. But when a scientist is inducing heart attacks in dogs to research how "omega-3 fatty acids provide protection for heart muscle tissue" . . . it's a grayer area. For what it's worth, NIH is moving away from using chimpanzees in research. Matthew Scully, a former speechwriter for George W. Bush, has made the most comprehensive attempt to make the case for animal rights -- or at least staunch opposition to animal abuse -- to conservatives in his book Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy. ADDENDA: This past week, while I was out, we didn't tape a new edition of the pop-culture podcast, but our producer Dave Perkins put together a "Best of the Jim and Mickey Show" edition, featuring my painful lesson that the old-fashioned DO NOT DISTURB hotel door-hanger never needed any technological upgrade; Mickey's begrudging acceptance that all of us are destined to walk around humming Taylor Swift songs for the rest of our lives; my tirade against the eugenics-minded quasi-fascist Santa from the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Christmas special; the time I became close to being replaced with Sean Connery, and the behind-the-scenes story of winning CPAC's Journalist of the Year award. . . . Late Sunday, it was announced that David Lynch will not be directing the new re-launched Twin Peaks series on Showtime; he's merely co-writing with co-creator Mark Frost. Lynch explains a bit here. Here's hoping the series continues to come to fruition . . . and stop teasing me, gentlemen! | 
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