“State governments” on The Daily Caller

The Oscars will be awarded Sunday night, so it’s time to take a close look at all the blockbuster movies that received sizable tax breaks in the past year. (more)

Missouri Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill admitted Monday that she had failed to pay about $287,000 in back taxes and will sell a private plane that has created considerable controversy as she prepares to run for a second term in 2012. (more)

Indiana state Treasurer Richard Mourdock will launch his primary challenge to Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) on Tuesday with the support of a majority of both the state’s 92 Republican county chairmen and its state party executive committee, he told the Fix in a recent interview. (more)

(CNN) — Arizona Governor Jan Brewer announced Thursday her state has filed a countersuit against the federal government, seeking the authority to implement its own border security efforts. (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Employers could face higher taxes in 2014 under an Obama administration budget proposal designed to help states hard hit by the recession and the weak recovery to refill their unemployment insurance funds and repay money borrowed from the federal government. (more)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Buoyed by a federal court ruling, Senate Republicans maneuvered for a vote to repeal the year-old health care law on Tuesday while the party’s potential White House contenders took turns urging them on. (more)

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin served as keynote speaker for hunting organization Safari Club International’s Jan. 29 convention in Reno, speaking to approximately 2,500 organization members, the Daily Beast reported Monday. (more)

Jared Loughner’s question for Gabrielle Giffords was utterly incomprehensible. When the Arizona representative couldn’t makes sense of Loughner’s nonsense during a 2007 rally, it set the alleged Tucson gunman off (“Can you believe it, they wouldn’t answer my question“). Loughner felt ignored and then the questions stopped. (more)

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Republican lawmakers in nearly a dozen states are reaching into the dusty annals of American history to fight President Obama’s health care overhaul. (more)

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords continues her remarkable, and at times miraculous, progress as she recovers from a point-blank gunshot wound to the head. (more)

The month of January is almost gone, and with it more than a few Americans’ New Year’s resolutions to live healthier lifestyles through diet and exercise. Regrettable as this may be, newly-elected leaders face a different set of resolutions that they must make and cannot afford to break. Namely, they must resolve to live healthier financial lifestyles by consuming fewer tax dollars and more actively pursuing budget reform to address government’s growing waistline before it’s too late. (more)

FULTON, Miss. (AP) — When Neil Brown got high on dangerous chemicals sold as bath salts, he took his skinning knife and slit his face and stomach repeatedly. Brown survived, but authorities say others haven’t been so lucky after snorting, injecting or smoking powders with such innocuous-sounding names as Ivory Wave, Red Dove and Vanilla Sky. (more)

PHOENIX (AP) — The Arizona Legislature on Thursday authorized Republican Gov. Jan Brewer to seek a federal waiver allowing the cash-short state to temporarily remove nearly 300,000 people from its Medicaid rolls in the first such request by a state. (more)

Mark Kelly would consider meeting the family of Jared Loughner, the man accused of opening fire in Tucson last week and shooting Kelly’s wife, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. (more)

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in the head in an apparent assassination attempt last week, could be ready to have her breathing tube removed Friday, according to husband Mark Kelly. (more)

In spite of all the recent death threats she’s received, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will speak in Nevada later this month at the Safari Club International’s annual convention. (more)

On January 8, 2011, a gunman opened fire at an event Representative Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) was holding to meet constituents outside a Tucson, Arizona, supermarket. Twenty people were shot, including Giffords. Less than a week after the tragedy, she remains in intensive care (the bullet reportedly hit the left side of her brain), but doctors are hopeful. In her first interview since the shooting, Pia Carusone, Giffords’ chief of staff, tells us what the Congresswoman is really like. (more)

CORAL GABLES, Fla. (AP) — Republicans gathering in South Florida to improve the party’s outreach to Hispanic voters will tackle trade, education — and the elephant in the room, immigration — at a conference organized by the new Hispanic Action Network. (more)

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn defended a massive increase in state income taxes passed by lawmakers Wednesday and promised to quickly sign the measure to help heal the state’s ailing finances. (more)

Since Saturday’s shooting rampage in Tucson, Ariz., the New York Times has published two staff editorials on the incident with an emphasis on addressing gun control. (more)