Failed liberal talk radio host and not-so-funny comedian Al Franken apparently thought that he could get away without paying taxes over the past four years. Well, the joke is on him and he now has to pay $70,000 in back taxes in 17 states.

DFL U.S. Senate candidate Al Franken, frontrunner in the race to unseat Republican U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman, owes $70,000 in back taxes in 17 states, where he earned income going back to 2003.

Franken on Tuesday told the Associated Press that he never intended to avoid paying taxes and that on the advice of his accountant, had paid taxes to the city and state where he lived.

Franken has been under fire since early March, when a Republican operative revealed that Franken had failed to pay workers’ compensation and disability premiums for employees of his New York-based corporation, Alan Franken, Inc., between 2002 and 2005.

New York state officials had tried to collect the back premiums for four years, resorting to a collection agency and even filing a summary judgment against Franken in state Supreme Court last May for $25,000.

In recent months, there’s been quite a bit of corruption discovered about Al Franken. This isn’t just some isolated incidents of corrupt actions… There’s a pattern of corruption. Three years ago we learned that Air America, Al Franken’s liberal talk radio project, was stealing federal funds from the Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club.

Al Franken truly is a member of the Caucus of Corruption. The question remains… will this be enough to force him out the race, or will Minnesota Democrats give him a free pass?

Minnesota Democrats Exposed is following the Franken story…

Of course, I knew that, and anyone not infatuated with Obama’s candidacy know that, but now Jeremiah Wright is confirming what we already knew… much to the dismay of Obamaniacs.

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright said Monday that he will try to change national policy by “coming after” Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) if he is elected president.

The pastor also insisted Obama “didn’t denounce” him and “didn’t distance himself” from Wright’s controversial remarks, but “did what politicians do.”

Wright implied Obama still agrees with him by saying: “He had to distance himself, because he’s a politician, from what the media was saying I had said, which was [portrayed as] anti-American.”

Well, first, let me just say that the media didn’t say what Wright said, they just played vide of what said, and his words spoke for themselves.

But anyway, Wright still told two undeniable truths. First, that Obama did not truly denounce Wright, and second that Obama only attempted to distance himself from Wright for political cover, not because of a genuine rejection of Wright’s words.

Thank you.

UPDATE: Wright’s recent public spectacle has Obama running for political cover.

UPDATE: Bulldog Pundit makes an interesting observation regarding Obama’s newfound “outrage” over Wright’s recent comments.

What did Wright really say this weekend that was any more offensive than what Obama previously dismissed as “soundbites”. I listened to this guy’s speeches to the NAACP and his comments at the National Press Club yesterday and I didn’t hear anything worse than he had said previously. I did learn however, that this guy’s kookiness is not limited to “sound bites”. The full version is just as loopy, and there’s absolutely no chance in hell that Obama wasn’t aware of it having gone to his church for 20 years (although he was mysteriously absent from church when all the “sound bite” moments occurred).

It’s such a horrible thing, isn’t it? To have to prove you are who you are in order to vote! How dare anyone ask such a horrible thing!

But seriously, if you believe in honest and fair elections, you should be happy about yesterday’s ruling… But it appears that the Democrats aren’t happy.

Democratic insiders fear that a number of states, particularly in the Midwest and South, will copy the Indiana law now that the Supreme Court has upheld it. “There’s the concern for our side that it can spread, other states can do what Indiana did,” said a Democratic strategist. “You may see a lot more of this now.”

That’s right. A lot more “one person, one vote” will ultimately result from the ruling and a lot of “one person, multiple votes” or “one dead person, one vote” will disappear.

Yesterday’s ruling protects my vote from being cancelled out by a fraudulent vote. The same goes for all of you. I can’t tell you how crazy it made me in recent elections when I’ve voted and I’ve never been asked to prove who I was. I’ve offered to show my ID to poll workers and been refused. There’s just something wrong with that.

…and now the RNC is demanding networks pull it.

The Republican National Committee demanded Monday that television networks stop running a television ad by the Democratic Party that falsely suggests John McCain wants a 100-year war in Iraq.

The ad says President Bush has talked about staying in Iraq for 50 years, then plays a clip of McCain saying, “Maybe 100. That’d be fine with me.”

The announcer then says: “If all he offers is more of the same, is John McCain the right choice for America’s future?”

Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan said the ad deliberately distorts what McCain, the likely GOP presidential nominee, said.

The committee’s chief counsel, Sean Cairncross, said he sent letters Monday to NBC, CNN and MSNBC insisting that they stop airing the commercial.

At issue is McCain’s answer, in January, to a question about Bush’s theory that troops could be in Iraq for 50 years.

[…]

Democratic Party chief Howard Dean said “there’s nothing false” about the ad.

“We deliberately used John McCain’s words. This isn’t some ominous consultant’s voice from Washington. This is John McCain’s own words. And we’ve been very upfront about everything that he’s said.”

The ad put out by the DNC does use McCain’s words, but cuts out a portion of his remarks to alter the meaning. Below is McCain’s full quote, with the portions used in the ad highlighted in blue.

Maybe 100. As long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed, that’d be fine with me, and I hope it would be fine with you, if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world where al-Qaida is training, recruiting, equipping and motivating people every single day.

What’s really ironic about this is how Howard Dean argues that since the ad uses McCain’s words that there’s no deception… yet, ever since the Jeremiah Wright sermons were exposed in the media, we’ve been hearing his supporters claim that Wright’s racist, anti-American, anti-Semitic comments aren’t so horrible when you consider the context of his sermon. So portions of Wriht’s sermons saying “God damn America” are apparently taken out of context, but editing John McCain’s comments by taking out 14 words form the middle of it is apparently on the level?

Considering the blatant deception going on here, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama should immediately call upon his party to kill the ad. But don’t count on it… they both have been using the “100-year-war” canard on stump — and FactCheck.org has specifically called Obama out on his deliberate distortion back in early February. So he’s as bad a liar Howard Dean.

And I’m sure Obama and his supporters will call this story a “distraction,” just like Rezko, Wright, the last debate, Bittergate, etc. etc. etc.

After an unsuccessful campaign for Congress in 2000, Illinois state Sen. Barack Obama faced serious financial pressure: numerous debts, limited cash and a law practice he had neglected for a year. Help arrived in early 2001 from a significant new legal client — a longtime political supporter.

Chicago entrepreneur Robert Blackwell Jr. paid Obama an $8,000-a-month retainer to give legal advice to his growing technology firm, Electronic Knowledge Interchange. It allowed Obama to supplement his $58,000 part-time state Senate salary for over a year with regular payments from Blackwell’s firm that eventually totaled $112,000.

A few months after receiving his final payment from EKI, Obama sent a request on state Senate letterhead urging Illinois officials to provide a $50,000 tourism promotion grant to another Blackwell company, Killerspin.

Killerspin specializes in table tennis, running tournaments nationwide and selling its own line of equipment and apparel and DVD recordings of the competitions. With support from Obama, other state officials and an Obama aide who went to work part time for Killerspin, the company eventually obtained $320,000 in state grants between 2002 and 2004 to subsidize its tournaments.

While Obama may not have been in Washington long (especially since half of his short term as a U.S. Senator has been spent running for president) but he’d be a liar if he claimed that he wasn’t a typical politician.

The Supreme Court ruled today that states can require voters to produce a photo ID when they vote. This is an important step in the right direction to strengthen the integrity of our voting system and preventing voter fraud by allowing states to have voters prove they are who they say they are.

Feel free to post your reactions to the ruling.

The word is that the economic stimulus checks are being mailed out today. So, I pose this question to the Blogs For Victory community: what do you plan to do with your rebate check?

UPDATE: Just a quick note… direct deposits are going to eligible people over the next 3 days.. checks will be mail soon.

Usually, candidates are open to having as many debates as possible. Unlike being on the campaign trail, it allows you to go head-to-head with your opponent and give voters a chance to weigh the differences between the candidates. For some reason (and we can all offer our guesses for the real reason) Barack Obama doesn’t want another debate before the potentially crucial Indiana and North Carolina primaries.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said on Sunday he would not hold another debate with rival Hillary Clinton until after the May 6 nominating contests in North Carolina and Indiana.

Clinton had challenged the Illinois senator and front-runner for the Democratic White House nomination to a 90-minute debate in Indiana without a moderator, but Obama turned her down.

“We’ve got nine days to try to campaign and reach as many voters as possible, and so rather than being in a studio, I want to make sure that we’re reaching out to folks where they live, answering their questions,” Obama told reporters.

After his subpar performance at the previous debate, it’s not surprising that he doesn’t want another debate until after the next batch of primary contests. He obviously feels he has more to lose than to gain from another debate at this point. Recent blunders combined with the ongoing Rezko and Wright stories have been chipping away at Obama’s so-called squeaky clean image.

But, this is a contest where both Democrats admit that when it comes to policy, that there’s not much difference between the two of them. With that in mind, another debate is extremely important so undecideds can potentially make their decision by seeing them debate. Obama’s refusal for another debate just makes him appear cowardly, not strategically smart. And it only gives Hillary more fodder for claiming he’s not been properly vetted.

I have an announcement for everyone here at Blogs For Victory. About a month ago I moved from Boston, MA to Buffalo, NY. I have traded Ted Kennedy and John Kerry for Chuck Schumer and Hillary Clinton. I only had to suffer one day with Eliot Spitzer as my governor.

Anyway, so, that’s my news. I am now a resident of New York State. As you may know, aside from this and other nationally oriented blogs, I also have a local Massachusetts politics blog, Hub Politics, which is still operating. I co-founded Hub Politics with my brother back in 2005, and it became the biggest conservative blog in the state. It will still go on, with my role gradually decreasing as I have now started a new conservative local politics blog for Western New York called The Buffalo Bean. So, for any of you out there from New York state, particularly Western New York, I encourage you to check out my new blog project.

As I’m sure you are all aware, John McCain has proposed a 3-month gas tax holiday from Memorial Day to Labor Day… and Senator Obama has come out opposing the idea.

But, as the Wall Street Journal reported today, as a state senator in Illinois Obama supported a gas tax holiday.

Sen. Obama, who voted for a temporary gas-tax break when he was a state senator in Illinois, rejected a federal tax holiday as bad fiscal policy. The federal gas tax raises money to repair and expand the highway system.

In Illinois in 2000, Sen. Obama voted for a six-month, five-percentage point break on the state’s 6.25% gas sales tax. The reduction of the tax, which goes into a general revenue fund, passed on a 55-1 vote and included measures designed to ensure that the benefits of the tax break reached consumers. At one point, Sen. Obama jokingly asked on the Senate floor whether it would be possible to install placards on gas-station pumps telling motorists he had helped win temporary price relief.

Now that it’s John McCain making the proposal for temporary relief at the gas pump, Obama has flip-flopped.

The ironic thing about the whole issue of high gas prices is that Democrats and the special interests that support them are the ones to blame. Because of the environmental lobby, we don’t drill for oil in our country. They also oppose building more refineries. The end result: our continued (and not increased) dependence on foreign oil.

But maybe that’s what Barack Obama wants, afterall, he’s gets a lot of money from big oil:

Sen. Barack Obama continued accepting donations from oil company executives and employees last month even as he aired ads in which he stated he took no oil company money, his campaign finance reports show.

Obama has taken at least $263,000 from oil company executives, family members and employees since entering the presidential race last year, including $46,000 last month. At least $140,000 has come in chunks of between $1,000 and $2,300, the maximum permitted under federal law.

Texas oil executive Robert L. Cavnar of Milagro Exploration and his wife, Gracie, have helped the Illinois Democrat raise at least another $50,000 by helping host a fundraiser earlier in the campaign.

Higher prices means more profit for big oil right? If you ask Obama that’s how things are… But when he gets big money from Big Oil, how do you think he cares about how much you’re paying at the pump when they’re pumping up his campaign coffers?

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: More on Obama’s Big Oil connections.