Last week Joan Vennochi of the Boston Globe spanked Mitt Romney for an interview he gave to The Hill newspaper in which Vennochi said he flip-flopped on immigration.

Today, Romney responds in a letter to the paper saying, "my view on immigration reform is exactly as I described in my 2008 campaign."

Two weeks ago Al Gore was in Chicago doing his routine on climate change during which he says that by the middle of the century it'll be warm enough to play baseball in February. For the record, yesterday was the chilliest Cubs home opener in five years.

And Chicago weather guru Tom Skilling says the chills of April will continue:

Chicagoans brace for early March level temperatures Tuesday, with readings more than 15 degrees below normal, as the area moves into an 11th consecutive day of sub-normal temperatures. This month's 41.0-degree average temperature is 3.6-degrees below the long-term 138-year average—cool enough to rank among the chilliest 20 percent of April 1-14 periods on the books. It's the first April here in 25 years that has failed to host a single 60-degree daytime high.

I'm back from a week in the Arizona desert. Technically, it was a vacation, though the term somewhat loses its meaning when you're traveling with three kids.

A couple of quick plugs to start things off:

This morning on RCP we have an exclusive op-ed by Senators Russ Feingold (D-WI) and David Vitter (R-LA) opposing automatic Congressional pay raises. The Senators write:

Since 1989, when Congress passed a law making annual pay raises automatic, members of the House and Senate have received regular pay increases based on a formula set by that legislation.  This 20-year-old backdoor pay raise system has allowed Congress to increase its own pay virtually every year without public debate and with very little – if any – public attention. [snip]

At a time when so many Americans are losing their jobs and struggling to pay their mortgages, these raises are all the more offensive.  Most Americans don't have a formula at their job that gives them automatic pay increases, and Congress shouldn't either.

As much as you think this issue might be a no-brainer, it's not a done deal unless and until it passes the House and is signed by the President.

Also, RealClearWorld has launched an excellent new global news feature called "Around the World." Click on a country of interest to get the latest RCW-selected commentary and country-specific data from Gallup's world poll. If you're a global news junkie or like to follow the news in certain countries in particular, Around the World is going to be a valuable resource.

With that, we return to our regularly scheduled programming.

The race to replace Congresscritter-turned-Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is still a nailbiter, with Democrat Scott Murphy up by 25 votes on Republican James Tedisco.  Politico reports:

The 10:30 a.m. tally shows Murphy with 77,907 votes and Tedisco with 77,882 votes.

The count still doesn't include absentee ballots from Saratoga County (a Tedisco stronghold), Washington County (a Murphy stronghold), and only shows 64 absentees counted from Murphy's home base of Warren County.

Tedisco is appparently reporting that he will gain about 120 votes from Saratoga county, with the count there about halfway concluded. Given that Washington and Warren counties combined cast about half as many votes as Saratoga County, while favoring Murphy by margins similar to Tedisco's margin in Saratoga, that would seem to be ominous news for Murphy.

But we must be cautious not to commit the ecological fallacy here, as far too many people who should know better have done.  Knowing how Saratoga and Washington/Warren counties voted in the general election really doesn't (necessarily) tell us much about how many people turned in absentee ballots, or how the absentees will break. You're dealing with a different subset of the electorate that could be more or less Republican, depending on how the parties targeted their GOTV efforts and how different demographics responded to those efforts.  So far the absentees seem to be breaking a few points more toward the Democrats than the counties as a whole, with Otsego county being slightly more Republican and Columbia county being considerably more Democratic.

In other words, this is still very much anyone's game.  Don't believe anything until the counting is done!

It took more than a week but the UN Security Council agreed Monday to officially scold North Korea for its missile test (without detailing whether it was a missile or satellite launch, as Pyongyang alleges the latter).

For punishment, the Security Council largely insisted upon the enforcement of past punishments. Ergo, the 15-nation council urged the enforcement of sanctions adopted after North Korea's 2006 nuclear test. The statement, drafted by the United States and China, promises that it will offer a bit more punishment within the month by banning some North Korean exports and freezing some banking assets.

A presidential statement is not binding, like a UN resolution. But UN members are supposed to follow a statement's directives.

At issue is Resolution 1718. Passed in October 2006, in a rare moment when China and Russia allowed for a unanimous Security Council action against North Korea, the resolution forbid North Korea from further nuclear or ballistic missile tests.  The statement specifies that the recent missile test was a violation of 1718. That's a small rhetorical victory for Japan and the United States, as the language is stronger than China would have preferred. Yet Japan had wanted a council resolution, which is binding though clearly, as 1718 demonstrated, quite often still a bark without bite.

Monday's statement will prove little more than symbolic. The international community is depending upon the six-party talks--North Korea, China, Russia, Japan, South Korea and the United States--to corral North Korea, which the UN has proven incapable of containing.

The statement will likely be formally adopted Monday afternoon. It demands North Korea cease further launches, just as the stronger resolution had more than two years ago.

The anti-tax Club for Growth announced today that former Rep. Chris Chocola (R-Ind.) is taking over as president, as Pat Toomey steps down from his post to "pursue other opportunities."

A Club for Growth press release described Chocola as "a staunch defender of the American taxpayer, fighting for the limited-government, free-market principles that are the foundation for economic growth in this country."

In 2006, Chocola was defeated for re-election to Congress by Joe Donnelly, whom Chocola had beaten in 2004. Chocola had a conservative voting record in the House, where he represented the northern-Indiana 2nd District for two terms.

Toomey is expected to challenge Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) for a second straight election. After coming up just short of knocking Specter out in the 2004 GOP primary, poor polling numbers for Specter indicate he is again vulnerable.

"I wish Pat the best of luck on his new path and am confident that he will be successful in whatever he does," Chocola said.

The Chicago Sun-Times reports today that Rod Blagojevich, the disgraced former governor, was told that Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) would raise $5 million in campaign funds for him in exchange for a Senate appointment.

"The overture came from at least two members of the local Indian community who approached the Blagojevich fund-raising team last fall, sources say.

Besides the $5 million to be raised by Jackson, the proposal also included another $1 million for Blagojevich's campaign fund that would come from Indian donors, sources say.

This is the first revelation that a proposal for the Jackson appointment involved an alleged promise that he'd raise campaign cash for the ex-governor.

Also, the amount of money allegedly offered to Blagojevich is significantly higher than what's been reported so far.

Sources did not disclose what role, if any, Jackson played in authorizing the offers to Blagojevich. Jackson has denied allowing anyone to make pay-to-play offers to the governor on his behalf. The congressman has been interviewed by authorities but has not been accused of wrongdoing."

Jackson said last week that he was "cooperating fully" with a preliminary review by the Office of Congressional Ethics, a relatively new panel that will decide whether or not the House Ethics Committee should conduct a full investigation. However, Jackson continued to deny any wrongdoing.

"As I said when the Blagojevich scandal first broke back in December, I have done nothing wrong and reject pay-to-play politics," Jackson said. "I'm confident that this new ethics office -- which I voted in favor of creating -- will be able to conduct a fair and expeditious review and dismiss this matter."

Former Delegate Brian Moran leads his two Democratic primary opponents, according to a new Daily Kos/Research2000 poll. Moran leads with 24%, followed by Terry McAuliffe with 19% and Creigh Deeds with 16%.

McAuliffe is the only one of the three Democrats whom more voters hold an unfavorable (36%) opinion of than favorable (35%). Moran has a 36%/33% fav/unfav rating, and Deeds is at 34%/30%.

Moran also performs the best against Republican candidate Bob McDonnell, who resigned as state attorney general to run for governor.

McDonnell 37 - Moran 36 - Und 27
McDonnell 40 - McAuliffe 33 - Und 27
McDonnell 38 - Deeds 31 - Und 31

"Not only are we leading in the primary, but, more importantly, this poll confirms that Brian is the strongest Democrat to take on Bob McDonnell in November," Moran campaign manager Andrew Roos said in a released statement. "Virginia Democrats know that we need a fighter and we need a winner come November, and this poll is further evidence that we are running a campaign that will accomplish exactly that."

With two months before the primary, McAuliffe currently leads in cash-on-hand with $2.5 million, followed by Deeds with $1.2 million and Moran with $825,000.

Andrew Sullivan has been blogging up a storm in the wake of the Iowa Supreme Court's decision to legalize gay marriage, as well as the Vermont Legislature's decision to legalize gay marriage. Today Sullivan, citing Nate Silver, chides National Review for misusing polling data (NR claims that Gallup shows little movement in the 2000s, while Silver's more fulsome data show fairly consistent improvement over time), and claims that "[i]n California, everyone concedes that support keeps going up - as the 2008 vote was far closer than the 2000 one":

Setting aside completely the merits of the gay marriage debate, I'm not sure Sullivan is correct on these two points. First, while Silver's LOESS regression shows a pretty smooth trendline, LOESS regression tends to show smoother trendlines than, say, rolling averages, especially if you use a large smoothing parameter. Even then, Silver's data show a flattening of support in 2008-2009.

For a different perspective, you can view Pollster.com's estimate, which shows a less-dramatic rise in support. This estimate only goes through 2008 (when Silver begins to show a flattening), but it shows support today at 40%, and opposition about where it was before the Supreme Court of Massachusetts weighed in. This is consistent with NRO's argument, though NRO also seems to ignore that a large reason for the "flatness" is the step back that occurred in the wake of the Massachusetts decision). To be sure, same-sex marriage seems likely (based on the information we have about people's attitudes today) to win out in the end – if for no other reason than attrition. But its arrival may be farther off than Sullivan anticipates, and support has been growing rather slowly, and in fits and starts, across the last decade.

More importantly, while I would think that support for gay marriage has grown in California, I would be wary of reading too much into the fact that the 2008 vote was far closer than the 2000 vote. With Prop 22, gay marriage proponents were seeking to preserve the immediate status quo and were not actually faced with the prospect of stripping anyone of a right that was more than theoretical. Neither was true for Prop 8, meaning that at least some of the tightening was likely due to the differing factual contexts for Prop 8 and Prop 22.

It is also probably worth noting that the next time gay marriage comes up for a vote in California, these contexts will be more akin to those present for Prop 22 than for Prop 8, and that in the future, proponents of gay marriage will have the added disadvantage of being on the “yes” side of a ballot initiative, which is generally thought to be the more difficult side to be on.

Carolinians for Reform announced today that it will spend $230,000 on a TV ad featuring South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R) defending his position to spend federal stimulus money to pay down the state's debt.

"For me the easy thing would be to accept money handed out from Washington, but the easy thing isn't always the right thing," Sanford says in the ad.

The DNC responded with a statement from spokesman Hari Sevugan.

"It's not surprising that Governor Sanford feels he needs to spend a quarter of a million dollars defending himself in a television ad after rejecting millions in funding for his state," said Sevugan. "Then again, if I had rejected $700 million for schools and public safety, I'd feel the need to go on TV and defend myself too, but that doesn't excuse Governor Sanford for putting his political ambitions ahead of the needs of South Carolinians."