Kevin Rennie has another scoop from Connecticut:

A Democratic challenge to Senator Christopher Dodd emerged today when Greenwich, Connecticut Democrat Roger Pearson told me he has formed a committee to explore a run for his party's 2010 nomination. The former First Selectman of the Republican bastion says that like many others he "is very disaffected" with Dodd, who has "really disappointed a lot of people."

"I look at the vision this guy is going to try to tell us he has," Pearson, 63, said late Thursday afternoon. "Where was he when Phil Gramm was talking about credit default stops and subprime mortgages?"

"I don't believe in career politics or career politicians," taking swipe at five term incumbent Dodd, who has fallen 16 points behind Republican former congressman Rob Simmons, according to a Quinnipiac Poll released yesterday.

The father of four children between the ages of 9 and 16, Pearson has some experience with the plunging prospects of previously unassailable politicians. The collapse of the Mianus River Bridge on I-95 in June, 1983, caused prolonged mayhem on the streets of Greenwich as the main northbound artery in the northeast remained closed for 6 months. That fall Pearson defeated Greenwich First Selectwoman Rebecca Breed, a rising star in Republican politics who'd been tagged with the failure to alleviate her tony town's misery.

The Stamford lawyer has had a diverse and eclectic career. In the 1970s and 1980s, he traveled the world representing professional tennis players. The New York Military Academy classmate of Donald Trump currently practices real estate, corporate and land use law.

Pearson's contrarian instincts were on display in 2006 when he supported Ned Lamont in the Democratic primary for the Senate and incumbent Joseph Lieberman when he ran in the general election as an independent after losing his party's nomination to Lamont. Pearson says he switched to Lieberman because he "wasn't happy with some of the answers" given during the fall campaign. Lieberman disappointed Pearson by failing to support a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq after winning re-election.

Calling himself "reasonably bipartisan," Pearson says he doesn't want to repeat the mistake he thinks he made in 1987 when he sat out a special election for Congress after the death of Republican Stewart McKinney.

A new DailyKos/Research2000 poll in South Dakota finds Sen. John Thune (R), with a 57%/32% favorable rating, leading two well-known Democrats in hypothetical 2010 Senate matchups. Thune leads former three-term Sen. Tom Daschle, whom Thune knocked out of the Senate by 2 points in 2004, as well as Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, who's in her third full term in the state's at-large House seat.

Thune 53
Daschle 40
Und 7

Thune 51
Herseth Sandlin 39
Und 10

While Pat Toomey, the Club for Growth president and former member of Congress, hasn't yet formally announced his candidacy, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) is apparently taking no chances. His miniscule margin of victory over Toomey in the 2004 Senate primary and his poor polling so far have caused the five-term senator to go on the air with a negative ad more than a year before the Republican primary.

"Pat Toomey. As a Wall Street trader he sold risky derivatives called credit default swaps. The same swaps that have now plunged us into this financial mess," the ad's narrator says. "Now Toomey wants a bonus: a seat in the United States Senate. Should we let him have it?"

MSNBC has been running a poll asking people to "Give President Obama a Grade." It's not scientific, of course, so let's take this with a grain of salt and with the understanding that hardcore partisans from each side often try to manipulate the results of these online polls. Nevertheless, with nearly 1.4 million votes cast, here are the results as of this morning when I grabbed a screenshot:

So 40% think Obama's acing the test, and 40% think he's like a member of the Delta House pledge class:

From Quinnipiac's new national survey, released yesterday:

21. Do you think the government should limit the amount of money that companies NOT taking federal funds pay their executives?

Yes 30%
No 64%
DK 6%

Think about these numbers for a second. Three out of ten Americans (including 22% of Republicans, 27% of Independents, and 40% of Democrats) believe the United States government should just reach in and tell companies how much they can pay their executives even if that company has not taken a single dime of taxpayer money.

That, my friends, is absolutely nuts.  Like others, I've been disgusted in the past over massive CEO payouts and golden parachutes, but however mad those things might have made me I never once thought the answer was to have the US government step in and put limits on what companies can pay their employees.

One can only hope this is a temporary, misplaced sentiment generated by residual anger over the AIG bonuses, and that it passes like a fever.

The Millennial Generation gets a taste of digital age medicine as rejection letters from Yale go paperless. On a related note, there were a lot more of them too, since Yale's admission rate dropped to an all time low of 7.5%.

As a Princeton alum, all of this talk about Yale makes me feel like I need a shower.

A new Quinnipiac poll in Connecticut finds Sen. Chris Dodd (D) trailing three potential Republican challengers, including former Rep. Rob Simmons, who leads Dodd by 16 points (March 26-31, 1181 RV, MoE +/- 2.9%). Just 58% of Democrats back Dodd against Simmons, while Simmons wins the support of 87% of Republicans.

Dodd faces dismal approval ratings: 33% approve and 58% disapprove of Dodd's handling of his job. Plus, a quarter of voters say Dodd is most to blame for the AIG bonuses.

“A 33 percent job approval is unheard of for a 30-year incumbent, especially a Democrat in a blue state," said Quinnipiac pollster Doug Schwartz. "Sen. Christopher Dodd's numbers among Democrats are especially devastating."

Other Republicans tested against Dodd include State Sen. Sam Caligiuri and former ambassador Tom Foley.

Simmons 50 (+7 vs. last poll, March 10)
Dodd 34 (-8)
Und 12

Caligiuri 41 (+7 vs. last poll, March 10)
Dodd 37 (-10)
Und 18

Foley 43
Dodd 35
Und 21

A Quinnipiac poll released today finds President Obama with a 58% job approval rating, and 51% of Americans believing his budget is needed to fix the economy.

Four in five Democrats support the President's budget, as do a slim majority of independents. Three-fourths of Republicans oppose it.

The survey also found that 81% of Americans support limiting executive compensation at firms that have received federal help. There is a bill on the House floor now that would do just that.

Obama now has a 61.0% approval rating in the RCP Job Approval Average

"You know, this is kind of weird. I've been reading federal budgets since I was 22 years old. I know that's kind of sick. I've never seen anything like this." - House Budget Committee ranking member Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), describing the country's fiscal situation today while introducing the GOP's alternative budget.