Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI). Photo: Wikimedia/Gage Skidmore

• Rep. Paul Ryan makes the case for his 2012 budget. My colleagues at Heritage give it two cheers, and Ross Douthat calls it the “triumph of policy” over politics.
• E.J. Dionne warns that Ryan’s budget would mark the end of progressive government, which is actually a good thing.
• A new report released by the New Organizing Institute both offers insights into e-mail advocacy and explains why careful testing is important.
• Megan McArdle explains that the complexity of accounting practices means  it’s perhaps futile to try to design a corporate tax without “loopholes” of any sort. “A corporate income tax,” she writes, “needs to start by calculating income, and as anyone who has ever looked at a corporate financial statement knows, that’s really complicated.”
• Mark Hemingway points out the facts about who has received campaign donations post–Citizens United. We shouldn’t forget, though, that principle is a better way to make policy than a cui bono analysis.
• Last but not least, Trent Hamm makes the case that your leisure time should not be spent idly. Leisure time, he writes, “can provide all the space you need to take on personal goals and get involved in things you might not otherwise enjoy.”

“…all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…” Photo: Wikimedia

“States don’t have rights,” Stephen Green reminds us. “Individuals do. It’s time we went about the business of restoring those rights, without alienating a huge constituency which suffered too long without them.” Green rightly argues that conservatives’ use of the language of states’ rights is not only muddle-headed but, for historical reasons, tends to associate conservatives with Jim Crow.

Nicola Moore and Eric Heis are undertaking an innovative project to raise youth awareness of federal overspending: they’re making a video game caled U.O.Me. They’re accepting contributions through mid-August to fund the game’s programming.

Realizing that spending is an issue of growing salience, progressives are rallying around new gimmicks like advanced rescission to bolster their budget-cutter bonafides. George Will is having none of it: the plan “certainly would not reduce deficit spending: Under the president’s proposal, if Congress kills the projects on the president’s list, the budgetary allocation would not be reduced, so legislators could dream up new things on which to spend the money.”

Timothy Carney, for his part, wonders if conservatives will look to military budgets as a source of savings.

E.J. Dionne says it’s ironic that conservatives who decry big government are calling for the federal government to more effectively manage the Gulf oil spill. Dionne, of course, is missing the point: there’s a difference between effective government (or energetic government, as Publius dubbed it in the Federalist) and big government. But all too many conservatives allow progressives to make such arguments by advocating for small government rather than a limited government that undertakes only its core responsibilities.

And last but not least, this is a clever submission to Google’s Search Stories campaign: