• 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.”

• How a cab medallion system is counterproductive: it introduces artificial scarcity and distorts drivers’ incentives.
• Russ Roberts points out that Japan’s fuel shortages are no mystery and that the solution isn’t more regulation. Shortages are a result of price controls that keep a scare product artificially inexpensive.
• Some fancy CSS work by Josh Brewer yields an impressive typographic result.
• New York City’s parking “privatization” scheme is a bad idea that isn’t really privatization at all, Stephen Smith argues.
• Last but not least, Dan Mitchell rounds up the late-night hosts’ cracks about Libya. My favorite, from Conan: “It’s being reported that Moammar Gadhafi is surrounded by an élite core of female bodyguards. In a related story, Charlie Sheen invaded Libya.”

One way bloggers can earn incremental income is through affiliate marketing programs, among which Amazon’s is perhaps the most popular. Bloggers simply link to Amazon products, adding a special referral code, and they are given credit for the sales they generate.

Generating these tracking codes can be something of a pain. Amazon’s own utility is clumsy and offers up a long, clunky URL. Ragaskar’s WordPress plugin aims to fill the void by automatically appending tracking codes to Amazon links in posts, but this can still generate clunky links.

Based on Ragaskar’s plugin, I whipped up the following code:

    add_filter('the_content','filter_amazon_associate_filter');

    add_filter('comment_text','filter_amazon_associate_filter');

    

    function filter_amazon_associate_filter($content) {

        $affiliate_code="YOURCODEHERE";

    

        $content=preg_replace(

            '/http:\/\/[^>]*?amazon.([^\/]*)\/([^>]*?ASIN|gp\/product|exec\/obidos\/tg\/detail\/-|[^>]*?dp)\/([0-9a-zA-Z]{10})[a-zA-Z0-9#\/\*\-\?\&\%\=\,\._;]*/i',

            'http://www.amazon.$1/exec/obidos/ASIN/$3/'.$affiliate_code,

            $content

        );

        return $content;

    }

Very simply, this code scans through your posts and comments and replaces ugly Amazon links with somthing like http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0048EJXCK/nathward-20.

To add this to your site, simply place the above code in your WordPress template’s functions.php file and replace YOURCODEHERE with your Amazon affiliate code.

Technology firms have often used April 1 as a chance to play pranks on their customers. Google, for example, is famous for these hoaxes, to the point that its 2004 launch of Gmail (on April 1) was originally viewed as a joke.

In a crowded field of 2011 pranks that includes elaborate videos and even browser extensions, LinkedIn’s prank is perhaps the subtlest and thus the funniest. They added historical figures and fictional characters to their “people you may know” tool, including Albert Einstein, Robin Hood (“Activist/​ Chief Fundraiser at Nottingham”) and J. R. R. Tolkien. Unfortunately, you can’t actually add these people to your network, but it’s a fun gesture nonetheless.

• Ryan Messmore warns that President Obama’s tax proposals might dampen charitable contributions and thereby increase dependence on government.
• Whoever would have thought that a billion-dollar bailout program wouldn’t work as expected?
• Adam Schroder’s 5 Steps to HTML5 showcases—and explains—some of the new features designers can build into their sites using HTML5 and CSS3.
• Smashing Magazine, meanwhile, offers up some tips for using CSS psuedo-elements like :nth-child().
• Last but not least, Richard Simmons provides one of the most entertaining in-flight safety videos ever.