Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine:
Elk Talk
While campaigning for his wife in Indiana last week, former President Bill Clinton said Hillary Clinton would scratch No Child Left Behind laws and that, "every time I say this, it's a guaranteed applause line. You can drop me in the middle of Idaho where there's not a Democrat in 200 miles and an elk would applaud me on that."
Well that statement has angered some Idaho Democrats and the state's party chairman Keith Roark says, "If Bill Clinton had done for elk in Idaho everything he did for Democrats, we'd have far fewer elk." And state-party spokesman Chuck Oxley says, "It's somehow magnetically grilled into his stump speech — to make this joke about how there are no Democrats in Idaho. Frankly, he didn't help."
The state party points to Clinton's impact on Idaho saying that in 1991, the year before he became president, Democrats and Republicans shared an equal number of seats in the Idaho State Senate. But by 2001, Democrats had just 3 of the 35 seats.
Show Me the Money
If a stay-at-home mom could be compensated in dollars she would rake-in almost $117,000 a year. That's according to a pre-Mother's Day study conducted by salary.com. The annual survey calculated a mother's market value by studying 10 jobs with duties that the typical mom perform — things like: housekeeper; day-care center teacher; van driver; psychologist and chief executive officer.
In all, 18,000 moms were interviewed and the biggest driver of mom's theoretical salary is the amount of overtime pay she would receive. According to the survey, the average stay-at-home mom works 95-hours a week.
Samantha Russell — a New Hampshire mother who left her job as a pastry chef to raise her two sons — completed the survey and said, "the rewards aren't monetary, but it's a reward knowing that they're safe and happy. It's worth it all."
Numbing Numbers
New information from the National Climatic Data Center might cool some global warming theories. According to the center, April 2008 was the coldest April in 11 years. The average temperature last month here in the U.S. was 51-degrees Fahrenheit. That figure is 1 degree cooler than the average April temperature for the entire twentieth century.
President of the National Center for Policy Research Amy Ridenour tells FOX News, "this is further proof that global warming is not happening. Somebody has to be the grownup in this debate and the fact is, climate change is variable. If it wasn't, then we wouldn't have weathermen."
April 2008 ranks as the 29th coldest since record keeping began 114 years ago.
Flat Tax?
Farmers in Estonia are facing a new gas tax. But it might not be what you're thinking. Cattle ranchers in the Eastern European country have started receiving notices that they will be taxed for methane gas emissions from their cows.
Cows produce large quantities of methane gas through belching and flatulence when they digest grass. Some environmental estimates say that cows account for 15-25 percent of the world's gas emissions and a single cow can produce 350 liters of methane and up to 1,500 liters of carbon dioxide in a single say.
A spokesman for the country's main opposition party — the People's Union of Estonia — calls the new tax a "huge surprise." There is no other European Union country that imposes a flatulence tax on its farmers.
— FOX News Channel's Martin Hill contributed to this report.
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