Going into CPAC this year I was afraid it might be a little dead this year. After all, with such excitement last year over the presidential election, I was worried there might not be as much energy on behalf of the activists.

Boy, was I ever wrong.

This afternoon some feisty CPAC-ers held a "Tea Party" outside the White House to rally against bailouts, where Michelle Malkin fired up the troops. I took some video of her impromptu speech. And, Joe the Plumber even made a special appearance! More photos below.

Meanwhile, the Townhall guys were holding down the fort at the actual conference. And, yes, they are quite the crew of good-looking conservative men!

And, I got to hang out with a real-life taxpayer watchdog, lol

Conservative media man Tucker Carlson is sad the Fairness Doctrine isn't going to be passed in its full glory.

He described it like "Christmas, your birthday and Hanukkah wrapped in one," because of the way it would have mobilized conservative activists.

It was particularly emblematic because, according to Carlson, the conservative movement is "held together by shared dislikes."

"Bill Clinton was the glue that held the conservative movement together" through the 1990's he said.

Now, it's time to figure out Republicans want. Or don't want again. "A lot of politics, as is life, is stopping bad things from happening," Carlson. He said it was okay for Republicans to say "I don't know what I am for, but I don't want that."

"There's no shame in telling other people to back off," Carlson declared.

UPDATE: Carlson was roundly booed by the audience for holding up the New York Times as an example of good journalism.

"They spell names right," Carlson said. The audience didn't want to hear it. Carlson gave the NYT credit for digging up original stories and for having properly edited content. A woman yelled out the papers was "twisted" in response.

"It's a liberal paper, okay, I knew that when I was a kid, my point is let's get our own papers!" he told her later during Q & A when she followed up with her earlier comments.

Carlson is currently embarking on his own conservative news project, which he briefly discussed at the conference.

"I've never met Pelosi's husband but I want to give the guy a medal." - Roger Hedgecock at CPAC while talking about why the Fairness Doctrine is bad.

I'm guessing it's this kind of talk that makes liberals so rabid about shutting down conservative radio. Hedgecock is free to say it of course, but I don't think that's exactly helping the cause.

Hedgecock also stole the basic idea of the American Issues Project latest ad about how to conceptualize $1 trillion in his speech. He said he had thought about it and figured a good way to visualize it is by thinking how far back Jesus existed.

Anyone who saw AIP's latest ad, or heard Minority Leader Mitch McConnell say this on the Senate floor knows Hedgecock didn't come up with this himself.

Moving on..

Editors' note: ?Townhall.com has learned that a specific speech topic request -- the fairness doctrine -- was not communicated directly to Joe Scarborough prior to his presentation. He gave his speech as he had prepared.

Ok, this is strange.

MSNBC's resident Republican Joe Scarborough was booked for CPAC to talk about the Fairness Doctrine. That's what it has said on the agenda for several days. And, as I blogged below there was even important action on it today in the Senate.

So, after a wonderful introduction by MRC's Seton Motley where he explained what happened this morning on the Hill, Scarborough totally dropped the ball.

He basically came out and said "I didn't know I was here to talk about the Fairness Doctrine, so let me say I'm against it....Now, I'm going to talk about what I was going to talk about."

Then, Scarborough proceeded to start talking about how great it was when he came to Congress in 1994. A basic, red meat speech on "the power of positive thinking in politics" and how even his dear old dad wouldn't vote for him.

But why is Scarborough ducking Fairness Doctrine talk? Did MSNBC put the tether on him? Does his new radio show with Mika have anything to do with it? Do they hope the single-host, conservative shows go down so Joe and Mika's ratings go up? I'm just speculating here, but why not. I wanted to hear him talk about conservative media.

Regardless, it's really poor tact to duck the topic you were billed to talk about to just, well, talk about yourself.

I hope he was misinformed.

We already know Barack Obama sure doesn't like the likes of talk radio titans like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. Yet, he's always been careful to say he opposes the Fairness Doctrine. He'd rather go about it in a different way.

And, get his old homestate senator, Dick Durbin, to do his bidding

The Senate overwhelmingly approved a measure to prevent the Fairness Doctrine from being reinstated today, yet also agreed to urge the Federal Communications Commission to increase "diversity" on the airwaves.

President Obama wrote a letter to the FCC when he was Illinois senator saying action must be taken to increase minority ownership in print and broadcast media. Conservative watchdogs have argued using government to do this is a  "backdoor" version of the Fairness Doctrine.

Both actions were attached to a larger bill to grant Washington D.C. voting rights. At this point it is unclear if either measure would be included in the final version of the bill.

Conservative Sen. Jim DeMint (S.C.) sponsored the amendment to kill the Fairness Doctrine. It passed 87-11.

Liberal Sen. Dick Durbin (D.-Ill.) sponsored the competing amendment for more media diversity, which passed 57-41.

"Today was an important victory for free speech, but the fight is far from over," said DeMint in a statement. "Senator Durbin's amendment exposed Democrat intentions to impose radio censorship through the back door using vague regulations dealing with media ownership. Senator Durbin's language was so broad, it could apply beyond radio to television, newspapers and the internet. All eyes are now on the FCC. If they attempt to shut down free speech directly, we will fight to stop them."

CPAC is hosting a panel to discuss the Fairness Doctrine at 3:45pm with Joe Scarborough and Tucker Carlson. I do hope they weigh in on the Senate's latest action.

Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee sounded a bit like he was still on the presidential campaign stump at CPAC Thursday afternoon.

He delivered a tough-talking speech, discussing the need for education reform, nuclear energy development and dismissing universal health care where "some computer here in Washington will decide what treatment you can have."

And, he gave a nod to his down-home roots.

"I'm not a Republican because I grew up rich," Huckabee said. "I'm a Republican because I grew up poor and didn't want to wait for the government to rescue me."

The normally optimistic Huckabee ended his speech with an unusually dire note though.

"Let's change this country because if we don't there may not be another generation left to get the job done," he said  before walking off stage.

President Obama's soon-to-be released budget will reportedly contain $634 billion to pay for universal health care.

The Washington Post is describing this as a "developing" story. These are all the details for now:

President intends to release a budget tomorrow that creates a 10-year, $634 billion "reserve fund" to partially pay for a vast expansion of the U.S. health system, an overhaul that many experts project will cost as much as $1 trillion over the next decade.

Obama would pay for the expansion by trimming tax breaks for the wealthy and tightening payments to insurers, hospitals and physicians, according to a senior administration official.

Well, I don't feel as good about the Jindal response as I did earlier today.

There was a cheesy, salesman-like quality to the response that I don't think connected with the Rick Santelli-inspired anger so many Republicans are feeling right now. And, I'm pretty sure he's going to be SNL's next target. His speech tempo was just, so weird.

Enough complaning from me. He didn't pass the primetime test and it makes me sad. I don't want to dwell.

What do you all think? Leave comments below.

President Obama announced Vice President Joe Biden will be keeping Congress in check on earmarks and wasteful spending.

I argued throughout the campaign and even in an Townhall cover story that would be Sara Palin's role as vice president if McCain won the election. She even said something to that effect and was smeared by liberals for allegedly overstepping her role.

Funny how things work out.

President Obama couched his calls for more government spending and tax increases in the spirit of American can do in this primetime address Tuesday evening.

"People bought homes they knew they couldn't afford from banks and lenders who pushed those bad loans anyway," Obama said, "And all the while, critical debates and difficult decisions were put off for some other time on some other day. Well that day of reckoning has arrived, and the time to take charge of our future is here."

Obama applauded Congress for delivering his $787 billion stimulus bill and beginning work on a $75 billion plan to increase lending and subsidize homes for people who can no longer afford their mortgages..

President Obama said he understood the "enormous responsibility" that comes with implementing massive programs with "good intentions can turn into broken promises and wasteful spending." To combat waste, fraud and abuse Obama announced Vice President Joe Biden would lead the administration's oversight tasks. "Because nobody messes with Joe," Obama laughed.

Republicans embraced Obama's calls for accountability and transparency and urged him to follow through on them in current budget battles, specifically the $410 billion omnibus spending bill House Democrats unveiled Monday.

"Republicans agree with the President on these commitments, and we assume Democratic congressional leaders do too," a group of House Republicans wrote in a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) Tuesday.  "It is in this spirit that we urge you to scrap the so-called 'omnibus' spending bill being rushed to a vote this week and instead bring a “continuing resolution” to the floor that freezes federal spending at current levels and includes no earmarks, Democratic or Republican."