Mathew Boyle from The Daily Caller highlights next month’s GOP presidential debate: “The Daily Caller, ATR and YouTube are hosting the debate, which will feature questions from audience members. The Daily Caller’s Editor-in-Chief Tucker Carlson said it’s an opportunity for engaged primary voters to interact directly with candidates. ‘For Republican candidates seeking to appeal to conservatives, this debate offers an opportunity to hear from engaged primary voters,’ Carlson said in a statement. ‘Social media allows voters to engage candidates directly. Conventional debates keep viewers at bay as observers. This debate will make them participants.’ ATR president Grover Norquist said this is a rare chance for candidates to debate without biased left-wing media filtering it. ‘This debate will focus on economics and the ongoing destruction of American jobs by the current Administration,’ Norquist said. ‘Real Republicans will ask real questions without the filter of establishment media bias.’ The debate is scheduled for July 10 in Las Vegas. YouTube will be carrying a live streaming video of it, as will The Daily Caller.”

From Daily Local News, Anthony Dalke writes: “An anti-tax pledge signed by several Pennsylvania lawmakers has been at the center of the state budget debate, as legislators question its influence on spending decisions being made in the next two weeks. A total of 34 state legislators and Gov. Tom Corbett signed the ‘Taxpayer Protection Pledge.’ By signing the pledge, the politicians, 31 of whom are Republican, promise not to vote for tax increases or new taxes. However, it does allow for new taxes, if they are offset with revenue neutral reductions of other taxes. For the lawmakers who signed the pledge, it signals their beliefs and holds them accountable to voters. ‘I don't believe we have a revenue problem; we have a spending problem,’ said state Rep. Stephen Bloom, R-Cumberland. ‘The pledge is a helpful way to show that there is another way that doesn't burden people with additional taxes.’”