Morning Constitutional – Tuesday, 18 May 2010

Good morning, everybody. Charlie Sheen has signed on for two more years of Two and a Half Men, and at a salary of nearly $2M an episode, becomes the highest paid actor on television. Now, your morning constitutional:

Democrats and Republicans go to polls today in primaries and special elections in Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Kentucky and Oregon.

As Congress looks this week at how the government and industry responded to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, it is likely that regulations on oil extraction will be tightened.

Newt Gingrich trying really, really hard to stay relevant.

Sausages are worse for you than unprocessed red meat.

Central American countries and the European Union came to an agreement Tuesday to liberalize trade and cut tariffs.

Democrats in Illinois wonder if it might be necessary to push the unpopular Alexi Giannoulias of this fall\’s Senate race.

Views on immigration present a new generation gap, as older Americans are less welcoming to immigrants than young people.

The smallpox vaccine may help prevent HIV infection.

Conservative pundits really care about Miss America. Adam Serwer at The American Prospect further notes:

I\’m not really a fan of beauty contests, but the tone and substance of the fever swamp\’s reaction to an Arab-American winning a beauty contest is at least useful for pointing out how some people\’s political opinions aren\’t based so much in questions of policy as anti-Muslim animosity. The level of anger is just so plainly disproportionate to the matter at hand as to be self-implicating. These people aren\’t worried about terrorism — they\’re offended by the idea of Muslims being integrated into the most mundane and banal aspects of American society.

Financial markets in the U.K. tumbled Monday after the new coalition government accused the previous Labour government of fixing financial forecasts.

Michael Lind at Salon: What\’s the next form of American capitalism?

Finally, BBC (finally) explores the history and meaning of the two-fingered metal sign.