New Mexico certainly isn’t alone in facing potential huge budgetary shortfalls for the year that starts July 1. The state’s budget battle officially began Monday when the Legislature’s budget committee submitted its own proposal for the 2011 budget year that calls for job cuts and reduced salaries for state workers. But according to a USA Today survey states across the nation face similar grim budget shortfalls and that could mean a repeat of actions they took to close budget gaps this year: service cuts, layoffs or furloughs and higher fees.

Also, former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson gets a mention in David Brooks’ most recent New York Times column, which examines the Tea Party movement.

Politicians and their supporters routinely funnel money through county-level political party committees around California, avoiding strict limits on campaign giving and hiding the source of millions in donations, according to an analysis by California Watch.

Former GOP U.S. Sen. Lincoln D. Chafee, known for his moderate Republicanism while in Washington, announced Monday that he was running for governor of Rhode Island as an Independent and immediately showed he was not your run-of-the-mill candidate, calling for a proposal that could potentially raise $89 million in new taxes, The Providence Journal reports.

Alaska legislators last year cost the state thousands of dollars in travel expenses with trips to South Africa, Saudi Arabia, England, China, Germany, Korea, France and Russia, according to the Associated Press.

Internationally, the New York Times reports that the suicide bomber who killed seven C.I.A. officers and a Jordanian spy last week was a double agent who was taken onto the base in Afghanistan because the Americans hoped he might be able to deliver top members of Al Qaeda’s network.

On the tech front, Google later today will announce Nexus One, the first smart phone designed by the company’s own engineers. It is the company’s attempt to gain more control over how people surf the Web while they’re on the go, according to the Washington Post.

In the media world, Politico, the online political news site in Washington, has in two years grown to be a $20 million operation and finished calendar 2009 with operating profits of about a million or more, according to paidContent.org.