You don’t say: In his brilliant exposition of why sweeping policy changes often have unintended consequences, the late sociologist Robert K. Merton wrote that leaders get things wrong when their “paramount concern with the foreseen immediate consequences excludes the consideration of further or other consequences” of their proposals. This leads policy makers to assert things that are false, wishing them to be true. Which brings us to President Obama’s many

Here’s one of those sites I wish I’d never found. BECAUSE OF THE CONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION! (Still. Anybody feel like buying me a $2500 Invicta diving watch for $450? Maybe?)

Outlaw!* Oh. And just so’s we’re clear, remember: dissent is patriotic, and it’s always right to Speak Truth to Power. — Even if doing so makes the President look like a craven, Chicago-style street pimp always on the lookout for a bitch to slap. (h/t happyfeet)

Or, alternately, “Ken Salazar and Obama: Lying, dissembling, partisan, CYA-determined crapweasels.” From WSJ: Before the Obama Administration sweeps under the carpet the controversy over the drilling experts it falsely used to justify its moratorium, the incident bears another look. Not least because it underlines the purely political nature of a drilling ban that now threatens the Gulf Coast economy and drilling safety. When President Obama last month announced his six-month

— Which, I wonder if this means they finally got around to reading the thing? Frankly, the only proper response for Arizona at this point is to tell the Feds to fuck the fucking fuck off — and tell Obama that if he wants to stop them from protecting their own borders, he should send some troops down to police those citizens who are hoping to police those own borders,

The wife and I are off to the coast for our 10th anniversary celebration, because nothing says “I’ve committed myself to you for a decade now, and I our love continues to grow stronger with each passing year” quite so much as having dirty hippies dressed in spunk-crusted ponchos hitting you up for loose change outside some San Francisco head shop. Keep the place buzzing, people. Buzzing like spunk-crusted panhandlers

You’ve heard me mention, from time to time, that my criticism of legal conservatism, broadly speaking, is that the conservative component of the libertarian-conservative alliance that makes up legal conservatism is too often reliant on stare decisis — and so too deferential to precedent — to beat back bad law that has become entrenched. Libertarians, on the other hand, are more amenable to so-called “judicial activism” — if in fact

Is it any wonder why big corporations eventually warm to the idea of corporatism / fascism? Share the (people’s) wealth! The Durbin amendment imposes a price control scheme on the fees oil companies and retailers pay when they accept payment by credit cards. The amendment was conceived and pushed for by lobbyists for big oil companies and big retailers like BP and Wal-Mart. Their goal is simple — shift the

oatmeal: “What’s with all the fuss over ‘high-fiber’ breakfast cereals lately? In my day, if you needed that badly to take a dump, you ate a fistful of prunes, downed a pot of black coffee, and grunted one out like a birthing Kodiak bear. And you liked it. ” — Seriously. What a bunch of pussies Americans have become.”*

Follow the bouncing ball… (h/t JHo)