Thanks for the music, Gerry Rafferty. And rest in peace. **** update: a more detailed obit, published in the Guardian.
January 4, 2011
January 4, 2011
“New Speaker Vows to Share Power—a Tricky Proposition”
Oh. Goodie: When John Boehner takes over one of the most powerful jobs in Washington this week, he says his first order of business is to make himself less powerful. On Wednesday the new speaker of the House of Representatives plans to offer a package of rule changes that, he says, will give minority-party members more of a say and decentralize power. […] Sounds like a nightmare, doesn’t it? But
January 4, 2011
I say, “Remember when Obama said it would be good if the US was more like Europe?”
Was it this kind of thing, ya think? Carbon footprints and all.
January 4, 2011
January fundraiser [sticky; new posts below] [Thursday update] [Final update]
Start the New Year off right: support freedom by giving me some of your money! Or if that doesn’t resonate with you as a pitch, let me know. I can do pity, too. **** update: about half-way home for the month. Thanks to all who’ve contributed! **** update 2: Thanks to all who’ve contributed this month. I’ll leave the post up through today, then it will disappear into the mists
January 4, 2011
This
You’ve heard me and others make these arguments, but it doesn’t hurt to hear them repeated with force and eloquence. Roger Pilon, vice president for legal affairs at the Cato Institute and publisher of the Cato Supreme Court Review, writing in the WSJ: Thus the first question the new Congress should ask of any proposed law is: Does the Constitution authorize us to pursue this end? If not, that ends
January 4, 2011
Another reason to despair that I’d missed because I was too concerned with the sinister machinations of the lame duck Congress
FX has canceled “Terriers,” easily the best TV show of 2010. In fact, “Terriers” joins (what to me is) the celebrated pantheon of great shows killed before their time — even as, eg., “Two and a Half Men” continues to pump out scenarios in which Charlie never really grows up and Ducky’s various neuroses are pricked for “comic” effect; “How I Met Your Mother” goes into yet another season-long analepsis
January 4, 2011
Pragmapopulism
Populist, “pragmatic” conservative Bill O’Reilly warns the GOP that trying to repeal ObamaCare is not what voters want (some of that 2700-page assault on personal liberty is, you see, “good for the folks”) — that instead, what voters want is for the new Congress to focus on the economy. Thus, per O’Reilly, a push to rollback ObamaCare is “a classic trap,” one that the GOP would do well to avoid.