Wapo: Across Ohio last week, the legislative push to restrict the union rights of government workers was greeted again and again by noisy protests. But in this state dotted with manufacturing plants and their locals, this may have been more striking: At least some elected officials normally sympathetic to industrial unions were questioning whether they should side with government workers. “I believe in what unions do, but as an elected

Pandering to the greens and the ethanol fetishists must not be paying off like it once did… (h/t Dan K)

Or, as I like to call them, the 47 haters who most want to harm women, children, minorities, and the earth.

Natural causes, his daughter says. Still. I’d check on Sarah Palin’s whereabouts.

Surprise! Overall, the Fed’s total balance sheet has expanded from $896 billion in Aug. 2007 when its latest round of quantitative easing began, to over $2.5 trillion today, a 187 percent increase. Now, prices are following suit. After a huge surge in oil in 2008, which saw the price of a barrel of oil peak at nearly $150 in July 2008, right before the financial crisis of September, it is

Reason’s Radley Balko finds Jonathan Chait’s sin of omission and bitch slaps him with it. Liberty. So very shadowy and right wing. **** update: So long as we’re talking about the Kochs, liberty, and individualism, see also here.

This is ironic.

James Pethokoukis, Reuters: Republicans, who control the House, want to cut $61 billion a year from discretionary programs, excluding defense and other security items, which depending on each politician’s chosen definition total $500 billion or somewhat more of the $3.5 trillion federal budget for 2010. Cost cuts on that scale, though, could lead to an impasse with the Democrat-controlled Senate next month. Meanwhile, President Barack Obama has called for a

Is it just me, or is it a poignant commentary on the sad decline of American individualism that a flaccid, big-government yes man like Ken Salazar gets away with wearing a fucking cowboy hat these days? Meh. Here.

Harsanyi: According to Nobel laureate and raconteur Paul Krugman, Gov. Scott Walker and “his backers” are attempting to “make Wisconsin — and eventually, America — less of a functioning democracy and more of a Third World-style oligarchy.” Now, it’s common knowledge that throwing around loaded words like “socialism” is both uncivil and obtuse, so it’s comforting to know we can still refer to people as “Third World-style oligarchs.” And boy,