Want a laugh? Well go back one year to this column, and ruminate on whether it could be possible for the author to be any more wrong… There have been 11 recessions since the Great Depression. And we’re nowhere close to being in the 12th one now. This isn’t just a matter of opinion. Words [...]

Radley Balko wrote a post explaining why the boycott of Whole Foods, a company that does everything the left wants employers to do for their employees and community, was moronic. He was linked by a few higher-profile lefty sites, and attracted some pretty hardcore vitriol. So he responded. Or, more accurately, he reached out through [...]

CSI, Forensic Files, The First 48 and other television programs of this genre are among my favorites. Investigators study a crime scene and learn all sorts of valuable information from blood spatter, shoe prints, tire marks, hair fibers, ballistics, and trace evidence. We are to believe that “the evidence doesn’t lie” and that these noble [...]

From The Economist

Chalk this one up to the sloppy language and anthropomorphism. Marc Ambinder is responding to points Megan McArdle made about obesity, and he takes a few steps too far (via Democracy in America): If you tend to blame individuals for their choices, then your answer will be no. But the crucial fact is that obesity [...]

Satisfaction levels of Medicare beneficiaries are pretty high. This surprises Kevin Drum: There’s a pretty obvious political dynamic that’s responsible for this. Seniors, who actually use Medicare, know perfectly well that it’s a good program. They can see any doctor they want, they get care when they need it, and the quality of service is [...]

Kevin Drum observes the lobbying fight between merchants and credit card companies. Card companies charge fees to merchants for the ability to accept cards, but if competition makes them unable to fully pass those fees along, they end up eating out of profit margins. So merchants want to get Congress to slap restrictions an the [...]

Ezra Klein says there’s we shouldn’t act as if defense spending (considered discretionary in the budget) in unable to be cut: My friend Chris Hayes likes to say that “non-defense discretionary spending” is the most pernicious phrase in Washington. It means, essentially, that there’s spending, which we can cut, and then there’s defense spending, which [...]

I wanted to give a shout out to co-blogger Jason Pye, who is currently editor of UnitedLiberty.org, a [fairly] new libertarian group blog. United Liberty is, much like The Liberty Papers, a “big-tent” libertarian site. They’ll run the gamut from anarcho-capitalists to Ron Paul Republibertarians. They include portions of their site for “headlines” and other [...]

Kevin Drum, on time filling out forms: So once you do your taxes you only have about two additional hours of government form filling out to do each year. To be honest, that’s less than I would have guessed — but that’s probably because I’ve been fooled by the fantastic increase in private sector forms [...]

Kevin Drum actually makes sense on this one! Trade talks aren’t quite that bad. But they’re close. The Doha round in particular lives or dies based on the willingness of rich nations to substantially reduce tariffs and subsidies on agricultural products, and seriously, what are the odds of that? We can’t even have a serious [...]

The parent company of the Boston Globe newspaper, the New York Times; has threatened to shut the Globe down if they cannot get at least $20 million in savings out of the paper for next year. [The story] quoted an unnamed person saying that in the meeting, management said that without the concessions, The Globe [...]

Check in this Thursday night at 8pm ET with your questions for Cheye Calvo, the Berwyn Heights, Maryland mayor who was subject to a violent, botched drug raid last year. Calvo’s pushing legislation that would bring transparency to how Maryland’s police departments use their SWAT teams. I’m hoping to be home in time to participate [...]

Kevin Drum, responding to Matt Yglesias’ suggestion that a payroll tax cut would be worthwhile in the “stimulus” bill: Agreed, but isn’t the $500/$1000 refundable tax credit in the current package essentially the same thing? Technically it’s a credit against income tax, but in practice, since it’s refundable, it’s a flat tax rebate for everyone [...]

Kevin Drum wonders why Republicans are recalcitrant obstructionists: Republican senators have a modest proposal for Hilda Solis: that if she’s confirmed as Labor Secretary, she recuse herself from any advocacy for the Employee Free Choice Act. That’s quite the suggestion. Rather like asking Robert Gates not to advocate for the armed forces, or Judd Gregg [...]

It’s very simple, and it’s something that, in many forms, I’ve discussed on many levels. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone lay it out quite as clearly and succinctly as here at Coyote Blog. I’m not going to excerpt it, because you simply need to click over and read the whole thing.

A few days ago, I tried to explain, in layman’s terms, how we ended up in this financial mess. I had this to say about the bailout: We can debate whether or not this bailout should or shouldn’t occur (for the record, I’m against it), but in an election year, there’s nothing that’s going to [...]

Blogger Megan McArdle has a problem. 16 years ago, in college at the age of 19, she was caught drinking underage in a bar in Pennsylvania, arrested, and convicted. At the time, she was a college student, without a driver’s license, and thus had no license to suspend. Since then, she’s gone on to live [...]

Over at Cafe Hayek, Don Boudreaux linked to his article discussing Bryan Caplan’s book, The Myth of the Rational Voter. In the always-wonderful comments section, a commenter named Bret made this point: So let me get this straight. If I vote in a way that makes me feel fantastic and wonderful about myself and I [...]

Wow. That’s all I can really say. Wow. I could make snide jokes, I could try to spin some insightful political commentary out of it, but all that is unnecessary. Click the link. Feel free to report any of your reactions in the comments section. Hat Tip: Cafe Hayek