Author Archive | Jim Lindgren

Glenn Reynolds has a nice piece on the tax-day Tea Party protests in the Wall Street Journal: The tea-party protest movement is organizing itself, on its own behalf. Some existing organizations, like Newt Gingrich’s American Solutions and FreedomWorks, have gotten involved. But they’re involved as followers and facilitators, not leaders. The leaders are appearing on […]

It is highly odd that Oliver Willis would attribute murdering cops to those who hold Republican views. ARREST RATES. In the debates over whether felons can vote, both Republicans and Democrats seem to agree implicitly that felons will tend to favor Democrats. I have never heard anyone even hint the opposite. That is consistent with […]

Oliver Willis expands on the views of Kos, arguing that Glenn Reynolds chose the side of the political aisle that encourages people to shoot cops: The conservative blogs are enraged that people are pointing out that they have and are stoking the fires of an atmosphere of hate that leads to police officers getting killed. […]

Ben Smith at Politico is reporting that Congressman A in the Blagojevich indictment is Rahm Emanuel. In 2006, he and his brother were allegedly victims of an extortion scheme: Patrick Fitzgerald’s indictment refers to two incidents involving “Congressman A”: In one, Blagojevich discusses approaching the unnamed congressman to broker a deal for Obama’s Senate seat. […]

Alaska Republicans, including Sarah Palin, have asked Sen. Mark Begich to resign because “the state’s voters would have re-elected former Sen. Ted Stevens had they known the U.S Department of Justice would abandon its prosecution of him.” The latest from the great state of Alaska: The head of the Alaska Republican Party today called on […]

Rod Blagojevich was indicted by a grand jury, with the indictment released by the US Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. The indictment is here. A press release is here. A fact sheet is here.

The Obama Administration has been strangely noncommital on the prospect floated by the Chinese and the Russians of Special Drawing Rights based on a basket of currencies to replace the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. Both Austan Goolsbee and Timothy Geithner refused to rule it out when asked about it. Geithner said, “We’re […]

Barack Obama was criticized in the last day for repeatedly mispronouncing “Orion” in Orion Energy Systems. While some of us have known the northern constellations since grade school, I would suspect that President Obama knows how to pronounce about as many English words as I do (and a lot more foreign names than I do). […]

Jennifer Rubin speculates that card check is dead for now because Senator Specter will not support cloture (tip to Instapundit). If true, that’s great news for the economy and the stock market. The chances of card check passing, which had been hanging over the market for months, has been lessening in recent weeks. On the […]

Supreme Court cases do have consequences. From the AP: The White House is reviewing a proposed finding by the Environmental Protection Agency that global warming is a threat to public health and welfare. Such a declaration would be the first step to regulating carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act and […]

China and Russia are proposing a new world reserve currency to replace the dollar. It would be in essence a basket of all major currencies. This is an old idea, but its recent reintroduction is thought to reflect unease with the US-triggered recession and the US

According to the French newspaper, Le Figaro, President Barack Obama has written a letter to French former president Jacques Chirac using language more commonly used when writing to current heads of state (via Monsters and Critics): Paris -US President Barack Obama has indirectly praised former French president Jacques Chirac’s fierce opposition to the US-led invasion […]

Public-Private business partnerships are usually a bad idea. An unintended consequence of such partnerships is that most of the gains are privatized, while most of the losses are borne by the public. With the Treasury

I was thinking: How about imposing a 90% tax on the income over $100,000 of some of the people who caused this mess? Perhaps not at the top of most lists, but fairly near the top, should be Christopher Dodd, Barney Frank, and the leaders of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and ACORN. If Congress is […]

I wonder whether AIG could have paid the bonuses in toxic assets, derivatives such as were sold by their Financial Products division, or at worst, AIG stock. Paying bonuses in toxic assets would have shifted risk to some of those who helped generate that risk and would improve AIG’s balance sheet. But that probably wasn’t […]