Author Archive | Jim Lindgren

Besides my earlier post on speaking fees in Barack and Michelle Obama

Paul Caron has Barack and Michelle Obama

I read with some amusement the struggles that some non-lawyers [and some lawyers as well] have been having understanding the language of Art II, Sec. 1 of the U.S. Constitution: “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be […]

For the Democrats, why did we see major discrepancies between polling and election results in New Hampshire, especially compared to the Iowa caucuses? My colleague, John McGinnis, offered a possible reason: people might have wanted to appear to their neighbors (i.e., in an Iowa caucus) to be more open to an African-American candidate than they […]

Last Friday, I posted the results of some data analysis on the question whether we are entering a recession. It turns out that others noticed some of the same patterns as I did. Here is what Bob Willis at Bloomberg wrote (tip to VC commenter Mark Field): The U.S. economy may be on the verge […]

Are we in an economic recession? According to figures released by the Dept. of Labor Friday morning, December civilian unemployment jumped three-tenths of a percent from 4.7% to 5%, representing a .6% increase over the March 2007 rate of 4.4%. According to historical statistics that I analyzed today, since 1948 there were 160 prior months […]

At The Corner, Mark Steyn writes that the Clintons were bad for the Democratic Party: The Clintons’ leadership of the Democratic Party was great for the Clintons, terrible for the Democratic Party: They lost the House, they lost the Senate, they lost state legislatures and governors’ mansions, and in the end Clinton couldn’t even bequeath […]

I am watching John Edwards’ speech attacking corporate greed (he used the phrase at least 2 or 3 times). One of Edwards’ examples of outrageous behavior by a corporation: Maytag closing its plant in Newton, Iowa. Before posting I saw that Glenn at Instapundit had similar feelings about the speech: Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, […]

Fox is declaring Obama the winner in Iowa. UPDATE (9:50pm): With nearly 90% of the Democratic votes in, Obama is leading by 7% (at 37%). Edwards and Clinton are tied at 30%.

Fox News is presenting Huckabee as the projected winner in Iowa

The most important of the local Iowa polls (Des Moines Register) shows substantial leads for Obama and Huckabee. The composites at Real Clear Politics, on the other hand, show nearly dead heats (with very slight leads for Clinton and Romney). Although caucuses are notoriously hard to predict, it will be interesting to see which polling […]

A few years ago, I noticed that one of the prevalent beliefs in the NFL is a myth: it is widely thought that it doesn

Gail Heriot

With the TV trailers piquing my interest, I decided to learn more about the background of the new Denzel Washington movie, The Great Debaters: From two-time Academy Award winner Denzel Washington and an ensemble cast [led] by Washington that includes Academy Award winner Forest Whitaker, comes THE GREAT DEBATERS. Inspired by a true story, THE […]

For years, Congress had been pushing lenders to lend vigorously in poor neighborhoods and to avoid redlining. This effort worked–only too well. Now Congress has discovered “predatory lending.” Jack Guttenberg (on Yahoo and in the Washington Post) has been criticizing Congress’s efforts (H.R. 3915 the Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act of 2007) to impose […]