For the "well, duh" file:
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - Gun-related violence has fallen steadily since 2006 in Virginia despite record firearm sales, according to a university professor's analysis.
"Despite"? How about "because of"? Bad guys already have their guns. "Record firearm sales" means we're getting more of them. Arm the right people, crime "falls steadily." Why is that so damn hard to understand?
Congressional negotiators, trying to avert a fiscal crisis in January, are examining ideas that would allow effective tax rates to rise for the wealthy without technically raising the top tax rate of 35 percent. They hope the proposals will advance negotiations by allowing both parties to claim they stood their ground.
Uncomfortable truth of the day: The further away we get from 1984, the closer it seems:
A Texas high school student is being suspended for refusing to wear a student ID card implanted with a radio-frequency identification chip.
Well, what do you know? I agree with PETA for once:
It’s a White House tradition with a century and a half of history behind it, but PETA is asking the White House to skip it this year.
Finally one of them says in public what they all think in private:
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Friday that Congress should stop placing legal limits on the amount of money the government can borrow and effectively lift the debt limit to infinity.
On Bloomberg TV, “Political Capital” host Al Hunt asked Geithner if he believes “we ought to just eliminate the debt ceiling.”
Then-defense sercretary Robert M. Gates may have been the civilian leader of the world’s largest military, but his position did not come with household staff. So, he often joked, he disposed of his leaves by blowing them onto the chairman’s lawn.
From Ron Paul's farewell speech (full transcript here):
During part one of his farewell speech to Congress, Rep. Ron Paul insisted that the internet remain free, as it is an important alternative to the “government media complex.”
I really hope he's wrong, but history says he's right: "Get ready for higher taxes and no spending reform."
The Obama tax hikes would both be too much and too little--too much not to dampen already weak economic growth, too little to stop the rapid accumulation of debt.
The New York Times says editors and biographers alike are loath to condemn the new Petraeus biography even though the writer and subject were having an affiar, because "the rules in this area are so hazy." This highly irritates Walter Russell Mead, who observes:
The Muncie Star-Press editorial page is mighty pleased that that nasty extremist, Tea Party partisan Richard Mourdock lost by 6 percent to that paragon of moderate virtue Joe Donnelly:
