House to vote on bailout today; please, God, let the Republicans show that they have a spine!

WASHINGTON — The House braced for a difficult vote set for Monday on a $700 billion rescue of the financial industry after a weekend of tense negotiations produced a plan that Congressional leaders portrayed as greatly strengthened by new taxpayer safeguards.
The 110-page bill, intended to ease a growing credit crisis, came after a frenzied week [...]

Congressional Republicans do something (seemingly) sensible, Nathancontramundi asks if sky has fallen

From the New York Times:
But once the doors closed, the smooth-talking House Republican leader, John A. Boehner of Ohio, surprised many in the room by declaring that his caucus could not support the plan to allow the government to buy distressed mortgage assets from ailing financial companies.
Mr. Boehner pressed an alternative that involved a smaller [...]

Save the banks, screw the people!

WASHINGTON – Struggling to stave off financial catastrophe, the Bush administration on Friday laid out a radical bailout plan with a jawdropping price tag — a takeover of a half-trillion dollars or more in worthless mortgages and other bad debt held by tottering institutions.
A grim-faced President Bush acknowledged risks to taxpayers in what would be [...]

The best candidate gets the job? How novel! How un-American!

The Indianapolis Star reports that the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department and Indianapolis Fire Department “no longer must use racial preference in hiring and promotion, prompting public safety officials to announce Friday they will more strictly adhere to a merit-based system that they say will ensure fairness.”
“People have the right to expect that in the Police [...]

More on Röpke: Foreseeing the Wal*Mart-welfare state

We can see similar contentions in Belloc, and I’m sure that, somewhere, Hayek provides an argument of such nature in The Road to Serfdorm (on my bookshelf, but, I, shamefully, admit, unread). Röpke is spot-on:
[T]he welfare state itself takes care of a sort of comfortable stall-feeding of the domesticated masses[.] Is this not bound to [...]

The Nanny State disapproves of the ochre on the living room ceiling.

Thanks to Mr Sullivan for alerting us to this absurd over-extension of the nanny state.
In Alabama it is illegal to recommend shades of paint without a license. In Nevada it is illegal to move any large piece of furniture for purposes of design without a license. In fact, hundreds of people have been [...]

America?! No, you serve the president.

Having, yesterday, finally, finished The American Republic, I found the head-line article of to-day’s Washington Post, “Internal Justice Dept. Report Cites Illegal Hiring Practices“, to be incredibly apropos.
Under the patriarchal . . . systems, there is, properly speaking, no state, no citizens, and the organization is economical rather than political. Authority — even the [...]

Ruminations on rootedness, place, community

Corresponding with a former professor regarding my next potential steps in academia, I made, in my most recent e-mail to her, the following comment
I should confess that part of my reason, beyond obvious things, for wishing to return is that N.D. [for, ideally, my juris doctor and, concurrent with that, either a Ph.D. or M.A. [...]

Remember when “conservatives” believed in small government?

Yahoo! News reports “Obama courts conservatives with new program”:
Taking a page from President Bush, Democrat Barack Obama said Tuesday he wants to expand White House efforts to steer social service dollars to religious groups, risking protests in his own party with his latest aggressive reach for voters who usually vote Republican.
I recall coming across a [...]

Remind me never to be kind to strangers in Florida

First, I have no opposition to “illegal” taxi services; rather, I quite vehemently oppose unnecessary regulations that drive up prices. Second, I suspect that this poor gent simply tried to be a nice guy at the wrong time, much to the pleasure of the sprawling, neurotic bureaucracy. I mean, consumer services department? Really? Why not [...]