Declare a mistrial! My brain can’t decide if I’m a libertarian or progressive or some bizarre, twisted blend of the two. I passionately agree that the most reliable, proven path to economically benefitting the most people is by constructing a society that consistently encourages “the entrepreneur, the risk taker and the cultivator of wealth through human intellect.” That belief leads me to question the skewed schedule of effective tax rates in America — where the...

If Obama’s transition team gets its way, Feb. 17 may no longer be a day-of-worry for those who still get their TV via antenna. Obama Transition Team Co-Chair John Podesta’s letter to the relevant committee chairs and ranking members (Sens. Rockefeller and Hutchison, Reps. Waxman and Barton) — requesting a delay in the scheduled transition from analog to digital broadcasting — strikes me as the ultimate CYA move. Here’s why: I work for a company that has a stake in the...

Chris Cillizza has the scoop. As a lifetime Missouri resident, I’m sure this will be very big news at home. Love him or not, Bond’s one of the Show-Me State’s epic political figures and the first Missouri governor I remember as a child. (He was first elected to that position in 1972, when I was seven.) The Dems will be salivating for the chance to pick up this seat in 2010, which Cillizza’s post makes clear. In addition, the party will have some decent candidates (from...

What do you get when you cross a brief, vegetative vacation with an extremely fast-start to the new year? For me, those circumstances recently combined to create a very bad case of “writer’s block.” Nor was it a single-issue case of writer’s block like Andrew Sullivan experienced after his respite. Mine was a pervasive block; it was the Hoover Dam of writer’s blocks. Thankfully, that block shattered this morning after I read Stephen Chapman’s column, “The...

Per Ben Smith: … a wired Chicago source emails that ‘senior administration officials have been coming in to present info in droves since the arrest on 12/9. That’s the primary reason the indictment has been delayed.’ Is anyone naïve enough to think those “droves” of “info” are good news for the Illinois Govenor?

So suggests the Sun Times ed board. H/t Ben Smith.

I wish I had six years to finish work reports. Of course, our reports aren’t 400 pages long. Then again, I have a team of three, and I suspect NASA has a few more. Is this seriously the best the agency can do?

Over the weekend, Becker and Posner took their respective shots at the UAW … and unions, in general. I believe great value can be offered by unions of freelancers — e.g., common artisans whose pay is primarily derived from diverse but finite projects rather than from single-entity employers — but I tend to share Posner’s and Becker’s doubts about the role and value of other unions; namely, those that organize workers at companies that would probably (or already do) offer...

And so we learn that Sen. Mitch McConnell, leader of a declining Republican caucus, wants “a weeklong cooling off period between when the [expected economic stimulus] bill is drafted and when it is voted on, allowing time to dissect it for signs of ‘fraud and waste.’” Good for McConnell. Despite at least one, unkind protest over the Senator’s sudden, rediscovered love for fiscal sanity, I applaud his call for a time out. No matter how much a government jolt to this...

Per my upbringing, I’m instinctively pro-Israel. I’m also terribly un-educated on the names, faces, arguments, and counter-arguments surrounding the current conflict and the history leading up to it. I thus took a few minutes this morning to read several related items: one from New York, one from London, and one from Jerusalem. If you’re similarly seeking perspective, I hope these links are helpful.

It’s that time of year again: Time to promise that we’ll do better in the next 12 months than we did in the prior 12. I won’t bother you with my personal or familial resolutions for ’09, but I do want to share a few blogging-related resolutions. In the past year, I’ve increasingly found it necessary to withdraw elements of, or entirely delete, certain posts — usually because I have either rushed to judgment or proffered a woefully unsubstantiated opinion. Of course, such failures...

One of my former bosses from the late 1990s recently penned a guest commentary for our hometown daily, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. It was published yesterday and essentially asked, if certain financial companies have become ‘too big to fail,’ why did U.S. regulators allow them to get that big in the first place, and why do they continue to protect said firms’ disproportionate size? An excerpt: It is disturbing, to put it mildly, that almost everything that’s been done so...

In today’s NYT, Paul Krugman frets about “state governors who are slashing spending in a time of recession, often at the expense both of their most vulnerable constituents and of the nation’s economic future.” Krugman’s worries are sparked, in part, by reports like this one, published in Friday’s WaPo: States from Rhode Island to California are being forced to curtail Medicaid, the government health insurance program for the poor, as they struggle to cope with the...

Adding to the “reality-stranger-than-fiction” genre, Matthew Parris — who spent some of this childhood in Africa and part of his adult years as a conservative member of the British parliament — argues today in The Times (London) that the value of the work of Christian missionaries in Africa transcends their charitable/civic contributions, that their faith plays an equally critical role in advancing the prospects of tribal Africans. The money paragraph: Christianity, post-Reformation...

In one corner — weighing in as the named leader of Obama’s National Economic Council — is Lawrence Summers, boasting a “have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too” treasure chest of hope. In the other corner — weighing in as one of those lonely voices in the wilderness who predicted the current mess — is Peter Schiff, offering nothing more impressive than a “pain-before-gain” bucket of cold water. I predict this match will go the full 15 rounds with no knock outs. My gut hopes...

At least we hope so. Taking the religious to the secular, FactCheck.org’s Brooks Jackson — whom I had the pleasure of interviewing a year-and-a-half ago — publishes, at Newsweek.com, a summary of claims he and his colleagues have “debunked just since Election Day.” It’s good for Brooks-and-crew, I suppose, that there’s so much bunk around to keep them busy — and good for the rest of us that they’re passionate about (and good at) their jobs. PS:...

Possibly not, per this brief report by Dave Schuler at OTB. For context, Schuler offers the following: Over the period of the last 60 years hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, have died in three wars between the two countries. The most recent of those wars in 1971 was the most severe … Violence and threats of violence are far too plentiful this holiday season.

As a reminder: I voted for Obama and volunteered time to help his campaign, making calls to and knocking on the doors of undecided voters. Net: I was a willing and enthusiastic member of what Campaign Manager David Plouffe — in a Dec. 19 email to Obama supporters — characterized as “the most powerful and effective grassroots movement in America.” Acknowledging those past realities, I still experience a recoil reaction when I read lines like this one from Plouffe’s...

Last week, I thought Andrew Sullivan’s post, “Taking Yes for an Answer” — re: the Rick Warren/Obama inauguration debate — would prove to be the definitive post on that subject, after all the dust had settled. I now think Sullivan has been trumped by the self-dubbed “Hollywood Farm Girl,” in a post titled “the big rick’s yamaka.”

If you read nothing else this holiday season, read this contribution to the NYT — a short, true story about the “real meaning” of the season.