Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has selected Judge Morgan Christen to become an Alaska Supreme Court justice, the second woman ever named to that bench. From the Alaska Daily News (read the entire article, there’s a lot of detail in it): Gov. Sarah Palin on Wednesday picked an Anchorage judge to fill the latest vacancy on the Alaska Supreme Court despite efforts by a conservative Christian group to convince...

A Rational And Affordable Process To Solve The Nation’s Banking Crisis by Marc Pascal Today all economic and financial experts are essentially baffled on how to proceed in cleaning up the remnants of the Gambling Casino that was once the U.S. banking and financial system. We have zombie banks (BoA, Citigroup, etc.) and a U.S.-owned insurance giant (AIG) that have turned into black holes for taxpayer...

Word out today that former First Lady Barbara Bush is recovering from heart surgery. Doctors say that they replaced a heart valve because it was becoming a health risk. I am sure we can all put aside politics and wish her the speediest of recoveries.

The Assistant Majority Whip for the West Virginia House of Delegates, Jeff Eldridge (D-Lincoln), is simultaneously seeking to legalize “the emerging full-contact – and often bloody – sport of mixed martial arts” while also pushing to make it “unlawful to sell Barbie and similar dolls ‘that promote or influence girls to place an undue importance on physical beauty to the detriment...

People who love to travel will have a harder time in 2009. In an epoch when the world needs a sense of global community as never before, the global airline industry is headed for a dramatic downturn in 2009 as the recession deepens and widens into many countries outside the US and Europe. The airlines are already flying more than 60 million fewer seats since August 2008 and this figure is set to increase if...

Although we are mostly a political and social commentary site I also think we can do our readers a service by providing them with commentary and reviews on good books, movies and the like. Recently I had the pleasure of reading the above book which is about the week Richard Nixon spent in China during February of 1972. For those of us who look back on this event as history it is difficult to understand just...

I grew up in Michigan, about sixty miles from the Canadian border. Our local cable system offered (and still does) the closest Canadian television station: Channel 9, a CBC affiliate in Windsor, Ontario. Beginning in high school and through college and even today, whenever I am home in Michigan, I turned on the CBC to catch their two nightly news programs: The National and The Journal. (I especially loved...

For those who are not familiar with the term Kobayashi Maru I will offer a brief explanation. The term comes from the film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and refers to an examination given to students at Starfleet Academy. On the surface it seems to be a character test of sorts. The student is supposedly on a routine patrol when he receives a distress call from a civilian vessel. Unfortunately, the ship is...

It seems that nothing can stop a stupid idea that gets up a good head of steam. We’ve seen the truth of this much of late in the marketplace. Home ownership is for everyone, one idea ran. The sub-prime fallout is the result. Derivatives are a substitute for regulation. That bit of idiocy has cost trillions to date and still counting. And oh, yes, we have to go into Iraq because they may have weapons of...

How did we get so poor so fast? Under the radar of stimulus bills and bailouts, economists are toting up the damage and super-investors like Warren Buffet are still trying to figure out what happened. Now we learn the economy is shrinking twice as fast as originally thought–at an annualized rate of 6.2 percent in the last three months of 2008 rather than the original estimate of 3.2, making it the worst...

If energy analysts are correct, American motorists should see a drop in gasoline prices beginning in April. That is if market demands truly drive the market price. If not, Big Oil is putting the screws to us once again.

The LA Times reports that President Obama is looking into rolling back the annoying and politically motivated “Conscience Rule” signed by President Bush at the end of his last term. The rule didn’t only apply to doctors performing abortions, but to a wide range of health care workers, allowing them to refuse to provide counseling regarding abortion as an option, the dispensing of birth control...

This morning, American International Group (AIG) announced the largest quarterly loss in corporate history at $61.7 billion. Much of that loss was based on write-downs of credit default swaps after the government acquired an 80% stake in the insurance firm last September. As a result of this massive loss, the government is now pumping $30 billion more into AIG, with even fewer strings attached than before....

I just saw Slumdog for the first time last night. A truly deserving winner, IMHO. Also, a good moment to reflect on the flourishing relationship between the US and India. Asia is one part of the world where even Democrats say George Bush did a very good job. As Dan Twining observes, Dubya’s most important achievement in Asia was the firm establishment of a strategic partnership with India. Then why,...

Collaboratively edited and maintained by people like you. if:book calls it social networking in reverse: [A] project of the Public Accountability Initiative funded by the Sunlight Foundation. It’s something like a networked telephone book of the rich and powerful: LittleSis aggregates publicly available information about America’s officials, both public and private. If you go to, for example, John...

Michael Pettis is the most intelligent commenter on the Chinese role in the global economy that I’ve run across, unfortunately. I say unfortunately because his prognosis is consistently grim and is based on communication with various Chinese and American businessmen and officials. One of the reasons I hate to enjoy his writing is because he focuses on how the current economic crisis is worsened by trade...

Washington Post: Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius accepted President Obama’s nomination to become Health and Human Services Secretary this afternoon, according to administration officials. Sebelius will replace former senator Thomas A. Daschle, who withdrew from consideration last month.

First Al Gore invented the internet. Then President Barack Obama invented hope and change. And now he proudly claimed in his address to the joint session of Congress: I believe the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it. None of this will come without cost, nor will it be easy. But this is America. We don’t do what’s easy. Apparently Americans invented everything, including...

When the Stimulus package included some “Buy America” language the world was outraged. Free Trade, Free Trade was the clear message. The omitted question is, “What do you mean by Free Trade?” In my opinion, to have truly Free and Fair Trade, the definition must have two parts: 1. Goods and services can be traded across borders without government impediment; and 2. The producers of those goods are subject...

Environmentalists (and I am one of them on many issues) are now on a roll. Americans are now being criticized for their toilet paper use, but perhaps most Americans will turn the other cheek: The tenderness of the delicate American buttock is causing more environmental devastation than the country’s love of gas-guzzling cars, fast food or McMansions, according to green campaigners. At fault, they say,...

By SHAUN MULLEN GUEST VOICE Fear has been the Republican Party’s greatest weapon, and notably so during the Age of Bush: Fear of people with funny names and skin colors. Fear of people who do not worship a Christian God. Fear of people who are not red-blooded Americans. Fear of people who don’t spout patriotic slogans or wear American flag lapel pins. But now the screw has turned and fear has become...

Earlier today I was listening to one of the better local talk shows, the Armstrong and Getty show when they discussed an e-mail they had received from a listener in Portland, Oregon. The subject of the e-mail was the fact that the union to which the listener belonged had announced to its members that they ‘would be supporting’ the WERC campaign. There was no debate or discussion but simply a declaration...

President Barack Obama’s budget plans announced Thursday to reduce health care costs by $634 billion through savings to expand medical insurance coverage seems partially supported in a report being published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The study found that the government is paying twice as much for treating a patient in Miami as in San Francisco. The dramatic cost differences paid by Medicare...

An unsettling sign from the Obama Administration this week in the form of statements made by Attorney General Eric Holder. It seems that the specter of the assault rifle ban may be coming round again. The Obama administration will seek to reinstate the assault weapons ban that expired in 2004 during the Bush administration, Attorney General Eric Holder said today. “As President Obama indicated during the...

Another update from our previous story on NY 20th CD Democratic Candidate Scott Murphy’s early writings on the appropriateness of having R.O.T.C. on college campus grounds. It seems that, during one of his campaign stops at a local V.F.W. the question was put to Mr. Murphy three times. His reaction is caught for you on film, thanks to the wonder of YouTube. It seems that the genie is out of the bottle...