David Brooks and Free Markets

David Brooks wrote in the NY Times today about the discontent he is feeling with the Democratic Party. His complaints about the health bill were accurate and forceful, but his understanding of the free market is not. He stated: 

Yet I confess, watching all this, I feel again why I’m no longer spiritually attached to the Democratic Party. The essence of America is energy — the vibrancy of the market, the mobility of the people and the disruptive creativity of the entrepreneurs. This vibrancy grew up accidentally, out of a cocktail of religious fervor and material abundance, but it was nurtured by choice. It was nurtured by our founders, who created national capital markets to disrupt the ossifying grip of the agricultural landholders. It was nurtured by 19th-century Republicans who built the railroads and the land-grant colleges to weave free markets across great distances. It was nurtured by Progressives who broke the stultifying grip of the trusts.

Progressives destroying trusts? Republicans building railroads? What is free about any of this?

The PATRIOT Act Revisited

Three provisions to the PATRIOT Act are due to expire at the end of this month. They are (courtesy of DownsizeDC.org):

1. Business Records: allows searches on your personal data without
your knowledge if the FBI convinces a judge it is "relevant" to a
terrorism investigation. The data could be computer-related,
financial, medical, or even your library check-out history

2. Lone Wolf: allows the federal government to spy on a foreign
person with no known ties to a foreign government or terrorist group
-- a power that's never been used

3. Roving Wiretap: allows federal agents to intercept phone
conversations without having to specify the person being investigated
or which phone is being used

Some are reporting that the new jobs bill being drafted by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid includes the renewal of the PATRIOT Act.  But these draconian provisions don't need to be passed again!

Is Senator Max Baucus Drunk or Just Stupid?

This has been all over the blogosphere and even featured at the Drudge Report with the caption "drunk Senator."   I'll let readers of YAL decide for themselves.

Cui Bono

Unless you have had you head buried in the sand for the last decade, I'm sure you've noticed evironmentalist calls for government regulations to slow "climate change." Since the failure of the Kyoto Treaty, environmentalists have tried to drastically reshape American law to combat those "evil corporations" and "needless consumers" who seek to eat the planet from the inside out. The most recent scheme to attempt to regress us back to a pastoral/agrarian lifestyle is the Waxman-Markey Cap and Trade bill. This dangerous piece of legislation has already passed the House and will soon be voted on in the Senate.

As always the bill is being expanded and changed in the Senate, yet sadly not for the better. In the new version of the bill that has been passed by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s Democrats (with Republicans protesting the vote), there is an extremely scary new provision. According to the Washington Examiner, the bill will contain a "climate emergency" provision. This provision will be triggered when global concentrations of greenhouse gases reach 450 ppm, which is set to happen within a few months. Once triggered it requires that the president to “direct all Federal agencies to use existing statutory authority to take appropriate actions...to address shortfalls."