ELSEWHERE

Michael Tremoglie writes: “Governor Howard Dean of Vermont routinely accuses President Bush of lying. However, if anyone seems to have a problem with candor, it is Governor Dean of Vermont.....” More here.

Schwarzenegger and Buffett together -- truth IS stranger than fiction. He could well be a winner with brains like that on his side.

“Critics of “Operation Iraqi Freedom” have suggested that it represents a radical departure in U.S. foreign policy: that our nearly unilateral and pre-emptive ("first strike") use of military force to topple sovereign nation's government... was revolutionary. But was it? This policy has been reinforced in presidential National Security Statements for decades. [e.g.] “We act in alliance or partnership when others share our interest, but unilaterally when compelling national interests so demand." -- William Jefferson Clinton. 2000 National Security Statement.” More here.

A Belgian court has just done something useful! They jailed an Albanian gangster for 8 years -- but only after he had smuggled 12,000 illegal immigrants into Britain!

The roots of the housing shortage: "Besides laws designed to halt 'overdevelopment,' the government reduces the supply of housing and drives up its cost in a number of other ways. Wetlands regulations often require extensive environmental studies before building is allowed to begin, and they completely prevent building on many otherwise viable sites. Licensing requirements restrict the supply of contractors, raising the cost of hiring them."

The new Puritans: "Jacobson's list of soda hazards nicely illustrates the hyperbolic approach to health advice favored by [The Center for Science in the Public Interest], which the microbiologist turned food activist co- founded in 1971 after working for Ralph Nader. Today the D.C.-based CSPI is one of the country's most influential nanny groups, with an annual budget of $15 million and some 800,000 newsletter subscribers. It has the ability to grab headlines, kill sales of products it doesn't like, and shape regulatory policy. The group is also emblematic of a troubling cultural trend whose motto might be, 'If it feels good, don't do it.'"

"In the interest of battling automobile-created air pollution, environmentalists call for more public transportation -- more buses and commuter trains and the higher taxes needed to fund them -- to get people out of their cars. Granting, for the sake of discussion, that air quality is as poor as environmentalists say it is, is public transportation really the answer?"

Protectionism may temporarily prop up inefficient industries and businesses but ultimately market forces will prevail, with the protected industry generally ending up worse off than before -- as the U.S. copper-mining industry found out to its cost.

Carnival of the Vanities is up again -- bigger than ever this time.

The Wicked one thinks that marriage should be deregulated.

My latest academic upload here (or here) should have horrified and amazed most political psychologists when it was first published. In typically Leftist fashion, however, they simply ignored something that did not suit their preconceptions. The favourite stick to beat conservatives with among psychologists is the claim that conservatives are “authoritarian” as measured by the California 'F' scale. What I show in this article is that, among the general population, highly idealistic Leftists are just as likely as conservatives to get high scores on the ‘F’ scale! Psychologists, of course, do not normally examine what happens out there in the general population. They confine their “research” to what their own students dutifully say! What a laugh!

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