Links and Minifeatures 12 12 Monday

RINO Sightings is up! Recommended: The Agitator, Digger's Realm



Carnival of Personal Finance is also up!



Best of Me Symphony is also up. Recommended: ROFASix,

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Heartless Libertarian has some worthwhile thoughts on the case of Corey Maye, on death row for shooting a cop he had every reason to believe was a violent criminal invading his home.



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Below the Beltway has a good article of something I've said several times here: That the real reson behind the run up in housing prices is government regulation and obstacles to construction. People who say they want low cost housing for the less well off on one hand, and then throw as many roadblocks in the way of people trying to actually erect enough homes to keep the price down on the other. The one intelligent thing that the City of San Diego has tried in the last fifteen years or so was the "City of Villages" concept. You had to be here to witness the NIMBY backlash in order to believe it. Needless to say, it's dead, which is a real shame for those people who don't enjoy 90 minute commutes at 90 mph from Hemet or 2 hour plus commutes from the Imperial Valley.



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Nasdaq has altered the composition of the Nasdaq 100. Here's the Yahoo version with slightly more information, but likely a less permanent link. This is a market capitalization based Index, like the S&P 500, but is heavily weighted towards technology sector companies. If you're wondering how it compares to S&P for the purposes of asset class, smaller number of stocks better (not good) for non-dilution, heavily weighted towards one sector bad for diversification. They're also all large cap.



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Opinion Journal has a great article about war naysayers being afraid of success, and gets a HT for directions to this article on the great job John Bolton's been doing. I still think Reid's best option is to quietly cave and attach his confirmation as a rider to something uncontroversial and necessary.



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Captain's Quarters has the goods on what is likely a second Syrian assassination of an opponent in Lebanon within the past year. I have long been of the opinion that Syria is the most sensible next target in the War on Terror - easiest logistics, easiest conquest, smallest bite, obviously least tenable position of all the rogue states who are the opponents of civilization, most unstable politically. If the Assad regime has a lick of sense, when the US says "Boo!" he'll capitulate, because otherwise he's going to face the same sort of death the Ceaucescus did and for the same reason.



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I knew Arnold had it in him! Clemency denied for Tookie Williams. Here's another article in case the more informative Yahoo AP article gets moved. Suffice it to say, Arnold went right down the line noting the claims of Tookie's supporters that were not believable, and why they were not believable.



Michelle Malkin has a round up. Is it just me, or has she got to be the blogger with the strongest Technorati skills going?



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Iraq the Model covers the start of the elections in Iraq. Proof things are going well? I had a tough time finding one news story on it, but it was easy finding stories on them finding more tortured prisoners in Iraq, but I had to go to the Iraqi 'sphere to find anything on the election. Man bites dog is news. Dog bites man is not.



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Q and O discusses the well-known fact in financial circles that the measurements of inflation are larger than actual inflation by about two-thirds of a percent or so, in light of the Democrat's claims that real wages are slipping. Well, duh. This is depth charging fish in a barrel. Corporate margins have been declining since the 1950's too. We going to put the corporations on welfare too, to make up for their reduced profits? Insanity.



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Rhymes With Right has an article paying tribute to our one MIA soldier in Iraq.