Links and Minifeatures 10 15 Monday

Carnival of Personal Finance Done in the fashion of Theodore Geisel, the famous Dr. Seuss. I'd have been happier if the couplet she's used for my entry was "Best you take care," something akin to what I actually said in the article.

I was hoping this sort of nonsense went out with the Clintons: How many lawyers does it take to rescue a soldier?

The answer should be zero. If it takes allowing criminals to escape criminal prosecution to rescue our people promptly, that's what it takes. I'd rather be able to prosecute the perpetrators criminally (assuming they survive the rescue), but if we have to let them go with a "don't do it again!" that's preferable to allowing them more time to do what they're going to.

If the lawyers want to obstruct, I rather suspect the rates of said perpetrators surviving the rescue will plummet. But I can't work up any large amount of outrage over it, and I don't particularly want to try.

Captain's Quarters has a slightly different take.

Q and O on the anti-war Democrats' "slow bleed" strategy.

Debunking World Net Daily

I include this because another agent in the office (an evangelical) was overmodulating about that report.

Coyote Blog points me at a Virginia Postrel article worth reading on why real estate gets so expensive

Final observation for the day: Has anybody considered, with the media attention that Al Gore's take on global warming has gotten, how much easier it would have been to sell the whole thing to the public thirty years ago? The means of information dissemination were much more monolithic, and much more controllable. If you could persuade the three networks it was true, or that it was in their interest that it be true, you were homefree!

I'll bet he's regretting having "invented the internet" now!

Twenty-five years ago, people were worried about fringe crazies (nazis, flat earthers, etcetera) being able to connect via the internet

(and what do you know, they were right to be concerned!)

But it has become a much more powerful tool for those in the mainstream, who nonetheless disagree with part or all of the "wisdom distributed from on high" to force the conversation to include all of the relevant facts.