Links and Minifeatures 12 31 Monday (New Year's Eve)

Carnival of Personal Finance

Sometimes you're closer to major news than you think. Fellow LLP member Rick Sincere was working for Benazir Bhutto.

New video of Bhutto killing, medical report raise doubts about security, government account

Captain's Quarters has the video, if you're so inclined. I didn't see the need to view it (I have the kids today), but his commentary makes plain that the Official Pakistan Government Story has severe credibility problems.

North Korea misses deadline for nuclear declaration

Is anyone surprised? Anyone at all?

One excellent place to cut pork: Subsidies keep flights at small airports in the air

Of course, it's all small potato molecules compared to unchecked growth in entitlement programs.

A worthwhile review of Iraq from historian Victor Davis Hanson

Our modern day system of slavery, at Wizbang

Chinese economy not as big as we thought.

Fred Thompson takes his case direct to the voters in Iowa. Seventeen minutes and worth it, even though I could have done without the overtly religious part.

Senate holds 12-second session to block recess appointments

I'd feel a lot differently about this if the senate was bringing the nominees for floor votes in a timely fashion. The senate has the right to confirm or deny certain appointees. But this together with their current behavior of doing a virtual filibuster on all Bush nominees is partisan politics at its worst, denying the president the constitutionally mandated power to make appointments. How is the job supposed to get done if the president can't put anybody into it? Holding them for a presumptive Democratic president after the inauguration not only means the job doesn't get done for a year while the work and problems pile up. It also frustrates the constitutional separation of powers, not to mention the implicit promise that the person who is president when the vacancy occurs gets to choose who goes into it. The eventual result of this thinking is nobody ever gets confirmed by the senate - "after all, it's only four years until the next election!". Not that I think the government doing more is a good thing, but they've got to have someone responsible for what's already there. I'd be in favor of a constitutional amendment giving the senate three months to vote thumbs down on somebody. Meanwhile, the nominee goes to work right away. And of course, there's always impeachment and all the other methods of removal.

Happy New Year, everybody! I will have a new article, appropriate for the new year, tomorrow and Consumer Focused Carnival of Real Estate on Wednesday, but I'm not currently certain about Thursday and Friday