Links and Minifeatures 2009 06 01 Monday

Carnival of Personal Finance

Carnival of Real Estate

Did Obama Target GOP Donors In Chrysler Dealer Closings?

every single dealer he checked out except one were either GOP donors or donated to Obama's rivals in the democratic primary.

and

Unreal. This is the kind of thing they do in Marxist regimes and Chicago. Could this really be happening in America?

How many laws does this violate, if true? There's a better chance of flying to the moon by flapping your arms than this kind of thing happening by chance. If verified, the statistical probability of it happening is more than enough to constitute a smoking gun worthy of impeachment and removal from office for anyone who understands mathematics.

Of course, the Democrats are a majority in both houses of Congress, so that may be an obstacle to Congressional understanding of basic mathematical fact.

Things are not looking good for the "just a coincidence" explanation

Ralph Peters: Instant justice for terrorists

The hidden costs of presidential empathy.

Here is one straw in the wind that does not bode well for a Sotomayor appointment. Justice Stevens of the current court came in for a fair share of criticism (all justified in my view) for his expansive reading in Kelo v. City of New London (2005) of the "public use language." Of course, the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment is as complex as it is short: "Nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." But he was surely done one better in the Summary Order in Didden v. Village of Port Chester issued by the Second Circuit in 2006. Judge Sotomayor was on the panel that issued the unsigned opinion--one that makes Justice Stevens look like a paradigmatic defender of strong property rights.

It seems that the more I learn about Ms. Sotomayon, the less I like. A direct quote: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

Suppose it had been Samuel Alito or John Roberts who said that, 180 degrees reversed? He would have been lucky to keep his previous position, much less be confirmed to the Supreme Court.

Judge Sotomayor's Identity Problem

The essence of the rule of law is that identity doesn't matter. The law means the same thing regardless of the identity of people applying the law or subject to it. We don't have one law for Jews and another for Catholics, one for Italian-Americans and another for Hispanic-Americans. We don't need to know who the judge is to know what the law is.

Judge Sotomayor's nomination is predicated on almost exactly the opposite understanding of what law is and should be, of what matters in our judges and their

The Need For Failure

First, the very notion of "too big to fail" is dangerous. It suggests that there is an insurance policy that says, no matter how risky your behavior, we will make sure you stay in business. It encourages banks to get bigger (or more interconnected), and it subsidizes risky behavior.

I have long thought that if a company is too big to fail, it needs to be broken up.

Obama, Incorporated

The interlocking directorate is anathema to trustbusters and corporate watchdogs. It occurs when a board member or top executive of one company sits on the board of another company, accumulating undue power over a given industry. When it reduces competition, the arrangement is forbidden by the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914.

If Henry De Lamar Clayton, the Alabama congressman who introduced the aforementioned act, were still with us, he'd presumably be shocked at the creation of the most far-reaching interlocking directorate in U.S. history. Obama Inc. has effectively won a seat on the board of companies at the heart of the nation's industrial production and its financial system. The robber barons of old would marvel at the tentacles of influence of Barack Obama, a CEO whose power would overawe J. P. Morgan (the famous industrialist, not the bailed-out bank)

Taking control of all the major capital corporations. Taking control of the banks. Taking direct political control of the census (putting it under White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, whose job it is to be partisan and who performs that part of it splendidly). Threatening dissenters with severe government harrassment. Spending trillions to subsidize supporters at taxpayer expense. Apparently favoring political supporters by closing auto dealerships belonging to those who supported others.

Is anyone else starting to see a pattern here? I can name some really horrible totalitarian hellholes that started their transition from democracy with less power concentrated in the strongman and cronies. Heck I've been liberally linking Armies of Liberation for four years who has documented the control over the country of Yemen wielded by the Saleh government with much less complete control of the country's power centers. I can't name any countries that became more free and more prosperous rather than less once they had ceded that much power to a given individual and his cronies.

Think it can't happen here? That's what they said about China, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Syria, and Cuba. More recently, they said it about Venezuela.

You call this an amusement park? Depends upon whose amusement it's for

Want to figure out how biased your news source is? Compare the coverage of these two events:

Military recruiter killed in Ark shooting

Suspect jailed in Kansas abortion doctor's killing

While the second was was unmistakeably vile, the first one is worse. I disagree vehemently with the alleged person who shot Tiller, but at least he did target his victim because that victim engaged of his own free will in a specific activity, to wit, the killing of late term babies (I may agree that it should be legal, but I refuse to shrink from the full consequences thereof by using euphemisms that deny the humanity of those babies). The second dominated news yesterday; I couldn't get away from it every time I opened my homepage. The first is receiving only a fraction of the attention. To be fair, the second is a day older than the first. But, as Michelle Malkin notes every pro-life organization has condemned the actions of the twit that killed Mr. Tiller in no uncertain terms. Let's see how many organizations like Code Pink condemn the killing of two soldiers who were simply assigned to sit in a recruiting office for two weeks straight out of training before being assigned to their units. Let's see if the media gives the two stories equal play.

I'd like to see both of these perpetrators fried. But the person who assassinated two soldiers willing to stand between the rest of us and people who want to kill us, simply because they happened to be in a recruiting office, deserves to fry slowly.

Why is the Obama Justice Department protecting people who intimidate voters? (video included!)

Political appointees at Justice pressured career prosecutors into giving up on the case of voter intimidation by the New Black Panthers group in Philadelphia, who attempted to frighten voters away from the polls in the presidential election:

Q and O:

A default judgment. A done deal. Guilty.

But they were ordered to drop the charges and case and settle for this:

A Justice Department spokesman on Thursday confirmed that the agency had dropped the case, dismissing two of the men from the lawsuit with no penalty and winning an order against the third man that simply prohibits him from bringing a weapon to a polling place in future elections.

Witness affidavit in NBPP voter bullying case It's damning.

So why is the Obama administration dropping charges after conviction?

Related: Obama administration: It's OK When We Politicize the Justice Department

The "politicization" of the Justice Department was one of many aspects of the Bush administration which the Obama administration was going to cure. But it appears that while the party of the administration has changed, we are seeing a level of political meddling at the Justice Department which the Bush administration never remotely approached

Advice to College Grads

HT Instapundit