Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona Reportedly Shot in Tucson

I have found nothing more. Any other information? Breaking News AlertThe New York TimesSat, January 08, 2011 — 1:22 PM ET—– Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona Reportedly Shot in Tucson A Democratic congresswoman from Arizona was shot along withseveral others during a public event at a grocery store inTucson, according to news reports. The condition […]

EMPLOYMENT SITUATION

The December employment report showed a continuation of the past few months trend as payroll employment rose 103,000 and the household survey showed a gain of 297,000. Theunemployment rate fell to 9.4%, but almost half of the drop was due to a 260,000 drop in the labor force. The gains in payroll employment reflected a […]

Debt Limit Bill and Social Security Benefit Cuts

(cross posted at SocialSecurityDefender.blogspot.com) Well the first line of attack is opening up. Lindsay Graham is threatening to hold up the Debt Limit Increase Bill, and so potentially throw this whole country and perhaps the world into default unless he gets cuts to Social Security. This is insane on several levels, not least because the […]

Scalia: Only African-Americans Have Second Amendment Rights Against states!

Lifted from an e-mail from Beverly Mann, the following is a short explanation and links to relevant cases concerning the words of Justice Scalia as reported in California Lawyer, second question down from the beginning about the 14th amendment and sex discrimination. Beverly Mann writes: Scalia: Only African-Americans Have Second Amendment Rights Against States! Here […]

Scientists, Republicans and Conservatives

by Mike KimelScientists, Republicans and ConservativesCross posted at the Presimetrics blog. According to a Pew poll, only 6% of scientists self-identify as Republicans, and only 9% as conservative. Figure 1 Birds of a feather and all of that. I meant to post on this a while back – I’m about a year and a half […]

Launching the Nine-ther Movement

by Bruce Webb Conservatives have long been 2nd Amendment Absolutists (unless you are a black man carrying a stick outside a mostly black precinct in Philadelphia, somehow ‘open carry’ doesn’t apply there). Now they have doubled down with the Tenther Movement, which they have tied together with an Enumerated Powers doctrine which mostly doesn’t actually […]

Following the Taylor Rule would have led to President Kerry

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand released a paper by Nicolas Groshenny last month—I’m behind on planning for Chanukkah; that I got to a paper from New Zealand about U.S. monetary policy this soon is, er, probably one of the reasons why—in which he evaluates the counterfactual of following the “Taylor Rule” from 2002 to […]