Free kibbles

House hearings call for oversight and regulation of oil futures markets. Obama proposes even harsher regulations. Government created this speculation problem by banning drilling and restricting nuclear, coal, and natural gas power plants. Now they want to screw up our economy even more. We are racing down the socialist path of destruction at breakneck speed. Every day Congress perverts our economy more, then when the markets react to take advantage of Congress' actions, Congress intervenes and further perverts the markets. This will end 1 of 2 ways, by the US becoming a poverty-stricken, totalitarian state (or states) or we extract government from our markets, reestablish freedom as the guiding principle of America, and we all thrive.

Guantanamo detainee wins habeas corpus hearing. US court removes "enemy combatant" status and orders military to release or try captive. This is the new face of war. Every enemy combatant gets a slot in the justice system. From now on, soldiers on the battlefield don't just have to fight for their lives and to accomplish their mission, they have to collect evidence for the subsequent hearings as well. One of the immediate impacts of this ruling is American troops will want to execute enemy combatants for their future protection. Some will do it. Some will refuse to reenlist. This is going to hurt troop moral and harm the reputation of our military. We are the laughing stock of the world - the superpower which cares more about coddling the enemy than defeating it. This is going to cost American lives, extend wars, weaken our military, society, and confidence in government. Until a month ago, about the only thing our government did well was defeat our enemies. Not it can't even do that. All thanks to the Supreme Court's habeas corpus ruling.

Iraq gives oil contracts to multi-national oil companies. I hope US firms got some.

Bill Gates to step down as head of Microsoft. Thank goodness. Maybe Microsoft will start producing quality products and quit using monopoly power to slow the development of software for consumers.

UK surveillance society out of control. The headline for this article said 1 camera for every 14 subjects, but I don't see that in the article. Look at what these cameras are used for. And it's just the start. These cameras will be used for profiling soon enough, then everybody will be a suspect.

Reason on the futility of forcing restaurants to post calorie counts.

Commentator Krystol says Bush may bomb Iran if a Democrats victory appears likely. This makes some sense to me. If Bush had confidence the next commander-in-chief would stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, he wouldn't need to bomb them, but if Obama was the likely victor, we would be assured that Iran would develop the bomb.

The best indication of the success of the surge in Iraq is that the media coverage has been "massively scaled back" as the mainstream media try to protect their Messiah, Obama.

Obama closely linked to ethanol special interests. These attacks on candidates and special interests are just silly. If Obama supports ethanol and wants to increase subsidies for domestic production, naturally he'll surround himself with other supporters. The special interest influence isn't the problem. The support for the wasteful, socialist policy is.

If government has to interfere in the private sector, a prize for new technology like McCain's proposal of $300 million for a new technology battery is least bad way of doing it.

George Carlin died.

Cato calls for an arms embargo on Zimbabwe, but I think the situation calls for tougher sanctions than just that.

Cato calls for Congress to cut off funds for and rescind Real ID act.

Congress reconsiders constitutionality of incandescent light bulb ban. Why doesn't it reconsider the constitutionality of all their other bans at the same time?

Feds are suing company because it lowers credit limits on its credit cards for people exercising high-risk behavior. The goal is wipe out the credit scoring system that evaluates risk. Once again government is forcing the credit industry to ignore credit risks, then government officials will lambaste those lenders for not managing risk when we have another credit crisis. Why do we continue to allow our government to harm us so badly?

Buffalo organization wants to help low income earners suck more benefits from taxpayers. They think this is a good idea. How about getting a better than minimum wage job instead? If government wasn't taking so much money from taxpayers by force, there would be more and higher paying jobs to compete for. It's neither compassionate, moral, constitutional nor good policy to take money by force from taxpayers to give to others.

Liberals rip Tim Russert for being too easy on the Bush administration. Unbelievable.