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21 things staff can't say to President Obama after a news conference.

How dumb is this? Texas passes law allowing police to use force to evacuate people during hurricanes. Don't the people and police have enough to worry about before a hurricane? How many people are police going to beat up, handcuff and drive 8 hours to safety? What was the problem with allowing people to ride out the storm and suffer the consequences?

""If the hurricane is arriving here, we’re going to be doing the best we can to hunker things down, to make sure we have as many special-needs patients evacuated, to prevent crime and looting,” Corpus Christi Police Cmdr. Mark Schauer said. “We’re going to have a hard enough time preventing crime, let alone arresting people who don’t leave."

County Judge Loyd Neal agreed that arrests for ignoring orders are unlikely.

"I don’t have a jail big enough to put 20,000 people in,” Neal said. “You have to hope people will use good sense. The majority of people usually do.""

So they put another law on the books that won't be enforced. Apparently legislators dont' realize that undermines the rule of law. And like somebody is going to stay home and risk their lives riding out a hurricane but leave because of a new law.

Anybody who believes that government won't interfere with Chrysler and GM directors is hopelessly naive. Sure, as long as the directors do exactly what Obama wants, he might leave them alone, but as soon as they do something different, wham! But it's worse than that. You can bet 535 congressmen and senators have them on speed dial. And of course, the union leadership will do most of the dirty work of manipulating them. The UAW didn't even bother to show up to testify before an oversight committee. It must be nice to be politically powerful like Goldman-Sachs and the UAW.

British politicians are pushing financial companies from London to Switzerland. Oppressive government does that.

Anti-gun writer makes a good point. If Congress and other aristocrats are going to hide behind metal detectors, why shouldn't guns be banned everywhere? If Congressmen, legislators and judges need protected from irresponsible people carrying guns, then why doesn't everybody need protected? The only protection anybody needs is a well armed populace. Take the the government metal detectors down. Gun ownership is supposed to provide the ultimate check on government power, but those metal detectors tremendously mute the effect. Tell me that aristocrats wouldn't significantly change their positions in favor of the taxpayer if they had to worry about angry taxpayers with guns in their throne rooms.

House Democrats are circling the wagons to give Obama a victory on health care that blue dogs can survive. This will put pressure on Senate Democrats to do the same. This is not going to be good for us, and we'll have to work twice as hard to derail this bill. UPDATE: According to Special Report, this deal has melted down and Democrats are negotiating behind closed doors without Republicans.

Obama to require health insurance to include weight reduction plans. Most Americans don't need that, but it will drive up the cost of their health insurance, just like Obama wants.

Rassmusen reports:

"23% [or respondents] believe passage of the reform legislation will lead to lower health care costs. Most voters (53%) say it will lead to higher costs, while 18% expect prices to remain about the same."

Why isn't this turd dead yet? I forgot. Democrats want power.

Cato explains that the US doesn't have the resources to supply the highest level of health care to all citizens.

"If health care reform is not based on accepting the fact of scarcity, we will increase the level of tragedy in the years ahead. Government will make promises it cannot keep. In the process of trying to keep impossible promises, we will add bureaucratic costs. We will use bureaucratic denials and queues to ration care. We will extend the use of price controls in a futile effort to stretch government resources, with the result that we will reduce supply and suppress innovation."

You can just hear Democrats demagoguing this idea of scarcity to our detriment.

Obamacare as Trojan horse for socialized medicine.

Microsoft and Yahoo agree to search deal to compete with Google.

Delphi hopes to re-emerge after four years of bankruptcy.

House to vote on government power grab to veto compensation packages at financial firms.

My Ohio Senator Voinovich claims Republicans can't get any traction because southern Republicans are RINO enough like him. Boy does he have that bass ackwards.

Barack Obama bible bag. I'm sure there was something similar for Bush. Government continues to assume the role of church.

Reason explains that the president is not nearly as powerful as people tend to think. This is true. Congress passes laws and are the real power in domestic policy. The president's greatest power isn't granted by the Constitution. It comes from the ability to get people to support him and his policies. That's why presidents keep presenting themselves as religious figures and the people keep rewarding him for it.

Democrats are claiming jobs that last less than a week as jobs created by the stimulus. If this stuff wasn't so destructive it would be funny.

Obama is pretending to be a budget cutter.

I can understand why the GAO would add the post office to its high risk list of government agencies with management problems, but what I don't understand is why our entire government isn't on that list.

Chicago is experiencing its coldest July in 67 years. Apparently the people of Chicago don't emit greenhouse gases.

Cato details the soap opera that is the potential succession possibilities in North Korea.

I don't think focusing on mortality rates tells the whole story of the problems with obesity. Obesity is a factor in diabetes, which raises health care costs. I also think if you looked at different reasons for death, i.e. if you took out deaths from activities that heavy people don't perform like climbing, swimmng or playing sports, the mortality rates for obese people would probably be worse. Saying that people shouldn't be active because there's a chance of death is stupid.

Drug czar uses bogus data to make it appear that we're winning the war on cocaine.

I agree with Reason that the case of the black Harvard professor and the white cop is not about race. It's about abuse of police power.

"By any account of what happened—Gates', Crowleys', or some version in between—Gates should never have been arrested. "Contempt of cop," as it's sometimes called, isn't a crime. Or at least it shouldn't be. It may be impolite, but mouthing off to police is protected speech, all the more so if your anger and insults are related to a perceived violation of your rights. The "disorderly conduct" charge for which Gates was arrested was intended to prevent riots, not to prevent cops from enduring insults. Crowley is owed an apology for being portrayed as a racist, but he ought to be disciplined for making a wrongful arrest."

Exactly. This essay has tons of links about police abuse of power and is a valuable resource.

"This deference to police at the expense of the policed is misplaced. Put a government worker behind a desk and give him the power to regulate, and conservatives will wax at length about public choice theory, bureaucratic pettiness, and the trappings of power. And rightly so. But put a government worker behind a badge, strap a gun to his waist, and give him the power to detain, use force, and kill, and those lessons somehow no longer apply."

What a fabulous observation. Cops are bureaucrats with badges and guns, making them significantly more dangerous than regular bureaucrats (who are plenty dangerous already), and therefore we must hold them to a significantly higher standard of conduct. Giving them the benefit of the doubt is counterproductive. We must demand police give the citizens the benefit of the doubt, and that they must protect our rights at all times or lose their jobs and suffer prosecution.

"Verbally disrespecting a cop may well be rude, but in a free society we can't allow it to become a crime, any more than we can criminalize criticism of the president, a senator, or the city council."

Absolutely. If police don't like that, they can go get wealth creation jobs in the private sector which will really help reduce crime.