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It is little noticed now, but an Examiner editorial calls attention to an important change in DC. One that will help us get the government under control.
It’s not just another day in the nation’s capital. At 11:30 a.m., Office of Management and Budget Director Jim Nussle and Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., will throw the switch on a new landmark of government, USASpending.gov. Mandated by the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 (FFATA), which was co-sponsored by Coburn and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., USASpending.gov is a searchable, Googlelike database that puts most federal spending within a few mouse clicks for every American. (Obama won’t be present at today’s activities because he is on the presidential campaign trail.)
Today is a milestone because, as President Bush noted when he signed FFATA into law Sept. 26: “We spend a lot of time and a lot of effort collecting your money, and we should show the same amount of effort in reporting how we spend it. … Taxpayers have a right to know where that money is going, and you have a right to know whether or not you’re getting value for your money.†Taxpayers can know because USASpending.gov brings federal spending into the Internet age. It’s the place to go, for example, if you’re interested in how much the government spent last year on “consultants†or the number of federal contracts given to the company owned by your congressman’s biggest contributor. …
… it may take a few years before the good effects of USASpending.gov are fully felt, but here’s fair warning to the old-school politicians who thrive on pork-barrel politics: It’s no longer just the dwindling ranks of the mainstream media covering the big spenders. Starting today, legions of citizens and professional watchdogs have access to an unprecedented amount of information and data on where tax dollars are going. And they’re all connected via the Internet. The pig roast with tax dollars as the main course is coming to an end.
Byron York writes about when waterboarding works.
About a year ago, I had dinner with a man who played a key role in the U.S. war on terror. The talk turned to allegations of torture. He said that our policy should be that we do not torture. And we should adhere to that policy. Unless, that is, a truly special situation comes up and we decide that we have to violate that policy in an extremely narrow set of circumstances.
Then, we explain what we did — by that, I think he meant the executive branch would be open with members of Congress — and move on. What he couldn’t understand was the determination, on the part of some lawmakers, to pass a law that would deal with any and all situations in the future. It’s just not possible. …
Gabriel Schoenfeld tours the ideas floated about the CIA.
Boston Phoenix wonders if Huck is the new Jimmy Carter.
For the past 25 years or so, Republicans have made Jimmy Carter and his presidency one of their favorite punching bags — the modern equivalent of what the Democrats did to Herbert Hoover two generations ago. “Look what happens when you nominate someone without much experience, who comes out of nowhere,” they’ve said. Or, “He was just a little too odd or unconventional to be an effective president.”
Now, though, the Republicans may want to keep their opinions of Carter (for whom I worked in the 1976 presidential campaign) to themselves. That’s because if they nominate Mike Huckabee — who this past week was unexpectedly leading the field in at least one national GOP poll and in Iowa — they’re going to be lining up behind someone who looks awfully similar to their bête noir. If nothing else, Carter’s experience as a candidate in 1976 may provide the Republicans a convenient handbook on what’s likely to happen to Huckabee as the campaign progresses. …
Professor Bainbridge lays out the case against Mike. Says if he’s the pick, we’re Hucked.
In my continuing quest to decide which (if any) of the GOP candidates to support in the 2008 Presidential primaries, we come back to the case of Mike Huckabee. I’ve joked in the past about never giving Hope, Arkansas, another chance at the presidency, but more serious and substantial reasons for eliminating Huckabee have now become apparent. Here’s a few in no particular order: …
The Captain posts on the Clinton campaign.
… No one practices the politics of personal destruction like the Clintons. The difference now is that Hillary has proven so ineffectual as a candidate that they have to push harder than normal to get the message out. It also explains the sudden and mystifying meltdown that occurred after the November debate when Hillary got caught switching positions on illegal alien drivers licenses. She proved incapable of containing the damage, and so the campaign panicked and started lashing out in all directions as a distraction, using material they had previously kept for whispering-campaign use. …
… We all watched in amazement as Howard Dean melted down in the snows of January 2004, in Iowa and New Hampshire. Dean, however, was a novice on the national stage. The Clintons are supposed to be grand masters of politics, and their meltdown thus far is far more compelling — and far more revealing of their character.
News.com from Australia says get yourself out in the sunshine.
PEOPLE should sit outside in the middle of the day to help stave off potential deadly medical conditions, an Australian researcher says.
Current recommendations about when people should be exposed to the sun the most were wrong and did not allow people to get enough vitamin D, according to David Turnbull, a research fellow at the University of Southern Queensland’s Centre for Rural and Remote Area Health.
Vitamin D, when absorbed through the skin from UV rays, has been found to help prevent various cancers, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease. …
Remember Kelo? That was when New London condemned land for transfer to developers. So how has that worked out? Ilya Somin posts in Volokh.
When the Supreme Court upheld the condemnation of private property for transfer to other private parties in Kelo v. City of New London, it was in large part on the theory that courts should defer to local governments’ judgments about when the use of eminent domain is needed to promote “economic development.” However, two and one half years after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the city and some seven years after the condemnation proceedings were first initiated, little or no economic development has occurred on the condemned land. …
… If the Kelo condemnation ultimately ends up creating more economic costs than benefits, that would not be a surprising development. For reasons I have explained in great detail in several articles (e.g. here and here), economic development takings often harm local economies more than they benefit them. …
… What is striking about the Kelo takings is that this pattern held true even in a case where intense nationwide media scrutiny was focused on the local government and its chosen developer. The Day also deserves credit for providing some excellent local coverage of the controversy. In more typical cases, where there is much less media attention, local governments have even less incentive to actually produce the “economic development” that supposedly justified condemnation in the first place.
Daily Mail says the Pope is a globalony skeptic. What will Al say?
Pope Benedict XVI has launched a surprise attack on climate change prophets of doom, warning them that any solutions to global warming must be based on firm evidence and not on dubious ideology.
The leader of more than a billion Roman Catholics suggested that fears over man-made emissions melting the ice caps and causing a wave of unprecedented disasters were nothing more than scare-mongering. …
Fox News reports on the holes in the globalony theories.
Part of the scientific consensus on global warming may be flawed, a new study asserts.
The researchers compared predictions of 22 widely used climate “models” — elaborate schematics that try to forecast how the global weather system will behave — with actual readings gathered by surface stations, weather balloons and orbiting satellites over the past three decades.
The study, published online this week in the International Journal of Climatology, found that while most of the models predicted that the middle and upper parts of the troposphere —1 to 6 miles above the Earth’s surface — would have warmed drastically over the past 30 years, actual observations showed only a little warming, especially over tropical regions. …