Stable Genius Liberal

NSA Says It Can’t Search Its Own Emails

“It’s just baffling,” says Mark Caramanica of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. “This is an agency that’s charged with monitoring millions of communications globally and they can’t even track their own internal communications in response to a FOIA request.”

They wouldn’t be lying would they?

Detroit was creatively destroyed by creative destruction

free-market enthusiasts love to quote Joseph Schumpeter about the inevitability of “creative destruction” — but they and their audiences invariably picture themselves as being the creative destroyers, not the creatively destroyed. Well, guess what: Someone always ends up being the modern equivalent of a buggy-whip producer, and it might be you.

John Galt and the Theory of the Firm

We may live in a market sea, but that sea is dotted with many islands that we call firms, some of them quite large, within which decisions are made not via markets but via hierarchy — even, you might say, via central planning. Clearly, there are some things you don’t want to leave up to the market — the market itself is telling us that, by creating those islands of planning and hierarchy.

Alan Greenspan was wrong about everything, hasn’t changed mind.

Brad De Long digs up an op-ed from 2010, three years ago, written by Alan Greenspan. And he was wrong about everything. So…will this change his mind about anything? Doubtful.

Dementia Rate Is Found to Drop Sharply due to health care and education improvements?

experts on aging said the studies also confirmed something they had suspected but had had difficulty proving: that dementia rates would fall and mental acuity improve as the population grew healthier and better educated. The incidence of dementia is lower among those better educated, as well as among those who control their blood pressure and cholesterol, possibly because some dementia is caused by ministrokes and other vascular damage. So as populations controlled cardiovascular risk factors better and had more years of schooling, it made sense that the risk of dementia might decrease. A half-dozen previous studies had hinted that the rate was falling, but they had flaws that led some to doubt the conclusions.

Florida: History of shameful jury decisions

Twenty years for a warning shot against a known abuser versus no time at all for killing an unarmed teenager leaves you scratching your head and wondering if justice is not just blind but also insane.

Worth a read. There is something seriously and deeply wrong about southern culture.

Untitled

davidvienna: (inspired by this, which was inspired by this)

Racists Love Ron and Rand Paul for Some Reason

But his son and progeny Rand Paul also has a close aide who is a huge racist, reports Alana Goodman. Jack Hunter, author, with Rand Paul, of The Tea Party Goes to Washington, is not just kinda bigoted in an uncomfortable, old-guy sort of way. He’s a serious neo-Confederate.

Why does this keep happening?

Here’s Exactly Who to Blame in Congress for Authorizing Government Spying

Nice itemized list of who voted for the patriot act and its extensions and expansions.

Privacy Group to Ask Supreme Court to Stop N.S.A.’s Phone Spying Program

All 11 members of the FISA court are appointed by John Roberts.There is no confirmation process. Any chance the court is far right?