Just some suggestions to get you started:
- Apparently, I live in the safest county in America — I say that because today’s Most Wanted person in Lexington County is a young woman who wasn’t born when I started working at The State in April 1987. She’s 5’4″, and weighs all of 135 pounds. And she’s wanted for… wait for it… forgery! Two whole counts. I am not making this up. I’m sure we’ll all breathe easier when she’s off the streets. Then we can start hunting down terrorists and such. This, by the way, is in a county where it seems a meth lab gets busted about every five minutes. But this is our public enemy No. 1.
- U.S. Charges Chinese Army Personnel With Cyberspying — This reminds me of something. There was a fascinating piece in The New Yorker several weeks back about a man who was born in China but lived most of his adult life as a very productive American, who ended up getting locked up for sharing technical secrets with the folks back in the old country. A wonderfully nuanced story about divided loyalties and the ways real agents rationalize what they’re doing — and quite an antidote to the sexed-up flash of “The Americans.”
- Former British Imam Convicted in Terror Trial in New York — For y’all who believe we should treat terrorism as discrete crimes rather than wage war on it, this is a victory.
Well, that should be enough to get y’all started.
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Not directly related to any of these, but an absolute must-read: Dexter Filkins’ piece in the New Yorker on the current situation in Iraq and specifically al-Maliki. Fascinating.
A lot of those Most Wanted deals are dubious. Some guy shot and killed another guy on Garners Ferry this weekend. He only got caught this afternoon. Wouldn’t he have been more wanted?
And why is my comment being held for moderation?
You would think. I suspect the problem is one of process. Folks at the sheriff’s departments, perhaps, send out Monday’s Most Wanted on Friday. Maybe not, but that would help explain it…
I thought the piece on animal rights groups paying $15.75 million to Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey for allegedly bribing a circus employee to lie about elephant abuse was kind of interesting.
My favorite quote from the piece: “Meyer, Glitzenstein & Crystal, the firm that represented the plaintiffs in that suit, said in a statement Thursday that it thinks it would have ultimately defeated the RICO claims but wanted to avoid more costly and time-consuming litigation.”
Riiiiighht. You totally would have won that, but you decided it would be too expensive in your legal fees. So you got your client (their insurance company) to pay almost $16 million to settle. Suuuuuure….
Remind me not to hire that law firm.
Well, legal fees and in-house time.
I think I might enjoy seeing their bill, with an itemized breakdown of course.
I don’t know why this debate didn’t make news last year when it occurred (or maybe it did and I missed it). South Carolina’s own Bob Inglis debated a couple of guys from Heartland and Heritage Foundation on the merits of a revenue-neutral carbon tax before a conservative crowd. Inglis took the side that the tax was a reasonable approach to addressing carbon emissions. The other gentlemen argued that any tax is a bad tax. Based on the audience response at the end of the debate, Inglis won the debate.
A “revenue neutral tax” is as elusive as the albino dodo bird riding on a unicorn.
“At the conclusion of the debate, a straw poll was taken and approximately 80% of the audience indicated they favored taxing carbon emissions in return for a dollar-for-dollar tax swap on something else (FICA taxes, corporate income taxes, etc.).”
Does anyone seriously think FICA taxes would be reduced to offset a carbon tax? How exactly would current and future FICA obligations be paid? A carbon tax would be devastating to the economy – especially to those on the lowest end of the income scale.
Here’s a real revenue neutral tax: Cut spending in other areas you think are less important and funnel the money to wherever the carbon tax would go. There’s billions in the military budget that could be diverted. Do we need a Federal Department of Education or a carbon tax?