Minor Thoughts from me to you

For once, I'm literally at a loss for words. How did this woman choose teaching as a career? Isn't "I can teach anyone above the age of 15 but I can't be responsible for my actions if I see a younger child" a bit of an interview killer?

A former teacher is suing the Cincinnati school district, saying she was discriminated against because of her rare phobia: a fear of young children. Maria Waltherr-Willard, 61, who had been teaching high school Spanish and French since 1976, said that when she was transferred to the district’s middle school in 2009, the children set off her phobia, causing her blood pressure to soar and forcing her to retire. Ms. Waltherr-Willard said that her phobia falls under the federal American with Disabilities Act and that the transfer violated the law.

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Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Personal Enthusiasm: It Was Okay

Literary fiction. It's the one genre (if you can call it that) that the reviewer has studiously avoided. And, yet, here he is. Writing a review of a literary novel. And not just any literary novel. Joe's writing a review of a novel that was picked by Oprah, for her noted national book club.

The reviewer thinks it's worth reflecting on how Joe got here. There was definitely some overconfidence and hubris involved. There was a sense that Joe could read the tea leaves better than others. Joe bet on the outcome of an election and lost. The tide of events was stronger than the strength of his convictions. In losing, he temporarily sacrificed control of his reading time.

Joe's good friend Adam believed that Joe's loss reflected bigger things. (That, at least, is how the reviewer chooses to view matters.) Perhaps a view of culture that's too constricted. Maybe an unbalanced reading list. Or a narrowness of mind. Whatever the reason, Adam assigned him the task of reading and reviewing Freedom.

Joe immediately suspected that this book represented the heretofore avoided "literary fiction" shelf. Never having actually bothered to fully define literary fiction, he was forced to do so. Naturally, he consulted Wikipedia on the topic.

Literary fiction, in general, focuses on the subjects of the narrative to create "introspective, in-depth character studies" of "interesting, complex and developed" characters. This contrasts with paraliterary fiction where "generally speaking, the kind of attention that we pay to the subject in literature ... has to be paid to the social and material complexities of the object".

Literary fiction does not focus on plot as much as paraliterary fiction. Usually, the focus is on the "inner story" of the characters who drive the plot with detailed motivations to elicit "emotional involvement" in the reader.

The tone of literary fiction is usually serious and, therefore, often darker than paraliterary fiction.

The pacing of literary fiction is slower than paraliterary fiction. As Terrence Rafferty notes, "literary fiction, by its nature, allows itself to dawdle, to linger on stray beauties even at the risk of losing its way."

Neal Stephenson has suggested that while any definition will be simplistic there is a general cultural difference between literary and genre fiction, created by who the author is accountable to. Literary novelists are typically supported by patronage via employment at a university or similar institutions, with the continuation of such positions determined not by book sales but by critical acclaim by other established literary authors and critics. Genre fiction writers seek to support themselves by book sales and write to please a mass audience.

Joe found that this description captured what he'd always feared about literary fiction. The genre represents novelists, freed from the constraints of financial or popular success, writing slow, serious, dark, plotless novels about the inner lives of characters. It sounded like a recipe for a boring, depressing book. And his honor depended on him reading it, finishing it, and reviewing it.

The thought of this book filled Joe with dread. He had to spend nearly a week nerving himself to start it, expecting weeks of painful slogging. Reality was a pleasant surprise. (The last time in this narrative that it would be.) Freedom was easy to read and did give the reader some incentive to progress through the story. Once started, he didn't feel tortured by his continued progress through it. Nevertheless, his fears weren't groundless. It was slow, serious, dark, and mostly (but not entirely) plotless. It focused on the inner lives of its characters, for the purpose of revealing their flaws and selfish motivations. For this reason, Joe would never consider it a page turner or book that he was eager to pick up.

What did Joe read? He read the story of Walter and Patty Berglund, a socially aware couple, leading the gentrification of a neighborhood in St. Paul, Minnesota. Outwardly, they were well matched and successful. They had two kids, a nice house and a secure income.

The reality was less pretty. Patty Berglund doted on her son, Joey, to the exclusion of both husband Walter and daughter Jessica. Walter, perhaps in reaction to Patty's weird indulgences of Joey, constantly fought with Joey and doted on Jessica (whom Patty nearly ignored). Patty always claimed (both to herself and to others) that Walter was the center of her life. But she really lusted after Walter's college friend, Richard Katz, being nearly unable to sexually resist him. Richard was a struggling, principled, indie rocker. Walter constantly competed with him, like the brother that he'd always wished he'd had. Patty constantly wished she could be with Richard but feared irretrievably damaging Walter's psyche.

Freedom starts with an overview of the Bergland's early life in their neighborhood, focusing on Patty's interactions with their neighbors. Then it suddenly detours into about 200 pages of Patty's therapeutic autobiography before jolting back to the main narrative. The reviewer had to read about the inner life of each Berglund, as well as the inner life of Richard Katz. The narrative showed how Patty's screwed up family life led to the screwed up way that she treated her own children. It showed how Walter's screwed up family life led to the screwed up way that he treated his own children. It showed how Katz just enjoyed screwing up everyone's life.

(The reviewer should mention, at this point, that there are no pleasant or sympathetic characters in this novel. At multiple points during each character's time on screen, he entertained fantasties of throttling each character and walking away. The reviewer cheerfully admits to avoiding "stupid" people and resents that Franzen thinks there is something to be gained by spending large quantities of time with said stupid people.)

(And, how is the reader supposed to interpret Franzen's portrayal of Patty? Does she really say "ha ha ha" in a pathetic attempt at sarcastic humor? Or is that merely Franzen's lame attempt at communicating the sound of laughter during those times in which he doesn't want to just say "she laughed"?)

Freedom is so named (so the reviewer thinks) because it portrays a modern American family, living a life full of "freedom". But, ultimately, that freedom doesn't really make them happy. Pretty much everyone is miserable in some way, at every point of the story.

Now that he has finished the book, the reviewer does have a trinitarian question. "So what? What's the point? Why does this book exist?" Are Americans really that oblivious to the life around them that they require a novelist to document it and point out its flaws? Does a certain, perhaps self-righteous, segment of society enjoy reading how about other portions of society go about ruining their lives?

At the risk of either boasting or appearing self congratulatory, the reviewer feels that he has a rich and detailed introspective view of his own life. His own inner narrative sounds remarkably like a literary fiction novel. No aspect of human nature, revealed by Freedom, was a revelation to him. It was ultimately dreary and uninteresting. If the reviewer wants a revealing view of human nature, he need only open the newspaper. (The sad story of General Petraeus and Patricia Broadwell teaches us that much.) He finds that literary fiction may be enlightening without being entertaining.

This was written Friday, just a few hours after I learned about the Newtown shooting.

Members of the Oregon School Board,

On a day like today, I feel very reassured that Netherwood Knoll Elementary is a gun-free zone. I feel reassured every time I think about the fact that my kindergarten aged daughter is perfectly safe from law-abiding people. She will never have to worry that someone who reads and obeys the “No Guns” sign will ever bring a gun to campus.

I wonder, though, how safe she is from people who aren’t law abiding? How safe is she, if someone decides to break the law by committing murder? How does that sign protect her then? In that moment, a gunman will walk into the school full of confidence. He’ll be confident that none of the school staff have the means to stop him. He’ll be confident that none of the teachers have the means to stop him. He’ll be confident that the classrooms are a perfect killing field for him. He’ll be confident that none of the classrooms are a potential threat to him.

Laws creating gun free schools have turned schools into killing fields for every psychopath who wants to get on the evening news. You’ve taken responsibility for my daughter but you’ve ensured that no one around her has the means to defend her or the means to stop evil doers that would threaten her.

Is there any one at Netherwood Knoll Elementary that is capable of committing violence in defense of the defenseless? Or are you going to continue to claim that the weapon is the real problem? By systematically disarming every individual in the school, you allow a lone murderer with a lone weapon to become the most powerful man in the school. That is immoral.

I beg of you. Reconsider your stance on guns in schools. Let the Oregon School District be full of schools that the evil are afraid to enter. Let our students come to school, secure in the knowledge that their teachers and staff are fully capable of protecting them, whether it’s from ice on the sidewalks or gunmen in the halls. Don’t allow NKE to be a shooting gallery of the defenseless any longer.

I was ecstatic when I read this yesterday.

the Republican Study Committee expresses support for expanding fair use, treating the reduction of statutory copyright damages as a kind of tort reform, punishing false copyright enforcement claims, and limiting copyright terms to twelve years, with increasingly expensive extensions available for no more than 34 years.

It is the most radical proposal for overhauling copyright that we have seen in recent years — and the most head-turning change of direction in decades for either party on intellectual property issues.

This would have been a major step forward for the Republican party in two crucial areas. First, it's an issue that is important to many younger voters, a demographic that has little affection for Republicans. Second, it would have demonstrated that the Republican party is something other than a reflexive protector of big businesses.

Sadly, the Republican Study Committee withdrew their brief within 24 hours.

”Yesterday you received a Policy Brief on copyright law that was published without adequate review within the RSC and failed to meet that standard. Copyright reform would have far-reaching impacts, so it is incredibly important that it be approached with all facts and viewpoints in hand.”

Yes, the Republican Party has just caved to a major big business (Disney) representing a major industry (Hollywood) that hates Republicans. In the process, angering many younger voters and technology savvy voters. How, exactly, do the idiots running the party think that this will help them out? This only proves, again, that the Republican party protects big businesses no matter and cares nothing for other Americans.

Worse, our cultural heritage is rapidly disappearing. Virtually the entire cultural output of the 20th and 21st centuries—movies, music, art, literature—is locked up in restrictive copyright. All of these works will be lot forever, unless the copyright owner sees a clear, commercial benefit to keeping these works available. Copyright reform—and limiting the term of copyright—is a vital part of preserving our cultural heritage.

From a political, cultural, and policy standpoint, this is an absolutely stupid decision. I'm furious with the Republican Study Committee and the craven cowardice that they've spinelessly demonstrated.

I've been spending all day thinking about why my election prediction was wrong. And not just slightly wrong but completely wrong. The simple answer is: I didn't want to believe that the 2012 electorate looked exactly like the 2008 electorate. (There's a whole narrative in why I didn't want to believe that, but I don't feel like writing that tonight. I'll write it soon, but not now.)

Unfortunately for me, the 2012 electorate looks almost exactly like the 2008 electorate and that completely doomed Mr. Romney's chances.

A week ago, I bet Adam that Mitt Romney would win the Presidency and that he would do it by winning Virginia, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Colorado, and New Hampshire. Events have now revealed that I was definitely overestimating Mr. Romney's standing in those states.

Adam has won the bet and I'm now waiting to find out which book I must purchase, read, and review.

Claire Berlinski takes an in-depth look, in the City Journal at a man that I'd never heard of, but who appears to wield a tremendous amount of influence.

Controversial Muslim preacher, feared Turkish intriguer—and “inspirer” of the largest charter school network in America.

.. Yet there is a bit more to the story. Gülen is a powerful business figure in Turkey and—to put it mildly—a controversial one. He is also an increasingly influential businessman globally. There are somewhere between 3 million and 6 million Gülen followers—or, to use the term they prefer, people who are “inspired” by him. Sources vary widely in their estimates of the worth of the institutions “inspired” by Gülen, which exist in every populated continent, but those based on American court records have ranged from $20 billion to $50 billion. Most interesting, from the American point of view, is that Gülen lives in Pennsylvania, in the Poconos. He is, among other things, a major player in the world of American charter schools—though he claims to have no power over them; they’re just greatly inspired, he says.

Even if it were only for these reasons, you might want to know more about Gülen, especially because the few commentators who do write about him generally mischaracterize him, whether they call him a “radical Islamist” or a “liberal Muslim.” The truth is much more complicated—to the extent that anyone understands it.

This is long, but it's worth reading.

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Michael Totten, speaking from experience on the Middle East.

President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney wrapped up their trilogy of presidential debates on Monday this week and spent most of the evening arguing foreign policy. Each demonstrated a reasonable grasp of how the world works and only sharply disagreed with his opponent on the margins and in the details. But they both seem to think, 11 years after 9/11, that calibrating just the right policy recipe will reduce Islamist extremism and anti-Americanism in the Middle East. They're wrong.

The Middle East desperately needs economic development, better education, the rule of law and gender equality, as Mr. Romney says. And Mr. Obama was right to take the side of citizens against dictators—especially in Libya, where Moammar Gadhafi ran one of the most thoroughly repressive police states in the world, and in Syria, where Bashar Assad has turned the country he inherited into a prison spattered with blood. But both presidential candidates are kidding themselves if they think anti-Americanism and the appeal of radical Islam will vanish any time soon.

First, it's simply not true that attitudes toward Americans have changed in the region. I've spent a lot of time in Tunisia and Egypt, both before and after the revolutions, and have yet to meet or interview a single person whose opinion of Americans has changed an iota.

Second, pace Mr. Romney, promoting better education, the rule of law and gender equality won't reduce the appeal of radical Islam. Egyptians voted for Islamist parties by a two-to-one margin. Two-thirds of those votes went to the Muslim Brotherhood, and the other third went to the totalitarian Salafists, the ideological brethren of Osama bin Laden. These people are not even remotely interested in the rule of law, better education or gender equality. They want Islamic law, Islamic education and gender apartheid. They will resist Mr. Romney's pressure for a more liberal alternative and denounce him as a meddling imperialist just for bringing it up.

Anti-Americanism has been a default political position in the Arab world for decades. Radical Islam is the principal vehicle through which it's expressed at the moment, but anti-Americanism specifically, and anti-Western "imperialism" generally, likewise lie at the molten core of secular Arab nationalism of every variety. The Islamists hate the U.S. because it's liberal and decadent. (The riots in September over a ludicrous Internet video ought to make that abundantly clear.) And both Islamists and secularists hate the U.S. because it's a superpower.

Everything the United States does is viewed with suspicion across the political spectrum. Gamal Abdel Gawad Soltan, the director of Egypt's Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, admitted as much to me in Cairo last summer when I asked him about NATO's war against Gadhafi in Libya. "There is a general sympathy with the Libyan people," he said, "but also concern about the NATO intervention. The fact that the rebels in Libya are supported by NATO is why many people here are somewhat restrained from voicing support for the rebels." When I asked him what Egyptians would think if the U.S. sat the war out, he said, "They would criticize NATO for not helping. It's a lose-lose situation for you."

So we're damned if we do and we're damned if we don't. And not just on Libya. An enormous swath of the Arab world supported the Iraqi insurgency after an American-led coalition overthrew Saddam Hussein. Thousands of non-Iraqi Arabs even showed up to fight. Yet today the U.S. is roundly criticized all over the region for not taking Assad out in Syria.

Totten concludes with this.

It's not his fault that the Middle East is immature and unhinged politically. Nobody can change that right now. This should be equally obvious to Mr. Romney even though he isn't president. No American president since Eisenhower could change it, nor can Mr. Romney. We may be able to help out here and there, and I wholeheartedly agree with him that we should. But Arab countries will mostly have to work this out on their own.

It will take a long time.

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The Atlantic published 54 photos of the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. If you haven't seen any photos yet, you should check these out.

Last night, Hurricane Sandy -- the largest Atlantic tropical system on record -- made landfall just south of Atlantic City, New Jersey, bringing winds up to 90 mph (150 kph), and pushing a massive storm surge onto beaches and shorelines. At least 12 deaths have been reported in the United States. These fatalities, when added to the previous toll in the Caribbean, leave Sandy responsible for more taking more than 80 lives to date. Millions across the Eastern Seaboard are now without power, and even more are struggling with rising floodwater. Sandy continues northward, now downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone, and those affected are now assessing the damage. Collected here are images of Sandy's aftermath, many from New York City, which suffered widespread blackouts and a record-setting high tide early this morning.

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Bloomberg News reported on October 17 that Attorney General Eric Holder “prosecuted more government officials for alleged leaks under the World War I-era Espionage Act than all his predecessors combined, including law-and-order Republicans John Mitchell, Edwin Meese and John Ashcroft.” :

The Justice Department said that there are established avenues for government employees to follow if they want to report misdeeds. The agency “does not target whistle-blowers in leak cases or any other cases,” Dean Boyd, a department spokesman, said.“An individual in authorized possession of classified information has no authority or right to unilaterally determine that it should be made public or otherwise disclose it,” he said.

However, when leaks to the press benefit the administration, prosecutions from the Jusitce Department are absent. For example, AG Holder was not prosecuting anyone over who leaked information about the killing of Oasma bin Laden. The Justice Department has yet to charge anyone over leaking information regarding the U.S. involvement in cyberattacks on Iran as well as an al Qaida plan to blow up a U.S. bound airplane. In fact, the Justice Department ended up appointing one of two attorneys to the cyberattacks investigation who was an Obama donor.

“There’s a problem with prosecutions that don’t distinguish between bad people -- people who spy for other governments, people who sell secrets for money -- and people who are accused of having conversations and discussions,” said Abbe Lowell, attorney for Stephen J. Kim, an intelligence analyst charged under the Act, to Bloomberg News.

... On October 10, nearly one month after the deadly Benghazi attack that took the lives of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, President Obama issued a policy directive on whistle blower protections.

The directive expanded the protections of the House’s Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act, which was designed to protect federal employees if they reported waste, fraud, or abuse through government officials-- to executive branch agencies. National security and intelligence staffers would be included in the legislation through the directive. It. passed the lower chamber in September. The bill has yet to be passed by the Senate.

Elizabeth Goitein, co-director of the Brennan Center of Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program, told Bloomberg News that the Obama policy directive does not go far enough, because it “doesn’t include media representatives within the universe of people to whom the whistle-blower can make the disclosure.” Basically, the administration can still continue to prosecute intelligence staffers who disclose information to the media.

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Republican Congressional candidate Martha McSally recently spoke out about the true war on women. Ms. McSally is running for Gabby Giffords' old Congressional seat. Oh, and she's also the first woman to fly a fighter jet into combat.

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President Obama has spent far more lavishly on White House state dinners than previous chief executives, including nearly $1 million on a 2010 dinner for Mexico's president, according to documents obtained by The Washington Examiner.

But current and former government officials said the documents obtained by The Examiner point to an unprecedented upsurge in White House spending on such events.

The Obama extravaganza two years ago for Mexican President Felipe Calderon, which included a performance by pop star Beyonce, cost $969,793, or more than $4,700 per attendee, the documents show.

The Calderon dinner was held on the South Lawn in a massive tent adorned with decorated walls, hanging chandeliers, carpeting and a stage for Beyonce's performance.

Guests rode private trolley cars from the White House to the tent. Celebrity guest chef Rick Bayless from Chicago’s Topolobampo restaurant was imported to prepare Oaxacan black mole, black bean tamalon and grilled green beans.

Of course, that much extravagence wouldn't be complete unless unseemly whiffs of crony capitalism were wafting about.

The documents also reveal that the Obama White House retained an outside planner for the dinners. Bryan Rafanelli, a Boston-based celebrity event planner who was retained last year, managed former first daughter Chelsea Clinton's 2010 nupitals. His firm's website boasts that he produced "State Dinners hosted by President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama."

Rafanelli's business partner, Mark Walsh, is deputy chief of the State Department's Office of Protocol, which reimburses the White House executive residence for the events.

But I'm sure that there was absolutely nothing wrong with a government official paying his business partner to plan lavish dinners.

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The Wall Street Journal reminds us of just how ineffectual and do-nothing the Senate has been, under Majority Leader Harry Reid. Do you really want Harry Reid to stay on as Majority Leader or should we give him the less taxing job of Minority Leader?

Even if Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan win on November 6, his agenda will be stymied if Republicans can't pick up at least three more seats than their current 47 and control the Senate. That's clear from the last two years, when Harry Reid's not-so-deliberative body became the graveyard for fiscal and other reform.

House Republicans won an historic midterm election in 2010, picking up 63 seats. They also gained six Senate seats, but a handful of weak GOP candidates (Sharron Angle, Ken Buck, Christine O'Donnell) cost them control of the upper body. Back in charge in 2011, Mr. Reid proceeded to stop nearly everything that House Republicans passed. President Obama hasn't even had to sweat a veto fight because nothing escapes Mr. Reid's lost world.

Consider the record. In 2011 and 2012 the House passed more than three-dozen economic or jobs-related bills and with only a few exceptions they died in the Senate without a vote. The bills dealt with regulatory relief, tax reduction, domestic drilling for energy, offshore drilling, a jobs bill for veterans, repeal of ObamaCare and many more. Many passed the House with significant Democratic support, as the nearby list shows.

Then there is the Democratic failure on their constitutional obligation of passing a budget. House Republicans passed their budgets in each of the past two years in the spring. The latest one, crafted by Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan, contained $4.5 trillion in deficit reduction—at least twice as much as Mr. Obama's budget proposal.

By contrast, the Senate failed to pass any budget in 2012. Or 2011. Or 2010. The Senate hasn't passed a budget in more than 1,200 days. Sorry, Harry, you can't blame that on a Republican filibuster, because it takes only 51 votes to pass a Senate budget resolution. In 2011 and 2012 the Senate Budget Committee never even drafted a budget, thus inspiring a House bill to dock the pay of Senate Budget Committee Members for not doing their job.

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First, it is admittedly tempting for a libertarian voter to fill in the oval for Johnson, the former New Mexico Governor. Johnson is far and away the best candidate the LP has ever put forward, and would make an excellent president. But the bottom line is this: Gary Johnson is not going to be elected president on November 6. Either Mitt Romney or Barack Obama will have that honor and burden. So I don’t have to choose between Romney and Johnson. I’m choosing between Romney and Obama.

Here’s why I like Mitt:

1. Obamacare. One reason many libertarians are skeptical of Romney was his introduction of “Romneycare” in Massachusetts. Many people, including the Obama Administration, like to say that this was the genesis of the despised individual mandate. Governor Romney has offered various reasons why Romneycare is different (federalism, substantive differences), which are not convincing to many libertarians.

Fine. But here’s the thing. For most libertarians, this is one of the most important issues in decades. Libertarians worry that Obamacare, beyond being an atrociously designed law even on its own terms and assumptions, will fundamentally alter the relationship between Americans and our government, and cement into place once and for all a European-style social democracy.

Romney has pledged to repeal Obamacare. It is one of his most visible pledges, and therefore – even if one doesn’t trust Romney (I do, although I’m not sure he can get repeal done) – it will be one of the hardest for him to break or ignore. And he has vowed to use Obama’s own weapon – executive branch waivers – to effectively stop implementation of the Act immediately.

So let’s be skeptical. Let’s assume there is only a 10 or 20 percent chance Romney carries through on this promise (I think the odds are much higher, but I’m being cautious and skeptical here). What are the odds of repeal if Obama is re-elected? Zero. Zilch. Nada. None. Nothing. If repeal of Obamacare is truly important – and I think it is – I will not pass up the most (or only) realistic chance to get it done.

2.Taxes. Mitt Romney has expressed a desire for sensible tax reform that most libertarians support – lower rates with a broader base. We’d like to see overall taxes decline, but in the face of massive deficits, with a public unwilling to stand for major cuts in entitlements, that’s probably not a realistic option. But Mitt Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan have promised to try. Barack Obama, on the other hand, has expressed again and again his desire and determination to raise income tax rates, and, at times, even to do so solely for the purpose of redistributing income. And to add insult to injury, Obama’s Orwellian language about “asking” some “to pay a little bit more” grates every time one hears it.

Walter Mondale campaigned on raising taxes and lost. Bill Clinton campaigned on cutting taxes, won, and promptly raised the marginal income tax rates. Libertarians often like to say that there is no difference between the two major parties. But in my lifetime (and I was reading Reason and walking precincts for Ed Clark before many of those young Reason staffers were born) there have been two Presidents who have substantially reduced income tax rates: Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, both Republicans. Republicans have delivered on income tax rate reductions, and can do so again.

Romney is clearly the superior candidate.

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Very cool.

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Yes, please.

There were 32,310 traffic fatalities in 2011, the fewest there have been since 1949. More importantly, fatality rates per 100 million vehicle miles traveled have dropped substantially over the years, falling from 24.09 in 1921 to 1.09 in 2011. In addition, while interstate highway speed limits have risen since Congress repealed all federally imposed speed limits in 1995, fatalities categorized as “speeding-related” by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) have declined since then. Specifically, there were 13,414 speeding-related fatalities in 1995 and 10,591 in 2011. Of the 10,591 speeding-related fatalities in 2011, just 964 occurred on interstate highways with speed limits “over 55 MPH.”

So even as critics contend that an 85 MPH speed limit will increase fatalities, it’s no surprise that Texas is implementing the higher limit: Driving in America has never been safer than it is now.

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I think Bob Owens makes a lot of sense, in this post. (And Romney needs to do a better job of explaining his positions. I didn't have any idea that this was a plan, when I watched him debate President Obama.)

We’ve sunk — pardon the term — literally trillions of dollars into the development of nuclear-armed, nuclear-powered carrier strike groups and ballistic missile submarines, but the loss of a single one would be an overwhelming blow from which it would take years to recover.

We’ve created a Navy that is “too big to fail,” in terms of the importance and capital investment we’ve placed on just eleven ships — an incredibly short-sighted position. We’ve made similarly bad investments in the gee-whiz technology of the F-22 Raptor, where every accident or combat loss costs $150 million each, and the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which will cost (if they are ever fielded) as much as a quarter-billion dollars each to replace for the Navy and Marine versions. We’re creating planes and ships that are too expensive to risk losing in combat. These technological marvels are backed by systems and support elements that are 50 years old, being used by the grandchildren of the men that built and used them.

It’s absurd.

What Mitt Romney has proposed is a shift in our way of thinking about the military that a community organizer simply can’t grasp.

Romney has proposed a Navy of lighter, more numerous, less expensive, and more deployable multiple-role ships that can be better geographically dispersed around the globe to more quickly respond to need, instead of having less than a dozen carrier strike groups chasing problems around the world.

Romney’s plan to use COTS (commercial off the shelf) technologies across the entire military may not be as sexy as spending billions to mount futuristic lasers and rail-guns on ships, but what it will do is put more ships and sailors on the water.

It’s a stunning turnaround offered by one of America’s best turnaround artists. Romney proposes to toss the bureaucratic dead-weight out of the military, out of the Pentagon, and replace them with real war-fighters and practical weapons.

It's a fairly fundamental issue. Do we want a Navy that has few ships that are each massively powerful and massively expensive? The downside is that it would be disastrous both economically and militarily to lose even one ship. Or do we want a Navy that has many, cheap ships that are each relatively weak? The upside is that we could afford to lose a few ships without crippling the Navy or the budget. Romney is in favor of the latter while Obama is in favor of the former.

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Steven Horwitz published a Cato Briefing Paper on Herbert Hoover, our President who was the exact opposite of a laissez faire non-interventionist.

Politicians and pundits portray Herbert Hoover as a defender of laissez faire governance whose dogmatic commitment to small government led him to stand by and do nothing while the economy collapsed in the wake of the stock market crash in 1929. In fact, Hoover had long been a critic of laissez faire. As president, he doubled federal spending in real terms in four years. He also used government to prop up wages, restricted immigration, signed the Smoot-Hawley tariff, raised taxes, and created the Reconstruction Finance Corporation—all interventionist measures and not laissez faire. Unlike many Democrats today, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's advisers knew that Hoover had started the New Deal. One of them wrote, "When we all burst into Washington ... we found every essential idea [of the New Deal] enacted in the 100-day Congress in the Hoover administration itself."

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Gabriel Kolko reviews the history of the New Deal and shows how President Hoover laid the groundwork for everything that President Roosevelt did, during the Great Depression. Compared to Hoover, FDR was just an amateur at centralizing government control of the economy.

Hoover’s initiatives did not produce economic recovery, but served as the groundwork for various policies laid out in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal.”  As Secretary of Commerce under the preceding Republican presidents, he had been particularly active in creating trade associations in hundreds of industries, and these associations were to become the backbone of the National Recovery Administration, the first New Deal.

... Roosevelt himself contributed little, perhaps nothing, to the formulation of the New Deal, most of which had existed in an early form in the trade associations. Trade associations wanted federal governmental protection from other members of the industry who competed too energetically—which classical economic theory declared was a good thing. Labor costs are equalized when labor is organized or child-labor outlawed; this became an issue when some codes, particularly in textiles, were formulated.

All this just shows what has been known for a long time: there is no difference between the parties and firms’ use of federal regulations to make money. Labor unions can therefore emerge as many things, including as a form of intra-industry struggle. The coal, apparel, and textiles industries are good examples: Northern textiles were for limits on child labor, the Southern textile industry (which used children as cheap factory hands), against federal control of it.

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Hey, look! It's yet another area where public sector unions are making the world a worse place. I'm 100% in favor of getting rid of police unions.

All of these Rhode Island cops, and many more like them across the county, were able to keep their jobs and benefits—sometimes only temporarily, but always longer than they should have—thanks to model legislation written and lobbied for by well-funded police unions. That piece of legislation is called the "law enforcement bill of rights," and its sole purpose is to shield cops from the laws they're paid to enforce.

The inspiration for this legislation and its similarly named cousins across the country is the Police Officers’ Bill of Rights, introduced in 1971 by New York Rep. Mario Biaggi (D), at the behest of the Police Benevolent Association. Having once been the most decorated police officer in the country, Biaggi didn't need much convincing to put forward the union-friendly bill.

Biaggi pushed for the POBOR until March 1987, when he received two indictments back-to-back. The first was for accepting a paid vacation from Brooklyn Democratic Leader Meade H. Esposito in exchange for using federal funds to bail out a company in Esposito's neighborhood. A second indictment handed down three months later charged Biaggi with extorting $3.6 million in cash and stock options from a small Bronx machine shop called Wedtech. Both charges resulted in convictions and Biaggi's resignation from Congress.

While Biaggi's bill never made it through Congress, police unions didn't wait for city managers or police department higher-ups to write their own. Benevolent associations in Maryland successfully pushed for the passage of a police bill of rights in 1972; Florida, Rhode Island, Virginia, New Mexico, and California followed suit before the 70s were over. The 1980s, 90s, and 2000s saw still more states adopt police bill of rights at the behest of police unions.

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