HAPPY NEW YEAR!

The Many Happy Returns Edition OTB Caption ContestTM is now over. (AFP/Getty Images/File/Mario Tama)

By any reasonable measure, we’re far too apprehensive about terrorism and expend far too many resources and sacrifice far too much liberty defending against its risks.  But there are smart ways and dumb ways to make that point. Nate Silver, responding a few days ago to one of my posts, demonstrates the former: Over the [...]

Several bloggers, most notably Andrew Sullivan, are calling attention to Shannyn Moore‘s bizarre post about being banned from a Sarah Palin event by husband Todd Palin. Sarah Palin’s Wasilla book signing had a few rules. “Per Todd Palin”, three of us were banned. “Public servants” in their police uniforms at a “public event” in a [...]

There’s quite a bit of chatter this morning about the fact that two travel bloggers of whom I’d never previously heard have  had their computers confiscated pursuant to subpoenas after publishing unclassified but sensitive TSA screening procedures.  AP’s Eileen Sullivan has the rundown: As the government reviews how an alleged terrorist was able to bring [...]

While we’re on the subject of China and trade policy, I wonder why more attention hasn’t been paid to China’s failure to live up to all of the commitments it made when it was admitted to the WTO back in 2001? As I calculate things China has yet to meet the obligations it made in [...]

Time for the New Year’s Eve OTB Caption ContestTM (AFP/File/Carl de Souza) Winners will be announced Monday PM

Apparently, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao had reason to be concerned about Western protectionism when he made his remarks last week. The U. S. has imposed stiff duties on imports of steel pipe from China: (Bloomberg) — The U.S. will impose duties on $2.8 billion in steel-pipe imports from China after saying subsidies on the products [...]

It seems that some liberal bloggers who used to complain about the Bush administration are being intellectually honest and also complaining when the Obama administration does the same thing.  BooMan, for one, doesn’t like it. What brought people together into progressive blogging communities and networks was related to policy (the invasion of Iraq, torture, illegal [...]

Paul Caron notes that TurboTax has updated its software to be sure to prompt future Treasury Secretaries to pay their self-employment taxes when they work for the IMF. (h/t Megan McArdle)

Daphne Evitiar doesn’t seem to note anything unusual about this: Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) sent a letter to President Obama today asking him to halt the transfer of six Guantanamo detainees to Yemen. The request, they say, is in light of the danger they’ve apparently just now realized [...]

The Netherlands will immediately begin using full body scanners for flights heading to the United States to prevent future terrorist attacks like the foiled Christmas Day attempt.

Is President Obama taking more flack for the failed Detroit terror plot than President Bush did for the shoe bomber? Politico’s Josh Gernstein thinks so. Eight years ago, a terrorist bomber’s attempt to blow up a transatlantic airliner was thwarted by a group of passengers, an incident that revealed some gaping holes in airline security [...]

It seems that Arianna Huffington was having dinner with an investment banker, a film maker, and several others and they hit upon a brilliant scheme to simultaneously punish the big Wall Street banks and get business lending moving again: Encourage everyone to move their money to local, community banks. Felix Samon thinks his unlikely to [...]

I’m away from home base the next couple of days, so tomorrow’s regularly scheduled edition of OTB Radio, our BlogTalkRadio program, will not take place. The next episode  will record and air live from 5:30-6:30 Eastern on Wednesday, January 6. You can play the previous show, subscribe to its feed, or share it with your [...]

Opposition to the Democrats’ health care reform plan has created some strange bedfellows, with the Hard Left and the Hard Right frequently working together.  Here’s on that I didn’t expect:  NYT columnist Bob Herbert attacking the plan from the Right. There is a middle-class tax time bomb ticking in the Senate’s version of President Obama’s [...]

It appears that the Detroit terror plot was fomented by people formerly held at Gitmo: Two of the four leaders allegedly behind the al Qaeda plot to blow up a Northwest Airlines passenger jet over Detroit were released by the U.S. from the Guantanamo prison in November, 2007, according to American officials and Department of [...]

The Land Snark Edition OTB Caption ContestTM is now over. REUTERS/Michele Crosera (ITALY ENVIRONMENT TRAVEL IMAGES OF THE DAY)

Time for the Monday OTB Caption ContestTM (AFP/Getty Images/File/Mario Tama) Winners will be announced Thursday PM

Two days after a Nigerian al Qaeda operative tried to blow up Northwest Flight 253 as it landed in Detroit, we had an eerie repeat.  Another Nigerian on the exact same flight locked himself in the lavatory and refused to come out.  Thankfully, it was a case of the trots, not a terrorist plot. The [...]

In the thread discussing the idiotic new TSA guidelines issued in overreaction to the Detroit terror plot, longtime commenter DC Loser observes, As a lifelong civil servant, anytime you create a large bureaucracy to deal with a specific problem, it is not in the interest of said bureaucracy for the root problem to go away. [...]

Politico‘s Josh Gernstein notes that revelations of Yemen’s connection to the failed Detroit terror plot will further complicate President Obama’s plans to move prisoners from the prison at Guantanamo Bay. “I’d expect Yemen’s handling of returned Guantanamo detainees to come under intense U.S. scrutiny,” said Matthew Waxman, a Columbia law professor who was an assistant [...]

It now appears that the thwarted failed Detroit terror plot was more sophisticated than initially thought.  The first reports — that the device was “incendiary rather than explosive” — appear to be mistaken. And we now think we know how the explosives got aboard the plane:  They were sewn into the terrorist’s underwear. Richard Esposito [...]

TV writer Steve Marmel takes to the pixels of HuffPo to excoriate President Obama for continuing his vacation in the wake of the failed Detroit terror plot. [T]he only thing that stopped 12/25 from feeling a lot like 9/11 was a failed detonator and a guy named Jasper Schuringa. Weather now seems like a quaint [...]

Urban Meyer, the tremendously successful head football coach at the University of Florida, has resigned, citing health reasons.   He’s only 45. Florida coach Urban Meyer, who was admitted to a hospital because of chest pains following the Southeastern Conference championship game, is stepping down because of health concerns. Meyer resigned Saturday, calling it quits after [...]

Not surprisingly, TSA is going to make flying even more aggravating in a stupid overreaction to the Detroit terror plot. In the wake of the terrorism attempt Friday on a Northwest Airlines flight, federal officials on Saturday imposed a new layer of restrictions on travelers that could lengthen lines at airports and limit the ability [...]

The Tons of Fun Edition OTB Caption ContestTM is now over. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson (UNITED STATES MILITARY HEALTH IMAGES OF THE DAY)

Buried several paragraphs into a NY Daily News story on the Tiger Woods soap opera: Us Weekly magazine, citing a source who spoke with other pro golfers, reported that Nordegren was told by a friend her husband was having an affair. She then roused Woods from an Ambien-enhanced sleep by whacking him with a golf [...]

The botched attempt by one Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab, allegedly somehow connected to al Qaeda, attempting to blow up a passenger jet as it made its descent into Detroit quite naturally has the blogosphere buzzing. Richard Fernandez and Josh Marshall have good roundups of the news as  it was developing throughout the evening, along with the [...]

Many pundits have suggested that the 2010 elections may see a repeat of the pattern of the 1994 midterms: a first-term Democratic president, wounded by intraparty squabbling over a controversial health care proposal, loses big in Congress in what is seen as a “referendum” on liberal overreach. Mike Munger, on the other hand, suggests that [...]

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Steven Taylor (here and here) breaks down the Senate’s party-line vote on the health care bill in some interesting ways.  The upshot: The 60 Yes votes represented 64.22% of the population Only 12 state delegations split their vote: AK, FL, IA, IN, LA, MO, NC, NE, NH, NV, OH, SD  (KY’s Jim Bunning, scheduled to [...]

Is the United States a Christian nation?    Well, a whopping 78 percent of Americans identify themselves as Christians.   But that’s less than ever before.  And the number of people identifying as having no religious identity is at its highest point ever, as is number saying religion is “not very important” in their lives. Gallup’s Frank [...]

Sunday night’s contest between the Dallas Cowboys and Washington Redskins will mark a milestone in one of the great rivalries in sports. Cowboys-Redskins, Edition No. 100 takes place Sunday night, appropriately enough in prime time. The Cowboys (9-5) hope to be in position to clinch a playoff berth, while the Redskins (4-10) are playing out [...]

David Lightman and William Douglas of the McClatchy Newspapers syndicate point out that the real action on the health care bill will take place in the murky world of conference committees, which–like many other things on the Hill–don’t really work the way your father’s (or, for that matter, your) American government textbook says they do: [...]

Position, they say, is policy. President Obama is discovering, as are many of his fellow travellers, that the tools he was only too happy to have available as a Senator can be quite nettlesome when viewed from the Oval Office. Thus, as Jake Tapper noted, the only President in history to have voted to filibuster [...]

The sportscaster George Michael has died, following a two-year battle with cancer. Michael, 70, was known nationally for “The George Michael Sports Machine,” a syndicated TV show that ran nationwide for 27 years. He was a fixture on TV for more than 25 years in Washington, where he was a sports anchor on NBC’s channel [...]

While most Americans think of the Census Bureau only in terms of the decennial population count, they are actually constantly surveying the demographic trends of the country.  Their latest report — and the last before the 2010 count that will be used to reapportion the House — finds some interesting results. The nation’s population as [...]

An air strike in Yemen may have killed the top leaders of al Qaead’s branch in that country, along with an American-born cleric linked to the Fort Hood massacre. A Yemeni air raid may have killed the top two leaders of al Qaeda’s regional branch on Thursday, and an American Muslim preacher linked to the [...]

Time for the Christmas Eve OTB Caption ContestTM REUTERS/Michele Crosera (ITALY ENVIRONMENT TRAVEL IMAGES OF THE DAY) Winners will be announced Monday PM Winners for last Monday Contest will be delayed until Friday or Saturday due to the Holidays.

In the years following the invasion of Iraq I frequently read claims that there had been a long “drumbeat to war” in advance of the invasion. When I asked those making such claims to substantiate them, I was invariably disappointed. I can only interpret this op-ed from Alan J. Kuperman, director of the Nuclear Proliferation [...]

“Seinfeld,” the “show about nothing,” gave us many memorable scenes that continue as cultural icons long after the show itself has become dated an unwatchable. One that apparently keeps growing is the mock holiday celebration called “Festivus.” Long before company celebrators bench-pressed fax machines, partygoers performed competitive face-plants into ice water, or family members gathered [...]

Over the past 19 hours, I’ve gotten four Breaking News alerts from CNN: Colorado judge sentences ‘balloon boy’ dad to 90 days in jail with some of that time to be served on work release. Man holding hostages at Virginia post office is in custody, CNN affiliate WDBJ reports. David Goldman has been reunited with [...]

Ezra Klein surveys the political landscape and offers a bold assessment: At this point, structural reform of the legislative system should, I think, be the main priority for people left, right, and center who want to see action on the problems facing the country. It’s all well and good to try to get the best [...]

The next episode of OTB Radio, our BlogTalkRadio program, will record and air live from 5:30-6:30 Eastern. Dave Schuler and I will be joined by King Banian of SCSU Scholars to talk about the “cash for cloture” shenanigans required to secure 60 votes for health care reform, the merits of federal regulations to limit airlines’ [...]

In response to a court order, Microsoft is issuing a “patch” that makes Word 2007 less useful. The 2007 Microsoft Office OPK Master Kit Download, available on Microsoft’s OEM Partner Center, strips Word and other Office programs of custom XML editing capabilities.  “The following patch is required for the United States,” Microsoft said in a [...]

Veteran journalist Jim Warren recounts this weekend’s 50th anniversary celebration at Chicago’s famed Second City comedy troupe.  He dutifully claims that “the obvious highlights were Friday and Saturday shows with Martin Short, Steve Carell, Bonnie Hunt, Jim Belushi, George Wendt, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Catherine O’Hara, Harold Ramis, Shelly Berman, Rachel Dratch, Robert Klein, Jack [...]

RedState’s Erick Erickson has a piece with the headline “Mitch McConnell Surrenders.” His dastardly crime? Allowing the inevitable to take place early enough on Christmas Eve for his colleagues to get home to their families ahead of an ice storm. So Mitch McConnell and Harry Reid have agreed not just to vote on the health [...]

George W. Bush left office as one of the most despised presidents in American history.  Could Barack Obama actually be less popular? Rasmussen says so: “The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 25% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. [...]