Pentagon Expected To Ask For Supplementary War Funding. As Usual.

Remember a couple of weeks ago, when Congress passed a $680 billion appropriation? Well, don't worry--the military will be getting still more money:The nation’s top military officer said Wednesday that he expected the Pentagon to ask Congress in the next few months for emergency financing to support the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, even though President Obama has pledged ...

Health Reform Bill to Allow Insurance Payments For Prayer Healings

Via Kevin Drum, I have learned that current Senate version of the health reform bill would provide for insurance payments for Christian Science prayer treatments--and probably other "spiritual" treatments as well.Reporting from Washington - Backed by some of the most powerful members of the Senate, a little-noticed provision in the healthcare overhaul bill would require insurers to consider covering Christian ...

Ford Posts 3Q09 Profit

Ford Motor Companies, the only major American automobile company to adequately prepare for a future where fewer cars are manufactured, and the only one not to receive signficant government handouts in the past year, posted a proft last quarter.Ford Motor Co (NYSE:F - News) posted a quarterly profit on Monday, defying Wall Street forecasts for a loss as it cut ...

The Cost of Empire

Last week, Congress approved the 2010 Defense Authorization Bill, with costs totalling to a whopping $680 billion. And as Christopher Preble points out, that's not all:The defense bill represents only part of our military spending. The appropriations bill moving through Congress governing veterans affairs, military construction and other agencies totals $133 billion, while the massive Department of Homeland Security ...

Defending Wyden-Bennett

On his new policy blog at True/Slant, E.D. Kain provides a good defense of the Wyden-Bennett Act.In Congress, however, we get bad compromises, not good ones, which is why we have the Baucus bill, which is neither as cost-effective, as close to universal coverage, or as fundamentally game-changing as Wyden-Bennett. Indeed, there is little to be enthusiastic about in ...

Obama’s Federalist Approach to Medical Marijuana

In new guidelines announced today, the Obama Administration has decided that it will deferring to the states on enforcing marijuana laws when those states have laws allowing the use of marijuana for medical purposes.The Obama administration will not seek to arrest medical marijuana users and suppliers as long as they conform to state laws, under new policy guidelines to be ...

Niche Markets and the Internet

One of the coolest things about the internet, in my opinion, is the way that it opens up markets for goods that might not be economically viable locally, but are economically viable when every business in the world has a global reach. This has opened us up to a vast array of goods and services that simply weren't economically ...

Fighting the Taliban by Lowering Taxes

Matthew Yglesias suggests that one thing that could aid the fight in Afghanistan would be to lower tariffs against Afghan goods and motivate our allies to do the same.If I’m reading these slides right then textile products made in Afghanistan are not eligible for duty-free sale in the United States. Changing that rule might encourage some factory-building in Afghanistan. Similarly ...

Britain Seeks Ban On Pint Glasses

As part of their ongoing effort to cement George Orwell's reputation by making him the most accurate prophet in history, the British Home Office is now investigating the possiblity of forcing every Pub in Britain to replace pint glasses with plastic pint cups: The BBC reported recently that the British Home Office is seeking a new design for pint glasses that ...

The Neuroscience of “Enhanced Interrogation”

Wired reports that studies show that "enhanced interrogation", far from being a reliable source of information, can actually make someone less of an intelligence asset because the stress involved changes the biochemistry of the brain:“There is a vast literature on the effects of extreme stress on motivation, mood and memory, using both animals and humans,” writes Shane O’Mara, a stress ...

Conservatives and Bailouts

Regarding the TARP program, Matthew Yglesias makes a comment about conservatives that really isn't fair:But Romney aside, it’s striking to see the number of conservatives who’ve decided that an initiative proposed by George W. Bush and Hank Paulson and endorsed by the GOP congressional leadership was and is secretly some socialist plot. Similarly with the idea that Ben Bernanke, former ...

Defunding ACORN and Double Standards

Dave Schuler notes that the Senate has voted to "de-fund" ACORN and strip them of Federal Money. I think that this is an entirely appropriate action. There's enough evidence that ACORN employees might have been willing to go along with and provide assistance with a sex-trafficking scheme that it's worth cutting off their funds, at least while the ...

Poland and Czech Republic Don’t Feel “Abandoned”

Via Steven Taylor, we note that neither Poland nor the Czech Republic feel "abandoned" by Obama's decision to scrap missile defense replace an expensive, ineffective boondoggle "missile defense system" with a less expensive, mobile, effective land and sea-based SM-3 interceptor force. Here's the Polish Prime Minister: Tusk said that Obama's "proposal of an alternative strategy should not affect the security ...

Malkin’s Chutzpah

I normally don't pay attention to Michelle Malkin because of my general policy of not paying attention to those uninterested in rational discussion (a policy that extends to, for example, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Keith Olbermann, Michael Moore, etc.). However, I have to say that I admire the chutzpah of her recent blog post, in which she decries the ...

Obama: Violating Habeas Corpus Okay When It’s Not At Gitmo

This must be some of that "change" that Obama is always talking about: a change of names, anyway. The Obama administration is putting a new plan in place at Afghanistan’s Bagram air field detention facility to bring indefinite detentions there — a practice viewed as a replication of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility’s more noxious functions — to an end. What ...