Revisiting a lively debate from over the weekend.

Employees of the US Federal Government earn substantially more in salary and benefits than their private sector comparables.

From Europe, a case of regulation gone nuts.

Two years ago, South Carolina Boeing workers voted 199-68 to decertify their union. The NLRB has filed suit against the company for choosing to locate a new plant there instead of Washington state. And House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi thinks it’s just fine if those jobs go the way of the dodo if they’re not [...]

Government has been a booming business over the last decade or so, and the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Area has benefited greatly: Washington, D.C., is now the country’s wealthiest metro area, jumping ahead of Silicon Valley, according to new data from the Census Bureau. The average household income for residents of D.C. metro area was $84,523 [...]

Government workers are among society’s favorite whipping boys. Why?

What’s a little thing like freedom of speech when there are shops being looted and burned?

If the U.S. defaults, Eric Cantor will make some money.

What was that, a joke about shovel ready jobs not being so shovel ready. Yeah unemployment a topic ripe for great comedy.

Illinois is so hard up for revenues it is considering selling ad space on license plates.

Clearly there’s a large ambiguity in the Constitutional gap between the two separate war-related powers of Congress and the Executive. The WPA can be seen as an attempt to resolve it but can’t if it’s unconstitutional.

Ten years ago today, the Bush tax cuts passed. They were a landmark piece of legislation which definitively demonstrated the truth of supply side economics by pushing government revenues to all-time highs, keeping the budget in balance, and unleashing an unprecedented wave of economic growth that continues to this day. Oh, wait…. Never mind.

Thousands of pedestrians are killed in America each year. Are we doing enough about it?

Most good government jobs require a college degree–but they don’t care much whether it’s a real one.

Should kids be required to buy their lunch at school rather than bring whatever their parents might pack for them to eat?

Judge Sumi’s TROs arise from a veritable cornucopia of error.

Whether due to innumeracy or intentional deceitfulness, ThinkProgress has the JobsOhio bill totally wrong.

It’s institutions of government – not its size – that matter when it comes to how good a job the government does.

The House GOP wants to virtually eliminate Federal funding for poison control centers. The nation’s network of 57 poison control centers takes four million calls a year about people who may have been exposed to a toxic substance. In three-quarters of all cases, the centers are able to provide treatment advice that does not require [...]

The Social Security “trust fund” may actually be worse than worthless.

Either Andrew Breitbart controls the entire media complex or Crooks & Liars jumped the gun. “Figure it out.”

TSA screeners will now have the right to join a union. Or at least a union that can’t actually negotiate much of anything.

Demanding that the new GOP House hold the line at the current number is satisfying rhetorically, but all-but-impossible politically.

I’m blogging Mark Levin’s Conservative Manifesto. Here’s part one…

The Christian Science Monitor has the entire 96 question multiple choice portion of the U.S. Citizenship Test. Applicants must get at least 58 questions right to pass. I got 96 out of 96. H/T: Alan Colmes

As I noted last week, there were reports that New York City’s lackluster response to the  Christmas blizzard was due at least in part to work stoppages by city sanitation workers. Now, there’s further corroboration of unionized workers slacking during the the blizzard. First, it looks like a much higher percentage than normal of workers [...]

Constitutional ambiguity is as old as, well, it’s as old as the Constitution itself

Judicial activism doesn’t mean “reaching a decision I don’t like.”

WikiLeaks’ reveals that DynCorp, a government contractor, provided drugs and child sex slaves to Afghan police–and the State Department helped cover it up.

“A popular Government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” – James Madison

President Obama proposes freezing federal civilian salaries for the next two years, saving billions in anticipated spending.

A Florida courthouse illegally saved 35,000 images from security scanners.

Here’s my plan for creating a budget surplus of $126 billion by 2015 and $592 billion by 2030.

Eliminating earmarks is good policy and good politics.

Krugman links to a story at Think Progress about how firefighters let a house burn down because the owner didn’t pay the fee. Paul, baby, next time do a bit of fact checking. This isn’t the market failing, it was a government run fire department. You can tell from this part of the Think Progress [...]

Banks are faced with a huge number of foreclosures and that resources they’ve allocated towards handling them was woefully inadequate.

The CBO sees a clear threat of a fiscal crisis during the next two decades unless we’re saved by magic ponies.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Senator Chris Dodd does not believe that Federal Reserve nominees will get a vote prior to November. He said the issue of whether to bring the nominations up for a debate and vote hadn’t been discussed when Senate Democrats met Tuesday afternoon to discuss strategy. “We’ve got a limited [...]

Why do we need to license barbers, again?

Renowned author Ray Bradbury hates big government but wants it to fund the colonization of Mars. That a man of his intelligence and insight can hold such diametrically opposed thoughts is an amusing reminder of the limits of human rationality.

The average federal government employee earns twice as much as the average private sector worker. An outrage? Not so much.

“The bill for establishing religious freedom, the principles of which had, to a certain degree, been enacted before, I had drawn in all the latitude of reason & right. It still met with opposition; but, with some mutilations in the preamble, it was finally passed; and a singular proposition proved that it’s protection of opinion [...]

According to health inspectors in Portland, Oregon, this little girl is potentially a threat to your health and safety.

Should we abandon the notion of civil marriage? Would doing so end the clash over homosexual unions?

Paul Krugman’s Medicare projections don’t line up with what the actuaries are telling us.

Most research shows that unemployment benefits/insurance increases the duration of unemployment.

Is the left to blame for unpaved roads?

Nobody can really say whether the stimulus worked — or even define “worked” — but that doesn’t stop them from issuing pronouncements.

A new poll shows that Americans have some odd ideas about the Constitution, and how to change it.

Will Democrats use a lame-duck session of Congress to pass legislation they can’t get through otherwise ? They might try, but I doubt they’ll succeed.