Democrats will defend everything from partial-birth abortion to distributing gay porn in the classroom, but some subjects are too hot for them to touch: The effect of their minimum-wage enthusiasm on black unemployment is one, and racial discrimination by their organized-labor constituents is another.

 You'd think that the Democrats would put jobs for blacks at the top of their list, but political calculations are perverse things: Black voters are a cheap date for Democrats says Kevin Williamson

The public union movement's main goal is securing a larger share of the overall private economy's wealth, which means pitting government employees against middle-class taxpayers.

The problem for democracy is that this creates a self-reinforcing cycle of higher spending and taxes. - Wall Street Journal

Pennsylvania State University has begun a formal investigation into whether a prominent faculty member is guilty of scientific misconduct for the way he carried out research into climate change

Keith Johnson writes the Director of the East Anglia climate-research unit has stepped down

 Unlike the widget manufacturing business, the entertainment assembly line lacks any objective or reliable criteria of excellence. The rewards of Hollywood flow to filmmakers in a random, fickle, manifestly unfair manner, which leads those writers and directors to assume that capitalism at large is similarly random, fickle and unfair.

Tinseltown veterans cherish appalling stories about exploitative treatment by callous executives says Michael Medved

Barack Obama and Clement Attlee have in common their pasts as “community organizers,” in Attlee’s case as a charity worker amid the poverty of Edwardian London’s East End, a harrowing and intoxicating experience that drove him to socialism. More important still is their shared eye for the main chance.

By hiking taxes on "the rich" Attlee was able to bring socialism to the U.K. writes Andrew Stuttaford

 The Republicans were sufficiently appalled by both the substance and the process of the stimulus that they united against it, as did the public. The pork, fake ZIP codes and spending on items never intended to stimulate the economy fueled the migration of independents from Obama and set the tone for his first year.

Once again Jonah Goldberg has it right

Only rail requires heavy subsidies. At the end of the day, the great danger is that true high-speed rail could cost taxpayers even more than the tens of billions in subsidies that have been paid to Amtrak since the 1970s.

Wendell Cox says high speed rail want be much faster than trains in the 1930s

Obama and the Democrats have decided, in the current cliché, to “double down.” That hardly does justice to what the president’s doing. In effect, he’s told embattled congressmen and senators to strap on the old suicide-bomber belt and self-detonate for the team this November.

Mark Steyn says like most lifelong politicians, Barack Obama has never created, manufactured, or marketed any product other than himself 

Obama ambushed six members of the judiciary and called upon the legislative branch to deride them publicly in his State of the Union speech; moreover it is incumbent upon on him to be legally accurate and responsible in his commentary.  He was not.

Randy Barnett points out they were there as a courtesy to Obama

 A really good president, Obama believes, is one who swiftly and furtively enacts unpopular legislation so that by the time anyone can object, it has become a fait accompli. A really good president is one who disguises his ideologically extreme positions long enough to "transform" the country in ways that will cost him reelection once the truth is made known.

A "really good' president says Jeffery Folks loves his country and respects it's people