CONGRESS HAD HEARINGS on universities with large endowments and skyrocketing tuition, and my colleague Iris Goodwin, who’s an expert on endowment-related issues, presented some testimony. (Bumped).

EXPLAINING FDIC insurance.

IT’S GETTING CROWDED IN THERE: “Like many, I’ve perceived the mainstream media as being in the tank for liberals and Democrats over the years. This year, however, it’s difficult to see them making it through November without collectively purchasing a larger tank.”

IT’S NOT JUST THE CHEVY VOLT: General Motors has more plug-in cars on the way. I hope they’re all big successes.

Plus, what GM can learn from the Prius.

STEPHEN GREEN ON Wall Street’s problems and the Presidential race. “In fact, of the nearly three million dollars Lehman employees and PAC distributed in the last 19 years, just two senators — Obama and Clinton — received more than a quarter of the total, split nearly evenly. McCain got about five percent. Nevertheless, McCain isn’t exactly jumping on board the free market bandwagon.” Nope. Plus this: “If there’s been an actual governing philosophy these last four years — other than encouraging Republicans to spend like Democrats — I can’t find it. . . . When it comes to large-scale theft, even the most politically-connected Wall Street boys are pikers compared to Congress.”

LET ‘EM FAIL? Bankruptcy is not a dirty word.

WON’T BACK DOWN: Taheri responds to Obama.

Obama also told NBC: “The foreign minister agreed that the next administration should not be bound by an agreement that’s currently made, but I think the only way to assure that is to make sure that there is strong bipartisan support, that Congress is involved, that the American people know the outlines of this agreement.

“And my concern is that if the Bush administration negotiates, as it currently has, and given that we’re entering into the heat of political season, that we’re probably better off not trying to complete a hard-and-fast agreement before the next administration takes office, but I think obviously these conversations have to continue.

“As I said, my No. 1 priority is making sure that we don’ t have a situation in which US troops on the ground are somehow vulnerable to, are made more vulnerable, because there is a lack of a clear mandate.”

This confirms precisely what I suggested in my article: Obama preferred to have no agreement on US troop withdrawals until a new administration took office in Washington.

Obama has changed position on another key issue. In the NBC report, he pretends that US troops in Iraq do not have a “clear mandate.” Now, however, he admits that there is a clear mandate from the UN Security Council and that he’d have no objection to extending it pending a bilateral Iraq-US agreement. . . .

Contrary to what Obama and his campaign have said, Iraqi officials insist that at no point in his talks in Washington and Baghdad did Obama make a distinction between SOFA and SFA when he advised them to wait for the next American administration.

The real news I see in the Obama statement is that there may be an encouraging evolution in his position on Iraq: The “rebuttal” shows that the senator no longer shares his party leadership’s belief that the United States has lost the war in Iraq.

Well, that’s good, right?

Earlier posts on this subject here and here. Plus, here’s a piece by Bob Owens. “If this charge is false, the Obama campaign must push forcefully for and get a substantial correction, if not a full retraction of the Taheri article. If they don’t, then longtime accusations of Obama’s naked self-interest may doom an already flailing campaign.” I don’t think the Obama Campaign’s response comes anywhere close to that. In fact, it seems more to confirm Taheri’s account.

UPDATE: Tom Maguire has much more on this, including Obama’s “baffling ‘denial’ which some keen observers noted did not seem to deny much.” Plus this: “I think Obama has been caught reading his campaign literature to foreign negotiators.”

POLITICO: Cash-poor Obama Says No to Reid.

BILL STUNTZ on Sarah Palin’s faith. “If an overwhelmingly secular press treats religious beliefs like those as disqualifying in a candidate for political office, a great many Americans will be effectively cast in the role of non-citizens. I hope that isn’t the view most of my non-believing friends take. If it is, I’m going to have to rethink my own voting practices.” (Via Professor Bainbridge).

RASMUSSEN: Palin 47%, Biden 44% in Make-believe Presidential Match-up. Of course, neither is actually running for President, though in Palin’s case the press might lead you to forget that .

MICKEY KAUS: “Note to Nigerian scam artists: Save your emails and focus them on McCain’s “base” conservative supporters. They are the biggest suckers on the planet! Just tell them you hate the MSM and they’ll do anything you say.”

Nah, you’ve got the get the MSM to show it hates you, too . . . .

WELL, THAT SETTLES IT, THEN: Pelosi: Dems bear no responsibility for economic crisis.

Meanwhile, Megan McArdle is busting twaddle pretty evenhandedly. First this:

There are a whole lot of Democrats in the comments to this post who know that Bush could have and should have stopped this bubble. They don’t know what he could have done, exactly; they’re not tricksy bankers. But they’ve read, like, one and a half whole articles on the subject, so they’re sure that this is the fault of Republican ideology.

I’m so glad that I’m voting with the reality based community this time around.

I interrupt this post to note that thanks to Bill Clinton, millions of people have died of cancer in the last ten years. It seems to me that if he cared, he could have funded research that would have cured cancer. What research? I don’t know, I’m not a damn doctor. All I know is, a lot of people are dying of cancer.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

One of my commenters blames Bush for gutting the predatory lending laws at the state level. A wicked pundit would note that this is a project near and dear to the heart of one Senator Joe Biden, (D-MBNA). A less divisive voice would point out that predatory lending laws are aimed mostly at payday loans and credit cards, not housing loans. The fraud problems in the housing market seem mostly to have been perpetuated by mortgage brokers, who are still regulated at the state level. The worst problems are in Democratic-dominated California.

Plus this:

Meanwhile, I’m seeing commenters claim that the housing crisis is really all about the Democrats making lenders lend money to poor people.

The data doesn’t track you. The legislative pushes to expand lending to the poor do not match very well the subprime crisis, either in time or scope. Probably they contributed somewhat, but at best only slightly.

It would be nice if everything that went wrong in the world was a result of the scheming of our ideological opponents. But the sad fact is, stuff goes wrong. All the time. And there is usually no villain behind it.

Indeed. And she’s got lots more — just keep scrolling.

JON HENKE: HOW THE LEFT IS AHEAD OF THE RIGHT on the Internet.

HEH: B.O. KNOWS FINANCE!

OUCH: “Team Obama has now used its thugs to shut down radio shows and refused to engage when given an opportunity. From these data points, what could we expect from an Obama administration? Responsible accountability … or an attack on free speech and journalism?”

RICHARD MINITER: What if Obama loses? “A rejection of Obama can only mean one of two things: a rejection of the 1960s formulation of liberalism (the current formulation, alas) or that America is deeply racist. Too many of them will go for the second hypothesis. Too many think that elections turn on identities, not ideas.”

TALKLEFT: Why the lack of respect for the Netroots? (Via Ann Althouse).

SANITIZING Sebelius.

ABC NEWS: Obama Inflates Role in Creation of Stimulus Package:

In Golden, Colo., today, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., took credit for the stimulus package that passed earlier this year.

“In January, I outlined a plan to help revive our faltering economy,” Obama said, “which formed the basis for a bipartisan stimulus package that passed the Congress.”

Is that true?

Democrats on Capitol Hill who support Obama say no.

Wanting Obama to win, however, none will say so on the record.

Good thing they made sure word didn’t get out, then. Oh, wait . . . .

UPDATE: McCain goes after Obama on this and on his Fannie Mae contributions.

Plus, hanging out with ordinary folks!

ANOTHER UPDATE: The best Congress Fannie could buy.

CHEAP, AGILE, AND FUN: The Ford Ka.

JAY MANIFOLD: “I submit that Sarah Palin is the most Heinleinian candidate for Vice-President of the United States in this country’s history.”

JIM GERAGHTY: It’s Just a Matter of Time Before Team Obama Tries to Shut Us All Down. They do seem to want to shut up their critics. Not that it’s worked terribly well for them. But, you know, they told me that if George W. Bush were re-elected, teams of “digital brownshirts” would be trying to silence critics of the Dear Leader. . . .

THE SACRED PRECINCTS OF THE MARITAL BEDROOM: Court sides with husband in coma sex case. “A Wisconsin appeals court says a man charged with allegedly having sex with his comatose wife in a nursing home had the right to an expectation of privacy.” I suspect, however, that if the genders were reversed people wouldn’t have cared nearly as much.

“SWIFTBOATING” WAS BAD until Democrats tried it. Now it’s just . . . inept.

IS OBAMA pulling back from Virginia to focus on Pennsylvania?

UPDATE: Maybe not.