IN THE MAIL: William Cohan’s House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street. According to the opening, the credit bubble’s bursting was first called by a blogger, Bennet Sedacca.

YOU THINK? Congress ‘Hypocrisy’ on Trips Angers Hotel Executives.

The U.S. Senate last month passed a measure limiting “luxury” spending for corporate travel by recipients of federal bailout funds. Two weeks later, about two dozen senators of both parties left town for political meetings on the Florida coast. . . .

Christopher Dodd, a Connecticut Democrat who heads the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, sponsored the amendment to the $787 billion stimulus package that requires companies receiving funds from the Troubled Assets Recovery Plan to curb “excessive or luxury expenditures,” including spending on events and private jets.

Over the weekend of Feb. 27, two weeks after the Senate passed the measure, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the party fundraising arms for Senate candidates, each held their annual winter meetings in Florida.

About a dozen Democrats, including Dodd, 64, gathered at the Marriott-operated Ritz-Carlton resort in Naples, Florida. Donors who gave at least $15,000 were invited and offered a “coastal view” room at the group rate of $469, according to the Democrats’ invitation.

At least 11 Republican senators held a similar retreat at The Breakers resort in Palm Beach.

Self-denial, like taxes, is for the little people.

TELEGRAPH: Mexican Drug Wars Now Worse Than Iraq.

But notice the juxtaposition. First this quote:

“The dynamic of this combat is approaching the early days of the Iraq war. The cartels’ men are well trained, disciplined and are armed with the latest weaponry, including armour-piercing bullets, rocket-launchers and grenades.”

Then this:

His claims were backed by Congressmen in Washington, who have said money and guns smuggled from the US were fuelling violence that was now creeping over the border.

If rocket launchers and grenades are making it into Mexico from the United States, it’s because they’re being sold out the back door of military and police armories, since civilian gun stores don’t sell them. I think it’s more likely that they’re coming from elsewhere, but any member of Congress who really thinks this is a problem should be demanding audits of those facilities posthaste.

Plus this: “The cartels’ ability to smuggle both guns and kidnap victims into Mexico has been facilitated by lax US border controls, although the Americans are starting to tighten up.” So instead of gun control, we might fix things by tightening up on the border? Hmm. . . .

MOE LANE on why he’s not depressed.

OBAMA, EMERGENCIES, and executive power.

JERRY POURNELLE on democracy and tyranny. “The sad truth is that democracy itself is often unstable. Intellectuals lose faith. Democracy is not flashy. It falls out of fashion. The intelligentsia feel scorned, unappreciated, and turn to new theories. There are other pressures. Republics stand until the citizens begin to vote themselves largess from the public treasury. When the plunder begins, those plundered feel no loyalty to the nation—and the beneficiaries demand ever more, until few are left unplundered. Eventually everyone plunders everyone, the state serving as little more than an agency for collecting and dispensing largess. The economy falters. Inflation begins. Deficits mount. Something must be done. Strong measures are demanded, but nothing can be agreed to.”

BRET STEPHENS: Will Obama Listen to Iran’s Bloggers?

A DOUBLE STANDARD on teen “rape.”

REVIEWING THE REVIEWERS: A roundup of book reviews from all over.

MERCURY NEWS: Internal Affairs: Just where does East Bay Rep. Pete Stark live, anyway?

San Francisco Chronicle:

The issue for voters in Stark’s 13th Congressional District is whether he remains in sufficient touch with their communities and concerns when he considers his “home” to be 3,000 miles away.

There is an upside to being represented by the gentleman from Maryland. The next time Stark unleashes one of his notorious tirades (such as suggesting that troops were being sent to Iraq to “get their heads blown off for the president’s amusement,” as he did in 2007) or ends up on Esquire Magazine’s list of 10 worst legislators on Capitol Hill (as he did in 1988) … residents in Alameda, Castro Valley and other parts of the East Bay district can blame their erstwhile homeboy’s bad manners on his East Coast address.

Plus, in the Courier-Journal:

If New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and Massachusetts Congressman Barney Frank are going to try to make public the names of bonus recipients to help mobs demonstrate in front of individuals’ homes, perhaps Maryland’s tax authorities could do the same for out-of-state politicians who’ve turned the state into their personal Liechtenstein.

No doubt millions of average Joes living in such tax hells as New York and California would love to work on the taxpayers’ dime in Washington and live in a low-tax jurisdiction nearby.

Indeed.

CHRIS DODD / COUNTRYWIDE UPDATE:

A new report showcases the lengths executives at Countrywide Financial went to in order to provide below-market mortgage rates to well-connected Washington insiders.

Countrywide’s CEO Angelo Mozilo granted sweetheart mortgages to a number of influential lawmakers including Connecticut Democrat Chris Dodd, who is chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, and Democratic Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota. E-mails obtained by government investigators show Countrywide employees often discussed the political influence wielded by “Friends of Angelo” as grounds for granting the discounts.

No surprise there. And note the Kent Conrad mention. He seems to have managed to keep things under the radar on this.

GEITHNER SEEKS EXPANDED POWERS: “The Obama administration is considering asking Congress to give the Treasury secretary unprecedented powers to initiate the seizure of non-bank financial companies, such as large insurers, investment firms and hedge funds, whose collapse would damage the broader economy, according to an administration document. The government at present has the authority to seize only banks. Giving the Treasury secretary authority over a broader range of companies would mark a significant shift from the existing model of financial regulation, which relies on independent agencies that are shielded from the political process.”

Insulation from the political process is only important when there’s a Republican in the White House.

HEH: Scalia Urges Patience with Barney Frank’s Heterophobia.

TRACKING UNINSURED DRIVERS with Big Brother technology.

CONGRESS IN A NUTSHELL: Earmarks for pig dung.

ED MORRISSEY: “Organizing a door-to-door campaign to support a political leader already elected to office seems to tip over into that cult-of-personality territory, to which Organizing for America seems oblivious.”

UPDATE: Not exactly a juggernaut.

“It sends a message to President Obama that we still support you,” Shanise (a natural saleswoman) told a young couple. “It would be great if we could get a million names!”

After an hour, the group had gathered 26 signatures in support of Obama’s budget.

If you can’t do better than that at Ikea. . . . And I loved this line: “I support him, I voted for him, but I don’t want to sign any more forms.” Good luck with that! Plus this: Congress isn’t feeling much heat from Obama’s ‘army’.

MISSISSIPPI: Bill Banning Red Light Cameras Signed Into Law.

WORLD’S CHEAPEST CAR: Not so popular with environmentalists.

AT LEAST THEY’RE NOT FLASHING THEIR BOOBIES. I think we can all be thankful for that. Congress Gone Wild.

MARK LEVIN’S NEW BOOK IS #1 on Amazon.

UPDATE: A review from Dan Riehl.

CNN STARTS TO NOTICE the tea party protests.

A SECOND LOOK AT COLD FUSION? “Now a new study has produced evidence for the existence of low-energy nuclear reactions (LENR), the new name for the controversial process labeled ‘cold fusion’ two decades ago.” (Via Classical Values). I hope it pans out, though I agree that Polywell Fusion deserves more attention.

POLL OF CHANGE: Obama’s job approval slipping to ‘50-50’. “The honeymoon is over, a national poll will signal today as President Obama’s job approval stumbles to about 50 percent over the lack of improvement with the crippled economy. The sobering numbers come as the president backpedals from two prime-time gaffes – one comparing his bowling score to a Special Olympian and another awkwardly laughing about the economy, which prompted Steve Kroft of ’60 Minutes’ to ask ‘are you punch-drunk?'”

Well, we’ll see how this holds up with other polls besides Zogby; this seems a bit low by comparison. On the other hand, it’s been a bad week for Obama, for those paying attention. (Note: Earlier post on this somehow got published to yesterday morning — before the poll came out — and then I couldn’t find it until after I’d put up this one.)

ARE YOU A VICTIM OF saver’s remorse?

The ING Direct bank likes to proclaim on billboards, “There is no such thing as Saver’s remorse.” But it turns out there is, at least according to the consumer psychologists featured in my Findings column. Have you ever felt its pangs?

Ran Kivetz, a professor of marketing at the Columbia Business School, and other consumer psychologists have found that splurging isn’t the only kind of self-control problem afflicting us when we go shopping. While we can indeed go on binges and feel a bad case of buyer’s remorse, that immediate guilt tends to dissipate with time. Eventually, we may look back more with regret at what we didn’t buy — and think wistfully of the pleasures we passed up.

Regrets are part of life. Save too little, save too much. Ask ’em out, don’t ask ’em out. “The tragedy of life is that not all values can be realized.”

DARREN HUTCHINSON IS defending Chris Dodd. “In a nutshell, the original law and subsequent regulations do not prohibit bonus payments by AIG. Dodd proposed and the Senate passed an amendment that would have banned most bonus payments by TARP recipients; the measure would have applied retroactively to AIG. The Obama administration pressured Dodd to make his amendment prospective rather than retroactive; Dodd capitulated to the administration’s demands, and Congress passed the modified version of Dodd’s amendment. Instead of blaming Obama, Bush, and Congress, commentators point the finger at Dodd, even though his amendment is the only legal provision that seriously regulates compensation and bonuses for TARP recipients. It is also worth mentioning that Dodd alone cannot legislate a loophole for AIG; only Congress can!” Well, except that presumably nobody but Dodd read the provision, since Congress as a whole voted on the bill without reading it . . . .