UH OH: Financial Times: Rating agency warns on US public finances.

Moody’s Investor Service, the credit rating agency, will fire a warning shot at the US on Monday, saying that unless the country gets public finances into better shape than the Obama administration projects there would be “downward pressure” on its triple A credit rating.

Examining the administration’s outlook for the federal budget deficit, the agency said: “If such a trajectory were to materialise, there would at some point be downward pressure on the triple A rating of the federal government.” . . .

The report follows concerns recently expressed about the US public finances from the other large rating agencies. Standard & Poor’s warned last week the triple A status of the US was at risk unless the country adopted a credible medium-term plan to rein in fiscal spending. Fitch Ratings issued a critical report on the US in January.

The country’s in the very best of hands.

GREEDY EXECUTIVES LOOT FAILING COMPANY: “The failing business would be the New York Times Company, which, like most newspapers, has fallen on hard times and laid off many employees. The greedy executives include Chairman Pinch Sulzberger. . . . Have the paper’s editorialists called for federal regulation of out-of-control executive compensation in the newspaper industry?”

HEH: Schoolhouse Barack.

LEE DOREN: Weak Brew: Potemkin ‘Coffee Party’ No Match For Real Tea Party Passion.

EUGENE VOLOKH: Justice Thomas and Judge Reinhardt:

Today’s L.A. Times print edition carries an article with the headline, “Challenging a judicial norm,” and the subhead, “A justice’s wife may test impartiality standards by starting a ‘tea party’ group.” (The online version has a different headline and a slightly different subhead.) The article is about Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who has just founded Liberty Central Inc., a conservative activist group.

Of course, Justice Thomas is not the only judge to have had a spouse in a prominent political role. Ninth Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt’s wife, Ramona Ripston, has just stepped down from being head of the Southern California ACLU. Third Circuit Judge Jane Roth’s husband was a U.S. Senator; Third Circuit Judge Marjorie Rendell’s husband is a governor. So I’m not sure that there’s really a judicial norm that judge’s spouses should stay out of politics, whether partisan politics, advocacy group politics, or public interest litigation (itself a form of politics, at least when done effectively).

Sure, but those spouses lean left. Meanwhile, let’s look at who the journalists are sleeping with . . . .

Plus, I can’t help but note that the Thomases are an interracial couple, something the L.A. Times stresses via a photograph of them together. Thus, this must really be all about racism.

And, anyway, it’s not like we have sitting judges comparing the President to Hitler and Mussolini or anything.