RICK SANTORUM RELEASES HIS TAX RETURNS. He’s making more money than I thought, based on his debate comments, though he’s certainly making less than Romney. Not a lot of charitable donations, though.
UPDATE: Reader Dorothy Olson writes: “Hey, the guy’s got 5 kids, one of whom is a special needs kid. How much money do you think he’s got left over?”
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Tom Canaday writes that “Rick Santorum has seven living children, not five.”
JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: How Republicans can win even if the economy keeps improving. Not so sure that’s a big worry, but . . . .
CHANGE: Foreclosures On The Rise Again.
REP. ALLEN WEST: Democratic handouts an ‘insidious form of slavery.’
JOHN STOSSEL: We Are On The Road To Bankruptcy. “What the president was talking about is not even a cut. The politicians just agreed that over the next 10 years, instead of increasing spending by $9.48 trillion, they’d increase it by ‘just’ $7.3 trillion. Calling that a ‘cut’ is nonsense.”
MICHAEL LEDEEN: “This president, who so vigorously asserts and imposes state power against Americans, is much more comfortable supporting dissident movements against American friends than against American enemies. At a certain point, after unconscionable dithering, he announced that Qadaffi must go, and he ordered our armed forces to help that happen. Qadaffi wasn’t killing Americans. Now he has his feckless secretary of state announce that, while Assad must also go, we will not support–not even from way behind–those fighting against Bashar Assad, who has killed lots of Americans.”
BOB ZUBRIN: Obama Wrecks The Mars Program: The president’s plans for NASA are completely flawed. “NASA’s Mars-exploration effort has been brilliantly successful because, since 1994, it has been approached as a campaign, with probes launched every two years, alternating between orbiters and landers. As a result, combined operations have been possible, with orbiters providing communication links and reconnaissance guidance for surface rovers, which in turn can conduct investigations on the ground to verify and calibrate orbital observations. Thus, the great treks of the rovers Spirit and Opportunity, launched in 2003, were supported from above by Mars Global Surveyor (MGS, launched in1996), Mars Odyssey (launched in 2001), and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO, launched in 2005). But after serving ten years in orbit, MGS is now no longer operating, and if we wait until the 2020s to resume Mars exploration, the rest of the orbiters will be gone as well. Moreover, so will be the experienced teams that created them. Effectively, the whole program will be completely wrecked, and we will have to start again from scratch.”
If this were part of a program of budget cuts designed to address the ballooning national debt, I’d say it was just the price we have to pay. But there is no such program of cuts. This money is just being shifted to benefit a more highly-placed constituency. I disagree with Zubrin about the manned space policy, though — on that one, I think Obama’s doing fairly well.
ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Who Wants to See Tina Korbe’s Thighs?
HIGHER EDUCATION UPDATE: Dean Wormer’s Guide To Some Progressive Colleges.
GEORGE WILL: Supreme Court should take on New York City’s rent control laws. The notion that “economic rights” are somehow less significant than other rights has no foundation in the Constitution. It’s merely a license for politicians to pass legislation favoring their cronies at the expense of others.
AT AMAZON, it’s the Automotive Outlet.
INSTAVISION: The Chimichanga Outrage: Why Obama Campaign Comments Are So Insulting to Hispanic Voters. With Spanish-language talk radio host Alfonso Aguilar, who thinks that Dems are taking Latino votes for granted.
JOBLESS CLAIMS, INFLATION NUMBERS LOOK SURPRISINGLY GOOD. Zerohedge is skeptical.
BYRON YORK: Romney Doesn’t Rule Out Santorum As Veep.
RAND SIMBERG: The Advancement of the Toxic Totalitarian Nanny State.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Florida Co-Eds Seek “Sugar Daddy” to Pay for College Degree. “So what is the ratio for these consenting adults? Well, most dating websites have more men than women. But at seekingarrangement.com, it’s the opposite. The ratio is 20 sugar babies to every one sugar daddy.”
INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Federal Workers Need To Be Part Of The Shared Sacrifice.
THE “SCOURGE” OF DEREGULATION?
President Obama has been using “deregulation” as a curse word since the 2008 campaign, and many liberals writing about lobbying tend to assume that all big business ever wants is deregulation.
But deregulation is often about freeing up small business from underneath the yoke of anti-competitive rules that serve mostly to protect big, existing businesses from upstart competition, thus hurting consumers and entrepreneurs.
A couple lawmakers in Minnesota want to roll back some of these regs.
Faster, please.
LEGAL EDUCATION UPDATE: Law student files negligence suit against LMU. “A Lincoln Memorial University student is seeking up to $750,000 in damages in a lawsuit that alleges college administrators negligently allowed her to enroll in law school even though she is ineligible to sit for the state bar exam.”
CHANGE: Moody’s May Downgrade 17 Banks, Securities Firms. “Moody’s Investor Service warned on Thursday it could downgrade the credit ratings of 17 global banks and securities firms due to more fragile funding conditions, increased regulatory burdens and a more difficult operating environment.”
Related: Moody’s Eyes 114 European Bank Ratings For Possible Downgrade. “Moody’s Investors Service placed various ratings of 114 financial institutions in 16 European countries on review for a possible downgrade, citing pressures from a difficult operating environment in Europe, weakening sovereign creditworthiness and challenges from capital markets activities. Moody’s said it has placed the stand-alone credit assessment on 99 banks, the long-term debt and deposit ratings of 109 institutions and the short-term ratings of 66 institutions on review for downgrade.”
TEN YEARS AGO ON INSTAPUNDIT: “I don’t think this is what Americans don’t understand. What Americans don’t understand is having a problem like this and not trying to deal with it. It’s the instinct toward appeasement that causes Americans to look at Europeans with baffled disgust.”