Jon Cohn explores the egg recall in greater detail, and comes to a similar conclusion as I did: that it just shows a continuation of E. coli conservatism, particularly the fervor for deregulation that goes back 30 years

Wikileaks has posted a single new document–a CIA Red Cell report contemplating what would (will?) happen if other countries begin to see the US as an exporter of terrorism. The document admits several cases where the US has exported terror–such as the widely known but downplayed fact that David Headley had a role in the Mumbai bombing.

A response to Spencer Ackerman’s opening gambit on Pakistan diplomacy.

The biggest problem with HAMP, the Obama Administration’s mortgage modification program, is the leeway it gives to the banks to set the terms of the negotiation. Even when they violate the guidelines of the program, they face little recourse. Part Three of a series on the failure of the Obama administration’s HAMP program.

Now that we’ve had a peek into the mind of Alan Simpson — several sordid and tawdry peeks, actually — we know the kind of talk that’s gone on in secret during the closed door meetings of the Obama’s Catfood Commission that is contemplating Sovereign Default on the bonds held by the Social Security Trust Fund.

This is what makes the fight to end our war on marijuana so difficult. The other side is not interested in an honest policy debate. Instead of honest argument, they rely on half-truths, distortions, twisted logic, ridiculous statements and naked propaganda.

The country is suffering from an unemployment crisis caused by the collapse of the housing bubble. However, we are being told that we have a deficit crisis and therefore have to cut Social Security, which is not even part of the budget.

To quote Old Man Simpson: “Over the last 40 years, I have had my size 15 feet in my mouth a time or two. “

Good news from Google: the search giant has accepted our marijuana legalization ads.
You can see the censored ads and sign our petition to Facebook protesting their decision here.

The ads were removed by Facebook, which said the ads, which feature a marijuana leaf, was a violation of its policy – a decision the social networking site made after serving no fewer than 38 million impressions of the ads earlier this month. The ads will run on Google’s advertising network immediately.

There are a bunch of reasons why people are so silly as to believe they’re going to get rich off of their house–things like the difficulty of adjusting for inflation and the rarity of coverage of markets (like Detroit) that have steadily lost value. But I’d like to raise another question raised by the graph, though: what the hell were we thinking? How did most of our society–including many “serious” experts–believe that spike was real–or sustainable?