The upshot of this is that regulatory policymaking has become centralized in the White House. Obama has appointed some decent regulators at the various agencies, but all of their work gets funneled through Cass Sunstein. The regulators are just trying to make do with too-small budgets to fulfill their responsibilities. They also have to constantly look over their shoulders to see how Cass Sunstein is kneecapping their recommendations. And the real-world effects of all this are huge.

We took delivery on our first shipment of heavyweight duck blanket lined jackets, made by UFCW local 1541 workers. The boxes piled high in the photo give an indication of what the rest of my house looks like at the moment.

Mark Udall’s amendment to strip out indefinite detention provisions from the defense authorization bill failed today, and the bill will likely pass the Senate with the provisions intact. This sets up a possible, but not certain, Obama veto.

The Office of Comptroller of the Currency has been “reviewing” foreclosures, checking for various errors and wrongful actions. It now appears they’re looking at 5,000 foreclosures against active-duty military, which may be in violation of the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act and other laws.

Richard Epstein explains why people shouldn’t get minimum wage, unemployment insurance and other worker protections and parts of the safety net. Those benefits just make the serfs unwilling to work harder for less.

We haven’t heard a lot about the Fukushima nuclear disaster lately, but this story on the extent of radiation sounds really bad. A Japanese Ministry reports that as much as 8% of the country was contaminated.

When former Goldman Sachs exec Henry Paulson was Treasury Secretary he apparently gave his hedge fund buddies extremely helpful and lucrative secret information about his plans to seize Freddie Mae and Fannie Mac while still assuring the public everything was fine. It’s another reminder the system is rigged.

We knew that Joe Biden was scheduled to visit Turkey and Greece this week, but while he was in the region, he swung over to Iraq, apparently to renew discussions about a “continued American presence in the country.”

Fifty European parliament members have signed a letter to US officials, including the President, members of the Senate and House and Department of Defense, to express concern about US government treatment of Pfc. Bradley Manning, accused whistleblower to WikiLeaks.

Over the past year President Obama has lost support across the board with all partisan sub groups, but the relative drop in support was largest among “pure independents” according to Gallup’s polling.