THE CREDIT CRUNCH HITS ICELAND: "Iceland built its extraordinary wealth on the crest of the worldwide credit boom and now the crunch is sweeping it away, bankrupting a people for whom the past eight years have been, for most of them and by their own admission, one long party."
JUSTIN KATZ WONDERS IF, AND HOW, HE SHOULD prepare for an Obama presidency.
RADLEY BALKO LOOKS AT OBAMA ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE, and is disappointed.
Obama's line on criminal justice has been a lot less encouraging. His running mate selection of Joe Biden, long one of the Senate's most strident crime hawks and staunchest drug warriors, was telling. Since the vice-presidential pick, Obama and Biden have embraced criminal justice policies geared toward a larger federal presence in law enforcement, a trend that started in the Nixon administration and that has skewed local police priorities toward the slogan-based crime policies of Congress, like "more arrests" and "stop coddling criminals."
I don't think either ticket has a lot to offer us on crime policy, though I confess a particular hostility to Biden's sponsorship of the dumb RAVE Act.
JOHN HINDERAKER: So much for Europe: "I'm not being critical here; Germany is a country and Europe isn't. It's one thing to sacrifice for one's countrymen, something else to sacrifice for those who share your continent, however friendly those other nations may be. That is as it should be. But it must be admitted that Germany's action today mocks the pretensions of the Eurocrats who have been engaged in a slow-motion coup for quite a few years now."
FINANCES: MEGAN MCARDLE on what went wrong.
SO I WATCHED THE SARAH CONNOR CHRONICLES tonight, and it turns out a Barrett .50 is nearly as effective against a Terminator as some had hoped. But nobody's tried the Taser trick yet.
MICKEY KAUS: "Federal prosecutors have moved to delay sentencing of former Obama fundraiser Tony Rezko, the Chicago Tribune reports. ... The obvious suspicion is that he's talking. Or at least talking about talking."
MORE ON THE SHORTAGE OF female law bloggers, from Ilya Somin and Ann Althouse.
Related thoughts here.
FROM "FAKE BUT ACCURATE," to "false but justified."
CBS: More Bogus Obama Donors Surface. "CBS News has learned that two donors to the Obama campaign that gave a total of $7,722 appear to have made their contributions under fake names that look like they were written by a mouse running across a keyboard: Dahsudhu Hdusahfd of Df, Hawaii with the following employer CZXVC/ZXVZXV and Uadhshgu Hduadh listed as living in Dhff, Florida listed their employer as DASADA/SAFASF."
Since it's CBS, though, should I ask for a second opinion?
ARNOLD KLING AND NICK SCHULZ: Inequality and the Sergey Brin Effect.
ELITE VS. ELITE? "The big message of our Red State, Blue State book is that the 'culture war' between red and blue America is real, but it is concentrated among upper-income voters. Richer Americans tend to be more politically involved and more ideological in their voting patterns."
In that case, the current economic situation should be bringing us all together.
I'M TESTING COMMENTS, so here's a very rare InstaPundit open thread for a bit. Enjoy! Er, if it works . . . .
UPDATE: Er, not yet. Dang.
THE MESSENGER PROBE returns to Mercury.
PLUG-IN HYBRIDS AREN'T COMING: They're here.