Deregulator: Alive since '85!

In case you haven't guessed, I'm blogging/posting elsewhere these days. From now on, the best place to find me is on Facebook. Or as a regular contributor to the JLF blog The Locker Room . See ya on the Interwebs ...

Because years ago some careless dolt didn't pay attention to his grill (and burned down his apartment building), it's against the law in North Carolina to have any grill using an open flame on an apartment balcony or patio. Gas or charcoal grills must be at least 10 feet from the structure. Which makes barbecuing on the third floor a challenge. Not grilling was not an option. So I had to obtain an electric grill and researched the alternatives. The result: A Weber (duh). The Q series comes in gas and electric models; and if you saw "Dear Food Network" last week, you'll recall one of the hosts (it may have been Aida Whatsername) cooking on one of the Q series gas models. This grill is not cheap. We got it at Bed, Bath & Beyond and using the standard 20% off coupon it was about $220 including tax. But it's a terrific grill that should last for years. And when we move to a house, I can see it being our primary grill when we don't use charcoal -- when we...

"John Edwards admits federal investigators are asking him questions. Federal subpoenas were issued Friday related to Mike Easley. "As the separate federal probes into a former senator and the former governor are emerging, Democrats are taking steps to replace the Republican prosecutor who is spearheading the inquiries about the highest-profile North Carolina Democrats of the past decade." That's the lede of today's story by N&O reporter Andy Curliss on the deepening federal investigations of the two top Dems. (Curliss has been absolutely on fire lately.) Curliss goes on to report that freshman Sen. Kay Hagan has chosen a panel to come up with successors to U.S. Attorney George Holding, a Bush appointee, who's led the probes. And Hagan said she might have a nominee in mind within a few weeks. When a new president takes office (especially when that transition involves a change of parties), it's not at all unusual for the new administration to replace ...

Thoughts on a world that will increasingly on different sources of information. It's my first Carolina Journal column.

That's a four-word sentence I knew I'd never write. But it's going to happen as soon as Gov. Bev Perdue signs the law passed by the state House yesterday. On a purely selfish, personal level, I'll be happy to no longer come home from a restaurant or bar with smoke-infused clothing. But as a matter of principle, this is a sad day for property owners. Setting aside cigar bars, private clubs, and some hotel rooms, the state ban outlaws smoking at all places of employment in the state -- including home-based businesses and one-person operations (think small convenience stores or shoe repair shops). The law prevents state or local governments from banning smoking in private residences ... for now. (Strike that; you can't smoke in your home if you provide child-care services.) So that exemption won't last forever.

That's how Sam Hieb, Piedmont Triad blogger for JLF, describes the travel habits of Gov. Mike Easley during his two terms in office. And that's just part of what the News and Observer unveils in a two-part series on the former governor's outside-the-lines activities. I'm proud to say that Carolina Journal did a lot of the early (and follow-up) reporting on Easley's taxpayer-funded private travel and his shady real-estate deals. You can read it all, dating from March 2006, here . Back at the N&O, here's how reporter Andrew Curliss' series opens : While he was governor, Mike Easley turned a small group of influential North Carolina businessmen into his own private air service, an arrangement Easley kept secret. Starting in 2003, Easley took at least 25 flights on private jets, some in apparent violation of campaign laws and ethics rules, documents and interviews show. Some flights were free. The value of others exceeded campaign contribution limits. Taxpa...

Folks, the 2009 Merle Eddy Watson Memorial Music Festival was hot. And the temps were pretty high, too -- around 90 Saturday. A few highlights of the stuff we saw. Friday, afternoon: The Chris Austin Songwriting Competition. This contest helped launch the careers of the first winner in the bluegrass category, Gillian Welch (1993), and Tift Merritt (2001), who was one of the judges this year (seen pictured with, among others, Jim Lauderdale and Leonard Podolak of the Duhks). We disagreed with the judges in all four categories. And one entrant who was a finalist in two categories and finished first in one should have won for best country song instead of best gospel song, but whatever. Tift Merritt played the Cabin Stage Thursday evening, and it was her first appearance at Merlefest since she won the Austin contest (and performed on the Cabin Stage) eight years ago. Friday night, Watson Stage: The Del McCoury Band. For my money, there's no one better playing straight-ahead bluegrass...

Well, maybe the analogy is not precise, but I'm trying to figure out a way to peg NYT columnist David Brooks. He's the MSM's version of an acceptable conservative, who can offer presumably insightful platitudes to the chin pullers of PBS and the BosNyWash political class. Even though there's nothing really conservative about him (unless you think conservatism = martial state, because Brooks has long advocated some type of coerced government service as a rite of passage for young Americans). Brooks is the sort of guy who, like Gergen, gets invited to present the right-wing viewpoint on acceptable TV shows and in prestige newspapers. And though he can turn a phrase, he's pretty useless in that role, because in his heart of hearts he's hoisting his wet finger to the wind and trying to figure out how he can continue being invited to those really nifty public functions by the political elites. Anyway, I typically don't waste my time reading him, but he was in the...

1) Ward Churchill won his lawsuit against the University of Colorado . And wants his old job back . Or a million bucks. 2) The Colorado legislature prepared a $1.9-million wish list of tax hikes it may soon pass -- without getting voter approval as the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights supposedly requires. Didn't take long for the political establishment to exploit the state Supreme Court ruling I wrote about here . When I was working in Colorado, I can't tell you how many times we'd have an editorial board with Democratic politicians (Gov. Bill Ritter, former House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, you name it) who would swear on a stack of Bibles their fidelity to the linchpin of TABOR: voter approval of tax increases. They'd say TABOR's revenue limitations ought to be tweaked, but by golly, any attempt to raise taxes deserves, no, demands a vote of the people, and they could not countenance any attempt to water down or bypass that explicit limitation on representative gove...

Don't get me wrong. UConn could still win the NCAA hoops championship this year. But the Hall of Fame coach may be preparing for his final weekend. The much-talked-about Yahoo! Sports story provides solid evidence of multiple recruiting violations. Essentially, as UConn pursued recruit Nate Miles, a former team manager turned sports agent steered Miles in UConn's direction. In other words, professional agents aren't just representing players before they turn pro; they're signing them up before college. And in this case, the agent went to pretty significant lengths to arrange for Miles to qualify academically at UConn. The specific violations may seem trivial, involving hundreds of phone calls between the agent and the recruit and the school at a time that NCAA rules limit contact between recruits and school officials to one a month. But Calhoun's reaction Thursday and again Friday to the developing story was especially telling. Could I have made a mistake? Sure. ...

The newest fad on the respectable left: Dissing Barack Obama and the Dems' mindless populism. Take this from NYT columnist and former editorial page editor Gail Collins: In summary, there appear to be only two constants in our ever-changing world. One is that Barack Obama is going to be on television every day forever. No venue is too strange. Soon, he’ll be on “Dancing With the Stars” (“And now, doing the Health Care, Energy and Education tango ...”) or delivering the weather report. (“Here we see a wave of systemic change, moving across the nation ...”) The other immutable truth is that we always need to have somebody we can be really, really angry at. The A.I.G. bonus-takers have pretty much worn out their 15 minutes. In an Op-Ed article in The Times on Wednesday, Jake DeSantis, one of the executive vice presidents of the company’s dreaded financial-products unit, offered up his side of the story about how even though he had never met a credit default swap in his life, he had p...

David O'Brien at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's outstanding Braves blog shares this story about the Boston Plaza Park Hotel's A-Roid cocktail: The A-Roid starts with a shot of El Mejor Tequila, served straight up. To give the shot a little something extra; a spicy smoky splash is served on the side in a convenient syringe … minus the needle. Inject the Performance-Enhancing Boost of Spicy Tomato “Juice” right into the shot or use it as a chaser. However you use it, come clean and acknowledge it … don’t deny it. And as the blogger at soxanddawgs.com points out, "At $11, ARod may be the only one able to afford the cocktail in this economy."

The Governator was perhaps the best-known proponent of the fallacy (also propagated by Al Gore, Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter , Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper and others) that it's possible for economic vitality and draconian green policies to co-exist. That any trade-offs required to reduce greenhouse gases would be scarcely noticed by Joe Citizen, and that we're all about to reach a carbon-neutral, nirvana of high incomes and minuscule environmental footprints. Or not. David Owen, in The New Yorker , acknowledges that the only way to significantly reduce greenhouse gases in the near term is by tanking the economy. He also notes that The environmental benefits of economic decline, though real, are fragile, because they are vulnerable to intervention by governments, which, understandably, want to put people back to work and get them buying non-necessities again—through programs intended to revive ordinary consumer spending (which has a big carbon footprint), and through public-inv...

Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., introduces a bill that would let newspapers restructure as nonprofits and get many of the tax benefits extended to charitable institutions. But to what purpose? Rocky Mountain News publisher John Temple asked as much in a column published a month before the paper closed: [Even] national newspapers ... do far more than inform their citizenry with serious reporting on public affairs. That's just a part of what they do. I can tell you from experience that the comics are far and away the section of newspapers that many readers feel most passionate about. [The] Washington Post publishes comics. Are we going to have nonprofits publishing the funny pages? Members of the public getting tax breaks for donating to keep Garfield alive? If we want to be so high-minded to create nonprofits for public service journalism, we'd have to exclude not only comics but also sports, entertainment, cooking, lifestyles, gossip, horoscopes, puzzles and all the other stuff that...

How else would we learn of the desire by Trekkies to "get their Kirk on," as The New York Times reports? (Hat tip: The Corner .)

Yesterday came reports that the Obama administration might force wounded veterans to get treatment under their own private health insurance. Now comes news that the administration has suspended the program that allows commercial pilots to safely carry firearms aboard planes . The Federal Flight Deck Officers program was instituted after 9/11 to enable formal training of pilots in firearms use as a way to protect passengers in case a genuine security risk (not just a terrorist threat) emerges when a plane is aloft. And yet a Washington Times editorial says the White House has secretly diverted $2 million that was used to train flight officers and instead will pay bureaucrats to harass, er, "conduct field inspections" of pilots who have been certified to carry. Since Mr. Obama's election, pilots have told us that the approval process for letting pilots carry guns on planes slowed significantly. Last week the problem went from bad to worse. Federal Flight Deck Officers - th...

To provide some spending leeway to expand federal health-care subsidies, the Obama administration is reportedly considering a plan that would require wounded U.S. veterans to pay for their service-related injuries using private health insurance. (Hat tip: NRO's Campaign Spot .) Unless you're in favor of privatizing the armed forces, the idea is not only manifestly unfair -- the nation's taxpayers have an obligation to pay for the treatment of those injured defending the country -- but it's also absolutely nuts politically. It reinforces the most damning indictments of the Democratic Party's left -- primarily that they hate the military. Even if this idea founders, Obama will have a tough time living it down. Veterans groups have the memories of elephants, and they do not accept slights (real or imagined) gracefully. While I was at the Rocky Mountain News, we supported a proposal by the Veterans Administration to share a new hospital with the University of Colorado ...

The state constitution is whatever the courts say it is. That's the upshot of yesterday's 6-1 ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court upholding a tax-rate freeze championed by Gov. Bill Ritter and passed by the 2007 legislature. For those of you outside Colorado, here's this convoluted story in a nutshell. The 1992 constitutional amendment known as the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights requires, among other things, a vote of the people before approving "any new tax, tax rate increase, mill levy [property tax hike] above that for the prior year -- or a tax policy change directly causing a net revenue gain to any district." Another provision of TABOR -- the one that drives liberals really crazy -- requires the government to issue tax refunds if revenues grow faster than inflation plus population growth. Residents of individual school districts can elect to forgo reductions in property tax rates that would be mandated by TABOR, again by popular vote. Since 1995, 174 of the...

A new news site is born. Thirty former Rocky Mountain News staffers announced the launch of InDenverTimes.com , a subscription-based online publication . Their goal: Line up 50,000 subscribers by April 23, what would have been the Rocky's 150th anniversary, and go live May 4. At $7 a month ($5 if you sign up for a year), initial subscriptions will be roughly half the cost of The Denver Post, A lot of familiar names (and decades of institutional/intellectual capital) if you're a Rocky reader: Sam Adams, Mark Brown, Mary Chandler, Kevin Flynn, Tillie Fong, Gary Massaro, David Milstead, Bill Scanlon, Marc Shulgold, Ed Stein and Mark Wolf. Along with some not-as-familiar ones, mainly from the paper's fine stable of editors. Gotta keep folks on deadline, right? Best of luck to 'em. There'll be no shortage of news for the Timesters to provide. UPDATE: Mike Roberts at Westword covers the press conference that kicked off the project. As the earlier announcement mentioned,...

In The Atlantic , my friend and former boss Virginia Postrel explains why super-intelligent policy-makers falsely believed that had tamed the ups and downs of the economy. And why their miscalculations may keep us in a funk for longer than is necessary. Congratulating policy makers for “the virtual disappearance of the business cycle” oversteps the evidence and encourages the hubris that fostered the current crisis and could make recovery more difficult. The conventional explanation for the Great Moderation gives too much credit to easily identifiable economic policy makers—“I feel the contribution of good policy cannot be overstated,” said [Christina] Romer — and too little to all those anonymous managers and workers whose everyday actions get summarized in the aggregate statistics that Fed economists watch so closely. Read the whole thing.

From the "I'm not making this up" file: The Democratic Party, with the tacit consent of the Obama administration, has locked their phasers on Rush Limbaugh in hopes of discrediting the popular conservative talk-show host. Again, I'm not making this up . As part of Operation Rushbo, the Dems plan to purchase anti-Rush billboard space, and they conducted a survey to pick the best phrase to use. And the winner is: Americans Didn't Vote for a RUSH to failure. To paraphrase W.C. Fields, if this was the winning phrase, the losers must have been whoppers indeed . Setting aside the ridiculous nature of the entire endeavor, Mark Steyn had it right on The Corner : Limbaugh will probably consider the billboards free advertising for his show. As if he needs the pub.

Just for the halibut I decided to check out ticket prices for tomorrow's game at StubHub . Let's see -- Upper Level Corner, Section 222, Row Y -- as high in the rafters as you can get: $395 per. Lower level, near courtside: A cool two grand. Oh yeah, we'd have to pay for plane fare, too. Makes those tickets we could have bought for the UC-Santa Barbara game in November for $219 apiece (at UCSB) a screaming bargain. Think we'll go to LoDo's Bar and Grill (we're in that photo album, keep clicking) instead and hang out with 100 or so of our best Tar Heel friends. Go Heels!

The features departments at the Charlotte Observer and the Raleigh News & Observer are merging . I wonder why that hasn't happened more frequently. In fact, though I worked with some very talented feature writers and editors at three general-interest dailies, you have to ask what they bring to the table that's not now being replicated by their counterparts at alternative weeklies. Other than frequency of publication. Just before the Rocky closed, I had a conversation with a veteran from the paper who's been there for several decades, and he said he'd been asking himself the same thing for years. Why wouldn't the Rocky (or the Post) benefit by getting rid of their feature depaprtments (and the 15-20 employees) entirely and simply inserting a copy of the Denver alt-weekly Westword in every Thursday edition? The daily could pay for the weekly's extra copies (Westword's print run may be 80,000, or about one-third the circulation of either daily). Westword ...

Or at least from former Rocky reporters. The Web site IWantMyRocky.com , founded by a number of staffers when the paper was put up for sale, has become an outlet for those former reporters to continue breaking news until they land on their feet, launch their own specialized Web sites (as transportation reporter Kevin Flynn appears poised to do), or -- potentially -- the site drives enough traffic as an aggregator of local news that it someday stands on its own. As Flynn notes, there's still appears to be no revenue model that could make a general-interest news site like IWantMyRocky profitable. But should one arise, former Rocky employees could surely offer the software -- the expertise, sources and reporting chops -- that could generate the content to make site like that a must-read.

Alex Rodriguez will undergo surgery next week to remove a cyst from his hip . Unless you're a fantasy baseball player or a Yankees season ticket holder, the obvious question is, could his admitted use of steroids have contributed to this condition? My lovely and talented intended, who's a nurse, suggested as much when she first heard this. And it turns out that at a minimum, frequent use of anabolic steroids could make it possible for osteoarthritis to set in prematurely, as the abstract of this study from the American Journal of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation concludes. Which makes the statement Yanks GM Brian Cashman made after A-Rod's mid-February press conference even more telling: Well, we're not in a position to go backwards on this. The position we're in is to try to move forward and make sure that we can help him get through this. We've got nine years of Alex remaining . … We've invested in him as an asset. And because of that, this is an asse...

As I write, the Dow 30 is at 6,673, meaning the index has lost nearly half its value in about 10 months. President Obama offered advice to investors Wednesday, and they responded by dumping shares as fast as they could get their brokers on the line. My former colleagues at Investor's Business Daily offered a critique of his views of the market, and, as usual, their analysis is on point. But Obama's comments also affirmed another place I take issue with those who argue that the new president is, to borrow from Bugs Bunny, a wolf in cheap clothing -- a barely closeted socialist, a genuine radical, Bill Ayers without the bombs. Instead, Obama (and congressional Democrats) aren't that at all. They're power-hungry, to be sure. But that's as far as it goes. They don't want to really remake the economy because I don't think they're smart or principled enough to try to pull that off. They continue to rhetorically embrace entrepreneurship and capitalism, even t...

I knew I'd get one -- an e-mail response to the NRO piece saying the MSM couldn't be trusted because they wouldn't report on Obama's fake birth certificate. Guy laid out the case and everything. I replied the only way I knew how: And I suppose 9/11 was an inside job.

Mike Roberts at Westword publishes a lengthy, fascinating Q&A with David Milstead, the Rocky's finance editor, who produced more hard-nosed journalism about the Rocky's demise than anyone. The Rocky's business section under the leadership of Rob Reuteman was top-notch, thanks to reporters like Dave, who explains what separates solid daily business journalism from something else: Business at the Rocky Mountain News was a section where the people there wanted to be working there. They were generally career business journalists. We hired experienced business journalists from the outside. We had three people who'd been at Reuters. I had been at the Wall Street Journal. And we had another person who'd been at Bloomberg. We had people who took business journalism seriously and were making it their first priority career choice. ... If you have serious, smart, career journalists working in your business section and you treat it like a real section, then it's going ...

Infinite Monkey Ben Boychuk offers his own take on my NRO piece with typical aplomb. It's not that the media does a fabulous job all of the time. And God knows the nation's newsrooms are teeming with liberal do-gooders. The news media is suffering from a crisis of legitimacy. Deadline pressures and an often poor grasp of the nuances of particular issues and industries undermine good journalism. It was ever thus, and probably always will be. But who's going to rake the muck when the last city reporter is hanged by the entrails of the last advertising manager? Glenn Reynolds? Your next door neighbor? You? From the e-mail reactions I've received to the piece so far, some well-read, thoughtful conservatives still harbor a striking amount of ignorance about the role of newspapers. It's not to validate your worldview, whatever that might be. The news and business sections are supposed to inform readers about the workings of government and other public institutions and ho...

Retired Rocky film critic Bob Denerstein takes a whack at the Polis story, too. Never mind that it takes years to become a skilled reporter. Never mind that it takes time, tact and savvy to develop sources. Never mind that talk radio has given us a pretty good idea of what a broadened expression of opinion can be worth. Never mind that some of the best bloggers in the world ply their trade on Old Media sites. Never mind that bloggers had little or nothing to do with the demise of the Rocky Mountain News. All I can say is that if Polis' grasp of other issues is in any way comparable to his understanding of this one, his constituents should be afraid. Very afraid. So with apologies to MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, I'm naming Jared Polis today's worst person in Colorado, even if he happens to be in D.C. at the moment. I may actually start referring to the 2nd District congressman as Rep. Jared Polis, D-Not Ready for Prime Time.

My friend John Miller at National Review invited me to reflect on the Rocky's demise for the mag's online edition, and rather than lament the loss of our editorial page, I chose to talk about the loss of a valued civic institution . Newspapers pay people to sit through endless city-council and land-use-planning and legislative-committee hearings, enduring the sausage-making process that is modern government. These reporters tell readers what’s going on and — when they’re at their journalistic best — what it all means. They take the trouble to analyze court decisions and search government records and decipher regulatory filings and pore through leaks from public-spirited civil servants. They don’t get every story right, and they’re often captives of their sources. But even reporters who are lazy or incompetent or hopelessly compromised provide an irreplaceable service. They keep self-government possible, perhaps even manageable, at a time when the state is growing ever larger an...

My podcast with Ben Boychuk and Jim Lakely of Infinite Monkeys fame is here. We talked about the Rocky, the role of free-market thinktanks and Obamanomics. Enjoy!

Spinal Tap's "Unwigged and Unplugged" tour is on. So who's the unfortunate drummer?

Newly elected U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, D-Boulder, isn't likely to get many Christmas cards from former staffers at the Rocky Mountain News. The Denver Post and Examiner.com report the far-left, super-rich Internet entrepreneur crowed about the Rocky's closure at a Nutroots, er, Netroots gathering in the Denver suburbs the day after the Rocky's final edition. "We killed the Rocky Mountain News... Long live new media," said Polis. It took Polis about a second and a half to start weaseling his way out when contacted by the Post Monday: The end of the Rocky Mountain News was a blow to all of us in Colorado. We were proud to have a city that had two powerful voices, two daily venues for informing the public, and a diversity of editorial voices. Not only has Colorado lost over 200 jobs, but the voice of the RMN has been silenced. Indeed, some of the blame rests with new media. While there are many other factors that have contributed such as the recession and a decline i...

Yesterday, my friend Ben Boychuk invited me to participate in the podcast he and his RedBlueAmerica running mate, Joel Mathis, produce weekly. Joel wasn't available, so fellow Infinite Monkey Jim Lakely (aka Dr. Zaius) joined Ben and me. When Ben gets the audio edited, I'll post a link. Jim made the point that Barack Obama has done more to remake the relationship between individuals and the U.S. government in one month than has taken place by any administration in recent memory. (Can't remember if he referenced FDR, but it'll be in the podcast.) As I suggested, Obama appears to be familiar with some of the work done by the "Chicago boys" at the University of Chicago, led by Milton Friedman, F.A. von Hayek and George Stigler. Problem is, he's taken the wrong lessons. In 1984, Milton and Rose Friedman published Tyranny of the Status Quo , a book asking why it's difficult for political reformers to maintain momentum after their early days in office. Looki...

As you've probably heard, the Rocky Mountain News, where I spent three fantastic years as an editorial writer, closed Friday. Here's a 20-minute video produced by the staff about the paper's final weeks. Riveting stuff, but then again, I'm an insider. You can read the entire final edition online (of course) here.

Sports Illustrated reports Alex Rodriguez tested positive for steroids in 2003 , his final season with the Texas Rangers. It's a big deal because Anticipating that the 33-year-old Rodriguez, who has 553 career home runs, could become the game's alltime home run king, the Yankees signed him in November 2007 to a 10-year, incentive-laden deal that could be worth as much as $305 million. Rodriguez is reportedly guaranteed $275 million and could receive a $6 million bonus each time he ties one of the four players at the top of the list: Willie Mays (660), Babe Ruth (714), Hank Aaron (755) and Barry Bonds (762), and an additional $6 million for passing Bonds. In order to receive the incentive money, the contract reportedly requires Rodriguez to make extra promotional appearances and sign memorabilia for the Yankees as part of a marketing plan surrounding his pursuit of Bonds's record. Unlike Bonds, ARod's power production never took a dramatic spike during the steroid heyday...

When you think Californians can't get any goofier. Hat tip: The Corner.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy (who passes for a conservative among Euro pols, BTW) has come up with a novel way to keep newpapers from folding: a government bailout! From French blogger Frederic Filloux: Young people reaching 18 are now entitled to a free subscription of the paper of their choice, the publisher providing the paper, and the government paying for the delivery. And, from a tax perspective, when you pour money into a newspaper this is treated as investing in a foundation. In the past, industrialists used the press as an ego booster, it has now become a charity business. Such a thing would never happen in the U.S. (we hope), but the idea of providing direct government aid to news organizations not named NPR or PBS has gained some currency on the left, as in this recent LA Times op-ed. The op-ed mentions postal discounts periodicals have received since the founding of the Republic as examples of government subsidies to the media. But expanding that subsidy would only hel...

Democrats: Stimulus no quick fix for economy.

And Merlefest. Here's a 2007 performance featuring Sam Bush, Bela Fleck, Jerry Douglas, Bryan Sutton and Byron House -- an hour or so before they joined Elvis Costello on stage! As Sam Bush said, "You get out of your house, the winter's over, and you go to MerleFest."

My former colleague, retired Rocky Mountain News TV columnnist Dusty Saunders, explains the problem with Dick Vitale : Vitale's loud, machine-gun delivery, coupled with an everybody's-a-winner philosophy, would pale quickly if he were a broadcaster for a specific college - or NBA - team.... Vitale's breathless banter covered a lot of ground on the NBA and college hoops scene, particularly while referencing current and former stars. But there was very little precise commentary about what was happening on the court. A precise style is not a Vitale strong point. Exactly.

We really are reliving the Clinton years .

But it sounds awfully interesting. I bet my friend Ben would crawl over broken glass to get there.

I'm attempting to post to Deregulator from my Facebook page. We'll see what happens ...

My friend Ben shares memories about our friend and mentor, and my former neighbor.

His 2008 in review . Two highlights: Barack Obama, having secured North and South America, flies to Germany without using an airplane and gives a major speech -- speaking English and German simultaneously -- to 200,000 mesmerized Germans, who immediately elect him chancellor, prompting France to surrender. and As the [financial] crisis worsens, an angry Congress, determined to get some answers, holds hearings and determines that whoever is responsible for this mess, it is definitely not Congress.

Spotted today, on an end cap in a Hobby Lobby. A big stack of those license-plate size items of wall art featuring the guv's one-liner about hockey moms and pit bulls. They were 50 percent off. No further comment.

OK, I have a personal stake here, because the newspaper I work for may fold in a few weeks. But this may be the year that a number of medium-size and larger cities lose their dailies, at least in the form of a paper-and-ink product delivered to the customers' front door. Name your reason for the demise of the daily -- Craigslist surely accelerated a trend that was well under way -- but there are plenty of reasons to be scared scatless when general-interest newspapers disappear. This op-ed from The Wall Street Journal sums up a lot about the challenges "citizen journalists" trying to cover local events will face, at least initially. Over at The Corner , Mark Krikorian has echoed these thoughts. There may be people who are passionate enough about local affairs (and who have lots of time on their hands) and are perfectly willing and capable of attending public hearings and reporting what happens. But before bloggers or other online-only media can replace newspapers, they...