The Denton Record-Chronicle says a man in Denton, Texas got big surprise from UPS. He was expecting tools he ordered from Sears, but opened the box and found 30-pounds of marijuana. He immediately contacted the police, which is the correct thing to do.Sure, we would all like to imagine that we'd keep the stuff; throwing a massive, Rasta-themed party or maybe even selling it to finance a month in the Bahamas. But when someone accidentally delivers drugs to your door, you have got to call law enforcement. Someone, somewhere will be looking for their drugs. Call the cops. Please. But it might be okay to sneak a little pinch.
In the New York Times, Paul Krugman says Bush officials should be punished for what he calls "crimes" and "abuse of power."
"Most of the abuses," Krugman writes, "involved using the power of government to reward political friends and punish political enemies."
Isn't that pretty much the definition of politics?
Also in the Times, David Brooks says the economic crisis exposes flaws in the economic theory at all points of the political spectrum, far Left to Hard Right.
"Republicans," Brooks writes, "Have been trying to create a large investor class with policies like private Social Security accounts, medical savings accounts and education vouchers."
But these policies are based on the idea that investors are rational actors who, collectively, make the best choices in the long-term. That's not always the case.
Democrats also have a "mechanical, dehumanized" view of the economy. Governments can't just pump a certain amount of cash into the economy and magically "create" a certain number of jobs. Brooks writes; "You can run up gigantic deficits, hire road builders and reduce the unemployment rate from 8 percent to 7 percent, but insecure people will still not spend and invest."
Neither view, he says, Left or Right, can account for the booms, busts and bubbles in a real economy -- those wild swings driven more by psychology than economic facts on the ground.
David Harsanyi of the Denver Post says the carbon footprint of Barack Obama's inauguration could exceed 575 million pounds of CO2. "According to the Institute for Liberty," he writes, "it would take the average U.S. household nearly 60,000 years of naughty ecological behavior" to produce that much carbon.
In The New Republic, Yossi Klein Halevi offers a seldom seen view of Israel. He captures the bravado and gallows humor among a few Israeli soldiers the night before the Gaza ground invasion began.
"Should we toast to a victory party?" he asks.
"We don't have victory parties," another answers.
A Russian immigrant whom the others have dubbed "KGB" approaches the group. "I have the sniper bullets," he says.
"Bad sign," someone says, laughing. "That means we're definitely going in."
"Why couldn't we just continue bombing by air?" says a reservist from Tel Aviv.
"We wouldn't have to be going in," counters a religious soldier, "if we'd responded when they first started firing rockets."
Riveting stuff.
