Dan Calabrese

Obama budget: You think government is big now? Just you wait!

The Obama budget is two months late, of course, but that's the least of its problems. You small-government people? Ha! We're not reducing the size of government today. We're not reducing the size of government tomorrow. We're not reducing it ever. Not unless the political dynamic of this country changes dramatically.

Sen. Tom Coburn easily finds $95 billion in federal waste

Some of the ways the federal government wastes money are so comical, we would almost miss the laugh lines if they ever went away. Seriously, what would conservatives do if we couldn't talk about Washington getting three different agencies involved with catfish inspections?

Defenestrated Detroit City Council: Don’t take away our kingdom!

Most cities with a population of around 700,000 have part-time city council members who are paid a per-meeting stipend, and maybe have one staff member (or the whole council shares a staff member or two) to help keep them up to speed on city business.

Party! Leftist Brits pretty excited that Thatcher is dead

This is probably just a more advanced demonstration of what you might see here when, say, Dick Cheney dies some day. Live it up! Nothing says life fulfillment like hearing about the death of someone with whom you disagreed politically, if that's all you've got in life. Take some Dramamine before you watch this:

What’s with this weird in-flight incident over the film ‘Alex Cross’?

You have to keep in mind that this is an account from the passengers themselves, provided to The Atlantic and then later recounted by Fox News, but it sounds plausible enough in an age of heightened security awareness but little common sense in the application of said awareness.

Majority supports legalizing pot; majority is wrong

I realize it's not fashionable these days to espouse the drug warrior sensibilities of the 1980s. If you read me much, you know I'm not too concerned with being fashionable. So needless to say, if wanting to keep marijuana illegal is now a minority point of view, then call me a rebel. I see nothing good coming from the legalization for which I guess 51 percent of Americans now express their support.

South Koreans are getting a little nervous

It still seems more likely than anything else that Kim Jong Un is just blustering very clumsily. But there's no way to be sure, and if you live in the South and you'd been used to shrugging off similar nonsense from his father and grandfather before him, you can't help but notice that it has a different feel to it this time. No one can be sure we haven't finally found ourselves facing the sort of delusional potentate who really thinks he can poke the tiger in the nuts and walk away without getting mauled. The Washington Post:

Gosh, who will help you budget responsibly? Why, Barack Obama!

You know how it is. You're trying to make a smart, responsible budget, but it's hard! And you just wish that someone would come along who is really good at making responsible budgets and can show you how to do it right. Well cheer up, Bunky! We've got just the guy, and he's ready to swoop in and show you how it's done. It's this guy! Right here:

New York Times notices that Obama totally manipulates the press

Wow. Who do you side with here? The Obama Administration, which is limiting press access and increasingly controlling how the president is presented in an obvious campaign of image control? Or the New York Times, which is complaining about it?

Johns Hopkins rejection

A quixotic quest for acceptance. There was a fair amount of buzz yesterday in conservative media (and predictably, just about none from the MSM), about the decision of the Student Government Association at Johns Hopkins University to reject Voice for Life - a pro-life student group - as an official student organization of the university.

David Stockman: So basically, the state has destroyed capitalism

You see where it's published, the New York Times, and your inclination is to write it off as garbage. You see who wrote it, former Reagan budget director David Stockman, and you remember that he was the apostate who turned tail over '80s-era deficits and became a hero to dopey green-eyeshade types like the Concord Coalition.

Economic hope: Look to the red states

Yes, you can still find pockets of prosperity in this country, and as friends of the boss Steve Moore and Arthur Laffer point out in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, the places where you find it tend to have something in common:

Robert Tracinski: Young people vote for dependency because that’s how they live

Ever ponder this question? Why would young people vote en masse for Barack Obama when he is running up a crushing debt for which they will be responsible? Even the faintest hint of reality should tell them they're screwing themselves by making such a choice.

Sebelius admits ObamaCare will jack up insurance premiums

So how is it that you can pass a law mandating expanded benefits, including free preventive care, and mandating coverage for those with pre-existing conditions . . . all without raising insurance premiums?

Cue the media wild guesses over gay marriage ruling

They have no news to report. They have no idea what will happen. But why would that stop them?

If marriage is a right, then the government needs to start hooking people up

I can't totally take credit for this one because it came about in a discussion between Rob and me yesterday. Those discussions, if you were to read them, would often present a rather disturbing look inside our two brains.

Obama creates jobs: Gunmakers hiring like crazy

It's the perfect encapsulation of the Obama Administration. The only time Obama actually causes job creation in the private sector is when he tries to do the opposite.

Cyprus bank robbery is back on

After Russia turned down a proposal to finance the Cypriot bailout in exchange for the rights to Cypriot oil leases, there weren't many options left. And here we are. The European Union has approved a $13 billion bailout plan that will be funded in part by seizing bank assets, including up to 40 percent of large bank deposits in the troubled island nation.

Well, we asked the Democrats for a budget . . .

Patty Murray announced it as if it were the birth of the messiah: "The Senate has passed a budget."

That Obama energy trust is an even bigger fraud than it first appeared to be

When I wrote about this last week, the emphasis was on the ease with which Obama purported to take $2 billion from elsewhere in the budget to fund alternative energy research. If it's that easy to just divert $2 billion, I surmised, I guess we must not need whatever that $2 billion was paying for.