Links for October 3rd

Bloomberg: Koch Brothers Flout Law With Secret Iran SalesThe Koch Brothers have secretly, criminally sold millions of dollars of petrochemical equipment to Iran, an enemy of the United States with whom it is unquestionably illegal to do business. This is no aberration for these bastards—they're out for a buck, and they don't care how they …

Links for August 27th

MSNBC: Santorum—GOP not ‘anti-science’Good for Jon Huntsman for acknowledging that the first step to getting the Republican Party out of the intellectual wilderness is to stop being anti-science. (Anti-science is anti-facts, and being anti-facts doesn't work for long.) Unsurprisingly, Rick Santorum says that his party isn't anti-science. He claims, by inference, that Huntsman asserted that …

Links for August 19th

CBS News: Like Every Administration, White House Defends Obama "Vacation"President Obama has taken 38 days of vacation so far in his presidency. At this point in Bush's presidency, he'd taken 102 days of vacation. Rick Perry’s Texas A&M TranscriptRepublican presidential candidate Rick Perry's academic record is on par with President Bush's—which is to say, very …

Links for August 17th

Physorg: Human precursors went to sea, team says130,000 year-old stone tools have been found on Crete. What with being an island, that means that hominids that predate homo sapiens managed to cross open water. That was an ability that researchers had long chalked up to being one of those things that makes us special, but …

Congressmen are upside-down in a new CNN poll.

The post-debt-ceiling poll numbers are in, and they’re not good for Republicans. A CNN poll released today finds the Republican Party is down to a 33% approval rating, vs. a 47% approval rating for the Democratic Party. Speaker John Boehner’s approval rating has dropped ten points in the past three weeks, down to 33%, while …

Links for August 6th

The Washington Post: Fewer dinners mean meaner politicsSince Gingrich's cohort of Republicans came into office in 1994, there has been a steady decline in bipartisan socialization and, indeed, socialization at all. He exhorted freshmen to return to their districts whenever possible, to be in D.C. only when absolutely necessary. The result is a dangerous loss …

Links for July 28th

New York Times: Nutrition Label Gets a Design OverhaulSome of the ideas to overhaul food nutrition labels are pretty clever. New York Times: After Aiding Republicans, Business Groups Press Them on Debt CeilingThe Chamber of Commerce threw the full weight of their support behind getting Democrats replaced by Republicans in last year's congressional election. Now …

Links for July 16th

Tabulaw: What Congress Does When it Runs Out of NumbersCongress recently passed a bill that created section 139D of the tax code. But there was already a 139D. No problem—they just kept the existing one. So there are two section 139Ds. Given my work on codes, this makes my head feel all explodey inside. New …

Links for July 9th

GAO: Replacing the $1 Note with a $1 Coin Would Provide a Financial Benefit to the GovernmentGetting rid of the $1 bill would save the government $184M/year. Not an enormous amount, on the scale of the budget, but there's no getting around that $184M is a very large amount of money indeed. Ten years ago, …

Links for June 7th

Chris Frashure: Virgil Goode Running for President?Remember when Goode was a Democrat? Remember when he was an independent? Remember when he was a Republican? Well, now he's a member of the Constitution Party, and he wants to run for president. This should be hilarious. ThinkProgress: Herman Cain Pledges Not To Sign Any Bill Longer Than …