Malkin's parents were Filipinos in the U.S. on student Visas; is Malkin really a U.S. citizen? Prove it! Where's the documentation. Furthermore, Malkin is on record as questioning the citizenship of children born in the U.S. to non-U.S. citizens. She says granting such children citizenship." How does she reconcile those views!

Malkin went to Oberlin, which she herself calls a "radically left-wing, liberal arts college." She spent four years being indoctrinated by the leftist/Marxist axis at Oberlin; can anyone really throw off such an upbringing? I think Malkin is a left-wing mole!

See how easy it is to dig stuff out of someone's past to make them look like hypocritical, lying, scheming scumbags? That too two minutes on the Internet.

Give it up, Michelle; your movement is mired in the doledrums. Take up knitting or volleyball or something useful, instead.

Chuck Todd was great during the election, breaking down delegate counts, the intricacies of primaries, and all the rest. But man, I'm telling you: the guy is absolutely lame as far as being a "White House Reporter."

On NBC's "First Read," Todd asked the readers to send in their suggestions on what questions he should ask the President. Rachel Maddow pointed her viewers to Todd's web site. He got thousands of responses and, while I didn't read them all, some were pretty darn good. And with all that help, the best he can do is to imply that Americans--struggling to make ends meet, getting kicked out of foreclosed houses, getting laid off, and having their savings destroyed--should be sacrificing more? Ye Gods.

I had the impression that Todd was a fairly smart guy and that, given some time, he would improve on the job. But really, he's not showing a whole lot of improvement. And networks wonder why their ratings are decreasing.

Maybe Shuster can go back to reporting, which he seems pretty durn good at. I would much rather him doing that than hosting a show, a job at which I personally find him irritating beyond all reason.

In all this hoo-haw about Michelle Obama putting her arm around the Queen, I have yet to see word one about what else she could have done that would have been better. Leaned away? Stood stiffly and awkwardly? Recoiled in horror? "Some people" may be appalled, but "some people" haven't weighed in on what, exactly, Michelle Obama should have done.

Which means, of course, that they're just kvetching for no good reason. They should be ignored.

Huckabee managed to squeeze three things into one sentence:

o) Obama lied on the campaign trail

o) He pushed the "arrogance" meme

o) He pushed the "teleprompter" meme (extra bonus points!)

One can't help but wonder what is wrong with these people.

If these "muted signs of life" mean that banks will stop jacking up interest rates even on customers who have perfectly fine credit; that banks will start loaning money out again; that banks will stop canceling the cards of long-time customers when they have a few bad months; etc.

Somehow, I don't think I should hold my breath.

I honestly can't decide if this is scary, or merely pathetic.

It could be scary, because honestly, how much closer can you get to genuine, honest-to-God, dyed-in-the-wool, 21st Century Congressional McCarthyism? He's got his list. He's got numbers. He won't tell you who is on the list. Now, if the numbers change over time with no additional "proof" (and how can you "prove" someone is or isn't a socialist?), we know Mr. Bachus has gone all-in on this version of Red baiting.

On the other hand, this can be viewed as the pathetic, last-gasp attempt by a party that has lost its relevance, has no positive, forward-looking ideas, has been thoroughly repudiated by the people in the last two elections, and is desperate to hang their hats on something. Anything. Think of a chicken flopping around for a while even though its head has been cut off. Bachus, in this analogy, represents (say) a couple of the chicken's claws.

So: scary? Or pathetic? I simply can't decide.

One person's fearlessness is another's stupidity, I suppose.

And maybe we can't spend our way out of the recession, but history shows that the spending freeze/low taxes/fiscal frugalism model is disastrous, so that doesn't leave too many choices, does it?

In all seriousness, is there something about being a high-profile lawyer or "legal consultant" like Jeffrey Toobin that makes them impervious to listening to the promptings of their own common sense? This guy looks at the perpetrators, authors, and enablers of heinous acts, and treats it as an interesting intellectual exercise. Has he no moral compass? Has he no sense of the fact that these people committed (or plotted to commit) war crimes? What is wrong with him?

This is the banality of evil; that someone can look at these memos, contemplate these acts, and then conclude "maybe this is something that the bar association should look at." No, Mr. Toobin; this is something that a jury should look at.

And lawyers wonder why their profession is viewed with such a gimlet eye. Thank God for people like Jonathon Turley, who actually express moral outrage in public.

But this Toobin guy? Feh.

Working with the median is often better than working with the average for just the reason you suggest, yes. As for whether that's true in this case, that would require looking at the data itself.

There are some facts that are clear, though: banks are lending less; banks have modified their lending rules to be very strict; banks are raising interest rates whenever they can, even on customers who have no bad credit history; banks are charging additional fees wherever they can.

Whatever the reasons, I think it's fair to say that banks have taken a huge infusion of taxpayer money, and are holding onto it like grim death. (What did they do, buy Krugerrands and bury them in a vault?)