Overlawyered.com is a fine site. Walter Olson has a great deal of insightful commentary -- and has had for decades -- about troubles in our legal system, not the least being "junk science."

About Bush and the My Pet Goat thing. As much as I've come to despise him, I do not share the hostility about Bush's taking five to sit and collect his thoughts while others were already dealing as best they could with what they now knew was an attack of unknown magnitude on the nation. What was he supposed to do, just jump up and starting waving his arms and start screaming in front of all the tots? And the notion that Bush -- or any president under similar circumstances -- should have flown back to D.C. is absurd. No intelligent person should need to have that explained.

The idea that Bush should have immediately flown back to D.C. is INSANE. The POTUS -- not the person of George Bush, but him as POTUS -- should not be flying to an obvious target of attack during a period of unknown numbers of acts of war on the nation, and when some of those fuel-laden planes were heading toward D.C. There is a reason why this nation has some fortified bunkers built for the POTUS (and subordinates) around the nation, yanno.

I have come to disagree with the Manhattan Inst. on much as it has drifted far away from what initially was a more libertarian-oriented think tank. But Walter Olson is nobody's front, and his decades of critiquing the legal system -- about which I know a thing or 100 from first-hand experience as a civil litigator -- is smart and usually spot on.

Olson wrote for Reason for a long time, and may still.

I'm not blowing smoke. Seriously, when a person in charge is confronted with a uniquely awful, unexpected and volatile crisis, it makes sense that s/he would take some minutes to focus, "go internal" and start prioritizing. If this had not been George Bush, I don't think anyone would think it was so awful. He is a man of many sins of incompetence, cowardice, hubris and much else that is bad, but I don't see that episode as being part of the indictment.

yeah, disguise a big problem among a larger body of statistics. It's a fact that fewer medical students are going into obstetrics because of the cost of insurance premiums, and some states (including Nevada) are facing a crisis of not enough obstetrics doctors becasue so many are leaving the practice.

True. And it has been the case for better than a decade that poorer, rural areas are under-serviced by obstetricians for the same reason. The med-mal insurance is cost-prohibitive.

What sadly low standards you have if you think it's all right for the President to "take 5" while his staff does the work. There is a word for that, it's called a "follower" and typically the President is supposed to lead, not follow his underlings and act like a potted plant.

Taking five does not = behaving as a potted plant. In an instance as unique and volatile as that one was, it makes sense to me that any president would take some minutes to decide on what to do. So he did it while continuing to sit in the classroom? So what?

Don't you think that, if a Democratic president sat in a classroom on 9/11 for five minutes (actually, I think it was seven), with a blank expression on his face, Peggy Noonan's head would have exploded?

Hers, Rush's, NRO's, LGF's, The Weekly Standard's & etc. And they would have been just as exploitative and misguided. I try my best to judge behavior independent of whose ox is gored. Don't always succeed, but I try.

Spare us the bullshit about how he had to keep the kids from crying or mentally arrange his grocery list.

I didnt say he had to "keep the kids from crying." But he needed to deport himself properly, and I think in that situation he did; he didn't get all hysterical or anything. Andy Card had given him the info available at that minute, and obviously Bush would be expecting more from Card and others as it was known. But taking several minutes to THINK seems like a normal, rational thing to do.

How exactly did Bush know that the situation was "unique and volatile" given that he didn't know what the situation even was and had no interest in finding out?

You cannot be serious. Two airplanes taking out the WTC is not unique and suggestive that some seriously volatile shit is going on?

pffft. I'm going to bed.

Umm. A barter economy is not a market economy. By definition, market economies must have currency. See the three words after "comparative advantage for enlightenment."

Not only that, but George Will was quite correct. Without a rule of law (which entails govt) contracts cannot be reliably enforced. Post-Soviet Russia fell into a syndicated crime swamp in no small part because outside investors could not be assured Ks would be upheld, thus stifling capital investment in Russian markets. Free markets are a good idea, but cannot be such without some state protection. (I know the anarchists left and right will disagree with me.)

Wondering whether I find problems with: improperly regulated markets, overly regulated markets, inadequately regulated markets, or a right-wing populist putsch engineered on behalf of people who hate markets they can't control?

Let me put it this way. When the legislature is heavily intertwined with corporations, revolving doors of personages, lobbyist influence married to the power to enact law & etc, mostly the corporations and legislators benefit.

I know it runs against anti-libertarianism 101, but I and those I read of my ilk have long known it. We don't call them the "military-industrial complex" or "prison-industrial complex" for nothing.

Free markets are one thing. Corporatism another.