1) This isn't some long, loong, loooong diversion from free market capitalism, this is exactly the result of free market capitalism. Ted Kennedy warned, way back in the 1960s that if corporations and individuals were allowed to grow to the size of governments there would be threats to democracy. He got nothing but derision from the capitalists, who promptly lectured him that without the ability to amass large amounts of capital, there would be no engine of growth and no economy.

The magical free market is based, both in the economics of the neoclassicalists, and in the Greenspan-Rand libertarian economics of the Fed, on the principal that a rational player does what is in its own long term best interests, and the statistical agglomeration of every player acting rationally is self-regulating. In what way is Goldman-Sachs, or its players in the government, acting in anything other than their own rational self interest?

2) The Constitution says,

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;

To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;

Yes, there has been a big push for health care reform, yes there has been the beginnings of a first toe in the water of a glimmer of a debate on Afghanistan. But the health care reform passed in the House a long time ago, and the committees holding hearings about Afghanistan are not those that do commerce and banking. And, lord knows, they haven't been knuckling under and investigating torture or war crimes all this time.

So where are the regulations? Is that Tim Geitner's job or the job of the House Banking Committee? All financial bills are required to originate in the House. Not the Senate, not the Executive Branch, not the Supreme Court, not on the streets, or in the newspapers, or on a boat some place offshore of Saamoa.

I think "political intelligence" is a lot more at the root of this than anyone wants to let on. Remember when Jay Rockefeller's campaign contributions came up during FISA? They were nowhere near the amount that would have influenced a man who was a billionaire in current dollars at birth. But his portfolio might have been a different matter. Goldman-Sachs is free-market capitalism, and the Fed is libertarianism. This is what they produce. Including endless war. Get on it or get over it.

And I think that the idea that the uninformed, the misinformed, and the willfully ignorant can understand finance well enough to regulate it is crap. The Goldman-Sachs people are, quite rationally, making money off the ignorance and the corruption of Congress. Do you honestly think that a guy who six years into a war in Iraq can't understand what the words Sunni and Shi'a mean can understand how a derivative financial instrument works? Probably knows all the details about top shelf vodka and single malt scotch, and who was seen with whom last night, though.

Congress, not the Treasury department, is entrusted with regulating commerce and banking. And they haven't passed a single regulation whatsoever to reign in the "rational actors" of free-market capitalism and Ayn Rand libertarianism. Not one.

No, you didn't do anything of the sort. You gave pages that showed that there were people who were affiliated in some fashion with CAIR, who were also affiliated with other organizations, sometimes at different times and places, and through those other organizations became involved with terrorists or with raising funds for HAMAS. And macgupta is reporting on someone who didn't name the organizations of which he was speaking in one case, and just a long rant that CAIR failed to get removed from the web by lawsuit in the other.

None of that amounts to hard cold evidence of support of terrorists. If you want to go on half-baked associational data like that, fine. But you haven't either proven that CAIR is a front for HAMAS (wgsalter's orignal claim), nor that they are an extremist organization (both of your claims), nor that Glenn's original comment that they were being treated to McCarthyite guilt by association was not true.

I am not chasing down all the subordinate links in a long, long multiply amended Daniel Pipes piece as your proof, either. If there's a link that proves your case among his ranting, find it and display it for us. You said you had proof. You have nothing of the sort, and are now trying to claim you don't need it. You don't but you did claim to have it. You weren't being quite on the level with us on that.

So, you're saying that someone who was on the board of directors of one chapter when the chapter (not CAIR) was founded, and subsequently was not, and then was arrested and indicted 10 years later due to a plot arising out of an organization he subsequently was involved in, is proof that CAIR is a front for HAMAS? (You are aware that being on the board doesn't even require membership I hope).

Does that mean that if a guy goes to Boston Latin, and subsequently joins Whitey Bulger's mob in Southie, that Boston Latin is a front for the Mafia?

Just want to know how your guilt by association gears turn.