The salient issue here is what do we want private actors in our society to do when they are told to take criminal actions, not by our federal government, but by a branch of our federal government wholly controlled by a single person. Is it remotely difficult to divine what the founding father's position on this would be?

A republic, if you can keep it. Perhaps 200 years, (give or take and probably a lot of the later given the purity of the founding fathers' vision of a free republic), was longer than Mr. Franklin had in mind.

...that's got to be a bit humiliating for the Clintons. The interesting thing about the housing plans is that at least Obama's doesn't violate the 'first, do no harm' rule. Hillary's plan to halt foreclosures- which would never get through any legislature because it would be obvious to anyone with half a brain that the bond market, where interest rates on everyone's mortages are set, would go into full scale revolt- is singularly the worst proposal put forward in this campaign by any candidate with the possible exception of Tom Tancredo.

What a brilliant idea by Hillary- through a monkey wrench into a credit apparatus aleady in the midst of choking off our economy. This is the beef? If so, it's another check box for vegitarianism and yet another reason the country will be better off with Hillary no where near the helm.

It is also probably a good idea to point out that not just Mark Penn, but Hillary is going with this attack, while they continue to not comment on Penn's links, and no less than Barbara Boxer has gone on record as saying that Hillary's charges are totally baseless.

If the voters in Texas can end this thing we won't have to be subjected to Clintonian mud for another four months. It's getting extremely tiresome...

What do you want to wager ol Eddie has some mommy issues? This long-time Clinton shill is now clearly losing it, and I can't say it sparks much in the way of sympathy from yours truly. However, this virtual toilet role is at least deft at demonstrating yet again that people who can't get past gender, or race or cultural chasm never seem quite able to grasp that their infirmity is not inherently universal.

This is not to say that there aren't those who didn't or wouldn't vote for a woman for her gender, just as there are those who would vote for someone simply for it. The same barrier, by the way, also undeniably faces black politicians, notwithstanding one mic's disinterest in the subject. As in that case, this will not prevent us electing a female president so long as she is less encumbered by serious character and other flaws than so thoroughly is Senator Clinton. In fact, having heard Mrs. Obama speak, I can think of one I'd be willing to vote for right now.

...can be dangerous. It's funny, I too used to scoff at the Pat Buchanan's and the Ross Perot's and the protectionist/populists who wanted to erect a wall around this country. After all, it is manifestly the case that trade makes people's lives better, it has always been thus and always thus will be.

However, if you examine arguments against mercantilist policies starting from as far back as Adam Smith, you will find they all have in common a critical mechanism, unavoidable in the long run, far less so before we are all dead: free floating exchange rates. What has happened in the last 50 years is that America has combined these free trade policies with the rise of huge blocks of dollar pegged/dollarized nations, nearly all of whom now have massive trade surpluses with the United States. Now here we are in 2008, finding ourselves nearly completely de-industrialized and therefore staring at completely intransigent trade deficits (whose chicken's are only now coming home to roost, but that is another subject), massive external liabilities and extremely well capitalized sovereign wealth funds with no wiggle room but to absorb massive amounts of US productive capacity.

The bottom line is that we were all wrong and that Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot were, in spite of themselves, somewhat right. We have allowed an unsustainable economy to take root in this country, whose very unsustainability has been to the great benefit of many, (mainly financiers), and at tremendous cost to a large number of communities and livelihoods that would have remained viable if sustainable 'long-run' conditions had only prevailed far sooner. You simply cannot, as we have for 25 years, continually import more goods than you produce (services do much not lend themselves to international trade). But we have, at great (future) cost, that when ultimately redressed, will find this country having a substantial increase in its manufacturing output/employment as a percentage of the economy. That is a fact, and it is undeniable.

Ignoramuses who, whatever their smattering of knowledge, are incapable of even recognizing let alone speaking to these issues, should not be lecturing us about what is sound policy, and what is not.

So we lose to Puerto Rico in international basketball and now Canada insinuates itself into American Presidential politics- so much for the Monroe Doctrine. Is there any shame that America has left to bear?

Seriously, NAFTA is a political football and all these two candidates are likely to do is try to address some of the environmental standard arbitrage that it allows. That is an issue however applicable to Mexican Maquiladoras not Canadian/American trade. Canadian environmental standards are better than our own. Perhaps that's what this politically tone deaf, not-even-full-time staffer was referring to when he decided to turn himself into a news story. Putz.