• David Boaz debates at The Economist: Is Obama failing? “In many ways, Obama has just doubled down on George W. Bush’s policies of bailouts, takeovers, expanded Fed powers and nationalizations. In a recession he is adding debt, taxes and regulation to the burdens already felt by business.” Readers can vote and join the debate.

• Ever wonder why weather forecasters can get things so wrong?

• Looking for a primer on the causes of the financial crisis? The new Cato Policy Report has answers.

• How to tell when the government health care overhaul is dead.

• Podcast: “Citizens United and Speech​Now​.org” featuring Steve Simpson of the Institute of Justice.

In a conversation about “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council admitted that he wants to re-criminalize sodomy:

…which is easy for him to say, of course, because he’s unlikely to be affected by the law. As someone who is likely to be affected by the law, I’m tempted to criminalize Peter Sprigg. Liberty is never more negotiable than when it’s liberty for someone you don’t like.

What is it that I don’t like? I don’t like putting people in cages. Whenever we can reasonably avoid it, we should. Liberty means liberty even for people we think are weird, or disgusting, or immoral — provided that they do not hurt us or our own legitimate interests. Lawrence v. Texas, for which the Cato Institute filed an amicus brief, is one of the most important expressions of this idea in our time.

Once liberty applies only to the things that we like, we have abandoned the true idea of liberty entirely. From that point on, you and I, as enforcers, must cling ever more tightly to arbitrary power. If we don’t, then someone else may come along, take that power, and criminalize us. A free society leaves the misfits alone, because sooner or later, everyone is a misfit, in some way or another.

I wrote about this private school in South Carolina last year. The Voice for School Choice has a new video highlighting the great work of the Eagle Military Academy, which works with many kids the public schools cannot or will not educate.

There’s a lot of talk lately about the transformative power of some charter schools, and it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that many secular and religious private schools have been saving kids all along with no public funds and little or no recognition from the elite opinion class.

We need to open up choice to these schools as well, not just public charter schools that cannot provide the breadth and depth of experiences offered by private schools.

Public charter schools are no substitute for full school choice through education tax credits.

President Obama has announced his intention to use $30 billion in TARP funds to create a new small business lending fund. In all likelihood, this is $30 billion the taxpayers will never see returned.

First of all, the problem facing small business, outside of the massive uncertainty being created by Washington, is one of credit availability, not cost. For those who can get credit, its quite cheap, arguably too cheap. So if the president doesn’t intend to lower the cost of credit, the plan must be to lower the quality; using the $30 billion to cover expected credit losses. Of course, we tried throwing lots of taxpayer money at unsustainable homeownership, is there any reason to believe throwing taxpayer money at unsustainable businesses is going to work any better?

Using TARP funds for this program is also somewhat disingenuous. This program adds $30 billion to the deficit regardless of whether it’s funded by TARP or by Congressional appropriations. Taking from the TARP only allows the President to keep treating the TARP as his personal slush fund. Nowhere in the TARP legislation can you find language authorizing the use of funds to cover credit losses on new loans. Being a constitutional scholar, the President should know very well that the spending power rests with Congress, not the President. If we are to have a new small business lending program, it should be designed and funded by Congress, not bureaucrats at the Treasury Department.

Historically the two main sources of small business start-up funding have been home equity and credit cards. Clearly the availability of home equity has declined. Sadly as well, with the passing of credit card “reform” the availability of credit card lending has also declined. If the President truly wants to help small business, then the first thing to do is ask Congress to repeal the credit card bill and then just get out of the way.

Today Politico Arena asks:

Should officials be talking about the Christmas-day bomber talking and what does it prove?

My response:

Amid growing bipartisan criticism of the Obama administration’s handling of the Christmas Day bombing, the Manhattan KSM trial, and much else in its approach to terrorism, it’s pretty clear that the White House put out the news last evening that Abdulmutallab is now talking simply to quiet that criticism. After all, that’s a story only because Abdulmutallab had not been talking. And why wasn’t he talking? Because shortly after he was arrested and briefly questioned by agents with no terrorism-related expertise, he was Mirandized and lawyered up, like any common criminal — consistent with the Obama administration’s law-enforcement approach to terrorism. And so he clammed up — and we were now put in the unseemly position of having to bargain with him to get intelligence. If this issue were not so serious, you’d have to call the Obama-Holder operation the Keystone Cops.

“Wealthy Face Higher Taxes.” That’s the headline that greeted two million American businesspeople Tuesday when they opened their Wall Street Journals. Inside, another banner head: “Big Firms Would Face Deeper Tax Bite.” Turn to the New York Times: “A Red-Ink Decade/​Obama Budget Sees Years of Deficits.” The Financial Times: “Obama to target overseas tax breaks.” Investor’s Business Daily: “Higher Taxes for All in Obama Budget, $1.6 Tril 2010 Deficit.” And the Washington Post (not that many productive people get that on their doorstep): “Obama budget would spend billions more.”

And President Obama wonders why banks aren’t lending, employers aren’t hiring, and investors are holding back? As the Economic Policy Institute illustrates, this is the slowest recovery of any postwar recession.

Let’s hope the Obama administration soon learns that higher taxes, more regulation, a larger share of GDP shifted to government, fears of Fed monetization of soaring debt — not to mention newspaper reports of Obama budgeteers “flipp[ing] through the tax code, looking for ideas” — can only discourage employers, investors, and entrepreneurs. Robert Higgs has cited the role of “regime uncertainty” in prolonging the Great Depression, as investors worried about what FDR might do next. Will Wilkinson points to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s saying “businesses want certainty. They need certainty so they can make long-term plans today.” Unfortunately, Will says, “Creating completely irresponsible, economically chilling regime uncertainty would appear to be the basic modus operandi of the Obama administration.”

Taxes, regulation, and uncertainty — and Obama asks why businesses aren’t lending, investing, and hiring.

Democrats have lots of ambitions. One of them is their health care overhaul, which included a lot of “pay-fors” — i.e., spending cuts that would pay for ObamaCare’s new entitlements. But they also want a jobs bill, a “doc fix,” and other things that require new government spending. Those also require pay-fors — unless Democrats are willing to expand further a $1‑trillion-plus deficit — and pay-fors are a scarce commodity.

Today, CongressDaily’s Anna Edney reports:

Some, though, are skeptical Democrats would use any of the pay-fors because that would mean officially declaring the reform effort dead.

“I don’t expect any effort to dismantle the reform bill until there’s no pulse,” one lobbyist said.

Right now, ObamaCare is mostly dead. And as we all know, “There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead…Mostly dead is slightly alive.”

A good way to tell when ObamaCare is all dead is when Democrats start picking at the carcass for pay-fors.