Quotes of the day

Every man serves a useful purpose. A miser, for example, makes a wonderful ancestor.--Laurence Peter

From a libertarian perspective, your generosity is reflected in what you do with your own money, not in what you do with other people's money. If I give a lot of money to charity, then I am generous. If you give a smaller fraction of your money to charity, then you are less generous. But if you want to tax me in order to give my money to charity, that does not make you generous.--Arnold Kling

We are rapidly approaching an ethos of No Company Left Behind or Too Small to Fail. Neither of those concepts works particularly well in K-12 education, where social promotion and other factors have only led to grade inflation and overblown sense of self--Nick Gillespie

Think of government as a charity. From a libertarian perspective, it is a charity run by the Mafia, which will break your knuckles if you don't make your donations. It is also a badly mismanaged charity. It funnels lots of money into questionable causes, and even when the causes are good the programs that it funds tend to be very wasteful.--Arnold Kling

How much longer will Tim Geithner be able to keep ignoring this fatal flaw in his bailout plan? Or will he just decide to ban economic studies by current Harvard and Princeton professors? (Presumably, former Harvard and Princeton professors--Summers and Bernanke--will still enjoy the First Amendment.)--John Carney

Bloomberg News just announced that the SEC is talking about bringing back the Uptick Rule, which prevents people from shortselling while the stock is on its way down. I don't understand why the Commission doesn't focus on something more effective, like installing lavish statues of Mammon on trading floors so that traders can better propitiate him. --Megan McArdle

So, if I've got this clear, Mugabe's family has the Ark if the Covenant, which doesn't melt people, but does grant the power to direct cholera against political opponents?--Amanda Taub

It kind of sucks some of the gravitas out of Obama’s moral preening on Guantanamo Bay when he hires a guy who made a stoner comedy about the place.--Abe Greenwald

Obama prefers to think of himself as Lincoln but, striving for Carterdom, is lucky if he looks like Clinton on a good day.--Jules Crittenden

... this is classic Obama rhetoric: Say you're open-minded, try not to impugn your critics' motives, and then move forward with the standard demagogic approach.--Bryan Caplan

State prosecutors are supposed to be motivated by a sense of public responsibility for the interests of justice. Law firms have other motivations, and no-bid contingency-fee deals encourage lawyers with a financial stake in a case to try meritless claims or ask for exorbitant awards. That serves neither taxpayers nor justice, though in this case it sure did help [Governor Ed] Rendell's re-election campaign.--WSJ Editorial Board

In a deposition for his $10 million suit against American Apparel, Woody Allen described the clothing company's ads as "sleazy," "adolescent" and "infantile." Yes, the same Woody Allen who sleazily started an affair with his quasi-stepdaughter, who was an adolescent at the time.--Cityfile

Three things go up in recessions: church attendance, bar attendance, and movie attendance. Why those three things? They represent the three things people are looking for: meaning, connection, and relief.--Rick Warren