"Buy low, sell high," was John D. Rockefeller's curt advice for business success. You can't buy low unless markets are left free to correct themselves. The stock market, for instance, lost 700 points yesterday. Today, it gained 400. No government program infused money into the market to turn its fortunes around. Investors did, but only when they saw value to be had. The same is true of the housing market. When investors, and ordinary buyers, see value to be had, they will return to purchase houses, which will eventually drive up prices. There are winners and losers in all bear and bull markets. Markets should not be artificially propped up through bailouts or subsidies. That's a kind of fraud, an unnatural manipulation of price. Price is determined by what a buyer will pay and the seller will sell for, not what an outside party believes is fair. Nobody considered it unfair to buyers when sellers placed extraordinary prices on ordinary homes during the boom. That's just the market at work. But declining prices is the market at work, too. And just as there were winners in the housing boom, there are winners in the housing bust, too.

The best article I have read on the current financial meltdown was written, strangely enough, eight years ago. In City Journal's Winter 2000 edition Howard Husock presciently outlines how the Community Redevelopment Act's affirmative-action lending would mean disaster for the banking industry. It is a must read. Husock writes, "A no-down-payment policy reflects a belief that poor families should qualify for home ownership because they are poor, in contrast to the reality that some poor families are prepared to make the sacrifices necessary to own property, and some are not. Keeping their distance from those unable to save money is a crucial means by which upwardly mobile, self-sacrificing people establish and maintain the value of the homes they buy. If we empower those with bad habits, or those who have made bad decisions, to follow those with good habits to better neighborhoods--thanks to CRA's new emphasis on lending to low-income borrowers no matter where they buy their homes—those neighborhoods will not remain better for long." Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron echoes and updates these sentiments on CNN.com: "The fact that government bears such a huge responsibility for the current mess means any response should eliminate the conditions that created this situation in the first place, not attempt to fix bad government with more government." Framing free enterprise as the cause of the financial mess will mean more of the activist government that made the mess in the first place. This is why the debate over causes is so important.

The House of Representatives has lived up to its name. With all 435 seats up for a vote in a few weeks, the House voted down the wildly unpopular $700 billion bank robbery in reverse. Republicans voted against the enormous corporate welfare bill by 2-1 margins, while their Democratic counterparts overwhelmingly favored it. The Democratic Party, if you haven't noticed, is not the party of the working man but the party of big government. Friends of liberty can celebrate today--but not too much. Like Jason, Freddy, and so many other monsters, the bill will likely return from the grave soon.

Demographic reality confronts the geographic snobbery of Massachusetts. If the state is such a great place to live, then why is everyone leaving? "So when you are growing up there it is difficult to escape the impression that you are lingering too long in a story that has long been over," writes John Hodgman in a hilarious essay in the Boston Globe. Hodgman brilliantly captures the Bay State paradox of self-importance meshing with a declinist mood. He writes, "[I]f you look at a map of Massachusetts and squint your eyes, you might imagine you are looking at the nation itself, only with no Texas, and a horribly deformed Florida. You might be tempted to believe that the whole country shaped itself in Massachusetts's honor. Certainly many in Massachusetts have believed so. From its beginning, Massachusetts was self-importantly aware of its own self-importance, its special place in the history of our country. Outlining the divine mission of the colony he helped to found, Puritan John Endicott would call it the 'Bulwark Against the Kingdom of the Anti-Christ.' I still call it that today--it's better than the 'Bay State.'"

Tune in to Boston's Talk Evolution 96.9 WTKK on Saturday, September 27 from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. I will be guest hosting once again for the wonderful and talented crime writer Michelle McPhee. There is, thankfully, no dearth of topics to discuss, from John McCain's dramatic suspension of his campaign, to Friday night's presidential debate--presuming it happens--to the $700 billion reverse bank robbery. Listen live here.

George W. Bush made his primetime push for a $700 billion bailout of financial institutions last night. For the benefit of those who don't speak Bushspeak, I offer translation for a few key passages:

Bush: "This is an extraordinary period for America's economy." Translation: I have presided over the funeral for the American Century. New York, the epicenter of the money world as long as anyone can remember, is no longer the capital of world finance. The dollar has been in freefall since I have been president, Wall Street is in shambles, foreigners laugh at us, and I am about to give you a recession as a going away present.

Bush: "[M]any Americans have felt anxiety about their finances and their future. I understand their worry and their frustration." Translation: My predecessor said, "I feel your pain." I am your pain.

Bush: "I'm a strong believer in free enterprise, so my natural instinct is to oppose government intervention. I believe companies that make bad decisions should be allowed to go out of business." Translation: These words are the exact opposite of my modus operandi. Of course, if by "free enterprise" you mean a mind-its-own-business government, then, hell no, I am against it. By "free enterprise" I mean nationalizing the world's largest insurance company, government giveaways of prescription drugs, enormous farm subsidies, socializing the losses of capitalists, the largest increase in government spending in my lifetime, and stuff like that.

Bush: "Once this crisis is resolved, there will be time to update our financial regulatory structures." Translation: Throw me the idol. I'll give you the whip.

Homer J. Fong is champion of week 3 with a 10-6 record. Don't be wrong. Praise Fong. All picks are against the spread. Home teams are in caps. Here are my selections: CHIEFS +9.5 over Broncos, Browns +3.5 over BENGALS, Texans +8 over JAGUARS, Cards +1.5 over JETS, SAINTS -5.5 over Niners, PANTHERS -7 over Falcons, TITANS -3 over Vikings, Packers +1 over BUCS, Bills -8 over RAMS, Chargers -8 over RAIDERS, Redskins +11 over COWBOYS, Eagles -3 over BEARS, and, on Monday Night Football, STEELERS -6.5 over Ravens. Make your picks in the comments section.

"Credit expansion can bring about a temporary boom. But such a fictitious prosperity must end in a general depression of trade, a slump. It can hardly be asserted that the economic history of the last decades has run counter to the pessimistic predictions of the economists. Our age has to face great economic troubles. But this is not a crisis of capitalism. It is the crisis of interventionism, of policies designed to improve capitalism and to substitute a better system for it."
--Ludwig von Mises, Socialism, 1922

After saddling taxpayers with an expensive prescription-drug entitlement, criminalizing speech through campaign finance "reform," and immersing America in a bloody, expensive, and unnecessary war based on falsehoods and abstractions, what do you do for an encore? George W. Bush's curtain call involves siphoning a trillion dollars from taxpayers to reward the practitioners of financial skullduggery and foolishness. Going quietly from the public stage, alas, is not his style. Refraining from hurling tomatoes and rotten eggs at him is not mine.

Has there ever been a socialist hated by more socialists than George W. Bush? Conversely, has there ever been a socialist more revered by self-proclaimed conservatives? We live in an age when style trumps substance, with the president's rich-kid oilman vibe overriding his actions in office marking him as the greatest friend of big government among presidents of the last half century. Perhaps if he came from Cambridge and not Crawford, his ostensible enemies would understand him better. The same goes of his friends.

Bush's bailout embraces a perverse form of socialism that turns Marx's theory of surplus value (the idea that profits are theft) on its head by viewing losses as a collective rather than an individual burden. Other ingredients in Bush's Marxist recipe for solvency include nationalizing the means of production (AIG, Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac) and embarking upon a class war, albeit on the side of Marx's dreaded capitalists rather than his beloved workers. It is socialism for the rich, which isn't socialism's antithesis but its flipside. It still socializes, making the debts of financiers the debts of society.

"We did this to protect the taxpayer," Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson boldly claimed. Paulson's "protection" is of the type offered by fictional goons Tony Soprano and Don Corleone. Who will protect us from our protectors? The estimated cost for the bailout amounts to more than $2,000 for every man, woman, and child in America--and some of the proposed beneficiaries aren't even Americans. Take the cost of the adjustible-rate mortgage assistance plan, the takeover of Freddie Mae, Fannie Mae, and AIG, the absorbtion of Bear Stearns' losses, the $300 billion to the Federal Housing Authority, and the subsidy to Countrywide, and add it to the estimated $700 billion for the current bailout, and the total public pricetag for private malfeasance, knavery, and stupidity exceeds $1 trillion. And who's to say it ends there? Put in perspective, the bailout will eclipse the cost of the Iraq war. And remember the initial estimates for the cost of Iraq? This gang does not have a good record when it comes to accurately forecasting the cost of its schemes. The actual pricetag will likely dwarf the guessed pricetag.

One Wall Street Journal writer even claimed that these government takeovers of bad loans is actually "a good deal for the taxpayer." If it were such a great deal, why are all companies looking to rid themselves of their bad loans and no company looking to take them on? The answer is because it is a horrible deal, and anyone saying anything to the contrary is a liar.

If there were justice in this act of governmental charity, then scores of philanthropists would be lining up to rain money upon the moneychangers. But nobody, and I mean nobody, would give a wooden nickel to any of these malefactors. Should the dregs of Wall Street wish to test this hypothesis, then they should prod one of the more pathetic of their number to venture into the street--perhaps wearing Brooks Brothers instead of Armani to emphasize his impoverished state--with cup in hand and sandwich board denoting his indigence, and harrangue passersby with tales of his woe. The only generosity he will experience is a charitable helping of insult and scorn. In other words, such a bailout could only be conducted by the force of the state. At least the socialism that relieves the destitute of the ghetto and the sticks is based on a popular spirit to aid the downtrodden. Where is the spirit for all this?

The administration's pitch has all the tact of a used-car salesman spiel. "We're going to work with Congress to get a bill done quickly," President Bush explained over the weekend. "The cleaner the better." In case anyone didn't get the hint, he continued that his plan would be moved "as quickly" and be "as big as possible." On Monday, he added, "[T]he whole world is watching to see if we can act quickly to shore up our markets and prevent damage to our capital markets, businesses, our housing sector, and retirement accounts." Translation? Don't read the bill. Don't debate. Just rubber stamp it. It took years to mess up the finances of lending institutions, but the president believes that he can cure them by Friday--the day the administration hopes to wrap this up--of this week. The forego-hardwork, get-rich-quick, don't-have-time-to-save-for-a-downpayment mentality that helped us get into this mess isn't a good model for extracting us from it. It took God six days to create the world. Why does George W. Bush think that he can save the financial world in less time than that?

The original plan presented to Congress by the U.S. Treasury ran a whole two-and-a-half pages. Most college papers are longer than that. The devil is in the details, and the president doesn't want to share the details. Like many a beggar, the federal government wants our money but doesn't want to get pinned down on what they will do with it. Any lendee would spend more time reading the fine print of a $200,000 loan than Congress will do with this $700 billion bill. Should we be grateful that the president even consulted Congress this time before spending taxdollars?

And then there is the incentive the government has created for financiers to act recklessly. The term is "moral hazard," and it means that people act irresponsibly when they know that they will not have to take responsibility for their actions. It encourages recklessness in the future by making a precedent for rewarding recklessness in the present. Welcome to the new normal. Reforms, the Treasury secretary says, can wait. What's important is throwing good money after bad. But pouring all the money in the world into troubled financial institutions does nothing to repair the inherent problems within those institutions.

The government has been in the business of telling business that it must provide loans to people not qualified for them. This includes Clinton administration mandates on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to serve underserved populations and the affirmative-action lending that results from constant legal hassles. "Ownership society" were George W. Bush's words describing this idealized America of the future. Yet, we are in that future, and living with the harsh reality of Bush's idealistic dictates of giving money to people who are the least likely to pay that money back. The federal interest in homes for people who can't afford them, like its interest in college educations for people who should have never even graduated from high school, results in inflationary pressure on prices, a bubble which bursts once lendees can't pay lenders and lenders discover the homes they recoup aren't worth what they initially valued them at.

When one adds the insane bankruptcy laws government has enacted to the inflationary pressure government exerts on the housing market by its unnatural obsession with homeownership, one sees why government activism is much to blame for America's predicament. Just as seizing the golden parachutes of executives who have driven companies into bankruptcy is barely discussed when outlining ways for those companies to go from red to black, garnishing portions of salaries or the proceeds of auctioned luxury items isn't on the table in compelling debtors to pay what they owe. Debtors great and small don't face real consequence when they default. The latter lose a house they never actually owned; the former stiff creditors and pass the bill on to Uncle Sam. The government used to put debtors in prison, hence the antiquarian phrase "debtors' prison." Now the government pays the debtors' bills. There are too many legal protections for deadbeats. It's too easy to default, which is why so many people on Wall Street and Main Street take this immoral route.

Republican cheerleaders delude themselves into believing they are supporting capitalism by rescuing these capitalists. They are undermining it. A capitalism without risk soon morphs into a capitalism without reward. President Bush and his Democratic detractors present a false dichotomy. The perimeters of debate roughly include those who wish to use government to bailout the reckless haves, and those who wish to use government to bailout the pitiful have-nots. The discussion is one of who should get the money, and perhaps, at best, how much money should be doled out. Whether the money should be doled out at all isn't even part of the discussion. There is a third way, and it's called anti-meddling, mind your own business, non-interventionism, the free market--take your pick--and it's not even represented in this debate. When Senator Jim Bunning says, "The free market for all intents and purposes is dead in America," I understand where he is coming from.

What should we do? In a word, nothing. Just as it is immoral to seize profits under the envious notion that they are really theft, it is immoral to socialize losses as if a banker's losses are really everybody's losses. Let them fail. They deserve it. There will always be lending because there will always be a buck in it. Enterprising capitalists with capital will be glad to take their place, glad to profit from their mistakes. We've already seen Bank of America gain from Merrill Lynch's loss. There would be more of this if the government stopped meddling. It actually makes more sense to give a trillion dollars as a reward to the financiers who did things right than to reward the failures. What makes more sense than either option is to stop handing out the taxpayers' money. The free market needs to be free of state intervention. There are enough incentives and disincentives to guide behavior in a manner that is beneficial to society. Creating artificial carrots and sticks only transforms rational behavior into irrational behavior. Coercion warps the market into doing things like lending money to people who don't seem to have the capacity to pay it back. A free market, free of government coercion and government bailouts, generally does not behave in this way.

George W. Bush worships the state. From centralizing education through No Child Left Behind, to nationalizing airport security, to footing the bill for the drug problems of senior citizens, Bush's impulse is always to look to government, and not the market, for solutions. Like the song says, "Boy, you're gonna carry that weight a long time." Creditors-turned-debtors won't even have to carry the weight of their losses after next week. Conservatives who stood by the worst enemy to their principles will have to carry the weight of George W. Bush for decades to come. By effectively masquerading as a conservative, as a believer in laissez-faire, Bush has discredited conservatism and laissez-faire by associating those ideas with failure--failures largely the result of government activism disguised as conservatism and laissez-faire. Ultimately, the banking crisis pales next to the taxpayer crisis, in which every American will bear the load of others. It's time for principled right-wingers to do what they should have done eight years ago: vocally and vehemently oppose the socialism of the Republican president and the Democrats in congress, clearly articulating the free enterprise position that is under attack from all sides but is the only way to avoid bailouts, moral hazard, and social engineering that seeks an "ownership society" but creates a deadbeat subculture.

During the last presidential election, the sons of a Democratic congressman and the Democratic mayor of Milwaukee were caught slashing the tires of 25 Republican Party get-out-the-vote vehicles on Election Day. Are you shocked, shocked that the investigation into who hacked Sarah Palin's Yahoo email account leads to David Kernell, the son of a Democrat state representative from Tennessee? What a coincidence that young Mr. Kernell's PeekYou page lists "hacking" as an interest. You don't say? "I really wanted to get something incriminating," the hacker anonymously explained, lamenting that he found "nothing that would derail her campaign as I had hoped." Any doubts about the political motivations behind this despicable invasion of privacy?

DocMcG is the champion of week two with an 10-4-1 record. All hail! FlynnFiles visitors are welcome and encouraged to participate. All picks are against the spread. Home teams are in caps. Here are my selections: Chiefs +5.5 over FALCONS, BILLS -9.5 over Raiders, TITANS -5 over Texans, Bengals +13.5 over GIANTS, Cards +3 over REDSKINS, Dolphins +12.5 over PATRIOTS, BEARS -3 over Bucs, VIKINGS -3.5 over Panthers, RAMS +9.5 over Seahawks, Lions +4 over NINERS, Saints +5.5 over BRONCOS, EAGLES -3 over Steelers, COLTS -5.5 over Jaguars, Browns +2 over RAVENS, PACKERS +3 over Cowboys, and, on Monday Night Football, CHARGERS -9 over Jets. Make your picks in the comments section. Good luck.

From the people who brought you the attacks on John McCain--whose war disabilities preclude him from typing on a keyboard--for failing to use email, comes the invasion of Sarah Palin's email account. Despicable human beings, so concerned with their own privacy that they have dubbed themselves "anonymous," have hacked into Sarah Palin's Yahoo account and posted its contents online. Those who confuse their own candidate for the messiah will just as soon delude themselves into believing the opposition the devil. It is frightening the depths to which people will sink when they believe themselves in service of a lofty cause.

"Rosenbergs sons acknowledge their father was a spy," reads an Associated Press headline. Who cares? "Rosenbergs guilty," was a headline in the 1950s. In 2008, it's old news.

It's nice to see two sixtysomething hard leftists lose their ideological and parental delusions. But no serious person since Julius Rosenberg's 1953 execution has believed him innocent of passing along secrets, including orchestrating an atomic spy ring, that aided Stalin's USSR. A jury determined him guilty in 1951. In 1983, Ron Radosh and Joyce Milton's "Rosenberg File" adjudged a guilty verdict on Julius Rosenberg's from the perspective of two liberal academics. From the grave, Nikita Khruschev acknowledged Rosenberg's guilt in his posthumously published memoirs in 1990. The release of the Venona intercepts in 1995 made public Rosenberg's code names ("Antenna," "Liberal") and espionage work on behalf of the Soviet Union. The documents Allen Weinstein pulled from the Soviet archives for "The Haunted Wood" depict an overzealous spy recklessly dscarding discretion in pursuit of secret information for the Soviet Union. "The main thing he can't reconcile himself to his relative inactivity," his handlers reported to Moscow. "At every meeting, he asks us to allow him to bring materials out of the plant and thus benefit us." And last week, Rosenberg's co-defendant, a 91-years-young Morton Sobell, who was captured in Mexico fleeing his FBI pursuers and subsequently sentenced to thirty years (he served about half of that), conceded that he and Rosenberg were indeed Communist spies.

"I don't have any reason to doubt Morty," Michael Meeropol told the New York Times. Yeah, if you can't trust a Communist spy engaged in a lifetime of deception, who can you trust? Amazingly, mountains of evidence, including documents from the Soviet archives and intercepted Soviet spy cables, testimony from their uncle against their parents, and the admission of Stalin's successor all never swayed the Meeropol (Rosenberg) brothers in their steadfast defense of their father. But a few abracadabra words from Mort Sobell does the trick. How many decades will we have to wait before the pair admits that their mother was a Communist steeped in her husband's shady business?

To make a 57-year-long story 45 seconds short, since the original case against Julius Rosenberg resulted in a guilty verdict, an enormous body of knowledge has been added to that original, overwhelming case. The initial correct judgment that this man was indeed a spy has been corroborated, vindicated, and enhanced. Like the Japanese soldier still fighting World War II in the Asian jungles in 1974, the pair left orphaned by their Communist parents were esentially the last men standing in their side's cause. Like World War II, this case closed a long time ago--even if a few crusaders still fought it on the periphery.

Carly Fiorina's comment dismissing the idea that Sara Palin could run Hewlett Packard is a Rorschach test. It tells us little of Fiorina's view of Palin. Our reactions to it speak volumes. Specifically, it provides a glimpse into the psychological makeup of the worshippers at the Holy Church of Big Government. In their minds, experience enough to preside over the federal government equips you with a universal set of tools to do anything. Of course anyone able to preside over the federal government should be able to run a multi-billion dollar business! This attitude is as awestruck by the state as it is contemptuous of business. George W. Bush struggled in fielding a successful major league baseball team, Bill Clinton never even used email as president, and George H.W. Bush would have made a bad supermarket checkout girl. There is a conceit among those in big jobs that they can do any job. They can't. There is a delusion among statists that only the wisest, noblest, and best rule. They don't. The former Hewlett Packard chief clarified her Palin observation: "Well, I don't think John McCain could run a major corporation; I don't think Barack Obama could run a major corporation; I don't think Joe Biden could run a major corporation." Agreed, and I don't think Carly Fiorina would make a good president. The former is no insult to McCain, Palin, Obama, and Biden; the latter, no insult to Fiorina.

"I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit. A prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power and duty should, I think, be resisted.... The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow-citizens in misfortune. This has been repeatedly and quite lately demonstrated. Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood."
--President Grover Cleveland, Veto of Texas Disaster Relief, February 16, 1887

Why the federal bailout of Bear Stearns but not of Lehman Brothers? Aside from promoting moral hazard, the federal government's selective bailout displays the arbitrary nature of activist government. No institution, not even the federal government, is prosperous enought to bailout every failed business. The president has repeatedly advanced the idea that "the government should not be picking winners and losers." Yet, his policy on the banking/real estate crisis has been to pick winners and losers. His stated policy is better than his actual policy. Let the losers lose and the winners win. How about a government of laws and not of whim?

There will be no reunion of the classic lineup of Pink Floyd. Keyboardist and founding member Rick Wright now plays in the great gig in the sky. He was 65.

In the band's overlooked era after the drugged-out departure of leader Syd Barrett and before the colossal success of The Dark Side of the Moon, Rick Wright was a force in a Pink Floyd struggling to find its identity. Aside from his sometime ethereal, sometime surreal keyboards, Wright performed lead vocals on the Beach Boys-esque "Summer of '68" from Atom Heart Mother and the mellow "Stay" from Obscured by Clouds. On the band's seminal album, The Dark Side of Moon, Wright penned the orgasmic "Great Gig in the Sky."

But by the mid-1970s Wright's musical contributions to Pink Floyd had largely dried up and his decision to take a vacation during the summer of '79 when Roger Waters was obsessed with finishing The Wall led to his firing. "Whatever bond Rick had enjoyed with Roger in the previous fifteen or so years was terminally broken," Mason writes in Inside Out, "and Rick's downfall was swift." Mason notes that Wright's acceptance of a deal that allowed him to continue as "a salaried performer" for The Wall shows proved fortuitous: "[H]e was the only one of us to make money from the live shows. The remaining three of us shared the losses."

After eight years away from Floyd, Wright rejoined the group on its two post-Roger Waters efforts. He even took lead vocals on "Wearing the Inside Out," whose title later lent itself to drummer Nick Mason's biography of the group. Three years ago, he reunited with Waters, Gilmour, and Mason for what turned out to be a farewell-my-friend rather than a hello-again concert for Live 8.

My favorite Rick Wright moment, nay, one of my favorite moments ever recorded, is the faint sound of a few notes of "See Emily Play"--a 1967 Pink Floyd pop hit written by Syd Barrett--in the last seconds of the group's 1975 "Wish You Were Here" album. It was a poignant touch for an album that paid homage to the group's fallen leader Syd Barrett, a casualty of the sixties drug culture whose body in 2006 finally caught up to his brain's death in the late 1960s.

In memory of Richard Wright, I will be bombarding my ears with that crashing organ of "Brain Damage/Eclipse," that spacy synthesizer of "Shine on You Crazy Diamond," the light-speed keyboards of "One of These Days," and other Rick Wright contributions that can never be killed by cancer.

Remember that hilarious billboard placed outside of the Academy Awards in 2005? Featuring headshots of Streisand, Affleck, Moore, and other of the usual suspects, the billboard read: "W. Still President. Thank You Hollywood." Well, that movie is being rerun this election. From the semi-coherent Bush-is-a-retard MTV Awards rant, to Susan Sarandon's comparion of Obama to Jesus, to Lindsay Lohan and her tomboy girltoy's deep thoughts on Sarah Palin, Hollywood hasn't learned. Rather than a politics of persuasion, celebrities practice a therapeutic politics in which their own catharsis trumps whatever effect their pronouncements have on the election. If they really wanted to help, entertainers would open up their wallets and shut their mouths. But this isn't about helping Obama. As ususual, it's all about them.

Abortion plays hell with logic. In a piece in the Boston Globe, Cass Sunstein writes: "As it was written in 1973, Roe v. Wade was far from a model of legal reasoning, and conservatives have been correct to criticize it. The court failed to root the abortion right in either the text of the Constitution or its own precedents." A few paragraphs later, he nevertheless concludes that the bad ruling should be upheld. "Roe v. Wade has been established law for 35 years; the right to choose is now a part of our culture. A decision to overrule it would not only disrupt and polarize the nation; it would also threaten countless doctors, and pregnant women and girls, with jail sentences and criminal fines." A similar glimpse into the innerworkings of abortion logic comes from Camille Paglia, who writes: "I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful." Despite this, Paglia supports a complete right to "murder"--her word--the unborn.

Judith Reisman, a personal hero of mine for doing so much to debunk Alfred Kinsey's pseudoscience, praises A Conservative History of the American Left in a thorough review in The American Thinker. "Kudos to Flynn for his diligent scholarship, pouring over musty, discarded books, and fading parchment paper-confessional letters and button holing graying New Leftists for first-person interviews," Reisman writes. "Wonderfully fresh, this massive tome is an imaginative, prudent critique of a belief system that shaped American history, and that no student will read elsewhere."

Write my blog for me in the comments section below as I prepare for my guest-hosting appearance on 96.9 WTKK in Boston on Saturday from 8-10 a.m. Say anything about anything. The world awaits your words.

Do you think you can beat Homer J. Fong and DocMcG? They are the AYRFSF pool champions for week one at 11-5. If you are up to the test, make your picks below. All picks are against the spread. Home teams are in caps. Here are my selections: CHIEFS -3.5 over Raiders, BENGALS -1 over Titans, Colts -2 over VIKINGS, REDSKINS Even over Saints, LIONS +3 over Packers, PANTHERS -3 over Bears, Giants -8.5 over RAMS, Bills +5.5 over JAGUARS, BUCS -7 over Falcons, SEAHAWKS -7 over Niners, CARDS -6.5 over Dolphins, Patriots +1.5 over JETS, TEXANS -4.5 over Ravens, Chargers -1.5 over BRONCOS, BROWNS +6 over Steelers, and, on Monday Night Football, Eagles +7 over COWBOYS. Make your selections in the comments section.

Hindsight isn't 20/20, at least when the subject is 9/11. Seven years after the Osama bin Laden-orchestrated attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center, majorities of respondents in just nine of nineteen countries surveyed believe al Qaeda behind the 9/11 murders. Did they miss bin Laden's tape claiming credit for the attacks? A third of our neighbors to the south blame al Qaeda, and almost a third blame the United States. Nearly a quarter of Germans think al Qaeda responsible for the attacks. Nearly half of Egypt, the second largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid, sees Israel behind the attacks. Only Kenya and Nigeria, perhaps immune to hoaxes because of the plethora of internet scams emanating from their environs, boast supermajorities believing al Qaeda responsible for 9/11.

The polls have swung in John McCain's favor since his masterstroke selection of Sarah Palin. Or have they? While Ohio, North Carolina, and Virginia trend in McCain's direction, Canada, Italy, and France are firmly in the Barack Obama camp. In fact, respondents in 22 countries overwhelmingly favored Obama. In not a single foreign nation surveyed by the BBC did poll takers favor McCain. We, the people of the world, will like you better, the poll's veiled threat goes, if you vote for the American presidential candidate we, the non Americans, want. Is there a more compelling argument for McCain than that the French, Mexicans, and Chinese favor his opponent?

Playdates, like the molester spectre that helped create them, are creepy. Apart from the culture of fear that perpetuates them, playdates are the result of the culture of death. If blacks or Hispanics suddenly disappeared from sight, society would immediately and understandably freak out. But in the last half century, children--whose numbers equal those of American blacks and Hispanics combined--have gradually disappeared from sight and nobody even noticed. It's not that dreaded kidnappers have become more productive, but that parents have become less productive.

Kerri Augusto authors an outstanding "My Turn" piece in Newsweek on the "playdate" phenomena and what she calls "scheduled childhood." "Past generations had the luxury of taking the essential childhood experience of playing for granted," she writes. "When I was growing up, the streets filled with kids riding bikes, playing 'graveyard tag' in the twilight hours, and just bopping around from one house to another. On a snow day, kids would convene in my backyard where my dad maintained a toboggan run, complete with benches, jumps and my mother's never-ending supply of cocoa. In the summer, hordes of children gathered for spontaneous water-balloon battles. There was no such thing as a playdate."

I wrote about this disturbing phenomena back in February. Chaufferred trips to and from school, Madden '08 instead of stickball 'til 8, and parents acting like Big Brother instead of mom and dad make for a childhood devoid of childhood. With such a smothered preadolesence, what will adulthood look like?

"It seems that we are up against a rising tide of scheduled childhoods born from a culture of fear," Augusto writes. "No one I know allows her young child to explore the woods, wander local neighborhoods or ride a bike across town without supervision. Children can't play in their own front yards without parents' sitting on guard at the window. We have come to accept that it is our job to keep our children from harm at the expense of everything else."

Left-wing radio host Randi Rhodes says that prisoner of war John McCain was "well treated" in Vietnam. This from a woman who provoked a defamation suit for accusing American contractors of the rape and murder of Iraqi civilians. Guards beating the bag out of you. Disentery. Two years of solitary confinement. Torture. With hospitality like that is there any wonder why they called it the Hanoi Hilton?

Did you like what you heard when I guest hosted for Michelle McPhee a week or so back? Well, I will be returning to WTKK's airwaves on Saturday, September 13 from 8-10 a.m. So here's your chance to get a second helping, or, if you skipped the first serving, to get your first taste of yours truly guest hosting a radio show. In the Boston area, the strong signal of WTKK is found at 96.9 on the FM band. Points beyond, check out the "listen live" button on WTKK's website to hear my broadcast.

USA Today reports that among likely voters that it polled John McCain holds a ten-point lead over Barack Obama. That's a seventeen-point swing in a week. Hey, bitter Barack: if you had only let bygones be bygones and named Hillary Clinton as your runningmate, you would have never heard of a lipstick pitbull named Sarah Palin and you would still be seven points up instead of ten points behind. Farmers: don't count your chickens before they hatch. Candidates: don't put president on your seat until the campaign has been won.

Remember when the Carter administration bailed out Chrysler? Somewhere there are a bunch of German fatcats laughing their heads off. Jimmy Carter could not have predicted the European future of the American automaker. But shouldn't the truth in front of his face have been enough to dissuade? Lee Iacocca makes an unconvincing welfare queen.

So do Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Let them perish. The government has taken over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The Bush administration threatens to transfer as much $100 billion from the federal treasury into the formerly quasi-private lending institutions. If the siphon of taxdollars is that large, the bailout willl be more than 100 times greater than the one Lee Iacocca scammed taxpayers out of in 1979.

It's as unjust to burden taxpayers with paying for the mistakes of lenders as it is to reward the lenders who made those mistakes with an infusion of hundreds of billions of dollars. This is called a moral hazard. By rewarding failure now, the Bush administration will instigate more failure in the future. With no strong incentive to avoid rash lending--indeed, with the bailout providing the opposite instruction--reckless lending institutions like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will continue their recklessness.

Banks should lend people money, not governments. Political incentives, rather than financial ones, govern the actions of government bureaucrats. They don't lose their jobs when they lose the company's money. They lose their jobs when they fail to lend money to people in preferred ethnic and socio-economic groups. In the truly private sector, success is rewarded and failure is punished. Government bureaucracy, unfortunately, won't ever go out of business. In fact, the more disastrous the government's failure, the stronger their argument to stay in businesses better suited for, well, business.

The government's failure is the reason why New Deal relics like Fannie Mae came into existence in the first place. By manipulating the currency, Franklin Roosevelt fostered instability in the financial markets. The brilliant Garet Garrett provides context: "One effect was that private borrowing and lending, except from day to day, practically ceased. With the value of the dollar being posted daily at the Treasury like a lottery number, who would lend money for six months or a year, with no way of guessing what a dollar would be worth when it came back paid? 'No man outside a lunatic asylum,' said Senator [Carter] Glass, "will loan his money today on a farm mortgage.' But the New Deal had a train of Federal lending agencies ready to start."

Fannie Mae was the caboose of that train. Thankfully, when enthusiasm for socialism started to wane in the late 1960s, the federal government let loose Fannie Mae. Now, eighty years after launching Fannie Mae, and forty years after partially privatizing it, the federal government is again hitching Fannie Mae to the federal gravy train. Why am I doomed to repeat George Santayana's most famous bit of wisdom?

Barack Obama's soaring oratory sends listeners into the sky. The gravitas of John McCain brings them back to earth. That's where people belong. John McCain gave an excellent, substantive speech on Thursday night. He stressed that he was just the maverick to take on Washington. He attacked his own party for abandoning its small-government principles. The shout-outs to average Americans placed in the audience--a fallen veteran's family, a struggling couple from Michigan, the parents of an impaired child--was presidential, in a state-of-the-union kind of way. McCain exuded decency in praising Obama and attacking his record. Just as the visual of Sara Palin's normally abnormal family attracted rather than repulsed, the sight of narcissistic hecklers provided made-for-TV visuals of the ugly people who hate McCain. Whose side are you on? He reminded us of the mettle he is made of by retelling his dramatic capture and torture at the hands of the Vietnamese Communists. He reassured that as a man who has known the horrors of war that he wants peace. A man who no one would claim is unusually blessed in the charisma department ended his address with a rousing call to action straight out of a Huey Long speech. After sixteen years of government-by-adolescent boys, John McCain arrives to return a grown-up to the Oval Office.

Rudy Giuliani and Sara Palin hit back-to-back home runs at the Republican National Convention. The speakers hammered home winning Republican themes: McCain's inspiring story, reform, and the party divide between Middle America and urban elitists. Both speakers served red meat to the hungry conventioneers who went unsatiated by the vegetarian fare offered by the speakers who preceeded. He said Obama voted "present" 130 times while in the Illinois senate. She said Obama kisses up to Middle American voters in Scranton but ridicules them in San Francisco. He said that Palin stood up to a machine while Obama joined one. She said that Obama has written two autobiographies but not a single piece of federal legislation. And it wasn't just one liners. Both Giuliani and Palin highlighted Obama's tax-and-spend mentality and naivity on foreign policy. Their speeches hurt Obama and helped McCain. Perhaps more so than anything Palin said, the camera vignettes showing the same family that has been the object of so much media vitriol made Palin a hit with ordinary Americans. The sight of her youngest daughter wetting her fingers with her tongue to then brush her little brother's hair was something out of a Norman Rockwell picture. Urban elitists never got Rockwell, either.

Are you ready for some football? Football is ready for you. The season is here, and I am picking the Patriots over the Cowboys in the Super Bowl. Home teams are in CAPS. All picks are against the spread. Make your selections in the comments section. Here are my picks: In the THURSDAY NIGHT GAME, Redskins +4 over GIANTS; for SUNDAY, RAVENS +1.5 over Bengals, Jets -3 over DOLPHINS, PATRIOTS -16 over Chiefs, STEELERS -6.5 over Texans, TITANS -3 over Jaguars, Lions -3 over FALCONS, Seahawks -1 over BILLS, SAINTS -3.5 over Bucs, EAGLES -7.5 over Rams, BROWNS +5.5 over Cowboys, CHARGERS -9 over Panthers, Cards -2.5 over NINERS, COLTS -9.5 over Bears; and, on Monday Night Football, Vikings +3 over PACKERS and RAIDERS +3 over Broncos. Welcome newcomers to the football pool. I encourage you to participate in the fifth season of a FlynnFiles tradition.

Sarah Palin has electrified the McCain campaign. Democrats don't attack her as a liability to McCain because she is a liablility. They attack her because she is an asset. She is such an asset that even the attacks upon her are backfiring on her attackers. Consider....

1. By charging Sarah Palin with being unqualified for the vice presidency, Barack Obama's minions only highlight the inexperience of their candidate. Amazingly, Obama compared his executive experience running his campaign to Palin's experience running a business, a town, a state, and Alaska's oil and gas commission. By Obama's standard, everyone who has ever run for president is qualified to be president by virtue of running a campaign. He is foolish to have taken the bait, particularly since the particulars are running for vice president and president. The comparison between unequals can't help but demote Obama and highlight his own inadequacies. John McCain chose Sarah Palin to serve as his running mate. Barack Obama chose Barack Obama to run for president after serving for just two years in the Senate.

2. The New York Times's trio of smarmy frontpage articles on Palin only serve to push women piqued by Obama's shoddy treatment of Hillary Clinton and Geraldine Ferraro further into the McCain camp. It's amazing that the same people who praised Joe Biden one week ago for joining the Senate instead of raising his motherless sons now damn Sarah Palin for running for vice president when she has a disabled child. Instead of the posterwoman for balancing family and career, Palin becomes in the jaundiced eyes of liberals an example of why women shouldn't get into politics. Feminists like working women, except when they work for the wrong side.

3. In hurling mud at Palin unglued Democrats and their courtesan press have dirtied themselves, not John McCain's runningmate. When it gets so petty as to tattle on her husband's DUI, tout conspiracy theories positing Palin as faking a birth, harp on her teenage daughter's pregnancy, point fingers at her soon-to-be son-in-law's self-identification as a "f---ing redneck," and gawk at the fact that she hunts, fishes, and snowmobiles, the Left intends to humilate, but suceeds in humanizing. Normal Americans don't have $300,000 jobs enforcing quotas or work as community organizers so the welfare kings and queens of Section 8 Kingdom can get more of our money. Normal people fish and hunt, and yes, encounter family issues like unintended pregnancies and legal issues like DUIs. Those issuing taunts against Palin advertise their indecency to the world.

Combatants fight dirty when the prospect of a clean fight appears to daunting. This is a Democratic year, but so was 2000 and 2004. Should Obama's henchmen continue to make Sarah Palin the issue they may just snatch defeat from the jaws of victory as they have done the previous two presidential elections. As Fred Thompson explained at the Republican National Convention last night, "The selection of Gov. Palin has the other side and their friends in the media in a state of panic." Sarah Palin is the best thing the McCain campaign has going for it now. What kind of political strategists highlight their opponents strength? The kind that lost the last two presidential races for the Democrats.

Who's your audience? With Ted Kennedy, Dennis Kucinich, and Nancy Pelosi all featured at the dais at the Democratic National Convention, the Democrats saw their audience as the hyper-partisans in the hall. Kicking out George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, John McCain recognizes the hyper-partisans in the hall as props and knows his audience as the millions watching at home. In jettisoning an unpopular president and an even less popular vice president, and selecting a running mate with a history of taking on the Republican Party establishment, McCain is adeptly letting America know that his would be the first term of a McCain-Palin administration, not a third term for Bush-Cheney.

If you read this site, you probably like free stuff. I do too. A few weeks back, I went to a Bruce Springsteen concert in a limo for free. I am still a little confused as to how it all came about. But when the tab is picked up, who asks questions?

As faithful readers know, I am a sworn enemy of the blackguards and villains who plot ways to charge for what used to come for free. You may have deduced that I am thusly an enthusiast of what one normally pays for but can get for free. It's like stealing but without the guilt.

Last month, I took advantage of Massachusetts's special sans sales-tax weekend by purchasing a five-volume History of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts--God Save the Commonwealth! (for who else can?)--for $100 (20% off and no 5% protection fee to the racket known as state). I did my part to starve the beast. How about you?

I caught a Shakespeare-in-the-park performance of Two Gentlemen of Verona. A two-year-old groundling accompanying me had his own ideas of entertainment, as did some previous nocturnal visitors to the park--leaving souvenirs of used condoms and a broken O'Doul's bottle (Who smashes a bottle of non-alcholic beer?) from their clandestine meeting, which caused the noisy and anarchic young lad's hasty departure. I stayed and enjoyed the performance. The following day, I checked out of the library the BBC's version of Othello starring Anthony Hopkins in the title role. It's now my favorite Shakespeare play. Library cards are better than rental fees. Sweet Desdemona. Sweeter the cash in my wallet.

Later that week, I took my son to a special children's concert in a different park, thankfully not known for anonymous encounters during off hours, where we heard Jumbalaya, among other ditties, along with an energetic brigade of pre-schoolers. The next day, a make-belive quintet of Beatles, the Faux Fab Five if you will, seranaded a packed park with Ticket To Ride, In My Life, Day Tripper, and more. If it were not for a middle-aged woman slumped in a lawn chair performing a peculiar index-finger dance to the songs, I would have sworn it was Shea Stadium circa-1965.

On a recent Friday night, along with Kettle One superwater disguised as mere Aquafina, I again attend a free concert. How clever, I thought, was I too concoct this elaborate sheme to privately drink alcohol in a public park underneath the noses of cops and within the gaze of so many adult tattlers--until I saw a courageous gentleman drinking beers openly. His brazeness smites me. Rather than a Beatlemania nostalgia act or a Hank Williams, Sr. stand-in, both acts performed original music. Though the headliners were very good, I'm left with some superfreaky memories from the folk-jazz fusion opening act. Imagine the satirical environmentalist lyrics heard on South Park. Now imagine someone earnestly singing those songs. One number was called "Green Is the New Red, White, and Blue." At least he got the first third right. It was church music for environmentalists. In that religion I worship Satan, so I made an offering of the Red Bull can and the Aquafina bottle to the trash barrell despite the ease with which I could have recycled. Let no one say this man's music didn't inspire me.

There's no such thing as a free lunch, but last weekend friends had us over for dinner. On the way there, we passed a free car wash performed by scantily-clad visions who worked as waitresses at the pool hall sponsoring the event. This must have been the scene many an Islamic suicide bomber believed awaited him, though something told me that few of these bikini vixins were virgins (and few of the bombers made it to an afterlife destination below 375 degrees fahrenheit). The view was free, but the "free" car wash required a donation to charity. I opted to watch instead of wash.

The drive-by, mouth-agape stare discredits the "axiom" that you get what you pay for. Alas, a Church of St. Rachel Carson choir concert disproves the notion that best things in life are free.