Top 3 of the Day

 Today will be the start of something I hope to do once a day: Post what are, in my opinion, the top three articles I read from around the web for that particular day. Nothing too extravagant. I may even add some commentary here and there. So let us dive right into the top three articles on the web for April 14th, 2009…

3.  More Populism At The FDA?

University of Chicago Law Professor Richard has never been very kind to the Federal Drug Administration. Why, he even wrote a 296 page bookon why the FDA is royally screwing consumers of medicine, not to mention the hundreds of other papers, chapters and op-eds he has written over his long career also directed at the FDA. In his latest piece for Forbes, Epstein takes a look at the direction the Obama administration seems to be taking the FDA- and he doesn’t come away pleased. 

Not only is there some good “current news” in this article, but Epstein really does a fantastic job explaining, in a simple way, why the FDA is more likely to harm people by inadvertently keeping good drugs off the market in an attempt to keep bad drugs from getting through.

 

2. President’s Preschool Emphasis Is Misdirected

Proverbs 22:6 says “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” Not to imply that the U.S. Department of Education has been reading the Bible (could anything less compatible even be imagined?), but the government is well learned in the art of subtle indoctrination (thanks Horace Mann!!), and knows exactly where to point its weapons of mass control: Preschoolers. The director of the Cato Institute’s “Center for Educational Freedom”,  Andrew Coulson, examines President Obama’s new plans for expanding Federal control of preschool education. As Coulson points out, government run education is simply awful. It is awful k through 12. It will never achieve anything more then being simply awful. Yet, we will continue to see tax dollars disappear into an ever growing black hole. Very depressing.

 

1. The ultimate reaping of what one sows: right-wing edition

And coming in at number one of the best articles I read today is a post by the ever-fearless and ever-vigilant Glenn Greenwald on the absolute hypocrisy of the mainstream Republican right on issues pertaining to the current police state we live under. Hard on the heel of two recent reports warning of “Patriot terrorist” groups, the Department of Homeland Defense just today released a recently declassified report warning of “Right-Wing Extremists”. Obviously alarmed by this trend, the right has begun to raise hell (justifiably, in my opinion). Greenwald, however, points out that the enormous Leviathan is basically a product of the mainstream right and their obsession with catching the terrorists after 9/11. Really, the right doesn’t bother to mention that all of these unlawful and unconstitutional surveillance actions were being hatched- and committed- during the eight years of the Bush Administration! They all defended Bush, but now that the guns are being used by someone else they are shrieking in livid rage. 

Greenwald also points out that under the Bush administration, the F.B.I. was actually closely monitoring what they considered left wing activist groups. They specifically singled out vegans, poverty workers, and antiwar protesters. Where was the right then, protesting the defilement of our rights? Not a peep. They really are “Great American Hypocrites”.

So take a look at the article. Greenwald is always excellent on civil liberties, and he pulls no punches revealing the right for what they really are.