WISDOM FROM OUR LEADERS

SLEEPING THROUGH THE 3AM CALL. NOT PAYING ATTENTION: Saudi Arabia ‘warned the United States IN WRITING about Boston Bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2012.’ “ So we were warned about him by both the Russians and the Saudis and still did nothing? What exactly are all those hundreds of billions for Homeland Security going for? Related: Sleeping through the “wake-up” calls. UPDATE: WaPo: As FBI expands Boston investigation, Obama defends law enforcement efforts. ANOTHER UPDATE: DHS denies any knowledge of Saudi warning. LIFE IN OBAMA’S POST-RACIAL AMERICA: Black Politician Says Asian Sculptor Racially Unsuitable To Do Civil Rights Sculpture. LOW-INFORMATION VOTERS: ObamaCare Poll Finds 42% Of Americans Don’t Know It’s The Law. However, the president took no blame WASHINGTON EXAMINER: Obama defends relevancy, blames Congress for political gridlock. “Obama’s press conference marked the 100th day of his second term, an early measure of his job performance. Over the past three months, Obama has seen his push for new gun restrictions die on Capitol Hill and still faces an uphill battle to implement other centerpieces of his agenda, such as immigration reform. Foreign events, including evidence that Syria used chemical weapons against anti-government rebels, have also cast a shadow over the president’s domestic agenda. . . . Obama also faced questions about Guantanamo Bay, the American prison in Cuba where suspected terrorists, or enemy combatants — held for years by the U.S. — are now engaged in a hunger strike. He had pledged in his first campaign to shut it down.” My favorite bit: “However, the president took no blame for Guantanamo remaining open, saying Congress repeatedly blocked his efforts to shutter the prison.” He’s not much for taking blame. by Glenn Reynolds He still thinks he’ll do his thing from the balcony (After all, it worked for Mussolini) MAUREEN DOWD: Say, Obama’s not actually that good at being President, is he? “Actually, it is his job to get them to behave. The job of the former community organizer and self-styled uniter is to somehow get this dunderheaded Congress, which is mind-bendingly awful, to do the stuff he wants them to do. It’s called leadership. He still thinks he’ll do his thing from the balcony and everyone else will follow along below. That’s not how it works.” YESTERDAY’S PRESS CONFERENCE STILL NOT WOWING THEM: The Hill: President Obama bristles, says he still has juice for second term. “The remark was a far cry from the triumphant tone heard in 2009, when Obama proclaimed he was ‘proud of what we’ve achieved’ and ‘pleased with our progress’ after 100 days in the Oval Office.” Related: Politico: President Obama: I’m still relevant. And, even from NPR: Logic Behind Obama News Conference Hard To Fathom. NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: Obama moving toward sending lethal arms to Syrian rebels, officials say. Benjamin D. Reese Jr., president of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education. ........ said Reese, who is also vice president for institutional equity at Duke University. Public Choice, Past and Present: The Legacy of James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock (Dwight R. Lee, editor, 2013): Rather than analyzing how both markets and collective decision-making handle economic problems, mainstream economics continues to model government as if it were an omniscient, benevolent social planner available to impose ideal solutions…. Implicitly, this methodology treats the political process as if it is a corrective device available to impose ideal social outcomes, something like a pinch hitter that always delivers the game-winning hit. But this is a fantasy. A choice between the real world of markets and the hypothetical ideal of government intervention is not an option. Instead, the choice is always about how markets work compared to the alternatives. Put another way, the relevant choice is always between the real-world operation of markets and the real-world operation of the political process. I cannot explain this bizarre dualism except by assuming that those who look to the state as being at least a potential secular savior have a kind of religious belief in the transformative power of sovereign power. The continuing rejection and ignorance of public-choice analyses reflects the fact that public-choice threatens not a mere scientific paradigm; rather, public-choice apparently threatens a deeply held and cherished dogma – a dogma featuring a belief in secular creationism and the need for, and possibility of, useful intervention from a higher power.