Peterr

To judge by his column in today’s Washington Post, Michael Gerson demonstrates a surprisingly poor grasp of the evangelical world. To say (as Gerson does) that evangelicals fear big government is laughable. They love big government — as long as they get to run it.

In a recent interview with Der Spiegel, General Petraeus reiterated his anti-corruption push, in which he tells his troops to be careful where they spend their money. With the latest stories from DC that show folks like Blackwater/Xe, KBR, and other US contractors getting off the hook, you have to wonder if the strategy of “Do As We Say, Not As We Do” will ever work. And if it won’t, then why do we continue to spend money and lives to keep pursuing it?

Texas energy companies stuck it to California a decade ago, and now they’re coming back again to try to derail California’s law on greenhouse gas emissions.

I have a hunch that someone is not happy about that prospect . . .

Blackwater lied to the government over three hundred times about breaking export control laws, and still managed to sweet talk its way into new contracts.

Sounds like epic parent fail to me.

Nelnet improperly exploits a loophole in the student lending regulations for years, and then last Friday afternoon settled a $1+ billion student loan fraud case for $55 million, just as college students head back to campus. Lovely.

But I’m sure that nothing like this could happen with insurance companies and the Health Insurance reform regulations, or the Wall Street firms and the FinReg rules . . .

Welcome back to campus, everyone.

Watching the flap with Robert Gibbs and his “inartful” comments that lashed out at the Left because of cable news talking points spewed by the Right made two words leap to my mind: displaced anger.

Roman Catholic Cardinal Roger Mahony, the soon-to-be-retired Archbishop of Los Angeles, is of the opinion that Judge Vaughn Walker was wrong in his ruling on Prop 8, because he failed to make his decision based upon religious beliefs that bless only male-female relationships.

Mahony ends up proving Walker’s point, that the only basis for the kind of discrimination that Prop 8 sought to enshrine in law grows out of certain religious and moral positions.

Cardinal, you may be free to discriminate against gays and lesbians within the Catholic church as a matter of faith, but the state of California is not free to do the same as a matter of law.

Missouri voters passed Proposition C, seeking to exempt Missourians from the individual mandate of the health insurance reform recently passed, and also the employer mandate. But if Missouri wants to nullify a federal law — what a quaint, pre-civil war notion — they’re going to have to defend it in court.

Fortunately, Missouri has plenty of money in the state coffers to waste it on a frivolous lawsuit.

Or, you know, not.

While Ben Bernanke dreams of being the uber-regulator and chief monitor of systemic risk, a new agreement between the FDIC and other banking regulators like the Fed allows the FDIC to have independent direct access to big banks instead of making the FDIC to rely on his tame stable of regulators at the Fed.

Chalk one up for real oversight.

It’s been a bad week for Pope Benedict. From Italy to Belgium to Washington DC, courts everywhere seem to be taking a hard look at some of the activities of the Catholic church, and they’re not liking what they’re seeing. Worst of all, from Benedict’s point of view, is that the events of the last eight days are but a foretaste of the weeks to come.