The Hollywood Liberal

Out Of Town
With that, I’m heading out of town for a long weekend bachelor party to an undisclosed location that I’m told has no Internet and may not even have decent cell phone access. So expect few posts for the next few days.

With that, I’m heading out of town for a long weekend bachelor party to an undisclosed location that I’m told has no Internet and may not even have decent cell phone access. So expect few posts for the next few days.

Fact checking the GOP debate at the Reagan library

That was a rip-roaring Republican debate Wednesday night at the Reagan library. As is our practice, we will quickly assess a number of claims and then perhaps come back later with a deeper look at some issues.

The debate started with a back and forth between former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and Texas Gov. Rick Perry over job creation during their tenures. This in many ways is a silly discussion — governors and even presidents are very much at the mercy of the economic situation they inherited — and Romney actually framed it well:

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FBI searches offices of Solyndra; lawmakers say they were misled about firm’s finances

FBI agents executed a surprise search Thursday of a Silicon Valley solar company that collapsed last week, in an investigation that appeared to center on half a billion dollars in federal loan guarantees granted to the company by the Obama administration.

The search at the offices and plant of Solyndra, a California-based manufacturer of solar panels, came as Republicans on Capitol Hill demanded answers to questions about the company’s selection for the $535 million Energy Department loan guarantee. Some Democrats questioned whether the company misled federal officials about its deteriorating financial condition.

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Football fantasy: A world where I don’t have to hear about ‘your’ team

Thursday night’s kickoff of the 2011 NFL season also kicked off of the 2011 fantasy football season, and I’d like to wish all the “owners” the best of luck with their “teams.”

That said, a word of friendly advice: Shut up about it.

No one cares who you drafted, or how you got a sleeper pick, or really pretty much anything else about your fantasy team — except other fantasy players. Identify those people and carry on short, quiet conversations with them — far, far away from me.

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Senate passes patent bill

After six years of squabbling over how to fix the country’s patent system, the Senate passed a bill Thursday touted by lawmakers as important for creating jobs and encouraging innovation.

But a wide range of patent experts said that the bill had been so watered down after years of debate and lobbying that it will do little to repair the country’s dysfunctional patent system — and is unlikely to spur much job growth.

“Every time I’ve heard either a Republican or Democrat talking about jobs relating to the patent bill, I feel like I’m in ‘Alice in Wonderland,’?” said Ed Black, president and chief executive of the Computer and Communications Industry Association. “Unless they’re counting patent lawyer jobs, it’s very unlikely.”

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Romney’s Flawed Economic Plan

Time to Leave 9/11 Behind
E.J. Dionne, Washington Post
WASHINGTON — After we honor the 10th anniversary of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, we need to leave the day behind. As a nation we have looked back for too long. We learned lessons from the attacks, but so many of them were wrong. The last decade was a detour that left our nation weaker, more divided and less certain of itself.Reflections on the meaning of the horror and the years that followed are inevitably inflected by our own political or philosophical leanings. It's a critique that no doubt applies to my thoughts as well. We see what we choose to see and use the event as we want to…

Imagining 9/11
Roger Cohen, New York Times
BELLAGIO, ITALY — My daughter turned four that day. She was in my arms as my wife and I ran down Remsen Street to the Brooklyn Promenade. Smoke from the towers was thickening into a churning cloud. Papers from incinerated brokerage houses fluttered across the East River beneath that sky I think of now as 9/11 blue. Roger Cohen Journalists are bound to observe which way people are moving and go in the opposite direction. I boarded the No. 2 train at Clark Street. The woman next to me was fighting back tears. Her brother was in the North Tower, she…

Why Liberals Fear the “Lochner” Decision
George Will, Washington Post
Liberal certitudes continue to dissolve, the most recent solvent being a robust new defense of a 1905 Supreme Court decision that liberals have long reviled — and misrepresented. To understand why the court correctly decided Lochner v. New York and why this is relevant to current arguments, read David E. Bernstein’s “Rehabilitating Lochner: Defending Individual Rights against Progressive Reform.”Since the New Deal, courts have stopped defending liberty of contract and other unenumerated rights grounded in America’s natural rights tradition….