The European Parliament voted last week (1/13) to let countries decide their own policies on growing genetically modified crops.

The vote allows countries such as Britain to press ahead because of hard evidence that such crops are good for the environment, good for consumers and good for farmers; and let countries such as Austria continue to ban the things despite such evidence.

It's a strange-bedfellow  alliance of the rational with the superstitious against the bureaucratic.

Indeed, the untold story is that it was a triumph of subtle diplomacy by Owen Paterson - the Euroskeptic former UK environment minister who knows how to work the Brussels system.

Last year he denounced what he called The Green Blob - "the network of environmental pressure groups, renewable energy companies and public officials who keep each other well supplied with lavish funds, scare stories and green tape."

It was the Green Blob that suffered defeat in Brussels last week.

Yesterday the New York Times condemned Republicans for conducting a "grim" and "dismal" campaign that blames "Obama and the Democratic Party (who) run a government that is so fundamentally broken it cannot offer its people the most basic protection from harm."

The New York Times can't stand it when Republicans tell the truth...

On the bright side, there's a wonderfully cheery story in the New York Times on Tuesday (10/07) - cheery for us, doom and gloom for the libtards at the Times:  The State-by-State Revival of the Right...

No wonder his popularity is in the pits and everyone who loves America hates his guts.  Headline from the London Daily Mail on Wednesday (10/08):  Obama slams GOP as party of billionaires then attends $32k-a-head fundraiser hosted by billionaire property tycoon named Rich Richman...

Now is the time to say J'Accuse! to Chief Justice John Roberts.  The suspicion that he was blackmailed (over illegally adopting his children) emerged after switching his vote at the last minute to rationalize the faux-constitutionality of Obamacare (June 2012).   This week, that suspicion was confirmed...

The Conservative Treehouse really nails this story:  Fifth Child Dies to Support President Obama's Illegal Immigration Goals...

Is Patrick Howley the HFR Hero of the Week?

Do you think people in government are more or less honest than those in the private sector?

A major function of most regulatory agencies is to keep those in the private sector honest and from abusing power. Yet we know that those in government often abuse the power that has been entrusted to them. The American Founders were well aware of the problem. As Thomas Jefferson warned:

"The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first."

As the size of government has grown, and particularly the bureaucratic state, the chains of the Constitution have been loosened, and predictably the abuse of power has also grown -- the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) being Exhibit A.

Exhibit B is the ways bureaucrats and politicians enrich themselves and their cronies with insider trading -- a criminal offense for anyone outside of government but not within.

It is a common experience these days to feel that time is short. We are busy, we have important things to do, and not enough hours in the day in which to do them. That we in America now spend the first five or so months of the year to pay for our taxes doesn't help.

But living like this becomes something of a Chinese finger puzzle - those gizmos you used to find at fairs where you put your fingers into the ends and then try and pull them out - the contraption tightens as you pull.

Our experience of time is somewhat the same. By completely filling our days, our experience can be that we become more anxious, more stressed, and more desperate for time.

Here's how to extract your time from the finger puzzle.

Last Saturday (8.18), a once enormously influential man in Washington died.  He was eulogized in every important newspaper from the New York Times to the Wall St. Journal to the Washington Times.  Let me tell you a completely unknown story about him.

Before his presidency, Ronald Reagan lived for many years in California.  On a regular basis, he had his hair cut at his favorite barbershop in Beverly Hills.  After his election and before he moved to Washington, a friend of mine was assigned to his transition team.  Thus he accompanied Mr. Reagan to his barbershop appointment.

My friend was startled to see an elderly man who just happened to be getting a haircut in the very next chair to which Mr. Reagan was seated.  The elderly man immediately began chatting up Mr. Reagan.  My friend was startled because the man was a Communist, the son of the founder of the Communist Party USA, one of America's richest and most powerful men who had made his fortune doing business with the Soviet Union since the days of Lenin.

His name was Armand Hammer.

My friend was seriously alarmed.  The president-elect's personal schedule and whereabouts was a highly-kept secret.  For someone in league with the Soviets to know it meant that someone - Armand Hammer - had a mole within Mr. Reagan's team on his payroll.  It took my friend years to find out the mole's identity.  It was the lionized man who died last Saturday.