The Daily Top Five-Jan. 4

1. I posted last night about the FEC's Shelmerdine case. Ryan Sager has a great column on the matter in the NY Post. Here is a relevant paragraphs:

But why should any of this matter? So what if Shelmerdine were trying to influence the election? So what if he had wanted to show his support for the president to endear himself to the overwhelmingly Republican NASCAR crowd? How on earth did America get to a point where a federal agency is putting an innocent citizen through the legal wringer over an over-sized bumper sticker?

Of course, the FEC's defenders might say: Shelmerdine wasn't fined, just "admonished." He got off lightly. No harm done. But the fact that he was put through this two-year legal proceeding in the first place is the real punishment. That's the real deterrent to him or anyone else getting involved - even in the most peripheral way - with the American political process in the future.

snip

With this case, the FEC has opened a new and disturbing door. If the agency claims oversight over any endorsement that it sees as valuable, what's next? Celebrities routinely get paid for endorsements. Is a rock star wearing a "Kerry for President" or "Impeach Bush" shirt now fair game?

It seems that, so long as trouble-makers are ready to write up the complaints, the FEC is happy to take any nutball theory for a few spins around the track - no matter how ludicrous the repercussions for free speech in our democracy.

I still think the matter silly, but the silliness for me is not just the subject matter, but that it took two years to resolve the matter. While the result is proper, the fact that it takes so long to come to a conclusion in such trivial matters is what is truly troubling about the regulatory process. Reform of the FEC should include the ability for the Office of General Counsel to exercise a little more prosecutorial discretion and drop such silly matters after a quick investigation.

2. The Circus is officially back in town today with the swearing in of the 110th Congress. Still digesting all the bloviating from the new leadership. Plenty of coverage on both sides of the political aisle.

3. This is just too cool for words. Commercial spaceflight looks more and more like a reality in my lifetime. About time. Hat Tip, the Instapundit.

4. George Will has a take-down of a Democratic signature issue, the minimum wage. Personally, I think that just because a job can be tangentially related to interstate commerce is a poor reason for having a federal minimum wage in the first place. The market has been a pretty good determinant of wages in the past and the whole point behind a minimum wage was to diminish the impact of changes in market needs on workers. But the problem is that not very many people make minium wage and those who do are generally part-time workers working in defined work categories, i.e. retail or food service, where skills are not necessary. If, as Will proposes, the minimum wage were $0, then the market will determine what is a fair wage for the work being performed.

5. I have been writing about education for most of the time I have maintained this blog. I have learned two things in the time; first, that the matter is so important and so big that we as a nation have a tough time figuring out where to start so we tend to tinker around the edges and second, that no matter what is said about reforming education, if you are not a teacher and or have experience in teaching, you will be attacked by those who are such people as being ill-informed and unqualified to offer an opinion. Brett Pawlowski, one of my favorite education writers, tries to tear this idea down a little:

To imply that non-educators are not qualified to discuss education issues, much less assume positions of authority and make decisions on its goals and operations, is simply wrongheaded – and it further widens the gap between the public and its schools, which ultimately benefits neither the public nor educators.

I think that Brett's approach is important because as a businessman he is the ultimate consumer of the product of our schools--the students who graduate. As a parent, I too am a consumer of education and I will have a say in how my daughters are educated in public schools, it is my right as a parent and my right as a taxpayer. If the educrats don't like it, well tought cause I will be in their face about it.