Surf's Up

There is a great buzz about James Clapper (Clap on! Clap off!) who's recent testimony is getting savaged. Andrew McCarthy of National Review Online couches in bianary form: There’s Willful Blindness, and Then There’s Willful Stupidity. Judith Levy summarizes about Clapper's testimony:

There are two possibilities, and they're both appalling. One is that Clapper knew everything he was saying was a gross distortion of reality but said it anyway, thereby deliberately misleading the American people and giving aid and comfort to a group whose interests are completely antithetical to those of the United States. The other is that Clapper is genuinely ignorant of the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood, a thought that is just about as unnerving as can be imagined.

I get that Egypt has been a fluid situation, but when the Director of Intelligence gets something wrong that is publicly and provably wrong, what does that say about of government. We aren't talking about blowing a prediction about what Mubarak would do, we are talking about the characterization as secular an organization who has publicly proclaimed a non-secular foundation.

More government incompetence: the IRS cannot get the Earned Income Tax Credit right and actually fails 1 out of 4 times. Simply criminal.

The IRS continues to report that 23% - 28% of EITC payments are issued improperly each year. In Fiscal Year 2009, this equated to $11 billion to $13 billion in EITC improper payments.

Now the question becomes, why can't they fix that?

One of Prof. Don Boudreaux's almost patented letters to the New York Times takes on an interesting note, the Supreme Court in the New Deal Era effectively amended the Constitution in an improper manner. The note is short, but certainly on point.

Of course there is much praise for the happenings in Egypt and I will have a more positive outlook on things in a later post--my thinking spawned by this post from Ann Althouse.

__________________________________

Check out my soccer blog at Nutmegs and Stepovers