Short Subjects for March

CPAC
 This year's Conservative Political Action Conference teaches us an important lesson: we no longer can contrast crazy wack job Republicans with "mainstream" Republicans.  The crazy wack jobs are the mainstream of the party.  Despite the straw poll they took, I don't anticipate Rand Paul getting the presidential nomination for 2016, because he can't have made the military contractors too happy.  Ted Cruz, on the other hand...

Francis
Unlike his predecessor, Pope Francis actually seems to show some human characteristics.  It's a nice change, I suppose, from Benedict, and it's nice that Francis seems to be concerned about the poor.  Still, I wonder if he has the administrative skills to clean up the Curia and the Vatican Bank.  Well, Jesuits often are pretty sharp — so, maybe.  Women, though, will have to wait for the next Pope or, more likely, the next century.

Bradley Manning
The Obama administration's pursuit of "aiding the enemy" charges against Bradley Manning is unconscionable.  How far we have descended from the era of Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon papers!  The Obamists pursue whistle blowers with the same vehemence they pursue undocumented aliens — and in both cases, that's a great deal harder than W ever did.  If Obama sometimes looks like a liberal, it's only by comparison with contemporary wack job Republicans.

Cyprus
There probably is enough loose change under the couch cushions of European plutocrats to bail out Cypriot banks, but most of that money would be going to Russian oligarchs using Cyprus to launder money obtained in ways that might not be exactly legitimate.  I'd suggest dropping the insurance level on deposits to, say, €50,000 and just letting them fail.  Would it shake up the Eurozone?  Uh huh.  Would it be catastrophic? Maybe, but the Euro was a catastrophe from day one.