Public data from the Internal Revenue Service, which recently acknowledged that agency officials singled out conservative groups for special scrutiny, shows that dozens of Tea Party groups were approved for tax exempt status beginning in May 2012. That was the same month that Representative Dave Camp of Michigan wrote to the I.R.S. asking for information about all “social welfare” groups that had applied for tax-exempt status in 2010 and 2011, to determine whether the I.R.S. was targeting conservative groups.

The flurry of approvals that came in the next few months was a sharp break from the previous two years, during which the agency approved just a handful of 501(c)(4) applications from Tea Party groups.

I.R.S. Approved Dozens of Tea Party Groups Following Congressional Scrutiny - NYTimes.com

Got that? Media Matters for America, the media watchdog organization, “stand[s] with those news organizations” criticizing the Justice Department’s actions and “share[s] their concerns.” But Media Matters Action Network, which describes itself as a “partner project” of Media Matters for America, is issuing talking points defending the Justice department against criticism from “those news organizations” in order to help “progressive talkers to win public debates with conservatives.” Got it?

There is something to the accusations of partisan hypocrisy here. The fact is that if the Bush Administration had done something like this the entire liberal blogosphere would be screaming bloody murder. Instead we're getting heavily qualified analysis from groups like ThinkProgress that seem to balance the issue, and liberals are writing comments in the threads reminding us that warrants aren't required to collect this kind of data.

A writer at HufPo says:

There are some deeds, I'm afraid, for which having the favored party identification is not an affirmative defense. It is not OK that the DoJ did this because the DoJ is being run by the guys who you perceive to be wearing the white hats. Snooping through the phone records of reporters doesn't become OK because Democrats are doing it, and it doesn't become evil by dint of the fact that Republicans are doing it. IT IS EITHER ALWAYS RIGHT, OR ALWAYS WRONG.

In fact I don't agree. There are circumstances in which it is right and circumstances in which it is wrong.

The substantive questions are:
1. Did the DOJ exhaust reasonable alternatives before doing a broad data pull?
2. Did the DOJ comply with regulations regarding investigations of the news media?

The Volokh Conspiracy » Media Matters v. Media Matters

Though she started this project in part to "open up the conversation about genetic surveillance," she says, it's taken on another purpose. Right now she's working with the Delaware medical examiner's office to try to identify a woman in a 20-year-old unsolved case by using some of the victim's remains to build a 3-D portrait of her. She's six weeks away from finishing the process, when investigators will, for the first time, have some idea of what the victim looked like before her death.

Litterbugs Beware: Turning Found DNA Into Portraits : NPR

Lessig's Republic, Lost...

unfortunately, dances rather quickly from a description of this proposal to outlining a number of political strategies that Lessig believes might bring it about. This proposed remedy—enough of a heavy lift to prompt questions about its political feasibility —also seems curiously unsuited to addressing the problems that Lessig has identified.

Disappointing. The book does a tremendous job explaining the problem but fails to engage the fundamental intellectual challenges involved with it's solution.

As an aside, I just grabbed Lesterland off of Amazon for $2. It is a more recent book and seems to address the issue more completely, particularly in the section titled "fixes."

Cleaning Up the Capitol

Doug Short of Advisor Perspectives dug up an interesting data point. He looked for similar historical periods when the CAPE ratio was above 20 and the 10-year U.S. Treasury bond yielded in the ultra low 2% range.

Essentially we are in unchartered territory, according to Short’s research.

“The closest we ever came to this in U.S. history was a seven-month period from October 1936 to April 1937,” Short wrote. “During that timeframe the 10-year yield averaged 2.67%, about 65 basis points above where we are now.”

How did the market fare? The S&P 500 had a big selloff during 1937 and into 1938, Short said.

What Shiller P/E ratio says about market’s top - Page 2 - MarketWatch

In recent decades, the productivity gains generated by both labor and capital have gone disproportionately to the owners of capital. Wages in the US have not kept pace with gains in productivity...

In fact, the very success of the owners of capital in securing the elephant’s share productivity gains and ensuring low effective taxes, lies at the very heart of the credit crisis.

Briefly, even if crudely, the decoupling of men’s wages from productivity made both possible and necessary wider participation of women in the work force. This too proved insufficient to procure the “American Dream” — a car, a home, a decent education.

Transfer payments also proved insufficient. Credit filled the gap and bought social peace, which meant no fighting over distribution of the social pie. The end of the credit cycle threatened this arrangement. The extraordinary government action in response to the crisis was largely intended to restart this circuit of capital. The large and persistent gap between deposits and loans at large financial institutions indicates that the transmission mechanism is still broken.

Foul-Weather Friends | Jacobin

For the stock market, one popular valuation is the Shiller cyclically adjusted P/E ratio for the S&P 500 SPX +0.43% , which is now 23.2, vs. the pre-bubble average of about 15. It’s been higher on only three occasions in the past 93 years: Just before the 1929 crash, just before the 2000 crash, and just before the 2008 crash.

It’s not just stocks; everything is overvalued - Rex Nutting - MarketWatch

The nation’s unemployment rate would probably be nearly a point lower, roughly 6.5 percent, and economic growth almost two points higher this year if Washington had not cut spending and raised taxes as it has since 2011, according to private-sector and government economists.

Yay Tea Party!

Deficit Reduction Is Seen by Economists as Impeding Recovery - NYTimes.com

BURNETT: Tim, is there any way, obviously, there is a voice mail they can try to get the phone companies to give that up at this point. It's not a voice mail. It's just a conversation. There's no way they actually can find out what happened, right, unless she tells them?

CLEMENTE: "No, there is a way. We certainly have ways in national security investigations to find out exactly what was said in that conversation. It's not necessarily something that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the investigation and/or lead to questioning of her. We certainly can find that out.

BURNETT: "So they can actually get that? People are saying, look, that is incredible.

CLEMENTE: "No, welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not."

Are all telephone calls recorded and accessible to the US government? | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

So, you put good news on Facebook because you're in the process of presenting yourself and you want that presentation to be positive. But reading all of these positive presentations makes you depressed - you feel happier if you think your life is better than everyone else's. So the end result is that social media is making people unhappy because they don't like to think that everyone else is having a good time.

People are fucking hopeless.

Good News Spreads Faster on Social Media - NYTimes.com