Why then have our political and business classes made the decision not to enforce immigration laws against an unchecked flow of illegal aliens from Mexico?

...at least according to witnesses, and he's still alive.

I guess he was surrounded by stormtroopers.

And a few random titbits about the bombing.

Ireland which went through some severe austerity

Except it didn't. "Ireland recorded a Government Budget deficit equal to 7.70 percent of the country's Gross Domestic Product in 2012." And it was as high as 30.9% in 2010. Now, if you want to argue it was foolish to bail out Anglo-Irish Bank, that's a different argument.

Which part of "Real austerity is cutting spending until outlays match receipts" was unclear?

Did you forget Portugal, which is now trying the severe brand of austerity that you seem to favor

Except it isn't.

"Portugal recorded a Government Budget deficit equal to 6.40 percent of the country's Gross Domestic Product in 2012.

Which part of "Real austerity is cutting spending until outlays match receipts" was unclear?

The thing to remember when hearing about all this "austerity" in Europe is that no country in Europe has tried real austerity .*

Real austerity is cutting spending until outlays match receipts. As the linked chart shows, the overwhelming majority have raised taxes or continued deficit spending. Some have slightly reduced the ratio of deficit spending to GDP and called it "austerity." They're still digging a hole, they're just doing it more slowly.

Politicians are addicted to spending to prop up an unsustainable welfare state. They've seen what the future looks like in Greece and they still refuse to stop spending. And the current government of the United States is right there digging with them.

Austerity hasn't been tried and failed. It's been declared difficult and left untried.

(*with the possible exception of Estonia and one or two other small countries)

It buys other companies to graft onto itself to give its corpse the semblance of life...

That same auction featured a lot of interesting science fiction first editions, including a true first of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone that went for $43,750, and an inscribed first of H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds went for $35,000.

That is to say, I would like them to rediscover the fact that we live in a constitutional republic in which the federal government's size and power is limited to only that necessary to carry specifically enumerated powers.

Sadly, that does not appear to be in the cards anytime soon. It makes it too hard to hand out subsidies to cronies and buy off various interest groups with taxpayer money.

Why did public pensions invest in venture capital firms in the first place? Years of ever-escalating pension benefits plus years of severe underfunding those same pensions means that they needed unrealistic growth rates to even come close to meeting their targets.

Take California for example. Not only did they keep increasing pensions promises while underfunding them, they used a variety of accounting tricks to cover it up. On top of that, they assumed unrealistic returns (7.5% or higher in many cases).

How could they get away with? California has essentially become a one-party state where public employee unions are the most powerful interest group. So the process is:

1. Public employee unions use mandatory union dues to contribute to Democratic candidates.
2. Once elected, Democrats vote for ever escalating pension benefits.
3. Democrats appoint pension board officials who ignore underfunded pensions. And the CEO of CalPERS, California's largest pension fund, was just indicted for fraud. "The indictment charges that the falsified documents allowed Villalobos to reap $14 million in fees for serving as a middleman between CalPERS and a prominent investment firm handling $3 billion in CalPERS' money."

Combine this with ever-higher taxes, and a faltering economy, and you have a recipe for the governing class looting the treasury at the expense of the middle class (and future generations that will have to deal with the consequences of bankruptcy and crushing debt loads). Several California cities have already declared bankruptcy, and newer, more transparent accounting rules will probably force more into bankruptcy.

VC funds are probably the least of their worries.

...just didn't have enough reasons to movie to Texas already...

They FAA is shutting down 149 control towers, supposedly as part of saving $637 million due to the sequester, at the same time Obama is asking for $500 million for the corrupt oligarchy running the Palestinian Authority.

But they still seem to be able to fund the TSA's security theater. But you know who won't have to go through the grope lines? People from Saudi Arabia. You know, the country that produced produced 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers.

And of course, there are the billions in green crony subsidies.

Your tax dollars at work...

...this is a crappy Soulskill post.

Even for a slow Saturday night.

Couldn't you find another Apple linkbait troll piece to post instead? You know, "Rumor Says New OS X Release Locked to Processor." You know, the lame crap that gets posted here every day which is still better than this...

The most prominent cases of SWATing I'm aware of have been carried out against conservative bloggers:

• Aaron Worthing.
• Patterico
• Erik Erickson

Several cases seen to involve people criticizing convicted Speedway Bomber felon (and left-wing activist) Brett Kimberlin.

Here's the free game EA will be offering.

One where:

Valero Energy Corporation
Dell Computer Corporation
Sysco
Enterprise Products
Plains All American Pipeline
Tesoro
etc.

were never founded in Texas.

And the rest of your post? [[Citation Needed]]