Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

There was a time when this would have been a HUUUGE scandal.  Now it is I gather just the sort of thing that happens.  Still: I will note it here.  There is reason to believe that White House officials have leaked highly material information, to which they had privileged access, to Wall Street firms: that is, that they assisted insider trading. As regular readers of this blog will know, I have long opposed the criminalization of insider trading. I have taken a sympathetic view of defendants on related charges from Michael Milken to Martha Stewart. Still, if we are going to have such laws on the book, there is no good case for giving an immunity to White House officials or the President himself.  Heck, there isn't even the BAD reason that the Supreme Court cooked up recently in another context for giving the President immunity. Their reason may not apply here on its face. But just to avoid a digression, let us focus on the staff involvement that seems to have been inv...

According to an unimpeachable source, a recent episode of The Daily Show , Dylan Ratigan has retired from his career at television news. To get TDS' take on it, go to the second segment here . It's about 8:30 and some unavoidable ad segments in. So I looked back at less amusing news sources and found that Ratigan actually left MSNBC almost a year ago. Though I'm not one of his biggest fans, (if I were of course I would likely have noticed his departure sooner), I have mentioned him before. In the blog that I closed down when I opened this one. I wrote a couple of entries there poking some fun at one of Ratigan's colleagues at MSNBC, Charles Gasparino. Here is one of them. You'll note that when Gasparino was pulling his bizarre tantrum, it was Ratigan who played the role of the responsible and somewhat exasperated adult. As it happens, that's the role he plays on the piece in The Daily Show as well. I hope things go well with the farm.