Cass Sunstein:

Obama's friend, law school classmate, and nominated head of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs ("regulatory czar") has a lot to say. But first, what Wikipedia says about this position:

"OIRA reviews collections of information under the Paperwork Reduction Act, and also develops and oversees the implementation of government-wide policies in the areas of information technology, information policy, privacy, and statistical policy."

and now what Sustein has to say:

"A system of limitless individual choices, with respect to communications, is not necessarily in the interest of citizenship and self-government. Democratic efforts to reduce the resulting problems ought not be rejected in freedom's name."

He wrote about his "Civility Check" idea in his book "Nudge":

"Every hour of every day, people send angry e-mails they soon regret, cursing people they barely know (or even worse, their friends and loved ones). A few of us have learned a simple rule: don't send an angry e-mail in the heat of the moment. File it, and wait a day before you send it. (In fact, the next day you may have calmed down so much that you forget even to look at it. So much the better.) But many people either haven't learned the rule or don’t always follow it. Technology could easily help. In fact, we have no doubt that technologically savvy types could design a helpful program by next month."

Note: he is proposing that software be put in place to require a 24 hr delay of e-mails being sent (not just for profanity, mind you--all e-mails would be censored and delayed)

"[A]lmost all gun control legislation is constitutionally fine. And if the Court is right, then fundamentalism does not justify the view that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms." -from his book "Radical Robes"

"[T]here should be extensive regulation of the use of animals in entertainment, in scientific experiments, and in agriculture." from "Animal Rights"

Goodbye Constitution: 

“Why should we be governed by people long dead? ... In any case, the group that ratified the Constitution included just a small subset of the society; it excluded all women, the vast majority of African Americans, many of those without property, and numerous others who were not permitted to vote.”

“We ought to ban hunting, I suggest, if there isn’t a purpose other than sport and fun. That should be against the law. It’s time now.” 

Sunstein also argued in favor of “eliminating current practices such as greyhound racing, cosmetic testing, and meat eating, most controversially.”

He's also a huge fan of Cost-Benefit-Analysis, even of human life. Meaning, he believes that a young person is worth $1.4 million more than a 70 year old person. Wow. I think there was somebody, once upon a time in history who believed certain people were more valuable than certain other people. And he wiped out those certain people who he didn't think had very much value.

Sunstein says that we need to weigh out the costs of things like the EPA's regulations on how much arsenic can be in the water: how much do these regulations cost, and how many lives do these regulations save, and how much do we value those lives?

Yes. This is who Obama has chosen. Scary? Confusing? Confusing like the White House-approved 747 flying over the 9/11 site today & causing people to scream? (simply for a photo shoot! And with no public apology from our Commander in Chief, by the way).  Confusion leads people to seek and trust in dictatorship--there are psychological terms for this, but I don't know what they are...

And on a lighter note, the puppy is very, very cute, and Karry just finished painting my craft room. :)