My favorite passage of Judge Roger Vinson's ruling finding ObamaCare unconstitutional is this one, rejecting the federal government's claim that the health care market is somehow unique:

The New York Times gives an enthusiastic review to a starchitect's elaborate plan for a new Queens public library branch without any mention of what construction would cost or of the fact that this same Queens public library system has recently been claiming it has been so financial strapped that it has stopped buying any new books.

This is one of the quirks of municipal finance. New construction can be financed through tax-exempt municipal bonds, which bond underwriters like to issue because they collect fees. No one is financing book purchases with bonds, however. One result is the construction of fancy new library buildings by internationally famous architects, for a library system that claims it can't afford to fill the buildings with any new books.

At the very least, it's incongruous.

Earlier this month the Sunday New York Times carried a front-page news article claiming, "A raft of recent studies found that public salaries, even with benefits included, are equivalent to or lag slightly behind those of private sector workers."

At the time, FutureOfCapitalism.com expressed skepticism.

Now it appears that not even the New York Times's own editorial writers believe the claim of the front-page Times news article. In an editorial today about the New York state budget, the Times says, "Salaries and benefits for state employees outstrip the private sector." Looks like there's a leak in that raft of recent studies.

A New York Times article on a protest in California outside a meeting that involved Charles and David Koch includes the following:

"You don't very often get a chance to be across the street from a bunch of billionaires who are scheming to do things against our democracy," said Kathy Clearly, 63, a retired schoolteacher who arrived by bus from Los Angeles and brandished a protest sign at the rally.

"Scheming to do things against our democracy" is quite a charge, but the Times article carries no evidence of it.

The Wall Street Journal has a humdinger of an editorial catching Newt Gingrich touting ethanol. His spokesman is also quoted denouncing, "rampant speculation in the commodities markets." The subheadline at WSJ.com describes Mr. Gingrich as an "Ethanol lobbyist." Mr. Gingrich is not registered with the Senate as a lobbyist for any ethanol interest, so it's not a great headline — a lobbyist doesn't mean the same thing, exactly, as a proponent.

The editorial does say that Mr. Gingrich gave a keynote speech to the Renewable Fuels Association, though it does not say whether Mr. Gingrich was paid for the speech or, if he was, how much.

President Obama pushes the "green jobs" idea hard in his weekly address, delivered from Orion Energy Systems, which the president touted as "an innovative company" and "a thriving enterprise" that is an example of "how America will win the future."

The stock chart for Orion tells a different story — the company's shares, which traded around $19 at the end of 2007, are now in the $4 range, and the company is cash-flow negative. The company's largest institutional shareholder is reportedly — wait for it — General Electric, which has been a similar disappointment for shareholders under CEO Jeffrey Immelt, chairman of President Obama's "Council on Jobs and Competitiveness."

Hedge fund manager John Paulson's "more than $5 billion in profits in 2010" are the subject of a front-page news article in the Wall Street Journal that is worthy of comment on several fronts. My personal favorite is the penultimate paragraph:

Other firms, such as Paulson & Co., have closed certain funds to new investors, but are actively raising new money for other funds. Mr. Paulson recently hosted a New York City event that featured speeches by former Fed chief Alan Greenspan and several chief executives of gold companies, aimed at boosting interest in his gold-focused fund.

At about 21:39 in this YouTube video interview posted yesterday, President Obama declares, "As I said, we will be out of Afghanistan by the end of this year." Then he declares, "Combat operations in Afghanistan have ended."

Neither of these statements is accurate. He was getting Afghanistan mixed up with Iraq. If this were Reagan or George W. Bush, the press would be all over it, depicting the president as senile, stupid, doddering, a pawn of his aides or vice president, or worse. Instead, the press has almost entirely ignored it. As of this morning the White House hadn't posted a transcript of the interview (as it often does with presidential statements or remarks) on its Web site, either.

Money manager George Soros has granted a series of interviews at Davos. To the BBC, he talked about the Euro. To Bloomberg, he talked about commodities prices. To CNBC, he talked about U.S. municipal bond prices. Not a single one of the reporters appears to have asked Mr. Soros what financial positions he had, or to have communicated those positions to readers. I don't fault Mr. Soros for talking to the reporters — he can make money if other people listen to what he says and then trade on it, because he's already taken his positions. But it'd be nice for the reporters to explain that rather than to treat him as if he's some sort of wise man on the sidelines who doesn't have a financial stake in what he's talking about.

The full dissent of three Republican members of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission is now posted online, and it does get into slightly more detail than the Wall Street Journal op-ed by Keith Hennessey, Bill Thomas, and Douglas Holtz-Eakin referenced here earlier. They write, "Government policymakers were afraid of large firms' sudden and disorderly failure and chose to intervene as a result. At times, intervention itself contributed to fear and uncertainty about the stability of the financial system." But that's all they write about it. It strikes me as a missed opportunity.

Michael Ledeen deconstructs the New York Times's coverage of Duane "Dewey" Clarridge: "maybe there's an element of professional jealousy in the Times' campaign against Dewey?"

Three Republican members of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission — Bill Thomas, Keith Hennessey, and Douglas Holtz-Eakin — have written an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal listing ten causes of the financial crisis. I'm looking forward to reading their actual dissent, rather than the summary in the op-ed, but on the basis of the op-ed, they seem not to have listed as a cause the way that Henry Paulson, Timothy Geithner, Ben Bernanke, and President Bush handled the trouble, particularly the panic-inducing, confidence-destroying "ambush" of Fannie Mae and the seizure of AIG without a shareholder vote.

The Egyptian government, which American taxpayers back with about $1.3 billion a year in military aid, more than any country except Iraq, Afghanistan, and Israel, has banned public demonstrations and blocked Twitter in response to public unrest.

FutureOfCapitalism spoke with the director of Cyberdissidents.org, David Keyes, to try to get a handle on the situation.

What to make of Twitter being blocked? Mr. Keyes says it's unusual. "Egypt is known for not blocking many Web sites," preferring instead to block dissidents themselves by arresting them. He mentions other sites that have been blocked in addition to Twitter: bambuser.com, a video streaming website; AlBadil.net, a newspaper that has dedicated a full spread to the protests; and Dostor.org, an opposition website headed by Ibrahim Issa.

The Wall Street Journal's coverage of Jared Kushner, who with his wife are reportedly friends and traveling companions of Rupert Murdoch, has been the subject of earlier attention here. Today the Journal steps it up a notch by making the apartment Mr. Kushner and his wife Ivanka Trump have for sale its house of the day.

Ralph Nader has a piece in the Wall Street Journal telling the story of how the government (he largely lets the directors off the hook) has abused Fannie Mae's common shareholders, of which he is one.

In return for providing an open credit line, the government received warrants to buy up to 79.9% of the GSEs' common stock for $0.00001 per share. The government's share stayed under 80% to avoid forcing the liabilities of these two behemoths onto the government's books. Treasury achieved this by having the common shareholders nominally own the other 20%.

Here's the rub: The zombie common shareholders have no rights or remedies against Fannie and Freddie, both operationally active companies, or their regulator—the Federal Housing Finance Agency. FHFA ordered the Fannie and Freddie boards and executives to suspend communications with shareholders and abolish the annual stockholders meeting.