Bizzy’s AM Coffee Biz-Econ Links (021006)

Free Links:

• Michelle Malkin has a grim and aptly named post called “The War on the Press,” chronicling successful suppressions around the world by the Cartoon Jihadists (update ….. and their hide-in-the-corner enablers — now Sweden, per Malkin). This is every bit as important as it’s being portrayed.
• Legal Challenge to the Constitutionality of Sarbanes Oxley — The Free Enterprise Fund is bringing the suit with the help of a lot of high-priced legal talent. The linked Biz Weak analysis piece says this:
  

  The complaint turns on two points. One is the assertion that the PCAOB (Public Company Accounting Oversight Board) exercises wide-ranging governmental powers with little oversight, violating the Constitution’s separation of powers. The second issue deals with how five members of PCAOB are appointed.

  “The PCAOB is an unaccountable, unconstitutional regulatory body,” says Mallory Factor, chairman of the Free Enterprise Fund. “It’s the poster child for the dangers of a runaway bureaucracy.”

  This looks like one that is going all the way to the Supremes. The reporting on this by The Associated Press and others is absurdly making this look like some Vast Right Wing Conspiracy project. I guess anyone who believes in free-market capitalism free of strangling government and quasi-government bureaucracy is now a presumptive VRWC member.

• Rock the Broke — It’s still called Rock the Vote, but it’s $700,000 in the hole (HT Lucianne), and prospects are dim.
• The Fed Says Consumer Borrowing slowed in ‘05 — This story is more notable for its snarky first sentence than it is for its substance: “Consumers, weighed down by high debt loads and low savings rates, increased borrowing last year by the smallest amount in 13 years, the Federal Reserve reported Tuesday.” Though it probably exists, no “weighed down by heavy debt loads” evidence is provided in the article.
• Read this before Apple sues them again like they did last year — Think Secret says it can confirm that “Apple is nearing completion of a completely revamped video iPod that will shed the ubiquitous mechanical click wheel for a touch screen and will sport a 3.5-inch diagonal display.”
• Yeah, we can protect you, but it will cost you — “A new security service from Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) will charge users $49.95 per year to better protect its Windows operating system from spyware, viruses and other Internet attacks.”

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• Since the Cartoon Jihad isn’t going away any time soon, go to OpinionJournal.com and get the straight scoop from a Muslim with sense: “Bonfire of the Pieties–Islam prohibits neither images of Muhammad nor jokes about religion.”