Glenn Reynolds Quotations

Whether (Tyco's) life as a short-seller's clay pigeon has been the driver or whether the company's own inability to make the case clearly enough has been the culprit, (Tyco) now is in a major league quandary,

GMAC is in some ways both the instrument for preservation of GM intermediate term and also an instrument for GM to wield in negotiations with the unions.

Just watched Bush's intro, followed by the Leahy / Schumer response. Bush was smirking; he thinks he's got it in the bag. More significantly, perhaps, Leahy and Schumer looked pretty flat; they seemed to be going through the motions; I don't think they believe they can stop him. That could change of course, but it's certainly how it looks now.

I think the bill makes a strong statement and provides some backbone regulations on how U.S. Internet companies should operate in China, but it will be difficult to enforce.

My own take: Some of the nitpicking and complaining may well be justified, even beyond the inevitable dropped balls in something like this. But there will be plenty of time for that later. Right now, people should be focusing on constructive action, not point-scoring.

This whole process is part economics, part bankruptcy law, part ideology and part game theory -- but 100 percent painful.

Commerce and free expression on the Internet have flourished because it's available to everyone on the same basis. That's how it should continue to be.

The whole Street is sitting around waiting for confirmation of Dana payments.

The secret of the 21st century is attract a lot of smart people to focus on problems that you think are important.

People used to be ignorant. It was hard to learn things. You had to go to libraries, look things up, perhaps sit and wait until a book was fetched from storage, or recalled from another user, or borrowed from a different library . . . Things are different today. I'm writing this in a bar right now, and I have most of human knowledge at my fingertips.

After Katrina, when people started talking about it costing $250 billion for repair and reconstruction, it made people think about cutting some of the projects that are everywhere.

Theyre acting like the target of a scandal,

It seems to me that it's a fairly narrow market that's going to pay for the privilege of reading columns by Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman and such,

I'm pretty sure that this development will actually be bad for the Republicans. When the topic is defense, the Democrats lose. When it's sex, the Republicans lose. And the abortion debate will, I think, turn into a sex debate before it's over.

In the end, a few extra pledges can add to the comfort zone for the banks in a sector that is having anything but smooth sailing.

In other words, it's like the rest of the news,

Call your senators and representatives and ask them if they're willing to support having that program cut or -- failing that -- what else they're willing to cut in order to fund Katrina relief.

Hiring a restructuring specialist does not imply filing, but when you do it and then default on the coupon, the picture is getting painted by the numbers.

One reason that a lot of people see me as cheerful and optimistic is that my expectations are really rather low.

The proverbial thirteenth chime of the clock - is not only wrong itself, but calls into question everything that came before it.

But remember: All this talk of tolerance and diversity is basically just a way for one group of white people to pursue power over other groups of white people. It's not about actually helping anyone.

The nannyism is partly to distract from the corruption — and partly just another opportunity to leverage it. A good general rule is that the more a government wants to run its citizens’ lives, the worse job it will do at the most basic tasks of government.

The government decides to try to increase the middle class by subsidizing things that middle class people have: If middle-class people go to college and own homes, then surely if more people go to college and own homes, we’ll have more middle-class people. But homeownership and college aren’t causes of middle-class status, they’re markers for possessing the kinds of traits — self-discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc. — that let you enter, and stay, in the middle class. Subsidizing the markers doesn’t produce the traits; if anything, it undermines them.

[T]he people as ultimate sovereigns, retain the ultimate power - and even the duty - to overthrow any government that fails to respect their authority.

Let's be honest: Kerry has no idea what it is to be even a middle-class white in this country.

As the interned American citizens of Japanese descent learned, the Bill of Rights provided them with little protection when it was needed.

Government, we are sometimes told, is just another word for things we choose to do together. Like a lot of things politicians say, this sounds good. And, also like a lot of things politicians say, it isn't the least bit true. Many of the things government does, we don't choose. Many of the things we choose, government doesn't do. And whatever gets done, we're not the ones doing it. And those who are doing it often interpret their mandates selfishly.

[B]ipartisanship means tarring and feathering politicans from both major parties.

That's the thing about conspiracy theories: in a comforting sort of way, they give rise to the feeling that someone, somewhere, knows what's going on.

If you only stand up for speech you approve of, you're a hack. If you only stand up for speech that everyone approves of, you're a coward.

I'd actually love to think that I could trust Kerry on national security. But the only way I could do that, at this point, would be via self-delusion.

When people say things like "don't let this moment pass without acting on gun control," what they're really saying is our arguments are so unpersuasive that they can only succeed when people aren't thinking clearly.

You can't be halfhearted in a revolution. Values that serve well in a civil society don't work in a state of nature.

[T]he notion that a belief in self-reliance cannot coexist with a spirit of generosity is crap. In fact, one is far less likely to find a spirit of generosity among the advocates of governmentally-required "compassion".

Things that can't go on forever, won't. Debts that can't be paid, won't be.

Hmm. Petty? Yes. Ineffectual? Yes. Infuriating and off-putting? Yes. Counterproductive? Yes. It's got to be a product of the French Foreign Ministry.

Diplomacy has more to do with (credible) threats than with sweet reason. And threats from America are a lot more credible, nowadays.

Bush is quite vulnerable if the Democrats pick the right issues. So far, though, they've shown their usual tendency to go for the capillary.

What's wrong with "the new elite?" Forget cultural insularity or smugness. The main problem with the "new elite" is that they're not an elite at all. That is, they aren't particularly smart, or competent.

When the private sector fails, the solution is more government. When the government fails, the solution is more government.

Personally, I'm tired of hearing the whole have-you-no-decency routine from people who have made quite clear that they possess none themselves.

Never trust anyone who calls himself a libertarian socialist. They're bound to be deeply confused, at best.

I can't say I'm surprised: the grassroots antiwar movement keeps turning out to be MoveOn/A.N.S.W.E.R. astroturf.

Where the U.N. is concerned, accountability is very thin on the ground in general.

[W]hen you align yourself exclusively with one party, and weaponize yourself in that party's cause, you're going to pay the price when the other party is in power. That's the price you pay for whoring yourself out.

A 'well regulated militia' was thus one that was well-trained and equipped, not one that was 'well-regulated' in the modern sense of being subjected to numerous government prohibitions and restrictions.

The purpose of the right to bear arms is twofold; to allow individuals to protect themselves and their families, and to ensure a body of armed citizenry from which a militia could be drawn, whether that militia's role was to protect the nation, or to protect the people from a tyrannical government.

Political Wire is one of the absolute must-read sites in the blogosphere.

Personally, I'd be delighted to live in a country where happily married gay couples had closets full of assault weapons.

If you're a Republican who's a threat to the Democrats, of course you are a racist. That's the definition of a racist, nowadays...

Democrats don't represent the taxpayers, they represent the tax-consumers...

The new racism is anything that might hurt a Democrat politically.

I can think of no better reason to vote against Obama than the prospect of an administration where any criticism of the President is treated as racism.

Imagine what things would be like if the news media actually sided with civilization.

With 'swift-boating' now being used by the ignorant as a synonym for false charges, it's worth remembering that it was John Kerry who had to retract his statement about his secret Christmas mission to Cambodia, despite it having allegedly been 'seared, seared' into his memory.

As I have said, the best Bush strategy is to put Congress on TV as often as possible.

As my father-in-law once said, when they talk about taxes it's always for teachers, firemen, and police - but when they spend your taxes, it always seems to go to some guy in a leather chair downtown you never heard of.

It's not so much about the cause, it's about feeling superior to political opponents.

You can sit in your living room and shout at your television, which makes you feel helpless, you can turn off the television, which is no great solution, or you can try to do better yourself,