Today's Links

-John Paul Stevens was nominated by Gerald Ford as a moderate Midwestern Republican, but is now the leader of the liberal bloc of the court, today announced his retirement.  Here are some of his potential replacements.

-A recent poll found that Americans preferred cutting spending to raising taxes by a 61% to 5% margin.  But when asked which programs we should cut, only item garnered support from a majority: foreign aid.  Currently, 1% of our budget goes toward foreign aid (much of it to Israel, Egypt, Iraq, and Afghanistan).  As this excellent piece points out, even if we add together the total budget for the five programs that garnered support from more than 25% of the population, they still only account for 3% of the budget.  Meaning we have some difficult choices ahead of us.

-The recession, officially, is almost certainly over.  And a number of indicators -- from jobs to sales -- convey positive news.  Yet, the mood of the general public has yet to shift.  That's partially because unemployment is still high and the recovery is likely to be slow.