Allahpundit | Hot Air:

Via MEMRI TV, skip ahead to 9:28. I’m actually sort of charmed that a left-wing jurist thinks it matters much what’s written in a nation’s constitution. Our Supreme Court managed to tease a right to abortion out of a clause governing legal procedure, didn’t it? Seventy years earlier, a right-wing Court teased a right of contract out of the same provision. If you can do that, there ain’t much you can’t do. In fact, we’re on the cusp right now of Congress being granted a new power to force Americans to buy certain products; the clause responsible for that, which deals with regulating commerce between states, was somehow used a few years ago to reach marijuana grown in someone’s own backyard for their own use — with conservative support, do note. A smart, aggressive judge can make a document say nearly anything. The constitution sets certain goalposts, granted, but there’s a lottttt of space between them for a skilled kicker to aim. ...

Tyler Durden | ZeroHedge:

Sick of the BLS propaganda? Then do the following calculation with us: using BLS data, the US civilian non-institutional population was 242,269 in January, an increase of 1.7 million month over month: apply the long-term average labor force participation rate of 65.8% to this number (because as chart 2 below shows, people are not retiring as the popular propaganda goes: in fact labor participation in those aged 55 and over has been soaring as more and more old people have to work overtime, forget retiring), and you get 159.4 million: that is what the real labor force should be. The BLS reported one? 154.4 million: a tiny 5 million difference. Then add these people who the BLS is purposefully ignoring yet who most certainly are in dire need of labor and/or a job to the 12.758 million reported unemployed by the BLS and you get 17.776 million in real unemployed workers. What does this mean? That using just the BLS denominator in calculating the unemployed rate of 154.4 million, the real unemployment rate actually rose in January to 11.5%. Compare that with the BLS reported decline from 8.5% to 8.3%. It also means that the spread between the reported and implied unemployment rate just soared to a fresh 30 year high of 3.2%. And that is how with a calculator and just one minute of math, one strips away countless hours of BLS propaganda.

Difference between Reported and Implied Unemployment Rate

Much More here...