It seems that Mitt Romney is already back in the saddle, only 16 months after he ceded the GOP presidential race to John McCain.

Over the past year, the U.S. government has acquired an unprecedented investment portfolio, including a majority stake in GM and a large ownership stake in Chrysler. These investments have raised a plethora of difficult policy challenges. One of the most important is the ongoing risk that private business decisions may get transformed into public policy issues.

After reading Steven Greydanus' review of the new Harry Potter (which I'm dying to see, but don't know when I'll find the time), I noticed a link at the bottom to an older post he wrote comparing Rowling's presentation of magic with that in Narnia and The Lord of the Rings. I trust my own love for the series is well enough established (and see the excellent series of reflections at Non-Modern), but of all the criticisms of the series I've read, I think Greydanus' is the most sensible.

Saving our planet from catastrophic climate change might require an unprecedented mass co-ordination of all the people our lonely little planet. However, it requires coordinated sacrifice, the west are living unsustainably, the east have not had their fair share yet, Africa is unmanageable ... how will we pull it off?

As Congress barrels toward a complete entanglement of government into the health care system, serious questions come to mind. For example, since we will all be in this system together, don't citizens have the right to ask the government to punish others for "destructive" behaviors that will put stress on the collective health care system?

The U.S. economy is in big trouble right now, and the reform process may be missing a key point. When banks ran into severe trouble late last year, the government responded quickly with a massive bailout, but very little has been done to address a major structural flaw that has left our economy so vulnerable: rampant income inequality. In a system based on consumer spending, we have stretched consumers beyond their limit.

America's failure to reach consensus with foreign powers on what constitutes an act of war in cyber space presents the danger of an inadvertent war. Expert opinion is split on the question of whether cyber attacks can ever reach the level of an act of war. Bruce Schneier recently pooh-poohed web defacement as a truly unserious national security threat. Richard Clarke has been a tireless advocate for the flip side of the argument, namely that cyber attacks are a completely new type of threat to national security that require new policy and new capabilities.

The focus of most reporting on cyber attacks and cyber security in military circles continues to distract the debate away from campaign level cyber attacks. Rather than discussing what a skilled nation-state adversary would do with currently available, known cyber attack strategies, coverage tends to focus on battlefield applications of information technology.

"With UK dentistry the most expensive in Europe, it pays to shop around for a good value private health insurance policy for dental health, especially for those on a lower income who often find themselves bearing the brunt of the dental crisis." That's the advice of Brian Mulreanny, the managing director of the health insurance firm Essential Healthcare.

Political parties, like people, have a life span, but unlike people they are driven by their relevance. Political parties which are no longer relevant cease to exist. The Republican Party is a perfect example; its central core values of low taxes, small government and less regulation have been proven false and the Republicans have been exposed for what they are, the party of the rich, the party of less taxes for the rich, and the party of less opportunity for the poor. They are the party of less and the party of nothing.

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