Today’s Links: January 26, 2012

OPINION

MEGAN MCARDLE: “The President’s Nostalgianomics”
“Obama, stymied by an economy that’s still pretty weak, and an opposition that has no more interest in cooperating with him than Republicans did with Hoover, has turned to a laundry list of weak proposals that sound pleasing to interest groups, but wouldn’t achieve much.  Of those, the best was allowing students who study here to stay here; the stupidest was probably adding yet another investigation of bank fraud (what have you been doing for the last three years, Mr. President?)  And the worst was the bizarre proposal for states to force students to stay in school until graduation or the age of 18.”

NICHOLAS AGAR: “The High Price of Long Life”
“Here I address the dangerous consequences of a widespread belief that human aging could be halted or reversed. If anti-aging medicine is to become a reality, then the various theories about how to halt or reverse the aging process will require testing on human subjects. Carrying out such tests will place unprecedented pressure on the rules protecting human participants in clinical trials, which are already routinely ignored.”

CHARLES GASPARINO: “Adding Up to Nothing”
“Three years after the Hope and Change president took office, Hope turns out to mean high taxes and lots of regulations, and Change consists of celebrating the government’s takeover of General Motors and belittling technological progress that destroys some jobs even as it creates others. The Great Uniter is all about class warfare.”

NEWS

DATA RETENTION – Europe Proposes a ‘Right to Be Forgotten’
“Chief among the new proposals is a ‘right to be forgotten’ that will allow people to demand that organizations that hold their data delete that data, as long as there is no legitimate grounds to hold it.”

FIDEL CASTRO – Castro Says US Republican Presidential Race Is Competition of ‘Idiocy and Ignorance’
“Fidel Castro lambasted the Republican presidential race as the greatest competition of “idiocy and ignorance” the world has ever seen in a column published Wednesday, and also took shots at the news media and foreign governments for seizing on the death of a Cuban prisoner to demand greater respect for human rights.”

EGYPT – Ray LaHood’s Son Barred From Leaving Egypt
“Egyptian authorities are barring several U.S. citizens — including Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s son — from leaving the country after Egyptian government forcesraided the offices of Washington-backed groups monitoring recent parliamentary elections there. Sam LaHood is director of the Egyptian program for the International Republican Institute, a nongovernmental organization with close ties to GOP congressional leadership. He attempted to board an airplane in Cairo on Saturday to leave the country but was told he was on a “no-fly list” and was refused permission to depart.”