Khamenei is a real swell guy. His day is packed with approving the imprisoning and torturing Iranian political dissidents, executing homosexuals, and training suicide bombers to blow themselves up in public marketplaces in Iraq. And of course his people are real keen on making the roadside bombs that have killed and maimed so many American soldiers in Iraq.

So with Iran in the international spotlight, the real questioning that should be going on is not about whether the presidential election in Iran was legitimate - but about whether the theocratic dictatorship in Iran is a legitimate form of government. This form of government makes the elections in Iran a kind of cruel joke played on the Iranian people. And for some reason the world plays along without condemning the whole system in Iran. It’s like Hitler is ruling Germany and by him allowing a president to be elected under him the world gets distracted from the key point that Germany is still ruled by Hitler.

It’s strange that President Obama would come down so hard on Honduras for the Supreme Court there ordering a president removed from office who was making an unconstitutional power grab - but regarding Iran he never points out the absurd form of dictatorship that rules that country.

The decision today was important because it helps protect using objective civil service tests in hirings and promotions for many government jobs.

We shouldn’t forget one crucial reason why civil service tests are used for hiring and promotions in many government jobs. These tests are used to establish a system of merit-based employment and promotions to avoid the cronyism that naturally infects all branches of government. This is especially important for public services that deal directly with public safety.

In the private sector, businesses have strong market incentives to maintain merit-based hiring and promotions. If you don’t maintain a competitive workforce, then you will go out of business. Government departments don’t have to deal with market forces constantly getting in your face.

But besides achieving high-quality police and fire departments, these tests give a path for the less socially and politically connected to get jobs and rise in position. So the tests are part of a fairer system than would otherwise exist.

These tests are win-win. The public gets better services and employees are judged by objective tests.

And creating a public health insurance plan to compete with private plans is a real threat to our system of private health insurance. Congress can rig the system so that businesses and people all start migrating to the public plan because it is artificially cheaper. Single payer, here we come, just give it time.

Cap & Trade - I could almost support this. After all, as I have written before, if anything makes sense to tax, pollution does. People and businesses should not be able to just dump tons of pollutants into the air that we have to breath with no cost to them. It makes more sense to tax pollution than people’s wages.

On the other hand, I don’t trust the Democrats with this issue. If I was in Congress, unless I could truly figure out nothing insane is going on in the 1200 page bill, I would vote against it.

And why the fixation with carbon emissions? There are a lot worse things being dumped into the air around the country. I am not convinced that Global Warming is certain and troublesome enough that the country should make it such a high priority. If it’s so important, then let’s spend to invent technologies to cool the planet rather than tax trillions away from consumers and businesses as we damage the economy.