Sometimes, the thought crosses my mind that conservatives care too much about taxes and liberals too little.  But, as college students, we’ll all end up paying our dues to Uncle Sam in the very near future.  So, with the legislative passage of the Bush tax cuts extension, it may be helpful to truly understand how it might really affect us as the future taxpayers of America.  First levied by the US government during the opening years of the Civil War, the federal income tax has presumably been the main point of the contention since the inception of the Tea Party movement, which has rocked the recent political landscape.

The NY Times has a sort of interesting feature called Point/Counterpoint on its website. This time, they have two rather creepy looking economists offer their views on whether or not the government should pass a second stimulus package. Both of them give pretty standard answers according to their views, and it might be a little boring, but I suppose it's an interesting primer for anyone looking for some kind of explanation of stimulus.

So Tim Geithner has announced his toxic assets plan in a column in the Wall Street Journal, and reactions are pouring in.

Paul Krugman makes a lot of sense on this: here's his initial take, a further explanation, and an example to show why Wall Street loves it. I've provided a summary of his argument after the jump. On the other hand, Brad DeLong has provided an FAQ on the plan that Krugman finds unconvincing.

Anyway, more below.

The prospect of nationalizing banks, particularly BofA and Citi, has been popping up everywhere recently. In his latest column, Paul Krugman argues in favor of nationalization on the premise that it is not only the only remaining option, but the natural course of action in a case like this. Rick Newman, however, wants everyone to take a deep breath for at least enough time to realize just how "scary" the prospect of nationalization is. With the Dow still on the slide, many are still wondering what the right thing to do is.

Ala this Saturday's SNL sketch, a nifty tool from WSJ now lets you play political punditand mess around with a red blue map.

The Law School's Social Justice Initiative hosted some law profs and a couple of other All Stars - Steve Shapiro (see pic), The ACLU's Legal Director and Shayana Kadidal, counsel for Gitmo detainees - for a look back at the year's big cases. The big ones - Gun Control (Heller) and Habeas for detainees (Boumidiene) - were on their docket but they also mentioned some important ones that might have fallen off our radar. As always, the faculty were on the top of their games. Coherent and well-spoken. Also, the event was surprisingly friendly to the uninitiated undergrad, with very little Legal Latin Jargon to roll your eyes at.