“Nothing is more essential… than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable character.” —Samuel Adams

Profiles of valor: Army Staff Sgt. Ketterer
Army Staff Sgt. Clarence Ketterer was serving as a Squad Leader with the 1st Battalion, 125th Infantry Regiment of the Michigan Army National Guard stationed in Habbaniyah, Iraq. During a patrol, Ketterer’s team came upon Iraqi soldiers whose vehicle had been hit by a suicide bomber and were under fire from insurgents. Ketterer quickly left the shelter of his vehicle to help evacuate the wounded soldiers while coordinating a counter-attack against the enemy. While assisting the wounded soldiers into an ambulance, Ketterer returned fire with his weapon and led the ambulance to safety. For the Iraqi lives that he saved that day, Ketterer was awarded the Bronze Star with combat “V” for valor. Ketterer is currently a senior at Central Michigan University and is a campus Company Executive Officer for the ROTC.

This week’s ‘Alpha Jackass’ award
“Even though I approved of Afghanistan and opposed Iraq from the beginning, I still resent that I was not asked or given the opportunity to support those soldiers.” —Bill Clinton this week in Iowa

“I supported the President when he asked the Congress for authority to stand up against weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.” —Bill Clinton in May 2003

And just for good measure: “I can support an action against Saddam Hussein because I think it’s in the long-term interests of our national security.” —Hillary Clinton in September 2002

Furthermore, Bill signed the Iraq Liberation Act in 1998, making it the official policy of the United States “to support efforts to remove the regime headed by Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, and to promote the emergence of a democratic government to replace the regime.”

BUSINESS & ECONOMY
’Predatory’ sub-prime lending
As the mainstream media love to remind us on a daily basis, the housing market is in trouble, with recent reports suggesting that the housing recession has begun to contribute to wider economic troubles. The problems have resulted primarily from chaos in the sub-prime-lending market, as marginal borrowers have been defaulting on housing loans at a staggering pace.

Obviously, nobody wants this sort of thing to happen, as both the lender and the borrower are hurt. There are plenty of incentives for banks and homeowners to be more cautious in the future. As usual, however, the federal government has decided that the market is not enough. The U.S. House passed the “Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act of 2007,” ostensibly to curb predatory lending practices. The goal of the legislation is to punish banks for providing loans “that the consumer lacks a reasonable ability to repay, does not provide a net tangible benefit, or has predatory characteristics.”

The problem, of course, is that nobody has ever defined just what constitutes a “predatory” loan. When these laws have been attempted at the state level, the law of unintended consequences has inevitably struck every time. What was intended to protect low-income borrowers ends up hurting them—by making it ever more difficult to obtain loans, not to mention lowering home values for sellers. When banks are made liable for the poor decisions of borrowers, they naturally withdraw from marginal-loan markets—hurting low-income borrowers the most. The market is already punishing those who made unwise loans; government meddling, however well intentioned, ends up being predatory in its own right.

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