Everything old is new again;

In the 1980s, there was a consensus among the members of the national media that Ronald Reagan was going to fail and that he was going to bring on economic disaster. But. . .the economy didn’t collapse. In fact, it soared to unprecedented levels.
The media stubbornly refused to admit that “Reaganomics” was responsible. The drumbeat of negative opposition to the president’s policies continued through the 1980s. By 1986. . . the ratio of negative to positive stories was seven to one. In other words, as the economy was improving, media reports on the economy were becoming increasingly negative.
One of the most common allegations in these reports was that the poor got poorer under Reagan, even though the actual number of poor declined from 14 to 13 percent during his administration, and the average income for the lowest one-fifth of Americans rose from $7,008 to $9,431. Inflation declined 48%, from 8.9 to 4.6%. Unemployment declined 45%, from 7.5 to 5.2.%. Interest rates declined 71.9%, from 21 to 5.9%. Twenty-one million new jobs were created.
The so-called “greedy ’80s” witnessed the largest peacetime economic expansion in our nation’s history, yet the media remained deaf, dumb and blind. – L. Brent Bozell III – November, 1994

“Newsweek: Strong Economy May Hurt Economy”;

Newsweek only admits now that what has been going on the past three years — superb productivity gains, resulting in a true strengthening of the economy, growth without inflation — was a good thing, now that it may be about to end.
Before, Newsweek bemoaned the lack of gangbusters hiring — the “jobless economy” we’ve heard so very much about — without acknowledging the upside of modest (but good) job growth was that companies were growing sensibly and strongly with respect to hiring, not overhiring in a way likely to provoke a bubble and the inevitable bursting of that bubble.
Only now that that it looks like companies are hiring a lot more people do they admit that the “jobless recovery” (which wasn’t jobless at all, but whatever) was fundamentally sound.
I’ve noted this a bunch of times before: The MSM is only willing to acknowlege the economy is strong in stories predicting it is about to weaken. Only when the scary prediction of a collapsing economy is discussed will they admit the economy is currently actually strong.
Bush can never get the political benefit of a strong economy, because the media will never admit it as such until it has passed. Only when the business cycle turns, as it it one day will, to a recessionary period will the MSM then admit the economy had been strong.
In order to contrast what had been good to what is now bad. Without ever acknowledging things were good at the time.
And so it goes.

Via Ian at Inoperable Terran.

A reader who works in the federal justice system writes;

As part of the government’s accountability legislation, there is this little gem. It appears almost as an afterthought in the Bill and has not received much attention outside of the Federal Department of Justice. The creation of the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions removes the Attorney General’s office from the Justice portfolio. This is to ensure no political influence is exerted to force a prosecution ahead or to affect the outcome in an ongoing prosecution.
The office of the D.P.P. is based upon an number of international models (including Great Britain) as well as models of some provincial Attorneys General in Canada. A number of prosecutions (notably under the Criminal Code) are the responsibility of the provinces to prosecute. In some provinces, a D.P.P. has been established to ensure the independence of the prosecuting agency from any and all political influences.
The Bill hints of good things to come in Federal prosecutions as it both promotes transparency in prosecutions and seeks to eradicate any political influence in the criminal justice arena.
In addition to the obvious sources of interference, presumably it will also preclude attempts by police to exert pressure to pursue questionable prosecutions, or demanding the prosecutions unit take certain (unreasonable) positions on bail or in sentencing.

Read about it here.