A few links

Slacktivist reminds us that while money cannot buy happiness, it can prevent misery (lack of food, lack of shelter, lack of medical care).
•A grim report from Reuters concludes that colleges are making it harder for poor students to attend. Instead of adding Pell Grants to other financial aid, for instance, they cut financial aid and make that available for merit scholarships (which frequently go to rich but not particularly meritorious kids). They also offer financial aid packages that don’t come close to paying tuition, thereby weeding out more poor students. Meanwhile, the Consumerist looks at the financial pros and cons of higher ed.
•Roy Edroso looks at conservatives freaking out over adulterer Mark Sanford’s return to office in South Carolina. Of particular note is the Jonah Goldberg piece linked to in which Goldberg struggles to prove that liberals are morally much worse than conservatives—maybe Hillary and Bill not divorcing is just because they don’t value fidelity the way Sanford, er, his wife does! And Sanford was obviously in love with this other woman so it’s not like he was just having sex or anything! It’s an impressive bit of floundering (some thoughts on the “better a hypocrite than a liberal” angle here).
•Guantanamo has been open long enough. And it should be closed and innocent prisoners released, not simply transferred somewhere else. Mother Jones says more prisoners have died at Gitmo than have gone to trial.
•The FTC has warned data brokers to be sure and follow the law in only releasing data for legitimate purposes.
This is not a new problem. Back around 1990, a Business Week reporter asked one of the credit bureaus to do a background check on (supposedly) a prospective employee, but without notifying him. The bureau staffer said no problem, they’d just list it as a regular credit check. And he made only minimal effort to verify the reporter had the job he claimed. And once inside the database, the reporter was able to find anyone’s data (even then Vice President Dan Quayle’s) without triggering any warning flags.
So I’m glad the FTC is doing something, at least.
•Sen. Dick Durbin says he was blindsided by what happened after Congress gave Bush the open-ended authorization to go to war (which Obama, in his turn, has also made use of). As Glenn Greenwald points out at the link, some people saw it coming perfectly clearly. Speaking of which, here’s a 2002 James Fallows article that predicts a lot of what would happen in Iraq over the next few years (though off on some assumptions, such as Saddam having WMDs).