Probably James M. Buchanan, although Milton Friedman and Tyler Cowen are up there as well.

"Carey Mulligan may be a decent actress, but her clumsy attempt at a Southern accent speaks to ruination of one of the true feminine characters in the entirety of American literature."

It also speaks to ruination of the concept of the versatile American actress.  That or Luhrmann really likes the idea of an actress with a gratingly botched Southern accent, one or the other.

Personally, I find it interesting to look at, fun to talk about, but ultimately meaningless.  Kinda like horoscopes.

(In fair disclosure, I am, as far as family genealogists can tell, 3/64s Native American, but that's basically a rounding error for me.  I identify, if anything, as German-American.)

To many on the progressive Left, identifying as Native American is a signal of commitment to post-colonialist views, and a way to snub the "ignorant white men" they see around them (whom they can then claim stole their rightful place out from under them). 

Depends on the rockers.  I'm a self-admitted fan of progressive rock, where you have guys who are still vibrant (and creating good new material!) forty years or so after first coming on to the scene (well, not in all cases, but you get the point).

If the musician's shtick is being puerile, then of course it's going to get tired after a couple of decades.  If they're an actual performer and artist?  Can last quite some time.

I wouldn't consider eliminating Commerce such a wise move, as it's responsible for a large part of the economic record-keeping that isn't done by the Federal Reserve... perhaps roll some of those functions into Labor (as BLS ends up having to cooperate with the Census Bureau on a lot of stuff as it is already),  but agencies like the PTO, NIST, ESA, and ITA are all significantly more defensible programs than, say, the entirety of Interior, Education, HHS, HUD, or Energy.

I still think the biggest fallacy of the "limit" theory of Romney's support is that people assume that if Santorum or Gingrich dropped out and endorsed the other, their supporters would automatically all go to the other candidate, when there's little indication to that effect.  If Gingrich and Santorum were interchangeable, then it would follow that one of them would have been run out of the race already.

Interesting note, however - Santorum has yet to win a state where the unemployment rate is higher than the national rate (Tennessee had the same rate in December 2011 as the nation).  If he gets the nod, we could see one of the weirdest phenomena in American political history - a challenger openly rooting for the economy to improve ahead of the election.

Last head-to-head polling in Michigan between Obama and the Republican candidates that I've seen had Obama beating Santorum by 20-plus points... then again, he also beat Romney by 9, so "electability" is pretty much out the window here.

The major factor, IMO, is that Michigan is a very populist state and very protective of its decrepit, atrophying manufacturing sector... and with Santorum championing that, he's likely to get himself a lot of votes.  If I were a betting man, I'd say Santorum wins Michigan, and wins it easily (as much as I'd rather see pretty much anyone else win here).

I don't know... I'm religious myself, but I score pretty strongly toward being a libertarian.  Then again, I've learned over the years that my religious views (I'm a Christian existentialist) aren't exactly what most would consider "orthodox".  I consider my faith to be compatible with libertarianism mostly from the perspective of "God gave us free will, including making us free to make our own mistakes - ultimately, it's up to us to ask for forgiveness from our own shortcomings."

I agree with James' thesis, though - there are some really conspiratorial people that call themselves libertarians.  Makes for some weird reactions when I tell people that I'm a libertarian, that's for sure.

I've been hearing the "Romney has a hard vote cap" for a while... and it seems more and more to not be the case.

That being said, there are a lot of people desperate to find somebody other than him... sometimes searching a bit too desperately, but there you go.  The question is how well Gingrich and/or Santorum can convince people that, in spite of their own shortcomings, they're worth having over Romney.

The interesting wild card will be how Ron Paul does going forward - I've been using his support levels as a proxy for the "protest vote" - while he has his die-hards, most Paul voters seem to be casting the proverbial "None Of The Above" ballot.