Quick hits

A few links courtesy of instapundit:

• An amazing/depressing quote from a top Democrat on the House Banking Committee
• More on Democrats trying to undo welfare reform and make more people dependent on government
• Suggestions that "green" policies may have played a role in the death toll from wildfires in Australia.

That last one really sickens me. When I first read about the wildfires I started thinking about some of the terrible fires in the American West in the past decade and how many of them were much worse than the needed to be because of a lack of logging in the forests. Basically without the removal of trees and deadwood the whole place turned into a tinderbox just waiting to inflame. I wondered if something similar might have been going on in Australia -- looks like that might be the case.