Mark Sanford reviewed Ayn Rand (like as a human?) for Newsweek. This is a thing that happened! Anyway, Mark Sanford really did not think this whole thing out, publishing his close reading masterwork in Newsweek, as this essay has all the makings of a winner of The Ayn Rand Institute’s annual 8th to 10th grade Anthem essay contest! Grand prize = $85,000, and plus your name and high school gets posted on the Ayn Rand fansite, which will become hilarious for your friends by 11th grade at the very latest. Anyway, see if you can tell which conjectures came from Mark Sanford’s Newsweek essay and which came from the 2009 Anthem contest winner from “Mariemont High School, Cincinnati, OH, USA.” As always, grand prize is an “iPhone,” except the “i” is capitalized and shit because RIGHTS OF THE INDIVIDUAL SDLFJSLDK. MORE »

• The Jews have excommunicated Matt Yglesias, which means he will no longer receive the weekly newsletter. Also, he has lost his peanut butter-and-jelly challah sandwich privileges. [Matt Yglesias]
• REDSTATE SIREN! Republican Senators are probably folding on health care! Why? For Pete’s sake, they have pocket rockets! [RedState]
• Jonah Goldberg. Born lobotomized? [True/Slant: Michael Roston]
• Ayn Rand is considered one of America’s most influential intellectuals, although almost everyone agrees that she is slightly less important than Star Wars Kid. [Hit & Run]
• Have you pre-ordered your copy of The Case Against Female Suffrage yet? Ha-Ha. We are doomed. [Think Progress]

• EAT A BAG OF LOW-FAT NUTRIENT-DENSE DICKS, JOHN MACKEY: The CEO of Whole Foods is a big fan of Ayn Rand, did you know that? Which explains why his solution to America’s healthcare crisis is for people to quit being so goddamn lazy and eat more healthy vegetables, which are easily procured for $4.99 a pound at Whole Foods! Meanwhile, a study shows that people on food stamps get fatter because you cannot buy healthy $4.99-a-pound vegetables when you are on food stamps. [Wall Street Journal, Science Daily]

Have you heard about the hot new craze sweeping the ranks of marginally employed basement-dwelling Pajamas Media devotees? It’s called “Going Galt,” and it refers to when the owner of a small haberdashery in East Tennessee has to lay off employees because nobody wants hats anymore, but the owner says they are voluntarily withdrawing their productive labor from society because Barack Obama is a “looter” and a socialist. MORE »

THREE GUESSES WHAT RON PAUL’S SON’S NAME IS, PEOPLE. Is it “Atlas” or “Shrugged”? Maybe “Fountainhead”? Or is there some libertarian writer namesake that might include all of these? MORE »

Some little hipster clarinet player from NYU is claiming the Iraq invasion and occupation was all about securing oil supplies for America. Oh and what is that sticking out of Jazzbo Al’s tattered raincoat? A worn paperback of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged,” which he actually first read when she was writing it, when he was screwing some gal in Rand’s “inner circle” and writing angry letters to the New York Times about how “parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should.” That’s right, we’re talking about former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan! MORE »

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s crazy new plan to actually ensure health insurance for everybody in California will likely have all sorts of problems and certainly won’t ever satisfy everybody, but unless you’re a Mexican-hating multi-millionaire like Lou Dobbs, it’s hard to find something wrong with the idea of making basic medical care available to the self-employed and working poor.

Luckily for California, the state isn’t just home to communist hippies like the governor — it’s also home to Irvine’s beloved Ayn Rand Institute, which today attacked Arnold’s proposal as “a moral travesty.”

Read the objectivist objections to this latest GOP socialist attack on America’s values, after the jump.

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Totally reasonable and well-respected “Christian Libertarian” philosopher Vox Day lays out the case for the existence of an “unholy alliance of Jews, atheists and African-American Marxists waging war on the Christmas holiday.” MORE »

• Congressional logic: “War = ok, Gambling = not so ok.” [A 'Feel Good' Production]
• There is a secret Chick-fil-A at GW. [Till Human Voices Wake Us, And We Drown]
• “…this latest rash of allen’s attack ads employing women-as-a-wedge plays like a demand for every pre-pregnant woman to make a decision; i’ve made mine, and it’s to support the candidate who would continue to allow me to make my own choices.” [Cocoricamo]
• Perfect, “they are going to make a movie of Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged and Angelina is going to play Dagney.” [MLP's Blog]
• Free screenings of Saved and Jessica Simpson’s Employee of the Month in Maryland. We’re just going to let that sink in. [Too Many Words]