"Retire to the whores' rooms"

Ayn Rand gets her wish
Originally uploaded by vegacura.

HBO has been rebroadcasting the first season of "Deadwood" this week in advance of Sunday's second season premiere. In an episode last night, one of the characters, acting as judge in the trial of "the coward McCall," uttered the following:

"The jury will now retire to the whores' rooms and begin their
deliberations."

For some reason, that line reminded me of Alan Greenspan's Capitol Hill testimony this week. Senate minority leader, Harry Reid, had a similar impression, I feel certain.

"I'm not a big Greenspan fan -- Alan Greenspan fan," Reid said when asked about the Fed chairman's testimony this week urging Congress to deal quickly with the financial problems facing Social Security and Medicare. "I voted against him the last two times. I think he's one of the biggest political hacks we have in Washington."

[...]

"Why doesn't he respond to the Republicans and tell them the big problem here is the debt that this administration [has] created?" he said. "We had a $7 trillion-dollar surplus when Bush took office. Now we have a $3 or $4 trillion-dollar deficit. That's, in fact, what Greenspan should be telling people."

And now the Objectivist is calling for a regressive consumption tax to replace income taxes, which remains somewhat progressive, though less so with each new "tax reform" that's put in place.