This week in good news

Omar Bashir has agreed to accept an independent South Sudan: It’s been a good day for Southern Sudan: An incredible 98.83 percent of Southern Sudanese voters opted for secession last month, according to official results released today. But almost as incredible, Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir proclaimed that he was ready for (and even welcomed) and [...]

I had some problems finding this one, because my news feeds seem to be filled with Pakistani assassination and Tunisian riots and general horribleness in Haiti. But I think this roughly qualifies as good news (From Free Exchange): The statement that low taxes drive population growth boils down to the idea that lower taxes in [...]

The house passed a bill on Wednesday to repeal “Don’t ask don’t tell” (DADT). The Senate should vote on it next week (senate floor time was said to be the largest obstacle, the Senate supposedly has 60 people willing to vote in favor). Cato-At-Liberty has some details about some of the more nuanced issues involved [...]

From Matthew Yglesias: One, corporate profits aren’t really at a record high. Two, corporate profits hit new highs all the time in an expanding economy. The real story here isn’t that nominal profits are at a record high, it’s that real profits are still below-peak. Which is just to say that corporate profits, like most everything [...]