"A ‘Minnesota Entertainment Commission’ would eliminate duplicative operations, de-politicize the planning process..."

That simply means keeping the public out of the decision-making loop, i.e. no referenda on spending public money.

About Excelsior Energy, you wrote (or quoted someone as writing), "has yet to move a shovelful of dirt to build its would-be 2,000-megawatt, $2.1 billion power plant. And despite receiving virtually all of its backing from the public trough, the company’s spending records, including its officers’ paychecks, remain under wraps.”

Sounds like they've been taking lessons from the Nigerian companies with government contracts. For 20 years they've collected money up front and produced...

You wrote, "The idea of the president, rather than the Supreme court, deciding which federal laws are unconstitutional should give us all pause..."

I second your reservations. But, before Marbury v Madison (1803) there were serious discussions about whether Congress or the President had they authority to decide if a law was "legal."

Then John Marshall had his way with the rest of the Court.

You wrote, "Could he have designed a four- or five-year peaceful transitional plan to a real multiparty constitutional democracy, leading to his own retirement? Could he have reduced by 50 percent or so the embedded corruption in the Egyptian economy? Could he have pulled it off and ended up rich, beloved and remembered positively through the ages? Could someone who grew up in the system in which he grew up and who had lived the life he lived even imagine such an alternative path?"

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