The Boston financial whiz who tried for years to expose Bernard Madoff reveals in an explosive new memoir that he made plans to murder the Ponzi schemer if necessary.

“If (Madoff) contacted me and threatened me, I was going to go down to New York and take him out,” Whitman resident Harry Markopolos writes in “No One Would Listen,” due in bookstores Tuesday. “At that point, it would have come down to him or me, (and) I felt I had no other options: I was going to kill him.”

Because that’s where the money is – Willie Sutton on why he robbed banks.

But what did the carping conservatives expect from Scott Brown? As an elected official, he answers to his constituents, who come from one of the most liberal states in the country. Although it's premature to characterize his record on the basis of a single vote, no one should be surprised if it ends up being on the leftward side of the GOP caucus.

If Scott Brown is a RINO, any conservative with a semblance of sanity should drop to his knees and say a prayer of thanks for the creation of RINOs. If the species didn't exist, Sen. Martha Coakley would be the 60th vote in favor of ObamaCare. No, scratch that. She'd be the 62nd vote for ObamaCare, the 60th and 61st coming from the Maine Democrats who would have soundly defeated whatever "real" Republicans ran in place of Snowe and Collins.

“If climate change were caused by gay sex, or by the practice of eating kittens, millions of protesters would be massing in the streets.”

One Big Brother is, of course, a socializing elite (as we know, several cut-rate brands are on the shelves). Miss Rand, as the enemy of any socializing force, calls in a Big Brother of her own contriving to do battle with the other. … The author (hasn’t), apparently, brooded on the degree to which, in a wicked world, a materialism of the Right and a materialism of the Left first surprisingly resemble, then, in action, tend to blend each with each, because, while differing at the top in avowed purpose, and possibly in conflict there, at bottom they are much the same thing.

Hours before Seth Wescott’s incredible performance in the snowboardcross final was broadcast nationally on NBC, his friends and colleagues were jumping on the bar and spraying champagne all around the restaurant Wescott owns near Sugarloaf in Maine.

The Rack was packed with people listening to play-by-play of the race over the phone from Nova Scotia, where the father of a bar patron was watching live on Canadian television.

The New York Times learned of the operation on Thursday, but delayed reporting it at the request of White House officials, who contended that making it public would end a hugely successful intelligence-gathering effort. The officials said that the group’s leaders had been unaware of Mullah Baradar’s capture and that if it became public they might cover their tracks and become more careful about communicating with each other.

Compare all this to the Fort Hill military base mass murders this fall, allegedly by psychiatrist Nidal Hasan. Similar story: bad job evaluations, rambling lectures, bizarre anti-Iraq war screeds, incomprehensible attempts to justify suicide bombings.

Political correctness run amok. That was the excuse then for why everyone ignored the warnings.

What’s the excuse now?

For those concerned about warming, it's time for a shift in emphasis. Fortunately, one has already been provided to them by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who has done more than any Democrat to keep climate legislation alive this year. His solution: skip the hurricanes and Himalayan glaciers and keep the argument on the hundreds of billions of dollars spent annually on foreign oil, some of that going to terrorists rather than to domestic job creation.

Nothing like a snowstorm on Truck Day Eve Day to cement the relationship between hoping for Spring and going batshit loony.

It was great film study. … We knew that on third-and-short they stack, and they like the outside release for the slant. Once (Austin) Collie motioned down, we knew No. 1 (Reggie Wayne) was going to wide depart and run to the sticks. I saw him do that. He wide-departed, and I jumped the route and the ball came right into my hands.

It was great film study by me, a great jump and a great play. It means so much. I’m a Louisiana native. This is real big.

Unbelievable … That the President is using most of his free 10 minutes during the Super Bowl pregame to push the healthcare bill, slam Republicans for not going along, and take batting practice from Katie Couric on how government can solve everything. For one day, keep the competitiveness on the football field!

Unfortunately, it's slightly less believable that he continues to be shocked by insurers raising premiums in the face of enormous uncertainty that HE and the congressional leadership have generated in the health market!

... All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most easily adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum.

The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

Now that the runaway train of one-party profligacy has flown off the tracks in Massachusetts, is there any chance We the People might seize this opportunity to re-examine our party loyalties, challenging the destructive duopoly that's been serving our nation so poorly? How can the decisive repudiations of both the party of George Bush and the party of Ted Kennedy in quick succession possibly be spun to the merit of either?

Isn’t it obvious that a disgusted electorate has had enough of both?

In the end, who caused what deficits when isn't important. What is important is finding some way to avoid that (future) spike. And both parties seem to be a long way away from having anything like a serious discussion about that challenge.

The pleasures of prosperity backfired. They bred carelessness and complacency. If regulation was lax, the main reason was that regulators -- like the lenders, investors and borrowers they regulated -- shared the conventional wisdom. Markets seemed to be working. Why interfere? That was the lesson of experience, not an abstract devotion to the theory of "efficient markets," as is now increasingly argued. Euphoria, or something close to it, was considered realism.

And once again, we are in the world of the angry voter.

Really angry. Compared with Illinois, Massachusetts is Athens in the age of Pericles.