Is there a more frequently committed instance of the looking-only-at-what-is-seen error than the frequently committed insistence that war is good for the economy?

But Cannon’s Law says that if it will work, then the government won’t do it. If regulation would really bite, the regulated parties will work the political system to kill it.

The tragedy of the world’s 160 million missing girls isn’t that they’re “missing.” The tragedy is that they’re dead.

When we said capitalism went on a sabbatical three years ago, we didn’t expect this to be a permanent vacation. In the past five years, private sector loans have deflated by $1.9 trillion, while public sector assisted credit has surged a similar amount. Roughly nine in 10 dollars of mortgage flow is being dominated by the Federal government — Fannie Mae, Ginnie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the FHA.

How about a tax on each American who keeps the same automobile for, say, more than five years? After all, someone who keeps her car in good repair and, as a result, lets many years pass between the time she bought her last car and the time she buys another, contributes to the decline of the U.S. auto industry in precisely the same way as does the most fanatical buyer of shiny new Volkswagens or Hondas.

So Blagojevich will be the fourth former governor of Illinois to go to jail since 1973. It is quite remarkable that President Obama has been able to avoid any significant association with the political culture from which he emerged.