I am surprised to see that ACORN is still in the news this week. In case it is possible for anyone to have forgotten, James O’Keefe III and his associate Hannah Giles, posing as pimp and prostitute went to ACORN offices in five cities including Baltimore and D.C. They sought advice on establishing a brothel, including how to file taxes without arousing suspicion, and some ACORN workers scandalously obliged.

It would certainly be nice if more, even most Americans had a firm grasp of economics, real-world as well as classical. At least then, our public debate could focus on the features of economic life that actually exist. This would likely rein in the discourse on both the right and left. But in a national climate in which a substantial percentage of people don’t think evolution should be taught in schools, I see little hope for economics.

Whereas the rhetoric of the House is often transparently insane, the thrust and parry of the senate is endlessly amusing.

There is a new commercial out that is designed to make me angry about proposals at the state and national levels to help pay for healthcare by taxing soda and sweetened “juice” drinks. When these commercials first appeared, they so annoyed me that I immediately wrote to my congressman to say I was adamantly in favor of such a tax.

Critics of financial regulation say, among many other things, that increased regulation will stifle innovation. Over the past year, it has become clear that many innovations are indistinguishable from scams, and these types of innovations should certainly be stifled.

U.S. policy in Afghanistan increasingly reminds me of the episode of The Twilight Zone in which a little girl inadvertently slips though her bedroom wall and into a dimension not unlike an M.C. Escher drawing.