Amity Shlaes explains that “lousy lawmakers, not low taxes, created fiscal woes.” (HT James McClure)

Boston Globe conservative-libertarian columnist Jeff Jacoby supports birthright citizenship in America.  Here’s his ringing conclusion:

Here’s a letter to a DC-area radio station, WTOP:

During today’s 1:00pm hour you played a clip of a listener who is “livid that Americans aren’t up in arms against the devastation that corporations inflict” on us.  This gentleman’s anger was sparked by the BP oil spill.

I have little sympathy for BP, it being a firm that has often feasted at government troughs.  But some perspective is now very much needed on the costs and benefits of corporations.

Here’s a letter to the Financial Times:

Several questions popped to mind after reading Nobel laureate economist Michael Spence’s essay in your pages today (“America needs a growth strategy“).  Here are a few:

Here’s a letter to the Washington Post:

Deborah Hahn writes: “Until the damaged BP well in the Gulf of Mexico is capped, please publish daily a front-page picture of wildlife covered in oil, in misery, dying, unable to be cleaned” (Letters, June 26).  Ms. Hahn believes that “such pictures are needed to educate the public” about the “horrors of what oil accidents do to our fellow creatures.”

PERC’s Terry Anderson – an incredibly creative and insightful economist and economic historian – explains in today’s Wall Street Journal that it’s safer to drill “in ‘the backyard.’”  Here’s a key ‘graf:

The best line of the day is from George Will’s Washington Post column:

Two of my outstanding colleagues over at the GMU School of Law – Todd Zywicki and Josh Wright – expose, in today’s Washington Times, several of the flaws that underlie Sen. Dick Durbin’s attempt to justify government control of debit-card interchange fees.

Jim Peron reminds us how well free minds and free markets work – so well that we take this working for granted.

Here’s a letter to The Atlantic:

Sebastian Mallaby cogently summarizes Paul Romer’s vital contributions to the theory of economic growth – contributions that highlight the role, not of mechanistic additions to the stock of technology and capital goods, but, instead, of good ideas (“The Politically Incorrect Guide to Ending Poverty,” July/August).

Bob Higgs wishes that the end were near for apocalyptic fear-mongering.

My GMU colleague, over in the law school, J.W. Verret weighs in at the New York Times – along with Lynn Stout, Jeff Miron and some others – on the legality and wisdom of preventing BP from paying dividends to its shareholders.