How can a man sound believable while claiming, falsely, to have voted for Secretary Clinton? It may seem like an arcane challenge, but it is one that will face more than a few American men on Election Day. And it is the topic of my latest column, which appears at Newsmax. Please check it out by clicking here.

Warren Buffett's history of touting how well managed Wells Fargo is, and his $14.45 billion paper profit for Berkshire Hathaway on his position in the bank that was creating phony accounts for customers without their permission, is the topic of my column this week for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Please check the whole column out by clicking the link here, and, if you like it, share it with your friends.

Is there a way to vote for the paid-bank-speech-giving Hillary Clinton instead of the wooing-Bernie Sanders primary voters Hillary?

Recent disclosures indicate that, speaking to Deutsche Bank in 2013, Mrs. Clinton expressed support for hydraulic fracturing as a way of obtaining oil and gas. "I've promoted fracking," she said.

In a 2013 speech to a Brazilian bank, Mrs. Clinton reportedly said, "My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open borders, sometime in the future." (The New York Times still hasn't corrected its story calling it a "whopper" and a "falsehood" when Trump accused Clinton of proposing effectively to abolish the nation's borders.)

At least five women Trump voters in my Facebook feed say they plan to stick with their intentions to vote for Mr. Trump notwithstanding the release of the tape of him speaking crudely about his advances, or assaults, on women.

These women voters have already discounted him as something less than exactly chivalrous, and figure he's better than the Hillary and Bill Clinton alternative.

It's the men that Trump might need to worry about, especially if they focus on the portion of the tape which features Mr. Trump saying about one woman, "I took her out furniture shopping."

For understandable reasons, most press coverage so far has focused on other parts of the tape. But that may be missing a key point.

Furniture shopping, for the average red-blooded, Archie Bunker, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity type American male, ranks somewhere between getting waterboarded and serving time in prison on the list of things that you would really, really, really rather not do.

Couldn't Mr. Trump have taken this woman to a football game, or a boxing match, or out to a steakhouse, or for a ride on his plane, or yacht, or just home to watch Netflix and chill?

Optimism or pessimism? Jeffrey Goldberg recommends one; George Will the other. Who is right? That is the topic of my column this week. Please check it out at Newsmax (here) and Reason (here).

Of all the moments in the oral argument Wednesday in the case of Salman v. United States, in which the Supreme Court got its long-awaited opportunity to revisit insider trading law in the aftermath of the Second Circuit's decision in Newman, the one that I found most striking in the transcript was this one. It was an exchange between Chief Justice Roberts and the deputy solicitor general, Michael Dreeben:

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: I'm not interested in who the government would seek to have liable. I'm interested in what the rule is going to be.

MR. DREEBEN: I'm equating the two, Mr. Chief Justice. I'm not --

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: This Court has not equated the two.

(Laughter.)

Union Square Ventures partner Fred Wilson writes at Inc.: "This is the fourth presidential election during the existence of Union Square Ventures and the first one in which we as a firm feel compelled to endorse a candidate: Hillary Clinton."

This is kind of ironic verging on comical, because Clinton has vowed to overturn the Citizens United Supreme Court decision that found corporate political speech was protected by the First Amendment. So this business — it's a New York City-based venture capital fund — is endorsing a presidential candidate who says businesses shouldn't be allowed to get involved in presidential politics. It looks to me like a double standard, where if you are a conservative or libertarian businessman or business engaging in politics — Koch Industries, or the Koch Brothers — you get demonized, but if you are left-of-center, you get a free pass.

The press's intense focus on Donald Trump's truthfulness brought to my mind at least two significant episodes where President Obama did not keep his word. They are the topic of my Las Vegas Review-Journal column this week; please check the full column out by clicking here. And the next time someone mention's Trump's supposed truthfulness problems, share, if you dare, the video embedded below.

The presidential debate and the state of the campaign, including Donald Trump, were the topic of a WGBH podcast, "The Scrum," on which I was a guest. A link is here, if you have been wondering what I thought of the debate or whether I am planning to vote for Trump, or if you are curious how I sound on a podcast.

From George Will's latest column:

The American project was to construct a constitutional regime whose institutional architecture would guarantee the limited government implied by the Founders' philosophy: Government is instituted to "secure" (the Declaration of Independence) preexisting natural rights. Today, however, neither the executive nor legislative branches takes this seriously, the judiciary has forsworn enforcing it, and neither political party represents it because no substantial constituency supports it.

Mr. Will's column goes on to call America "a country that currently is indifferent to its founding." That's hard to square with the popularity of "Hamilton" on Broadway. Perhaps the whole column is too pessimistic, or perhaps Mr. Will is right that conservatives "need a talent for pessimism." He certainly displays such talent in this particular column.

Amid a whole column full of hysterical and highly skippable Trump-bashing, Thomas Friedman actually buries a pretty good point that is worth passing along:

if you want to be an optimist about America, stand on your head — the country looks so much better from the bottom up. What you see are towns and regions not waiting for Washington, D.C., but coming together themselves to fix infrastructure, education and governance. I see it everywhere I go.

And, relatedly, this: "I am not enamored of Clinton's stale, liberal, centralized view of politics."

Secretary of State Kerry does what neither Donald Trump nor Hillary Clinton is willing to do: deliver a robust defense of free trade in general and of the Trans-Pacific Partnership in particular, framed in terms of American leadership in Asia. Check out the speech.

Students can now apply to college as members of a small group rather than as individuals, Bloomberg News reports, noting that the program is supported by Senator Elizabeth Warren and by former FDIC chairman Sheila Bair, who is now a college president: "What if the school allowed certain students to apply as part of a group?...In some cases, Bair said, the school slightly eased its traditional admissions standards for certain students' friends, to allow them both to enroll...Donors, including San Francisco-based Bank of the West, a unit of BNP Paribas SA, are covering slightly less than half the cost."

The Bloomberg story doesn't explore the question of how a bank wound up as a donor to this Warren-Bair program.

Before blaming Clinton or Trump, look in the mirror. That's the message of my column this week, which is about the Jewish holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and their message in this political season. Please check out the column at the New Boston Post (here), the New York Sun (here), and Newsmax (here).

From a Hudson Institute event in New York City last week at which Benjamin Netanyahu was honored with the Hudson Institute's Herman Kahn award:

[Interviewer]: Isn't it possible to do more and grow faster? And what are those things that the Netanyahu government has to do to get it done?

NETANYAHU: Well, the first thing is deregulation.

...regulation is required, but over-regulation is not, we definitely have over-regulation. I chair a few government committees, I mean I actually chair them, and every few weeks I bring in with my director general all of the relevant ministries and we cut. We take a machete and we cut. I'm looking for the silver machete; there are a few, you'll be hearing about them.

But that's goal number one because the greatest impediment right now to entrepreneurship, which is the key to economic growth, is holding back the power of bureaucrats and regulators, holding them back and yet keeping what you need. And that's a delicate balancing act. But it's not very delicate because we just over-regulate. So everything that you see about the Israeli economy is with this over-regulation, which tells you what the potential is.