From a New York Times article about Clinton campaign fundraisers in London organized by Anna Wintour:

The designers Alber Elbaz, Christopher Bailey of Burberry and Tom Ford were among the couple of hundred guests paying $500 each for the gallery event ($1,000 including a photo with Chelsea Clinton) or $2,700 for the dinner. Mr. Elbaz, who cannot vote as he is not an American citizen, said he went to support his partner, Alex Koo, who is. Mr. Bailey, who is British, is a friend of Chelsea Clinton.

From the Federal Election Commission website: "Foreign nationals are prohibited from making any contributions or expenditures in connection with any election in the U.S. Please note, however, that "green card" holders (i.e., individuals lawfully admitted for permanent residence in the U.S.) are not considered foreign nationals and, as a result, may contribute."

In the Portland Press Herald, Mary Pols has a smart look at how the ridiculous complexities of labor law are interfering with farmers trying to make a living in Maine. There's a small farm exemption for agricultural workers, but if the worker runs a credit card or sells an apple pie at a farm stand, turns milk into yoghurt, or drives a truck or tractor to pick up crops from a neighboring farm, the Fair Labor Standards Act applies. From the story: "Does anyone really understand this stuff, besides lawyers and bureaucrats?...rejuvenated interest in farming has been good for Maine's economy, but it's also created nebulous new situations where farmers – and their employees – might be violating labor laws without even realizing it."

The story quotes one farmer, Jack Lazor of Butterworks Farm in Vermont, who was raided by the Department of Labor. Mr. Lazor says, "I think the best thing to do is stay small and not hire anybody."

Sometimes the most informative New York Times coverage of overregulation (not an oxymoron, really) comes in, of all places, the food section. From today's article on "How to Pick a Wine Store":

State regulations can also shape the atmosphere of a wine shop. New York shops cannot sell beer, unlike those in Virginia and California. Unwined in Alexandria has an excellent selection of craft beers, including six taps for filling growlers, while Bay Grape offers a fine assortment of bottled beers. New York wine shops, strangely, are also not permitted to sell food, unlike Virginia and California.

What would New Yorkers do without the legislature and governor protecting them from the risk of being able to buy beer or food in a wine store?

A fascinating story is unfolding on Capitol Hill involving Congress's efforts to shield the payday loan industry and its mainly working poor customers from the crippling "protection" of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The news is that the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, has sided with the industry and its customers against the CFPB bureaucrats.

The panic over Donald Trump has reached Larry Summers, the former Treasury Secretary and Harvard president, who writes:

The geopolitical consequences of Donald Trump's rise may be even more serious. The rest of the world is incredulous and appalled by the possibility of a Trump presidency and has started quietly rethinking its approach to the United States accordingly. The US and China are struggling over influence in Asia. It is hard to imagine something better for China than the US moving to adopt a policy of 'truculent isolationism.' The Trans-Pacific Partnership, a central element in our rebalancing toward Asia, could collapse.

Bill Clinton was in my hometown of Worcester late last night campaigning for Hillary. I stopped by and wrote it up for the New York Sun: please check the story out here.

To me the most newsworthy part was the brazen borrowing of the Bush and Kasich language about helping all Americans "rise."

But also noteworthy were Mr. Clinton's hostile comments about hedge funds and activist investors.

Robert Gordon's The Rise and Fall of American Growth is the topic of libertarian (or classical liberal) law professor Richard Epstein's latest column. Professor Epstein faults Professor Gordon for failing to deal with how the rise of government has slowed growth. Professor Epstein writes:

Gordon attributes the decline in innovation to matters of demographics, education, debt, and inequality, ruefully noting the negative growth in income over the last few years in the United States. But at no point does he mention that the source of all these negative trends is an expansion in the size of government that outpaces the rise in GDP.

Rush Limbaugh's account of his dinner with Rupert Murdoch and Senator Schumer is worth a look.

And my goodness, if Senator Schumer's constituents get word that he had a cordial dinner with Rupert Murdoch and Rush Limbaugh, who knows if he'll ever be welcome back in Park Slope.

How panicked should we be over Donald Trump? My column this week tries to answer that question. Please check it out at CapX (here), the New York Sun (here), Newsmax (here).

Regular readers here know that I am not exactly a big booster of Donald Trump. Yet I also try to point out specious anti-Trump arguments when they appear, which they do with some increasing frequency. The latest line of attack involves criticizing him for having inherited wealth. So, in Thursday night's CNN Republican debate, Senator Rubio said of Mr. Trump, "If he hadn't inherited $200 million you know where he'd be right now? He'd be selling watches in Manhattan." And in today's Wall Street Journal, Kimberly Strassel writes that among Mr. Trump's political vulnerabilities are that, "This is the man who was born to a silver spoon."

Setting up a no-inherited-wealth test for the presidency would have ruled out JFK, FDR, and the two most recent Republican presidents. It's not Mr. Trump's fault (or FDR's, or JFK's) that they were born into rich families. If anything, this line of attack shows how the ceaseless class warfare rhetoric on the Democratic side has crossed the aisle to infect Republican discourse as well.

After being in the excellent hands of a series of Bukharan Jewish barbers in New York, I moved to Boston and, after some experimentation, finally found a guy who gives a great haircut at a reasonable price without too much talking. He happens to be muslim, an immigrant from Jordan.

I was getting my hair cut the other day and CNN was on in the shop and they did a piece on Trump and Cruz. My barber pointed up at the television at Trump and asked, "Our next president?" I shrugged as diplomatically as I can, which isn't very, especially when wearing one of those barbershop capes.

"I know he's said some things about muslims, and I am muslim. But he is a businessman — you'll see how quickly he'll change his position once he gets in." My muslim barber said he could live with Trump.

Anecdotes don't equal data, I know. But I thought it was worth passing along. We'll have more to say later on the question of "how panicked should we be about Trump?"

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Bank of America Corp. is rolling out a new-mortgage product that would allow borrowers to make down payments of as little as 3%...the new loans are backed in a partnership with mortgage-finance giant Freddie Mac and the Self-Help Ventures Fund, a Durham, N.C.-based nonprofit....To get the loans under Bank of America's new program, borrowers must have a credit score of at least 660, which is higher than FHA's requirement, and an income that is less than the area's median.

I hope that works out well for everyone involved, but in the event of a recession that leaves those borrowers jobless or a real estate downturn that leaves the houses worth less than the mortgages, it will not be pretty.

Matthew Continetti has an interesting post up at the Washington Free Beacon about David Frum's 1995 book Dead Right:

Frum's typology of post-Reagan conservatives. He divides them into three groups. There are optimists, led by Jack Kemp. There are moralists, led by William J. Bennett. And there are nationalists, led by Pat Buchanan....

It is worth considering where these groups stand today. Kemp protégé Paul Ryan is clearly the leader of the optimists. Donald Trump is clearly the leader of the nationalists. But I can't tell you who the leader of the moralists is.

President Obama's potential choices for the spot on the Supreme Court created by the death of Antonin Scalia are the topic of my column this week. It includes some possible picks whose names you may not have heard. Please check the full column out at the New York Sun (here), Reason (here), and Newsmax (here).

The conflict between the government and Apple over whether Apple should have to devise and provide the government a way to unlock the iphone of the San Bernardino shooter is in the news after Apple's CEO issued a public letter protesting the request.

I can see both sides of this one. Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, issued a statement accusing Apple of, in essence, arrogantly overreaching: "Apple chose to protect a dead ISIS terrorist's p‎rivacy over the security of the American people. ... It's unfortunate that the great company Apple is becoming the company of choice for terrorists, drug dealers, and sexual predators of all sorts."

Apple. on the other hand, makes it sound like it is the U.S. government that is overreaching.

I do have a few thoughts to add.