From a Politico report on an "agricultural summit" that attracted Republican presidential candidates to Iowa over the weekend:

Bush made an effort to humanize himself. His best moment, in terms of connecting with the crowd, came as he endorsed mandatory country-of-origin labeling.

"When I go to Publix in Coral Gables, which I'll do tomorrow after church, to prepare for Sunday Fun Day in my house," he said, "we'll be cooking Iowa beef and we'll be making guacamole. I will want to know where that avocado comes from."

Maybe Mr. Bush hasn't fully thought this one through. The fact that Mr. Bush wants to know where his avocado comes from should be plenty of incentive for his grocer to provide him the information without a law from Washington forcing the grocer to do that. In fact, businesses do things aimed at pleasing customers, or meeting customer desires, all the time even without laws from Washington forcing the businesses to do that.

James K. Glassman has a USA Today op-ed piece with three ideas to increase economic growth: cut the corporate tax rate, lift the cap on skilled immigration, and expand free trade.

The front-page New York Times article about David Geffen's $100 million gift to Lincoln Center, which will rename Avery Fisher Hall as David Geffen Hall, touches on Mr. Geffen's New York ties:

Mr. Geffen's gift may signal a renewed commitment to New York, where he has kept an apartment since 1976 and where he started his career at William Morris — though Mr. Geffen said he has always maintained his connection to the city.

"I'm a kid from Brooklyn," he said. "I love New York."

The New York Times account of David Petraeus's plea deal in connection with a misdemeanor count of mishandling classified information includes the following background:

Mr. Petraeus is far from the first high-ranking official accused of mishandling classified information. Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales was admonished but not charged in 2008 for keeping information about the National Security Agency's wiretapping program at his house.
John M. Deutch, the C.I.A. director from May 1995 to December 1996, lost his security clearances but was not charged for keeping government secrets on his home computer. Samuel R. Berger, a former national security adviser, pleaded guilty in 2005 to a misdemeanor and paid a $50,000 fine for removing classified documents from the National Archives.

Amid the furor over Hillary Clinton's reported use of a non-government email account as secretary of State, one issue I haven't seen raised is how much the government spends on running government email systems, and how much money might be saved if all government workers followed Mrs. Clinton's example and used their personal email accounts (or a free Gmail, Yahoo, or Hotmail account) for intra-governmental communication. Maybe the security vulnerabilities or lack of permanent-record-keeping features would make such an approach untenable, but on the other hand, it would probably save the government some money. Using private email doesn't seem to have adversely affected Mrs. Clinton's performance as secretary of State.

Robert Reich, the U.C. Berkeley professor and former U.S. labor secretary who was recently named in a New York Times article as "one of some 200 economists and academics who have offered Mrs. Clinton ideas and guidance as she settles on an economic doctrine," has an article calling for the Democratic Party's 2016 presidential nominee to support "an end to trade agreements that take a big toll on wages of working-class Americans," as well as "higher corporate taxes."

Nobel laureate New York Times columnist Paul Krugman writes on his blog:

Maybe the right prefers guys without credentials because they really know how things work, although I'd argue that this proposition can be refuted with two words: Larry Kudlow. More likely, it's that affinity fraud thing: Professors, even if they're conservative, just aren't the base's kind of people. I don't think it's an accident that Kudlow still dresses like Gordon Gekko after all these years.
Anyway, food for thought — if thinking is the kind of thing you like to do.

It's actually sad that this this is what passes for discourse about ideas at the highest levels on the left — attacking an economist by making fun of his clothing. Meanwhile, the idea that professors are somehow inherently unpopular with the conservative base makes you wonder who bought all those books by Milton Friedman, Newt Gingrich, and Allan Bloom.

Amid the talk of a higher education bubble, it's worth remembering that not every institution makes it. Sweet Briar College in Virginia announced today that this year's graduating class will be its last. "Efforts will begin immediately to help current students transfer to other colleges and universities," the college said.

Former Harvard president and Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers has an interview with the Washington Post in which he calls for action to fight inequality:

insofar as the goal is to address inequality, I think we will need a combination of more substantially more progressive taxation than we have at present in the United States...There is, for example, no reason why the estate tax should be so riddled with loopholes and sheltering devices, as is currently the case. We need to look at places where there are substantial economic rents being earned, whether those are property values protected by exclusionary zoning, franchises contributing to the politically fortunate, overly generous protections of intellectual property, or implicit subsidies to the financial system, as examples.

Warren Buffett's annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders is the topic of my column this week. Please check it out at the New York Sun (here), Reason (here), and Newsmax (here).

No sooner had I posted my column from this week about the New Yorker magazine's political tilt than the magazine confirmed it with a piece that begins, "let's stipulate up front that Scott Walker, the governor of Wisconsin, is an odious politician whose ascension to the Presidency would be a disaster." The article decries Governor Walker's "hat tip to the Book of Genesis brigade," as if the New Yorker would prefer the Bible without the first book.

These sort of "up front' stipulations were what I meant when I wrote about the way the magazine seems to assume its readers share a certain political view, and how annoying that is for those of us readers who don't share it.

From the press release announcing David Ganek's Fifth- and Fourth-Amendment-based lawsuit against the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara, in connection with raid that the release calls "one of the only instances ever when FBI agents have raided a financial services organization without simultaneously making arrests or filing charges. That raid directly and predictably led to the closing of Level Global and cost nearly 60 innocent people their jobs and reputations"...

Money manger David Ganek has sued the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara, "claiming that the government violated his constitutional rights by fabricating accusations against him," the New York Times reports, adding that "Mr. Bharara's image as an invincible prosecutor...is beginning to fray." Let's hope so. And good for Mr. Ganek and his legal team for pushing back and giving Mr. Bharara at least a modest sense of what it is like to be on the other end of things.

The 90th anniversary issue of the New Yorker magazine, which included an article about commas and a profile of Apple executive Jonathan Ive, is the subject of my column this week. Please check it out at the New York Sun (here), Reason (here), and Newsmax (here).

From a New Republic critique of Patricia Arquette's Oscar speech: "addressing people as taxpayers is a rather unsavory (and typically right wing) habit that advances the notion people are worth what they pay in taxes."

It's a good thing no one ever told Samuel Adams that or we American taxpayers would still be stuck supporting the British royal family in their palaces.