"Where is Peter Orszag now?" is the question answered in my column this week. Please check it out at Reason here.

Duke Energy Renewables agreed to pay a $1 million fine and pleaded guilty to violating the Migratory Bird Treaty Act in connection with the deaths of 14 golden eagles and "dozens of other birds" at two wind power generation projects in Wyoming, the New York Times reports.

It's a reminder that while "green" energy advocates seek taxpayer subsidies and portray fossil fuels as polluting, pretty much every means of generating power has some environmental cost.

The New York Times has an interview with an alpaca farmer who lives on Martha's Vineyard and who asserts, "Alpacas are a federally recognized livestock, so owning them has tax benefits."

The Times doesn't press the issue, but why the tax code should incentivize someone to open an alpaca farm on Martha's Vineyard (or anywhere else, for that matter) is a fine public policy question that you'd think might be asked by some non-farmers.

Pope Francis is using his first apostolic exhortation, published today, to criticize what he describes as the excesses of free market, growth-oriented economics:

Glenn Beck had me on his radio show to talk JFK, Conservative and has a report of the event at GlennBeck.com here.

Mr. Bartley's burger cottage in Harvard Square, a fine Cambridge institution, has added "The Obamacare" as a burger on its menu. Description: "Nobody knows what's in it!...Ask the liberal sitting next to you." Price "Trillions."

The op-ed of today's New York Post carries my article about President Kennedy's New York connections, both personal and ideological. More coverage of JFK, Conservative is at, among other places, the New York Sun, Marketwatch and Rush Limbaugh.

Free trade may be one area where President Obama can resuscitate his presidency by emulating President Kennedy, I write in my column this week. Please check it out at the New York Sun (here), Reason (here), and Newsmax (here).

Mid-sized organic farmers are protesting a proposed Food and Drug Administration rule that would restrict the use of manure as fertilizer, NPR reports.

One of the questions I have been getting as I go around promoting JFK, Conservative is "What about Barry Goldwater?" Wasn't Goldwater, not Kennedy, the real conservative of the day, and wasn't Goldwater a critic of Kennedy? I address this point in the book, but nonetheless it's marvelous to get the following comment from a FutureOfCapitalism reader-participant-watchdog-community member-content co-creator

The Massachusetts Nurses Association announced that it has collected what it says are "more than 100,000 signatures" for a ballot initiative that has to be read to be believed. As the Nurses Association summarizes it:

1. If in any fiscal year a facility that accepts funds from the Commonwealth, and whose patient mix is less than 60% government payer, reports to the Center for Health Information and Analysis an annual operating margin, including amortization and depreciation that exceeds 8%, that facility shall be subject to a civil penalty equal to the amount by which the annual operating margin exceeds 8%.

2. If a hospital that receives taxpayer money should compensate its CEO annually more than 100 times the annual compensation of the lowest paid full-time employee of that hospital, the hospital will be fined an amount equal to the amount that the CEO's compensation is over 100 times the compensation of the lowest paid full-time employee, and that fine will also be deposited into the Medicaid Reimbursement Enhancement Fund.

A Republican senator from Utah, Mike Lee, gave a speech to the Heritage Foundation about poverty:

freedom doesn't mean "you're on your own." Freedom means "we're all in this together." The conservative vision for America is not an Ayn Rand novel. It's a Norman Rockwell painting, or a Frank Capra movie: a nation "of plain, ordinary kindness, and a little looking out for the other fellow, too."

Amity Shlaes devotes her Forbes column to the book JFK, Conservative, which she calls "brilliant."

Singer Tina Turner has given up her American citizenship and become Swiss, USA Today reports, the latest reminder that talent and capital are highly mobile.

The FDA's proposed ban on trans-fats, including old-fashioned stick margarine, is the topic of my column this week. Please check it out at Reason (here) or Newsmax (here).