Marlin Steel, which used to make baskets for bagel stores, has grown by leaps and bounds by transforming itself into a maker of precision metal baskets for manufacturers. Charles Fishman of Fast Company has the story. Link via The Browser, which kvells: "all business reporting should be this good."

Republican criticism of Secretary of State Kerry for being on a yacht at Nantucket during the coup in Egypt is the topic of my column this week, in which I rise to the defense of Captain Kerry. Please check it out at Reason (here) or Newsmax (here).

Libertarian law professor Richard Epstein's column this week for the Hoover Institution's web site is about the myth of a pro-business Supreme Court. "The current anti-business rhetoric seriously misstates the relevant issues," he writes.

A few days old, but worth a mention: The Washington Post has an article about how the Obama administration's alarmist warnings about the effects of the sequester did not turn out to come true. The Post says the sequester: "has not produced what the Obama administration predicted: widespread breakdowns in crucial government services."

Link via Slate's Matthew Yglesias, who writes, "the Obama administration should be somewhat embarassed by its own overblown rhetoric...There's some real waste in federal spending."

Scott Rosenberg has an article looking at Google as an example of the potential for innovation even when it seems like there is not room for any:

you have to recall the Web scene that Google was born into. In 1998, search was over. It was a "solved problem"! Altavista, Excite, Infoseek, Lycos, and the rest — all these sites provided an essential but fully understood service to Web users. All that was left was for the "portal" companies to build profitable businesses around them, and the Web would be complete.

Google burst onto this scene and said, "No, you don't understand, there's room to improve here." That was correct.

The federal student loan policy, along with the financial aid policies of many colleges and universities, "implicitly discriminates against those who are frugal and fiscally responsible," Richard Vedder of Ohio University writes at Bloomberg View. He adds that "surprisingly little academic work" has been done on this issue, "perhaps because college professors indirectly benefit from this policy."

The speaker of the New York State assembly, Sheldon Silver, a Democrat, was paid between $350,000 and $450,000 for his "of counsel" work in 2012 by plaintiff's lawyers Weitz & Luxenberg, according to a newly required detailed financial disclosure reported in the Daily News.

That's considerably more than his income as Assembly speaker. It's certainly possible that Mr. Silver is opposed to tort reform for public policy reasons or ideology rather than for personal financial reasons, but the current arrangement makes it rather difficult to put that proposition to a test.

For a taste of how complex it can be to comply with federal employment law, take a look at this week's opinion from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in the case of Mortgage Bankers Association v. Seth Harris.

Mr. Harris is the acting secretary of labor. The case involves whether, under the Federal Fair Labor Standards Act, mortgage loan officers qualify as exempt professionals, or whether they must be paid overtime if they work more than 40 hours a week. From the opinion:

Libertarian law professor Richard Epstein's column this week is about the Supreme Court's decision on gay marriage: "how the Court reached its result on matters of constitutional procedure should be disturbing to anyone who cares about constitutional law, regardless of his or her personal views on same-sex marriage."

What the Boston Red Sox, who are leading the American League East, can teach us about immigration policy is the subject of my column this week. Please check it out at the New York Sun (here), Reason (here), and Newsmax (here).

The Boston Globe has an editorial calling for an end on the state-imposed cap on the number of liquor licenses issued in Boston:

While Boston can't issue new licenses, well-financed restaurateurs can buy them from someone else. But because of the artificial scarcity of licenses, a full liquor license can go for more than $300,000. Even a beer and wine license often costs $40,000 or more — a crippling expense to someone like Henry-Garrett, who bought her restaurant tables at Ikea to save money.

The Constitution's Fifth Amendment states: "nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."

Determining what exactly is "just compensation," however, isn't always so easy. The Martha's Vineyard Gazette has an account of the state of Massachusetts seizing a summer house that a family has owned since 1963. The state plans to construct a larger bridge on the land. The newspaper reports:

In an interview with the Gazette last month Mrs. Holloman described a tangled decade-long standoff between her family and the state over whether they would be allowed to stay in the house, and if not, also over what is fair market value for the property. The state has appraised the property at $267,000. An appraisal commissioned by Mrs. Holloman put the value at between $1.2 million and $1.5 million. The town assessed the property at $447,000 in 2012.

Jeffrey Toobin writes in the New Yorker: "There is a lingering mythology that Justices turn out to surprise the Presidents who appoint them to the Court. That was last true during the Eisenhower Administration."

What about Justice Souter, appointed by a Republican president, George H.W. Bush, who turned into a reliable liberal vote on the high court?

The New Yorker magazine has a long article about a George Soros-funded campaign against the Swiss-based Israeli mining businessman Beny Steinmetz and his company Beny Steinmetz Group Resources. The article reports, "B.S.G.R. does not have a compliance department."

It reminded me of my column from a few months back. The New Yorker's tone about it is faintly damning, as if compliance departments actually are associated with law-abiding behavior, and as if the Beny Steinmetz group's lack of one is proof of a kind of recklessness rather than merely a failure to comply with the convention that in order to appear compliant a company must hire staff devoted to compliance.

The quarterly drive for paying subscribers that we've been running here this week is wrapping up today, so this will be the last pitch. The response so far has been really encouraging, but we are still just short of our participation goal, so if you have been meaning to do this, or are even halfway thinking about it, please seize the moment. Reasons for helping were outlined earlier this week in Ten Reasons to Become a Paying Subscriber and Ten More Reasons to Become a Paying Subscriber. If you have any questions, they are probably covered in the Frequently Asked Questions. Bottom line: an entry-level $49 annual subscription is less than $1 a week, entitles you to receive quarterly reports sent only to paying subscribers, is crucial to sustaining the site's operations, and will send an encouraging signal of support for what we do here. Thank you to all who have already participated. The rest of you, please, help out. The link is here.