Max Boot writes on the Commentary magazine Web log, regarding the disclosures of programs that appear to allow the U.S. government to access Verizon and Google customer data without the knowledge or consent of the customers: "President Obama deserves to be commended for continuing these programs, building on work done in the Bush administration, rather than being attacked as the second coming of Big Brother."

The New York Times has a different view of it in an editorial:

Essentially, the administration is saying that without any individual suspicion of wrongdoing, the government is allowed to know whom Americans are calling every time they make a phone call, for how long they talk and from where.

From Harvard's big new official report on the decline in undergraduates choosing to study the humanities — i.e. history, English — rather than more "practical" fields such as computer science or economics:

Large private investment groups buying up single-family homes are the topic of a front-page New York Times article. The article focuses on Riverside County, Calif. The Times doesn't mention it, but Riverside County is adjacent to San Bernardino County, which was the center of efforts by other investors to use the government power of eminent domain to seize control of houses (or of the underlying mortgages or securitized mortgages). The Riverside County example, in which home prices are recovering amid substantial private investment on a market basis — without the use of the eminent domain power — would seem to undermine the case for the use of eminent domain. In fact, though again, the article doesn't get into it, I wouldn't be surprised if this development is concentrated in Riverside County more than in San Bernardino County because San Bernardino County has been most out-front in exploring the use of eminent domain power in a way that threatens the rights of some of the existing property owners.

Not available online, an article headlined "Home Buying 101" in the Spring 2013 "Real Estate & Homes" supplement to the Vineyard Gazette quotes Polly K. Bassett, the "co-owner and a broker of Martha's Vineyard Mortgage Company, L.L.C." She says, "We have access to a wide range of programs such as USDA, which is a program where you can put no money down, 100 per cent financing, and we also do a 97 percent financing with three per cent down....There are a lot of programs out there for people buying their first home."

Buy your first home on Martha's Vineyard with zero percent or three percent down? This might be a good idea for a borrower if prices go up, but it's not a good idea for a lender if the price goes down. "USDA" isn't explained in the article, but it might be a U.S. Department of Agriculture program for farm property, which means the lender is us, the taxpayers. And the Federal Housing Administration has a three-percent down program, which means, again, the taxpayers are on the hook.

This would be a fine topic for a congressional hearing; if the Vineyard Gazette is going to write about it, a little more skepticism would go a long way.

The business career of Frank Lautenberg, the senator from New Jersey who died this week, is the subject of my latest column. His fortune came from his role building the payroll processing firm ADP, where he worked for more years than he spent in the Senate. Please check the column out at Time (here), Reason (here), the New York Sun (here), and Newsmax (here).

John Cochrane (here) and Benn Steil and Dinah Walker (here) have posts about Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke's announcement that the Fed will consider "a recalibration" of the pace of its asset purchases.

Timothy Carney's column in the Washington examiner focuses on the latest set of spins through the revolving door: "This is the way of Washington. Use public power to subsidize an industry, then go to work for that industry."

Boston Globe columnist Scot Lehigh has an article praising mayoral candidate John Connolly for defying the city's teachers union:

given the way the teachers' union has behaved under Stutman's stewardship, receiving its imprimatur is akin to having a highly visible vampire bite on one's neck....Bostonians should want mayoral and City Council candidates who, like Connolly, put the interests of students and their families above those of the teachers' union.

Finally, voters should look skeptically at whichever candidate ends up with the union's backing. Absent compelling evidence to the contrary, that endorsement should be taken as a sign that the candidate in question isn't strong enough on education reform.

Democratic pollster Mark Mellman writes in The Hill that the Democrats seeking to regain control of the House have their own demographic challenges:

regaining control will require a careful strategy to reach out to those normally not well disposed to voting for Democrats: white voters in suburbs and rural areas, including the somewhat wealthier, the more religious and men. Failure to make progress with these segments will leave Democrats a minority in the House for years to come.

Libertarian law professor Richard Epstein's column this week is about the Congressional attack on Apple's tax tactics: "a series of distracting hearings meant only to excoriate a profitable American company for making entirely legal, and totally rational, decisions."

Disclosure: I own some Apple shares (though in retrospect it may have been a mistake to buy stock in a company with Al Gore as a director), an iPhone and and an Apple MacBook Pro on which this Web site is written.

Under the headline, "Fix, don't flatten, the tax code," the American Enterprise Institute has posted an article by its DeWitt Wallace Fellow, James Pethokoukis, that originally appeared at National Review Online. The article argues against a flat tax on income, that is, against a tax that would treat everyone the same by applying the same federal tax rate to all income, or to all income above some baseline level.

My initial reaction was to roll my eyes and say to myself, "For this, we need AEI and National Review Online?" My secondary reaction was to try to stifle the initial reaction on the grounds that people on the center-right spend too much time criticizing each other rather than supporting each other. And my third reaction, which I think is the best one, was to try to explain in a constructive and measured way why I think Mr. Pethokoukis' arguments against a flat tax are not particularly strong ones.

Here, then, are Mr. Pethokoukis' arguments against a flat tax (in quotation marks), followed by my responses.

A new book by Columbia Business School dean Glenn Hubbard and Hudson Institute economist Tim Kane, Balance: The Economics of Great Powers From Ancient Rome to Modern America, is the subject of my column this week. The book calls for a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution and discusses the debasement of Roman coins under the emperor Septimius Severus. Please check the column out at the New York Sun (here) and Newsmax (here).

A gala for Success Academy Charter Schools is the topic of a dispatch at Bloomberg News by my former New York Sun colleague Amanda Gordon, who mentions some of the numbers that tell the story of the remarkable growth spearheaded by Eva Moskowitz, the dynamic former New York City Council member. The organization is on track to have 11,500 students in 23 schools and, as Ms. Gordon reports, the gala attracted significant support from leaders in New York's financial services industry.

The Nation has an article about the businesses funding the left-leaning Center for American Progress. According to the Nation article, they include Goldman Sachs, Comcast, Walmart, General Motors, Pacific Gas and Electric, General Electric, Boeing, and Lockheed.

The YouTube video in which the former congressman, Anthony Weiner, announces his candidacy for mayor of New York includes a shout-out to deregulation. The video shows a pizza parlor and Mr. Weiner says, "If you're trying to run a small business like this one, you're drowning in regulations that nickle and dime you to death."