Libertarian law professor Richard Epstein's latest weekly column is about corporate welfare: "The libertarian position demands that we examine all government action on a presumption of distrust. In particular, this means that great care should be taken to see that government assets should not be given away to private interests. Rather, they should be transferred through competitive actions that require private parties to pay just compensation to the public treasury for public assets that they buy or lease. In a 1987 article in the Cato Journal, I made the claim that a well-functioning constitution needs to have not only a Takings Clause but also a 'Givings Clause.'"

My former colleague Josh Gerstein, writing in Politico, details five promises that President Obama made but has not kept.

The last paragraph of a Wall Street Journal editorial today headlined "Hillary's Responsibility":

CNN reported Monday night from Lima that Mrs. Clinton finally addressed the White House comments by saying "I take responsibility" for what happened in Benghazi. She added that "I want to avoid some kind of political gotcha" so close to an election. That's nice, but it still leaves many questions, such as why her own comments to the U.N. differed so much from the substance and tone of Mr. Obama's. Saying you take "responsibility" in brief interviews from faraway Peru is a long way from acting as if you're responsible.

The front-page, lead news article from the same day's newspaper:

In the first presidential debate, Mitt Romney said that his tax plan "is not like anything that's been tried before." In the vice presidential debate, Paul Ryan said of his tax plan, "it's been done before." The apparent contradiction — and the possibility that they are both right — is the topic of my column this week. Please check it out at the New York Sun (here), Newsmax (here), and Reason (here).

Nicholas Kristof's Sunday New York Times column is about his Harvard freshman-year roommate, Scott Androes, who has cancer after going from the end of 2003 to 2012 without health insurance.

Mr. Kristof writes, "it would have made more sense to provide Scott with insurance and regular physicals. Catching the cancer earlier would have saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in radiation and chemo expenses — and maybe a life as well." He goes on to write that this is what the upcoming presidential election is about.

It's a moving, sad, and touching tale in a kind of there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I way, and on Sunday night it was high on the list of most-emailed-articles on the Times Web site.

But the more I thought about it, the more I was troubled by some unanswered questions. Maybe Mr. Kristof can answer them in a follow-up column, or in the comments section below, or maybe Mr. Androes will — I hope his health recovers enough for him to engage in this debate.

The movie Atlas Shrugged, Part II, based on the Ayn Rand book, arrived in movie theaters today.

I saw it at a theater in Manhattan.

It was both important and disappointing.

Disappointing, because it begins with an airplane chase scene in which the airplane looks disturbingly obviously like a toy model, and because that is a pretty good indicator of the low-budget production and dramatic values throughout. There are no superstar actors, and the action drags at times while the characters make heavy-handed political speeches.

But important, because the scenario the film describes — a world in which many of the best and brightest disappear or quit because of a government that takes what it wants and taxes what it leaves behind — is one that may seem familiar, or potentially close, to many viewers.

News that the European Union had won the Nobel Peace Prize brought to mind a lunch I had a few weeks ago with the president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus.

Mr. Klaus was in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, but he took a time out for an event presented by the Hudson Institute and the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College that was timed to the launch in America of his book Europe: The Shattering of Illusions.

In respect of the European Union, Mr. Klaus said, "we find ourselves in a blind alley. The only possible way out is the way back."

He said the sovereign debt crisis is just the tip of a much bigger iceberg — a Europe that has no citizens, only inhabitants. He said he favors European trade liberalization and "integration," but that the European Union had attempted to go far beyond that, to "unification" into a "superstate."

"I think that democracy can exist not at the level of a continent, just at the level of a state," he said.

The debate between Vice President Biden and Congressman Paul Ryan was almost painful to watch, but it was probably useful in terms of reminding voters what each party stands for.

The Democrats are the ones who promise more stuff. "Any senior out there today, ask yourself, do you have more benefits today? You do," Mr. Biden said, looking right into the camera and taking credit for reducing the "doughnut hole" for prescription drugs in Medicare and for "wellness visits" with "no copay."

Mr. Biden was not shy about how long he's been around, boasting that he was in the room in 1983 when Tip O'Neill cut a deal and saying that Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has "been my friend for 39 years."

The Democrats also pose as the enemies of the rich. Mr. Biden accused Republicans of "holding hostage the middle class tax cut" for the "superwealthy." He mentioned hedge funds and said, "the biggest loophole they are taking advantage of is the carried interest, the capital gains loophole."

The Washington Post reports:

Just before leaving public office in 2001, [Vice President Al] Gore reported assets of less than $2 million; today, his wealth is estimated at $100 million....Fourteen green-tech firms in which Gore invested received or directly benefited from more than $2.5 billion in loans, grants and tax breaks, part of President Obama's historic push to seed a U.S. renewable-energy industry with public money.

One example:

Iberdrola Renovables, a wind subsidiary largely owned by the Spanish electricity giant Iberdrola, received $1.5 billion for 20 wind farms it built across the United States.

Via YouTube: "Yes, in socialism the rich will be poorer, but the poor will also be poorer."

The Washington Free Beacon has a couple of interesting stories:

First, "The owner of Olive Garden and Red Lobster will shift more employees to part-time status in a trial designed to minimize the impact of new requirements imposed by the Affordable Care Act."

Businesses that started in garages — included Google, Apple, Amazon, Mattel, Hewlett-Packard, and Lender's Bagels — were the topic of my column this week. Courtesy of Newsbusters.org, I just learned of another — Westgate Resorts and its parent company, Central Florida Investments. From the company's Web site: "From a tiny orange grove and the dream of a man working out of his garage, Westgate Resorts and its parent company, Central Florida Investments (CFI), have grown into the largest privately-owned timeshare company in the world employing over 10,000 around the United States."

The New York Times has an interview with Donald P. Cogsville, "chief executive of the Cogsville Group, a private equity firm that last week won a bid to buy foreclosed homes through a Fannie Mae pilot program." From the interview:

Q. How much of your business is tied to the government?

A. Well, right now a fair amount. From the very beginning our strategy has been that the government is going to be somewhat monolithic in its ability to actually be at the epicenter of the problem, and so our ability to partner with the federal government was part of the strategy. We partnered with the F.D.I.C. and we now pivot over to Fannie and Freddie, where the residential crisis is happening in more of an acute way, and HUD and F.H.A.

Gotham Schools reports:

seven years into its existence, the nation's first union-run school is one of the lowest-performing schools in the city. Fewer than a third of students are reading on grade level, and the math proficiency rate among eighth-graders is less than half the city average....

The United Federation of Teachers, which runs the school under a charter, appears pleased, though.

"I go to that school and I'm very, very happy with what we see," UFT President Michael Mulgrew said last week. "The parents are great, the teachers are doing a good job. We are very happy."

Libertarian law professor Richard Epstein's latest column is about the Supreme Court case involving affirmative action in admissions to the University of Texas.