When a company overpays for the naming rights to a government-subsidized sports stadium, it's almost always a bad sign. Citigroup paid a reported $400 million in 2006 to call the new Mets baseball stadium Citi Field; Citi shares since then have tanked. Barclays paid $200 million for rights to put its name on the arena in Brooklyn where the Nets basketball team will play, an arena built with the use of state power to seize private homes through eminent domain. Now the CEO, chairman, and chief operating officer of Barclays have all resigned amid a scandal over fixing, or attempting to fix, the London interbank offered rate.

Four days after Mitt Romney's Jet Ski outing on Lake Winnipesaukee, it is still press fodder. The Boston Globe's Joan Vennochi weighs in with a column describing it as a "John Kerry moment," and the Wall Street Journal has an editorial observing, "the Obama campaign is assailing Mr. Romney as an out-of-touch rich man, and the rich man obliged by vacationing this week at his lake-side home with a jet-ski cameo."

Some thoughts on the Jet Ski photo (actually, it's not clear what brand of personal watercraft is pictured. It might be a Sea Doo, or a Kawasaki.) You can check out the photo at the Globe column link above.

First, his wife is driving. That's not something one sees all that often.

USA Today has an editorial reporting that the cost of the food stamp program grew to $78 billion in 2011 from $17 billion in 2000, while the number of Americans receiving benefits under the program grew to 46 million from 17 million. Says the editorial: "Numbers like these erode people's faith in the fairness of government anti-poverty programs. These numbers are not driven by a rise in hunger. Indeed they have come about at a time when Americans — particularly those on the lower-income rungs — are struggling with obesity....States also have been given cash bonuses from Washington for signing up more people."

My weekly column is about the attempt to strike down ObamaCare at the Supreme Court: "the whole episode points to the risks of the way in which the conservative movement, including the libertarian wing of it, has been overrun by lawyers in a less than entirely healthy way." Please check it out at Reason.com here or at Newsmax here or at the New York Sun here.

Gregg Easterbook tries to explain the failures of Pepco, the highly regulated electric utility that is keeping some Washington-area residents in the dark: "Montgomery County, Maryland, is one of the nation's bluest and wealthiest counties; its perennially awful power service raises the question of whether liberals can make the trains run on time."

David Brooks is not a columnist I often agree with, but he makes sense to me writing about ObamaCare:

People are apparently angry that the court didn't rid them of a law they detest. But that's silly. If Americans want to replace this thing, they should do it themselves....Critics of the bill shouldn't be hating on Chief Justice Roberts. If they can't make this case to the voters, they really shouldn't be in public life....Republicans say they trust the people. If that's true, then they won't waste another futile breath bashing the court for upholding Obamacare. They'll explicitly tell the country how they would replace it. Democracy is a contest between alternatives, not a deus ex machina stroke from the lords in black robes.

Jonah Goldberg writes in USA Today:

Obama's fraudulent claim that the Supreme Court agrees with him is not so unusual. The president has a well-known habit of insisting that not only is he right, but also that all smart people agree with him.

For instance, in a 2009 discussion of the economic stimulus, Obama toldTheWashington Post's Fred Hiatt, "Whatever arguments may be made by the critics at this point, there was no economist out there who thought we didn't need to do (it)." Or, in a speech about energy last March: "What I just said about energy, by the way, is not disputed by any energy expert. Everybody agrees with this."

Let the record show that there are, in fact, economists and energy experts who disagree with Barack Obama. Really.

Beyond what this tendency says about the president's own character, it certainly reveals the arrogance of liberalism itself.

Senator Rand Paul has an op-ed piece in USA Today likening Chief Justice Roberts' decision in the ObamaCare case to the Supreme Court's rulings in Plessy v. Ferguson (separate but equal) and in Dred Scott (fugitive slave). The comparison strikes me as over-the-top, but it's an indication of the tone of some of the reaction to the decision on the right.

V. Kerry Smith and Carlos Valcarcel Wolloh, economists at Arizona State University, take a look at the effects of the Clean Water Act, enacted 40 years ago in 1972 by President Nixon: "we find average water quality in U.S. lakes is at about the same level in 2011 as it was in 1975." Also, a bad economy is good for water, and vice versa: "As the unemployment rate rises, all the national indexes for water quality improve and the reverse seems to accompany improving economic conditions." They say that calls into question the popular idea that as household income increases so does environmental quality.

The title of their working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research is "Has Surface Water Quality Improved Since the Clean Water Act?"

Stanford Economics profession John Taylor reports on a recent speech at Stanford at which the former chairman and CEO of Wells Fargo, Dick Kovacevich, recounted:

the full story of how he was forced to take TARP funds even though Wells Fargo did not need or want the funds. The forcing event took place in October 2008 at a now well-known meeting at the U.S. Treasury with Hank Paulson, Ben Bernanke, as well as several other heads of major financial institutions.

The latest absurd Proposition 65 warning I've seen is this one, on a package of Diamond brand wooden matches that I purchased today in a supermarket in New York City:

CALIFORNIA PROPOSITION 65 WARNING:

Combustion of this manufactured product results in the emissions of carbon monoxide, soot and other combustion by-products which are known by the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects, or reproductive harm.

First, the amount of "carbon monoxide, soot and other combustion by-products" that results from the combustion of a single match seems very small, so small that it seems unlikely to cause cancer, birth defects, or reproductive harm.

Steven Greenhut has a Bloomberg View column explaining why the eminent domain mortgage grab moving ahead in San Bernardino County, California is a bad idea:

Grabbing private mortgages could lead to a widespread reluctance by private firms to lend money in the county -- or at least an increase in the cost of lending in that area. That would be a particular problem given that an obstacle to a revived housing market, especially in low-income, high-unemployment areas, is the inability of homebuyers to qualify for mortgages....Rather than advancing a public good, the main beneficiary of this idea would be those private interests most adept at manipulating the government. Policy makers should reject this abuse of property rights and allow the housing market to do what it already is doing -- recover on its own.

Usually this site reviews books rather than just recommending them. But Glenn Beck's latest, Cowards: What Politicians, Radicals and the Media Refuse to Say, is an exception. I particularly liked the chapters on education and on capitalism. If you buy it from the link in this item, this site gets a share of the revenues at no extra cost to you.

So long as I have some of my friends on the right disagreeing with me already over the ObamaCare ruling, I might as well make one other point about our separated powers and modesty and restraint in government that may add to my unpopularity. Concerning yesterday's vote by the House of Representatives to find Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for refusing to surrender documents he claims are protected by executive privilege: Some day, the Republicans are going to find themselves in control of the executive branch, and it is going to be Nancy Pelosi, Richard Durbin, Charles Schumer, and Carl Levin trying to get their hands on privileged executive branch documents. And then things are going to look different.

The Grumpy Economist, the University of Chicago's John Cohrane:

We should not rely on the court to determine economic policy or write laws. That's what Congress and Administration are for. If you don't like the health care law, try to find someone of either party with the courage to say just how he or she will repeal and replace, and vote.

This will be healthy for both parties. Defenders can't say how wonderful it would all have been except that the nasty polticized court threw it out. They will have to own Obamacare as it falls apart at the seams. Opponents will have to work to repeal, and explain what they will replace with.

David Brooks:

Roberts has made a period of innovation and change more likely. He did it by taking the court off center stage and by letting the political process play out.

Self-restraint. It's a good thing. More people should try it.