A Democratic Congresswoman from Maine, Chellie Pingree, is reportedly considering a run for Senate after Senator Olympia Snowe's announcement that she will not seek re-election.

Ms. Pingree is married to S. Donald Sussman, the money manager who reportedly earlier this month reached a deal to give a loan of "$3 million to $4 million" to the company that owns the Portland Press-Herald, Maine's largest newspaper.

The Obama administration is turning the mandatory automobile back-up camera rule into the latest example of the pattern of its regulatory bark being worse than its bite. USA Today reports that the rule, which the New York Times said yesterday in a front-page story would be out this week, will now be delayed until, conveniently, after the presidential election.

From an article in today's Wall Street Journal:

Q: Since most if not all of the gasoline sold in the United States is mixed with 10% ethanol, which degrades gas mileage, does the EPA take this into consideration when determining average gas mileage?

—J. Kamisar, Weston, Conn.

A: No, the Environmental Protection Agency bases its fuel-economy ratings for vehicles on 100% gasoline. Drivers using the typical 10% ethanol blend should expect a decrease of 3% to 4% in fuel economy.

If this is true, it's outrageous. The government's fuel economy ratings are for a fuel that's different from the fuel that the government forces drivers to use.

The New York Times and San Jose Mercury News report:

Federal regulators plan to announce this week that automakers will be required to put rearview cameras in all passenger vehicles by 2014 to help drivers see what is behind them. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which proposed the mandate in late 2010, is expected to send a final version of the rule to Congress on Wednesday...in a preliminary version circulated for public comment, regulators predicted that adding the cameras and viewing screens will cost the auto industry as much as $2.7 billion a year, or $160 to $200 a vehicle. At least some of the cost is expected to be passed on to consumers through higher prices.

Today's Wall Street Journal Heard on the Street column notices one of the same sentences in Warren Buffett's annual letter that was mentioned here on Sunday, and makes a similar point.

Vanguard mutual funds founder John C. Bogle's call for higher capital gains taxes is the topic of my weekly column. Please check it out at Reason.com (here) or at the New York Sun (here).

The Charles Koch Foundation has published some of its correspondence with the New York Times over an article about the Heartland Institute.

For some lawyers the press is as important an audience as a jury or a judge.

Lawyer Gloria Allred has a 380-person press email list, Yahoo! News reports. Yahoo! publishes the list but removes the email addresses, thus perpetuating the system under which people who want attention from the press have to hire a Gloria Allred, or someone like her, to get it for them.

Return a rental car to the San Francisco Airport's giant joint rental-car garage and you might be confronted, as I was last night, with this sign: "Proposition 65 Warning: Vehicle exhaust fumes are present and contain chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm."

This struck me as at least slightly absurd for at least two reasons.

First, the sign is posted not at the entry door to the garage, but well inside, once it's too late to avoid exposure to the carcinogenic and birth-defect inducing chemicals. Even if it were posted at the entry door, it's not clear how the state expects people who view it to react. What is a driver supposed to do, abandon his rental car at roadside and then sprint to the terminal while holding his breath to avoid inhaling the exhaust fumes from the other vehicles?

Warren Buffett posted his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders this weekend. At least three points about the letter struck me as worth mentioning.

First, Mr. Buffett writes: "(A largely unnoted fact: Large numbers of people who have 'lost' their house through foreclosure have actually realized a profit because they carried out refinancings earlier that gave them cash in excess of their cost. In these cases, the evicted homeowner was the winner, and the victim was the lender.)"

This strikes me as a bit much. The lenders — who included arms of Wells Fargo, General Electric, and Bank of America, companies in which Berkshire Hathaway had or has sizeable positions — knew what they were getting into. The fact that they may have lost money by some definition on some mortgage loans doesn't make them "victims." People make investment decisions that wind up in losses all the time. That doesn't mean they are all "victims." Maybe that was the point Mr. Buffett was trying to make with his parenthetical statement, but it comes off as just spin to make the banks he owns look better.

This Wednesday, February 29, I will be speaking in Washington D.C. about Samuel Adams and why he matters now. The event is free and open to the public with advance registration, and there will be a "light lunch." FutureOfCapitalism readers in the Washington area are warmly invited to attend, to bring their friends, and even to get a special 50%-off discount on admission. There's also a webcast for those of you who don't like leaving your computers or who don't want to go anywhere near Washington. The link to RSVP to the event is here.

Allan Meltzer's new book Why Capitalism? is the topic of my weekly column. Please check it out at the New York Sun (here) or Reason.com (here).

CNN has posted a full transcript of its Wednesday night Mesa, Arizona, presidential debate, which I just finished reading. I thought the two most interesting comments came from Governor Romney. First, this:

With regards to -- to TARP it's very simple, or -- or the Wall Street. Look, I don't want to save any Wall Street Banks.

I just don't want (sic) make sure we lose all of our banks. And like -- like President Bush at the time, I was concerned that if we didn't do something, there were some pretty high risks that not just Wall Street banks, but all banks would collapse. And like many other people -- many other economists, they were concerned that our entire currency system would go down.

Amity Shlaes has a column about a new Tax Foundation study that the Foundation headlines, "Global Evidence on Taxes and Economic Growth: Payroll Taxes Have No Effect."

Shlaes is a genius and a friend with whom I agree probably 99.9% of the time, and the Tax Foundation is a wonderful institution that I also usually agree with. But on this one I think they are missing a key point. Here's the Shlaes column:

Maybe payroll-tax cuts don't equal growth. Perhaps they don't matter to growth. Perhaps other steps generate better growth....Some countries featuring very high or regressive payroll-tax rates, such as the Slovak Republic, with taxes in the mid-40 percent range, grew fast over the decade.

Here's the Tax Foundation report:

Here is New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's response to a question from CNN about Warren Buffett's call for higher taxes on his competitors, as reported in Mike Allen's Politico Playbook:

"[H]e should just write a check and shut up. (LAUGHTER) Really, and just contribute, OK? … I'm tired of hearing about it. If he wants to give the government more money, he's got the ability to write a check, go ahead and write it."