The American Enterprise Institute's Nick Schulz, reviewing a book for the Wall Street Journal, writes:

Then there is the U.S. patent system, an essential function of government meant to nurture and protect business. Instead, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has become more a corporate inhibitor. How many patent applications were stacked up, awaiting approval, as of the first of the year? A "staggering" 1.2 million, the author reports. That's triple the number of a decade ago. To be fair, the patent office isn't entirely to blame. It is chronically underfunded by Congress, which in the past 20 years has diverted to other uses more than a billion dollars in fees collected by the office.

With patent applications languishing, weakening intellectual-property protections, companies encounter more trouble finding funding. Technological advance slows. Despite all the talk on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue about the need for more jobs, Washington is crippling one of our most effective economic stimulants.

The New York Sun has brought out its editorials on the dollar and the gold standard as a book under the title It Shines For All. The editorials are preceded by a short introduction by James Grant, the editor of Grant's Interest Rate Observer, and they are followed by excerpts from the Coinage Act of 1792.

The editorials are beautifully crafted and designed to make the point that, as one of them puts it, the gold standard "is not a flakey idea. On the contrary, it is fiat money that is the flakey idea."

"Arnott Index Derided by Bogle as Witchcraft Beats Vanguard Fund," is the headline over a Bloomberg News profile of money manger Robert Arnott. From the article:

Eugene Fama, a professor of finance at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business who helped develop the efficient market hypothesis, said Arnott's indexes represent a triumph of marketing rather than an innovation in investing. In a 2007 interview in the Journal of Indexes, Fama said they simply capture the "value effect" by using measures such as cash flow to select cheaper equities, not unlike what stock pickers do. In an e-mail in April, Fama said of Arnott's work, "My view hasn't changed."

What the article doesn't mention is that Professor Fama is a "board member of Dimensional Fund Advisors" and a consultant for Dimensional's Fixed Income and Value Strategies. In other words, he's a money manager that competes with Mr. Arnott.

The Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, which isn't exactly the Heartland Institute or the Heritage Foundation "asked eight leading climate experts whether they think there is growing evidence that human-caused global warming is contributing to an increased incidence of extreme weather." Among the answers:

Andrew Watson, professor of environmental sciences at the University of East Anglia.
My answer to this question as posed is no...."Human-caused climate change" is something that will develop over decades to a century (the time scale on which greenhouse gas concentrations are changing), and evidence for or against it needs also to be considered over such lengths of time. So if you are thinking about recent events such as Hurricane Katrina, tornadoes in Alabama or Missouri, flooding in Bangladesh, Southeast Asia or on the Mississippi, my answer is that a few such examples of extreme weather cannot, by definition, be used as evidence for, or against, climate change.

A conference on Free Markets and Social Progress held late last month at Jerusalem is the topic of an article in the Jewish Ideas Daily headlined "Jews and Capitalism." Russell Roberts of George Mason University was among the speakers. The Jewish Ideas Daily article begins with the question, "Why are so many Jews discomfited by capitalism—and not merely by the caricature of capitalism as rapacious speculation and exploitative profiteering but by the very idea of organizing an economy along free-market lines?" I'm grateful for the detailed coverage of this conference, which I otherwise wouldn't have known about, but to me the more interesting questions about Jews and capitalism are why are so many Jews so good at it and why are so many people from Jewish backgrounds (Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand) so prominent among its defenders?

The Washington Examiner's Timothy Carney has an article about President Obama's choice for commerce secretary, John Bryson, writing that Mr. Bryson has made a career in "the government-directed economy, where businesses profit by working hand-in-hand with politicians and bureaucrats."

From a New York Times article announcing the promotion of Jill Abramson, the co-author of Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas, to executive editor of the New York Times: "In my house growing up, The Times substituted for religion," she said. "If The Times said it, it was the absolute truth."

Diana Furchtgott-Roth has a column updating the state of play on light bulb laws:

Representative Joe Barton, a Texas Republican, proposed the Better Use of Light Bulb Act (BULB) on January 5.

Charlotte Baker, Chairman Upton's press secretary, told me in an email that "the committee plans to hold a hearing on lighting efficiency standards later this month," but she would not tell me whether the BULB Act would be included.

The bill, which has 62 cosponsors, 61 Republicans and one Democrat, would repeal the phaseout of incandescent light bulbs. A companion bill in the Senate is sponsored by Wyoming Republican Michael Enzi, and has 28 cosponsors.

The House Republican leadership has evinced no interest in bringing the Barton bill to the floor.

Via Greg Mankiw's blog comes a set of slides from Nobel laureate economist Robert Lucas making the case that government policies now are contributing to the slow recovery as they did in the 1930s. "I see analogies to the U.S. of the 1930's," he writes:

The New York Times has a news article about what it says is a decline in the number of Korean grocers in New York City. Toward the end there is a passage about competition: "Whole Foods, Fresh Direct and pharmacy chains have cut into his profits, he said. The fruit carts that City Hall has helped proliferate, including one across Broadway from his store, undercut his prices."

Mike Allen's Politico Paybook has advance excerpts of Mitt Romney's presidential announcement speech, and what struck me in them were the echoes of Democrats past. There's a Romney reference to "Folks who grew up believing that if they played by the rules, worked hard, that they would have the chance to build a good life, with steady work and always that possibility to work a little harder and get ahead," which is an echo of Bill Clinton's 1992 speech (click through to that link and you might smile) at Madison Square Garden in New York accepting the Democratic presidential nomination: "In the name of all the people who do the work, pay the taxes, raise the kids and play by the rules--of the hard-working Americans who make up our forgotten middle class, I proudly accept your nomination for President of the United States of America."

"Google Antitrust Probe by U.S. Could Take Years" is the headline over a Bloomberg News article that begins, "Google Inc. (GOOG) may be forced to spend years defending itself in a U.S. Federal Trade Commission investigation that could be the government's biggest antitrust probe since the Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) case. Even if Google ultimately prevails, the probe might create uncertainty around the company's business, slowing its momentum, lawyers and analysts said." [Emphasis ours.]

Note all the wiggle words: "could...may...could...might." This investigation could be the biggest since Microsoft and create business uncertainty for Google for years. Or it could not. The article focuses on the possibility that it could.

Lewis Lehrman and Frank Cannon have an op-ed in the Washington Times warning that the Republicans may focus too much on cutting spending and not enough on unleashing growth. They quote Rep. Jack Kemp, in 1979, saying: "If one political party concentrates on increasing public spending and the other party concentrates on decreasing public spending, who is left to concentrate on economic growth, and the expansion of opportunities that can come only from such growth?"

John Stossel's latest column is about Walter Williams' new book, Race and Economics, and argues that government programs like welfare and the minimum wage, designed to help poor people, wind up hurting them.

In a column in the New York Times, David Leonhardt refers to "Edward Glaeser, a conservative-leaning Harvard economist."

The review here of Mr. Glaeser's book criticized it for "a series of unquestioned left-wing assumptions," including its claim that "there's no free-market solution for the great urban problem facing slums," its claim that "Over the past thirty years, American society has become more unequal," its assertion that in Israel "factions have wasted decades fighting over land," its advocacy of high-speed rail, its call for increased taxes on gas and carbon emissions, and its overheated rhetoric on global warming.

If Mr. Glaeser is, in Mr. Leonhardt's view, "conservative-leaning," what does that say about Mr. Leonhardt's own political leanings?

In any event, this is a standard tic of the left-wing press — conservatives must be labeled as such so that the left-wing readers can be adequately warned.