Wired has the tale of how plumbers' unions and state and local building codes almost stymied the introduction of the environmental innovation known as the water-free urinal. Link via Timothy Carney.

Robert Pozen has a piece in the Wall Street Journal pushing back against the expansion of deposit insurance. His fall-back position: "If political pressures require a permanent expansion of FDIC insurance of bank deposits, Congress should move to a two-tiered structure. The FDIC should fully guarantee the first $100,000 in any bank account, and should guarantee a lesser percentage (e.g., 80%- 90%) of any amount in that bank account between $100,000 and $250,000. That compromise would help community banks, retain a measure of market discipline, and reduce the FDIC's costs in resolving bank failures."

Concord, Massachusetts is preparing to impose an outright ban on the sale of bottled water, the New York Times reports. The motive appears to be environmentalism.

The divergence in opinions between elites and everyone else plays out in Turkey as well as in America, reports Harold Rhode, a former Pentagon official who knows Turkey well: "It now appears that the average Turk -- for lack of a better term - approximately 70% of the population who is not part of the political establishment, the academic establishment, or the media -- now understands that this crisis has hurt Turkey internationally and politically and that there was no reason for Turkey to provoke Israel."

To judge by Mr. Rhode's article, published on the Hudson Institute New York Web site, Turkey is hardly a lost cause for NATO or the West, and it's way too early to write the country off, as some have been tempted to do.

Bloomberg News headline on an article about financial "reform" legislation: "Volcker Rule Under Attack as Lawmakers Seek Hedge Fund Loophole." How is it a "loophole" to allow banks to do things that they already do, and that haven't been outlawed yet?

When you see the press describing something as a "loophole," it's generally code for a legislative provision that an editor or a reporter or the owner of the news outlet doesn't like.

Larry Kudlow suggests making like Ralph Lauren:

Why not consider taking some profits off the table, before the tax man arrives next year? Taxes on capital gains and dividends are heading higher folks. Why not book some gains before the IRS grabs them?

I'm not suggesting that investors sell everything they own. But investors may want to seriously consider lightening their portfolios a bit. Take some profits on these mini-market rallies.

The Kudlow column doesn't mention Ralph Lauren, but that's the move he's talking about.

Pajamas Media has published an article I wrote about the departure plans of President Obama's director of management and budget, Peter Orszag.

The Wall Street Journal manages to write a whole article about a fake press release that moved over the press-release distribution operation Business Wire without mentioning that Business Wire is owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. A Reuters article on the same situation includes a Buffett reference in the second sentence, making the Journal's omission all the more glaring.

The Wall Street Journal ups the ante with its second stripper story in as many days (we noted yesterday's here). The paper hasn't yet stooped to a New York Times-style slide show.

We've been following the press coverage of fund manager Steven Eisman's attack on for-profit colleges. The latest development: a New York Times story, with no mention of Mr. Eisman or any other managers short the colleges, which says, "For-profit colleges have less than 10 percent of the nation's college students, but get about 25 percent of all federal student-aid disbursements." The article begins:

Concerned about the disproportionate share of federal student aid flowing to for-profit colleges, several Democratic lawmakers on Monday asked the federal Government Accountability Office to investigate the for-profit institutions, in terms of both quality and finance.

The following is an actual Associated Press headline: "AP sources: Obama to reveal health law details."

Wouldn't it have been nice if the details had been revealed before the law was voted on by Congress?

First came yesterday's Telegraph story that White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel is "expected" to resign. Now Bloomberg reports that the White House budget director, Peter Orszag, will leave in July.

Thomas Sowell invokes the Nazis and the Soviet Communists and says, "In our times, American democracy is being dismantled, piece by piece, before our very eyes by the current administration in Washington, and few people seem to be concerned about it." He says the $20 billion BP fund is an example of "arbitrary power-- versus the rule of law and the preservation of freedom." It's a good thing Mr. Sowell isn't a Republican congressman or John Boehner would force him to apologize.

Glenn Beck also takes aim at the absurdities of Fatherhood.gov.

The latest data point in the New York newspaper war: The Wall Street Journal runs out a dispatch from Kansas City, Mo., under the headline, "Showdown Over Strippers." It's accompanied by pictures but not the full-scale slideshow that the New York Times included earlier this month in its dispatch from Illinois that ran under the headline "School-Turned-Strip-Club Bothers the Alumni." Somebody call the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism.