Typically, disputes like those over the U.S. attorney and terrorist-surveillance program are worked out by compromise. If a president wants to protect his prerogatives, he also wants to preserve a working relationship with Congress. But this particular relationship can’t be saved. Comity is impossible with a Congress bent on doing all it can to destroy what remains of the Bush administration. In the matter of the U.S. attorneys, the administration has provided Congress 8,500 pages of documents and numerous officials and former officials have testified. This isn’t enough for a Congress that won’t stop until it has run-down every outlandish conspiracy theory about the firings that -- even if clumsy and ill-advised -- were perfectly within Bush’s power to make.

And so, the administration was justified in saying both, "no more," and "see you in court." There, it can hope to get a decision that strengthens the executive’s ability to protect its deliberations for a long time to come.

Ethanol production has driven up the prices of corn-fed livestock, such as beef, chicken and dairy products, and products made from corn, such as cereals. As a result of higher demand for corn, other grain prices, such as soybean and wheat, have risen dramatically. The fact that the U.S. is the world's largest grain producer and exporter means that the ethanol-induced higher grain prices will have a worldwide impact on food prices.

It's easy to understand how the public, looking for cheaper gasoline, can be taken in by the call for increased ethanol usage. But politicians, corn farmers and ethanol producers know they are running a cruel hoax on the American consumer. They are in it for the money. The top leader in the ethanol hoax is Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), the country's largest producer of ethanol. Ethanol producers and the farm lobby have pressured farm state congressmen into believing that it would be political suicide if they didn't support subsidized ethanol production. That's the stick. Campaign contributions play the role of the carrot.

In America, drivers are fuming and politicians are demanding explanations because gasoline has hit about $3.50 per gallon. That's less than half the price being paid by motorists in most industrialized countries. High to us is low to them. Then there are the oil refiners. Relative to the $120 price of crude, $3.50 for gasoline is so cheap that their margins have virtually disappeared. So "high" in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Oxford, Mississippi is "low" in similarly named cities in the UK, and "high" for motorists is "low" for refiners. It depends where you live, and at which point in the supply chain you find yourself.

But assume that prices are "high", which indeed they are by historic standards. We are mistaken when we think these "high" prices are causing inflation. High oil prices can force consumers to spend more on gasoline and heating oil, at the expense of other purchases. Ask any suffering restaurateur or clothes retailer if you doubt that. But high oil prices can't trigger a rise in the general price level -- inflation -- unless someone pumps money into the economy so that, to use an oldie but goodie from the economists' lexicon, there is more money chasing the same amount of goods.

If you want something to blame for inflation, don't look at oil prices, look at the billions the Federal Reserve Board's monetary policy gurus and their confederates at the U.S. Treasury are pouring into the economic system. The cost to taxpayers of saving the financial services sector from ruin is not only making good any collateral the Fed has accepted that might prove worthless, but the run-up in the rate of inflation.

Hate crimes "are different" from other crimes: That was the argument for hate-crimes laws that Al Gore made during the 2000 campaign, and it is the argument that we are going to hear again this week, as Congress takes up federal legislation on the subject. Crimes motivated by hostility to the victim’s race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation are said to be different chiefly because they, supposedly, instill fear in entire communities and generate social division.

Even if this generalization is true -- and it is not obvious that it is -- it should not end our thought about hate. There is no evidence that adding hate-crimes laws on top of regular criminal laws does anything to deter these acts. Nor is there any evidence that federal action is needed. Most states already have hate-crimes laws; the federal government has a hate-crimes law that applies to victims who were engaged in federally protected activities, such as holding rallies.

The proposed legislation would allow the federal government to investigate and prosecute hate crimes, whether or not federally protected activities were involved, and to assist local law enforcement in fighting them. But there is no evidence that local law enforcement has a special need for federal resources to help it combat hate crimes. 

According to the National Center for Pay Equity, women’s earnings in 2006 were 76.9 percent of men’s, with the median full-time, year-round female employee earning just $32,515, compared to a median male earning of $42,261. But should we be outraged? No. And here’s why.

Women earn less largely because we have the luxury of decisions that men generally can only dream of. We work less hours in the average work week, we are more likely to take time off to have kids or care for aging parents, and we choose lower paying fields requiring less formal education. Oh, and we’re less far less likely to be killed at work, a little detail often neglected at the NCPE.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, men are much more likely to suffer fatal workplace injuries than women. According to 2006 BLS statistics, the most recent year available, 428 American women were killed on the job. Compare this with the 5,275 men who lost their lives. The reason: Men take more dangerous, laborious, and physically demanding jobs, and they are compensated heavily for taking such positions. According to the BLS, the most deadly fields for 2006 were those heavily dominated by men, including logging, mining, waste management, law enforcement, construction, and transportation projects.

Conversely, as the BLS statistics demonstrated, the fields with the lowest death rates, including education and social services, are female-dominated. Ultimately, the average man is more willing than the average woman to spend his days inside dark mines to extract coal.Act like a man and you’ll be compensated as one.