The Wrap-up

Spending

Senator Coburn’s amendment requiring the Pentagon to grade each military earmark on its usefulness and necessity may have died in committee, but, according to Federal News Radio, “House and Senate leaders have agreed to [re]consider [the legislation] in November.”

NTU’s Andrew Moylan proposes six reforms for the purposefully cryptic budget process around which all conservatives should rally: spending caps, earmark reform, supplemental-appropriation reform, a spending commission, line-item veto authority for the president, and dynamic scoring of revenue estimates.

Energy

California taxpayers beware: Proposition 87, the Clean Alternative Energy Act, will foist upon your state “expensive energy, gratuitous taxes [and] corporate welfare.”

Are the promises about ethanol too good to be true? Consumer Reports test-drives the hype.

Campaigns and Elections

A new Cato study finds that libertarians constitute a larger share of the electorate than the fabled “soccer moms” and “NASCAR dads.”

In the campaign for Illinois governor, the incumbent Democrat and his Republican challenger are both conspicuous enthusiasts of big government and both tainted by allegations of corruption, thus leaving conservatives and reform-minded voters restless.

Miscellaneous

Click here for an index of every presidential “signing statement”—a process that Bob Barr argues threatens the separation of powers—issued by George W. Bush.

Colorado voters will face an unusually easy question next month: should education dollars go toward the classroom or toward bureaucracy?

The White House responds to Bob Woodward’s new book, State of Denial.

Cato’s Dan Griswold exposes the counterproductive and costly sham that is U.S. farm policy.

Hong Kong’s new leader recently declared his intention to modify his country’s longtime laissez-faire policies. Milton Friedman reflects, “Although the territory may continue to grow, it will no longer be . . . a shining symbol of economic freed.”