My son was upset when he returned home from his minimum wage job at a local grocery store. Seems he was confronted with, “The assistant manager is hopping mad about something you did,” as soon as he entered the door. His mind raced. What had he done? He took a breath, composed himself, and headed toward her office.

And she was mad. Turns out my son — who is new to the job — had taken only a 15-minute break instead of the state-mandated 30-minute break on three separate occasions — an offense the assistant manager said could cost the store $10,000 per occurrence, $30,000 in all.

The tiny colony was apparently not too young to have “foreign affairs”; and, indeed, it learned all too quickly the ways of interstate relations.

The sappy headline said it all: “Ticket scalpers jam computers, spoiling hopes and dreams of Springsteen fans.” The Boss is just Born to Lose in his neverending campaign against the inviolable law of supply and demand.

With the campaign carnival stopping in Nevada this week for Saturday’s Republican caucus, the Las Vegas Sun’s J. Patrick Coolican takes Ron Paul to task for Paul’s call to end the Fed and return to gold. Coolican writes,