Since we know the monstrosities associated with government buildings, monuments, and state-built cars, surely then, we can imagine a Europe with a nationalized wine industry. Don’t laugh; the European Union’s top agricultural official is wanting to do just that. EU Farm Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel thinks that the state can spend money and market Europe’s wine “more efficiently” than the private producers.

This is a story about Linda Combs, who cleaned up the government’s financial reporting process.

A remarkable fact jumps off the page at me: “Nineteen of the 24 agencies received unqualified audit opinions in 2005, a vast improvement compared to 1990, when only one had a clean audit opinion.” Then the article goes on to say that:

“180 Trillion Leisure Hours Lost To Work Last Year,“ says The Onion. The article actually presents some fundamental problems of scarcity in rather interesting ways. Why do we only think in terms of work-hours lost? Probably because that’s what the organizations who fund such studies care about, but in future, it’s not too difficult to imagine a time when leisure hours might actually outnumber work hours.

Randy Barnett lectures us that libertarians can and should be all for war — but for the life of him, he just can’t seem to figure out why this particular centrally planned war on Iraq hasn’t gone well. Really, it’s just a mystery, all these unintended consequences, these unexpected results, the expense, the bizarre and inexplicable failure of the government to achieve its ends.

An old economist joke goes like this. A person is walking along and says to an economist, look, there is a $20 bill on the sidewalk. The economist disputes it without looking, on grounds that if it were there, someone else would have already picked it up.

Chris McGreal reports from Harare:

Yes, conclude Boston University Law School Professors (and economists) Michael Meurer and Jim Bessen. According to Patently-O’s summary,