I don’t mean to pick on the US Postal Service, but I must admit to a strong (but not yet clinical) obsession with monopolies — especially those that deliver mail. Consequently, the planet’s largest governmental monopoly draws my attention like cow patties attract flies.

You hear it from them all the time; teachers just want a fair wage. Oh, well who doesn’t? This line of thought begs two questions: How are wage rates established in a free market? And, are market wage rates fair?

Were the barbarians more beneficent than the Romans? A couple of Englishmen are trying to convince you that this is so. They state that the only uniquely Roman feature of the Empire was its professional army (hardly an advance).

In today’s New York Times, Robert H. Frank, who is described as “the co-author, with Ben S. Bernanke, of `Principles of Economics,’” writes that Galbraith should have won the Nobel Prize—for the ideas expressed in The Affluent Society.

In case anyone needs a refresher about Galbraith, and the fascistic nature of his ideas, be sure to see my “Galbraith’s Neo-Feudalism.”

USA Today has broken the story that, with the cooperation of AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, the NSA has been collecting (nearly) all our phone call records since shortly after 9/11:

Let’s say that we put our politics on the market model. Everyone who is still nuts for Bush should be permitted to be ruled by him completely and without question.

Does gasoline at 10 cents a gallon and falling sound impossible in today’s world? Well, if you think it’s impossible, you’re wrong.

Because that’s where gasoline actually is, and it looks like it’s going even lower.

Of course, it’s not 10 cents a gallon in today’s paper money. But it is 10 cents a gallon in the Constitutional money of the United States, which is gold coin and bullion.

It was a familiar time.

It was a time of a Republican administration waging an unpopular war. It was a war some Democrats said they opposed but seemed to do very little to stop. Inflation was starting to become a problem.

America’s allies thought our president’s economic and political polices were flawed and they were often ridiculed. Anti-Americanism was popular. The Republican president infrequently disagreed with Democrats about the welfare state.

Stories from today’s newspapers? Not exactly.

Let us be honest. I’m only a 93% Libertarian and roughly a 90% patriot. That’s why I curse our Alabama Legislature’s proposal to mount cameras at traffic intersections, but view with calm equanimity the wiretapping of suspects or even suspected suspects who’d like to blow up New York City; or poison Chicago’s water supply or otherwise harm me or my countrymen.