You’ve seen Hayek and Keynes battle rapping. Now, our Emo Founding Fathers:

Steve Poizner, the California insurance commissioner who is seeking the Republican nomination for governor, created a stir this week by charging opponent Meg Whitman’s campaign with attempting to coerce him out of the race. He said he had reported her campaign to state and federal law enforcement authorities.

What did Whitman actually do? Well, Poizner said that Whitman consultant Mike Murphy had contacted a Poizner staffer by phone and email to urge him to withdraw from the race. The email, released by Poizner, said: “I hate the idea of each of us spending $20 million beating on the other in the primary, only to have a badly damaged nominee. And we can spend $40 million tearing up Steve if we must; bad for him, bad for us, and a crazy waste to tear up a guy with great future statewide potential.” In the email, Murphy went on to suggest that if Poizner dropped out of the race before the June 8 vote, Whitman and her team would immediately get behind him for a 2012 challenge to Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

Poizner says that’s not only “strong-arm tactics” but possibly an illegal inducement to get him to withdraw. But isn’t this really just politics as usual? Don’t candidates as a matter of course say “support me this time, and I’ll support you next time” or “run for a different office and I’ll endorse you”? Presidential candidates, or their campaign managers, are often said to have promised the vice presidency to more than one rival to clear the field.

The point about spending $40 million of Republican money tearing up fellow Republicans is a pretty common complaint about party primaries. In fact, National Review correspondent John J. Miller raised just that concern about the Rick Perry-Kay Bailey Hutchison showdown in Texas.

Even during the Rod Blagojevich flap over “selling” a Senate seat, the always-provocative Jack Shafer and Jim Harper both asked, Isn’t this what politicians do? They make deals — including deals like “I’ll support your campaign if you’ll make my buddy (or me) a Cabinet secretary.” No doubt the promises are often worthless, but they still get made. Blagojevich and Murphy have reminded pols all over the country that such deals are better made in person, not via email or telephone.

Politics ain’t beanbag, Mr. Poizner. Accept the deal or reject it. But “let’s clear the field and spend our money fighting the other party” is pretty standard politics. And a darn sight better than another standard political practice, using the taxpayers’ money to bribe the voters to support you.

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“Father of the Individual Mandate” Mitt Romney[/caption]

The former nickname came from National Journal or The Wall Street Journal, I’m not sure which. The latter nickname comes from Institute for Health Freedom president Sue Blevins.

See here for details on an upcoming event in Dallas where Goodman’s National Center for Policy Analysis will play host to Romney.

It should be an interesting event. With all 40 Republican members of the U.S. Senate, including moderates like Sen. Olympia Snowe (R‑ME), voting to declare an individual mandate unconstitutional…with 35 states moving legislation to block an individual mandate…with the Heritage Foundation rebuking an individual mandate…and with Virginia’s Democratically controlled Senate approving legislation to block an individual mandate…well, Romney may have a tough road to hoe with the conservatives who typically attend NPCA events.

Despite still defending the Fed’s bailouts, Fed Governor Kevin Warsh gave a speech this morning offering a few insights about reforming our financial system that seem to be lost on both Obama and Bernanke.

A few highlights:

The mortgage finance system is owed far stricter scrutiny to gather a fuller appreciation of the causes of the crisis. The government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs), Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, for example, were given license and direction to take excessive risks.

One has to hope that both Bernanke and Obama are listening. The silence of the Obama administration on fixing Fannie and Freddie is nothing short of shocking and irresponsible. Any commitment to real reform has to include the GSEs.

Granting new powers to resolve failing firms in the discretionary hands of regulators is unlikely, in the near-term, to drive the market discipline required to avoid the recurrence of financial crises.

…Some newly-empowered and untested regulatory structure is not likely — in and of itself — to be sufficient to tackle institutions that are too-big-to-fail, particularly as memories of the crisis fade. Regulation is too important to be left to regulators alone.

I believe these two points cannot be stated more strongly: what we need is more market discipline, rather than less. Putting the entire weight of our financial system on the backs of our financial regulators is a crisis just waiting to happen. Sadly the direction of both President Obama and Congress seems to be in undermining market monitoring of firms and relying solely on regulators to “get it right” — the very same regulators who were asleep at the wheel prior to the last crisis.

• David Boaz debates at The Economist: Is Obama failing? “In many ways, Obama has just doubled down on George W. Bush’s policies of bailouts, takeovers, expanded Fed powers and nationalizations. In a recession he is adding debt, taxes and regulation to the burdens already felt by business.” Readers can vote and join the debate.

• Ever wonder why weather forecasters can get things so wrong?

• Looking for a primer on the causes of the financial crisis? The new Cato Policy Report has answers.

• How to tell when the government health care overhaul is dead.

• Podcast: “Citizens United and Speech​Now​.org” featuring Steve Simpson of the Institute of Justice.

In a conversation about “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council admitted that he wants to re-criminalize sodomy:

…which is easy for him to say, of course, because he’s unlikely to be affected by the law. As someone who is likely to be affected by the law, I’m tempted to criminalize Peter Sprigg. Liberty is never more negotiable than when it’s liberty for someone you don’t like.

What is it that I don’t like? I don’t like putting people in cages. Whenever we can reasonably avoid it, we should. Liberty means liberty even for people we think are weird, or disgusting, or immoral — provided that they do not hurt us or our own legitimate interests. Lawrence v. Texas, for which the Cato Institute filed an amicus brief, is one of the most important expressions of this idea in our time.

Once liberty applies only to the things that we like, we have abandoned the true idea of liberty entirely. From that point on, you and I, as enforcers, must cling ever more tightly to arbitrary power. If we don’t, then someone else may come along, take that power, and criminalize us. A free society leaves the misfits alone, because sooner or later, everyone is a misfit, in some way or another.

I wrote about this private school in South Carolina last year. The Voice for School Choice has a new video highlighting the great work of the Eagle Military Academy, which works with many kids the public schools cannot or will not educate.

There’s a lot of talk lately about the transformative power of some charter schools, and it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that many secular and religious private schools have been saving kids all along with no public funds and little or no recognition from the elite opinion class.

We need to open up choice to these schools as well, not just public charter schools that cannot provide the breadth and depth of experiences offered by private schools.

Public charter schools are no substitute for full school choice through education tax credits.