Michael Barone

Start with the brilliant blog post on our most underestimated president, Ulysses S. Grant, from chicagoboyz's Lexington Green.

Here's some more discussion of the Iraqi oil trust proposal, which I (and, apparently, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton) have been pushing for three years. Here is a list of possible objections to the idea by economist Megan McArdle. And some good answers from Ilya Solmin of the Volokh Conspiracy. It seems to me that the problems of determining who's eligible and of setting up a reliable banking system should be readily solvable. And I don't think a payment in the magnitude of $500per person per year is going to discourage many people from working. More likely, many will use it and the guarantee of similar cash flow in the future as capital to set up businesses.

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