The enduring nanny state - Ramesh Ponnuru is quite correct in his criticism of Congress for sticking their nose into the fight between merchants and credit card companies: "There's no good reason for the government to supervise negotiations between consenting adults." Quite right. In a capitalistic system, there are no barriers to prevent merchants from shopping for better rates, or even dropping the services of credit card companies altogether.

More election-year busy work. Can we have some oil now?