You walk into any supermarket or any shopping mall and ask the public what they are worried about. Not one of them will tell you they are worried about 12 years of Mitt Romney's tax returns.

The constant need for special waivers is symptomatic of poorly written public policy. It's a signal that the cost of compliance is unreasonably high; the benefits are hard to measure; and either legislators or regulators have failed to do their homework.

Barack Obama's life was so much simpler in 2009. Back then, he had refined the cold act of blaming others for the bad economy into an art form. Deficits? Blame Bush's tax cuts. Spending? Blame the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. No business investment? Blame Wall Street.

For most Americans, Friday afternoons are filled with positive anticipation of the weekend. In Washington, it's where government officials dump stories they want to bury. Good news gets dropped on Monday so bureaucrats can talk about it all week.

As a boy, when I was bad, my mother would chew me out in Spanish. And since I was bad a lot, I learned a lot of Spanish!

It's good to give seniors more choices and more options, let them choose a plan that's best for them and target assistance to the lowest income people.

You walk into any supermarket or any shopping mall and ask the public what they are worried about. Not one of them will tell you they are worried about 12 years of Mitt Romney's tax returns.