Dumb “Reform”  —  Today's big news story is the release of a report by PriceWaterhouseCoopers on the impact the Senate Finance Committee's health care “reform” bill will have on health insurance premiums.  PWC concluded that the cost of health insurance for the average family will rise by $4,000 by 2019, as compared with doing nothing:

Number of U.S. Troops in Afghanistan Overlooks Thousands of Support Troops  —  Additional Deployments Not Announced and Rarely Noted  —  President Obama announced in March that he would be sending 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan.  But in an unannounced move, the White House has also authorized …

BRUCE JENNER: BARACK OBAMA UNDESERVING OF NOBEL AWARD  —  TMZ has a video of former Olympian and “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” reality star Bruce Jenner weighing in on President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize win.  —  “He's done nothing,” Jenner said.  “He's done absolutely nothing.”

As Panel Votes Today, Democrats Look Ahead  —  The Senate Finance Committee will hold a landmark vote on health-care reform legislation Tuesday that is expected to underscore the deep partisan divisions that have emerged and hardened over five months of debate.

White House Escalates War of Words With Fox News  —  Anita Dunn, White House communications director, calls Fox News a “wing of the Republican Party,” after the White House began using its government blog to criticize “Fox lies.”  —  FOXNews.com  —  Calling Fox News “a wing of the Republican Party …

Liz Cheney takes on ‘radical’ W.H.  —  Former Vice President Dick Cheney's eldest daughter Liz will launch a new group aimed at rallying opposition to the “radical” foreign policy of the Obama administration which it says has succeeded only in undermining the nation's security.

Snowe Vote Shows Obama Whether Republicans Help on Health Care  —  Oct. 13 (Bloomberg) — U.S. Senator Olympia Snowe's independent streak showed up early.  —  Orphaned at age 9, she took the train by herself as a young girl from boarding school in upstate New York to Maine to see her aunt and uncle on weekends and holidays.

Obama Dollar Retreats Most Against Commodities in Wealth Shift  —  Oct. 13 (Bloomberg) — President Barack Obama's effort to lead the world economic recovery by spending the U.S. out of its recession is undermining the dollar, triggering record commodities rallies as investors scour the globe for hard assets.

A Question of When Dishonesty Becomes Criminal  —  In February, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that federal prosecutors had developed an unseemly crush on a particularly vague law, one that had “been invoked to impose criminal penalties upon a staggeringly broad swath of behavior.”

Governing The Commons  —  No one should now say “Elinor who?” Nobel Laureate, Elinor Ostrom, Oct. 12, 2009  —  I have just returned from an undergraduate multidisciplinary class that my colleague (Bart Wilson) and I teach, “Foundations of Economic Exchange.”

Gag on reporting MP's Trafigura question lifted  —  The question from Paul Farrelly MP which was subject to a gagging order related to the Trafigura toxic waste scandal  —  How the Guardian reported the Trafigura dumping story  —  The existence of a previously secret injunction against the media …

Second Thoughts in Battle for Virginia  —  WASHINGTON — When State Senator R. Creigh Deeds defeated Terry McAuliffe, the former Democratic Party chairman and confidante of Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton, to be the Democratic nominee for governor of Virginia, the argument among many Democrats …

Don't Fail, or Reward Success  —  “Compensation continues to generate controversy and anger,” Lloyd Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, said last month.  “And, in many respects, much of it is understandable and appropriate.”  —  On Thursday, Mr. Blankfein and his colleagues …

German Ship Transporting Arms for Iran  —  US troops boarded a German-owned freighter in early October and found eight containers full of ammunition, allegedly headed to Syria from Iran.  The shipment is in violation of a UN weapons embargo and has become a source of chagrin in Berlin.