"This is a world-class city, and we provide fire and police protection, period. The idea that we would charge the family for a funeral is nonsensical," he said during his first public appearance today, calling the website set up by his office to solicit donations "ridiculous."

President Obama will hold a press conference this coming Wednesday. Here are two questions I would like to see the press ask him:

1. During your campaign, you said that under your tax plan, "no one will pay higher tax rates than they paid in the 1990s." The House healthcare reform bill, however, raises tax rates for top earners well above the 1990s levels. In many states, the top marginal tax rate would exceed 50 percent. Do you still stand by that campaign pledge, and would you veto any bill that violates it?

2. During your campaign, you said, "The danger in a cap-and-trade system is that the permits to emit greenhouse gases are given away for free as opposed to priced at auction. One of the mistakes the Europeans made in setting up a cap-and-trade system was to give too many of those permits away." The climate change bill now being considered in Congress does the same thing. Are you now willing to have the United States make the same mistake the Europeans made, or would you veto the bill?

The fundamental problem underlying the financial crisis was government policy. Instead of undertaking enormous new policies, we should try to fix or eliminate bad policies and focus on efficiency rather than redistribution. Doing nothing new and simply working with pre-existing procedures would have been much better than anything we've done so far.

The Obama administration announced a crackdown Wednesday on hundreds of companies suspected of employing illegal immigrants, signaling a shift in strategy: going after employers instead of workers.

The key to returning true competition to health care is to make it possible for individuals to fire their insurance company, which requires eliminating the tax break on employer-provided health insurance by extending it to privately purchased policies.

Reading Brad DeLong's "non-Socratic dialogue on social welfare functions" has inspired me to return to one of my favorite literacy forms. In DeLong's original dialogue, Prof. Agathon helps Prof. Glaukon reach a shocking conclusion: