Minnesota Lawyer

At this point, Larry Summers isn’t just the favorite for Federal Reserve chairman. He’s the overwhelming favorite. Unless something truly unexpected shows up in the vetting process (a paid toast at Bashar al-Assad’s birthday party, for example) or the administration comes to believe Senate Democrats will revolt against a Summers nomination, he’s going to get the job.

With respect to the science of climate change, many experts regard the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as the world’s authoritative institution. A draft summary of its forthcoming report was leaked last week.

President Barack Obama is making the most important economic-policy decision of his second term: picking a new chairman for the Federal Reserve. We shouldn’t be optimistic, because nothing the president has said or done suggests that he is at all displeased with a Fed performance that has been just short of disastrous.

Would-be tax reformers on Capitol Hill are taking a “blank slate” approach to the issue. Dave Camp and Max Baucus, the House Republican and Senate Democrat in charge of the tax-law committees, say that every tax break is on death row unless a strong case can be made for it.

“As a prosecutor, a judge, an attorney in private practice, and now, as our nation’s attorney general, I’ve seen the criminal justice system firsthand, from nearly every angle. While I have the utmost faith in — and dedication to — America’s legal system, we must face the reality that, as it stands, our system is in too many respects broken.”

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced this past week that the Justice Department would significantly alter how nonviolent drug offenders are charged in order to circumvent mandatory minimum sentencing requirements.

An odd puzzle is taking shape in the labor market: Over the past three years, the number of job openings has risen almost 50 percent, but actual hiring has gone up by less than 5 percent. Companies are advertising a lot more jobs, in other words, but not filling them.

Improving the U.S. health-care system requires encouraging low-value doctors and hospitals to practice as well as high-value ones do. The gap between the two is wide, but that only shows how much room we have for improvement.

President Barack Obama keeps declaring war on rising college costs. In a speech at Knox College last month, he vowed to unveil an “aggressive strategy to shake up the system, tackle rising costs and improve value.” He said something similar in his 2012 State of the Union address, so I’m a little skeptical that much will happen.

In the past few weeks, the U.S. Senate races of 2014 have started to take shape. Elizabeth Cheney, daughter of the former vice president, announced that she would take on Senator Mike Enzi of Wyoming in a Republican primary. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky got a challenger, too, in businessman Matt Bevin. And Representative Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, has decided to run against incumbent Democratic Senator Mark Pryor.