The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission issued its majority report in January 2011, stating that the 2007-2010 crisis was "avoidable" and caused by widespread failures in financial regulation. Commission member Peter Wallison disagreed.

When economies are already laboring under too much spending, and are at diminishing-return levels of taxation, implementing a carbon tax would be a mistake.

Expectations of falling prices would deepen the economic downturn.

The new health care proposals do not include "death panels," but there are real problems with the end-of-life provisions in the current health care bill.

On March 23, 2010, after a heated battle on the Hill, President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law. In spring 2012, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether or not Obama's healthcare reform is constitutional.

The pundits may not admit it, butPresident George W. Bush'sIraq record is clear.

Review of In the Wake of the Plague--The Black Death and the World it Made.

Matsui will be missed by friends and fellow congressmen from both sides of the aisle.