Paul Krugman has a must-read, or maybe a I-highly-recommend-you-read-it column today. You can get it for free over at Economist's View. It begins: It's been a good Democrats, bad Democrats kind of week. The bill expanding children's health insurance that just passed in the House makes you want to stand up and cheer. Reports that Senator Charles Schumer opposes plans to close the hedge fund tax loophole make you want to sit down and cry.

For all you fellow privatization nerds out there, if you're out there, here's an interesting paper on what's called "contracting-in," or when government decides to do in-house something that it once contracted out. Apparently this has been happening quite frequently on the local level, as public managers decide that sometimes contracting out is wasteful and doesn't achieve the goals of reducing costs and encouraging innovation like it was supposed to.

In an op-ed published today at TomPaine.com, our colleague Matt takes the president's veto rhetoric to proverbial woodshed. But the president's position is misleading and out of touch with the American public. First, there is no substance to his attacks on the size of the congressional spending proposals. Congress's fiscal 2008 spending plan exceeds the president's budget slightly regarding social spending—a mere $23 billion—or less than one percent of the entire budget. This difference between their budget and the president's will not open the spending floodgates.

This afternoon, the Senate passed the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007, by a vote of 83-14. Among the significant reforms included in the bill are the following earmarks disclosure requirements:

• all earmarks in bills, resolutions, conference reports and managers' statements must be identified and posted on the internet at least 48 hours before a vote
• Senators must certify that they and their immediate family will not financially benefit from any earmarks they've requested