HIGHLY EXPLICABLE. It's...

HIGHLY EXPLICABLE. It's a small point, but one passage in the aformentioned National Review article made me laugh out loud:

If Republicans want credit for spending restraint, they also should have some high-profile program eliminations. Corporate welfare presents obvious targets. It seems inexplicable that Republicans haven�t taken up this issue despite the fact that every conservative think tank has pushed them to do it for years.

Indeed! It's a bottomless mystery why Republicans haven't cut off the public spigots to corporations. If TAPPED were a less honest enterprise I'd leave the excerpt truncated like that, but duty compels me to point out the authors' next sentence: "But the influence of business lobbyists and farm-state members has preserved Washington�s 'spending for the rich.'" Very true. So what's "inexplicable," again?

--Sam Rosenfeld