America’s national debt recently crossed the $13 trillion mark, and taxpayers are on the hook for several times that amount as government spending on social programs rises uncontrollably.

Congress would do well to heed F.A. Hayek’s warning in The Constitution of Liberty: “[D]emocracy will have to learn that it must pay for its own follies and that it cannot draw unlimited checks on the future to solve its present problems.”

“States don’t have rights,” Stephen Green reminds us. “Individuals do. It’s time we went about the business of restoring those rights, without alienating a huge constituency which suffered too long without them.” Green rightly argues that conservatives’ use of the language of states’ rights is not only muddle-headed but, for historical reasons, tends to associate conservatives with Jim Crow.

Nicola Moore and Eric Heis are undertaking an innovative project to raise youth awareness of federal overspending: they’re making a video game caled U.O.Me. They’re accepting contributions through mid-August to fund the game’s programming.

Realizing that spending is an issue of growing salience, progressives are rallying around new gimmicks like advanced rescission to bolster their budget-cutter bonafides. George Will is having none of it: the plan “certainly would not reduce deficit spending: Under the president’s proposal, if Congress kills the projects on the president’s list, the budgetary allocation would not be reduced, so legislators could dream up new things on which to spend the money.”

Timothy Carney, for his part, wonders if conservatives will look to military budgets as a source of savings.

E.J. Dionne says it’s ironic that conservatives who decry big government are calling for the federal government to more effectively manage the Gulf oil spill. Dionne, of course, is missing the point: there’s a difference between effective government (or energetic government, as Publius dubbed it in the Federalist) and big government. But all too many conservatives allow progressives to make such arguments by advocating for *small *government rather than a *limited *government that undertakes only its core responsibilities.

And last but not least, this is a clever submission to Google’s Search Stories campaign:

Jonathan Adler argues that many self-described followers of Edmund Burke are anything but: “The institutions [David] Brooks would defend today bear no resemblance to the organic institutions Burke sought to protect.  Indeed, they have crowded out and, in some cases crushed, the little platoons upon which social order depends.  So the meaningful question for a true Burkean is not whether to oppose a Jacobin revolution, but what to do after such a revolution has already taken place.”

In the latest issue of A List Apart, Ethan Marcotte explains how to use CSS style sheets to create a web site that scales well to varying screen resolutions. For example, he uses CSS media queries to create a single page that renders well on an iPhone, on a standard monitor and on a wide-screen monitor. I’ve implemented some of his techniques on this page to make an iPhone-friendly version.

Europe’s “current welfare state is unaffordable…The crisis has made the day of reckoning closer by several years in virtually all the industrial countries.”

And last but not least, Google has made several excellent fonts available for free use on other sites through a simple CSS call. OFL Sorts Mill Goudy TT is now the default font for this site.

Window-shopping isn’t what it used to be, Philip Kennicott explains in the Washington Post. In an effort to maximize shelf space, all too many D.C. retailers like CVS block their windows, which reduces engagement with passers-by. I wonder: have retailers ever tested whether an engaging, inviting storefront might improve sales and offset revenues from lost shelving? (via GGW).

Ross Douthat says Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul is a prime example of

why politicians must exercise prudence in addition to principle. Julian Sanchez makes a similar point: “Libertarians need to think harder about how our principles should degrade elegantly, how they can guide us through a fallen world where the live political options seldom afford a full escape from injustice.”

Michael Perkins argues that federal workers shouldn’t get effectively unlimited mass-transit benefits, and suggests instead a benefit that can be spent on any form of transportation. But why stop there? Why not eliminate the benefit altogether and increase salaries accordingly, allowing workers to spend their incomes as they see fit? Not only would this remove the distortions Perkins rightly decries, but it would free workers to choose their own spending priorities.

This Washington Post headline raised hopes, but only briefly, that President Obama had proposed spending cuts: “Democrats cautious on Obama’s spending-cut proposal.” Alas, it refers only to the President’s (important) assertion of budgetary authority—but not to any evidence that he plans any actual reduction in outlays.

And last but not least, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has released a clever ad poking fun at many prominent critics of her state’s immigration law.

The new culture war “is not a fight over guns, gays or abortion,” Arthur Brooks argues, but a battle between free enterprise and statism. Supporters of free enterprise need to make a moral case for their system, he writes, to demonstrate that “earned success” is superior to dependence on government, and not simply hold that free enterprise delivers better material results.

Speaking of dependence on government, the New York Times claims that the insufficiency of one government subsidy, for child care, is driving families onto another government subsidy, welfare. However did people cope before government provided everything?

Renderings of the proposed Purple Line in Maryland show there’s no reason transit has to be ugly (link in PDF). While landscaping may add to the project’s cost, it’s worth remembering that aesthetics matter and that there’s a difference between lowering costs and cutting corners.

The Atlantic is running a special report on the changing American city. Every article is worth a read. Progressives have for too long dominated debates over urban policy; it behooves conservatives to engage this debate head-on and offer real solutions to problems facing cities.

And last but not least, Google has announced it will make its Pac-Man doodle permanently available.