James Ceasar explains how the passion for Obama can be traced to radical thinking about replacing traditional religion with a “Religion of Humanity.”

What happens when science becomes politicized? The truth is sacrificed to the “greater good.”

• Campaign Finance Reform’s Unending Quest to Limit Our Rights. Bradley Smith explains how campaign finance “reform” has continued to erode basic constitutional protections: “every time we close off one avenue of political participation, politically active Americans will turn to the next most effective legal means of carrying on their activity. That next most effective means will then become the loophole that must be closed.”
• Gmail Users Are More Active on Social Media.
• The GOP Shouldn’t Count It’s Chickens Just Yet. Ramesh Ponnuru: “Republicans shouldn’t get carried away. There are 10 months to go before the midterm elections, and the political climate can change a lot in that time.”

• Did Deregulation Really Cause the Crash? Russ Roberts: “If you lift the speed limit from 65 miles per hour to 200 miles per hour and someone crashes going 195, it would be strange to blame the crash on the change in the speed limit. The question remains as to why someone would be so reckless.”
• Teaching Business School Students to Think Creatively.
• The Right Way and the Wrong Way to Simplify Taxes. “For the Obama Administration, the new regulation is a way to try to increase tax revenues without Congress having to pass a law…Here’s a better idea: If Washington doesn’t like taxpayers working the system of legal deductions to reduce their tax burden, it can always simplify the code and flatten the rates.”

• Rock Solid HTML Emails How to build e-mails that work in every e-mail client.
• How Apple Leaks Information “Often Apple has a need to let information out, unofficially. The company has been doing that for years, and it helps preserve Apple’s consistent, official reputation for never talking about unreleased products.”
• Todd Zywicki on Proposed New Credit Card Limits. “What would happen if the Merchants Payments Coalition gets its way and politicians squeeze interchange fees? Credit cards are essentially a closed economic system: A reduction in interchange fees will have to be offset by increased revenues elsewhere or a reduction in costs. For example, issuers could try to increase the revenue generated from consumers through higher interest payments, higher penalty fees, or reinstating annual fees.”

• What Made American Universities Great. “Ivy League institutions rose to greatness only after being cut off from state aid and meddling.”
• What’s the Matter With California? William Vogeli explains how the “big-spending, high-taxing, lousy-services paradigm” is ruining California’s appeal.
• Dave Barry Looks Back on 2009. Choice quote: “Washington, rejecting ‘business as usual,’ finally stopped trying to solve every problem by throwing billions of taxpayer dollars at it and instead started trying to solve every problem by throwing trillions of taxpayer dollars at it.”