TWO INTERESTING NUGGETS–out of my areas of expertise, but well worth your time. The Volokh Conspiracy hosts dueling perspectives on the effect of cigarette tax increases on crime; and National Review Online charges that we’ve got lots more teachers, but they’re making less money and doing less teaching, thus the only beneficiaries are–you guessed it–teachers’ unions. (I note that NRO isn’t arguing that the unions caused these changes, just that they are the main beneficiaries. There’s quite a bit of “unions exploiting teachers” boilerplate at the beginning, but that seems like attention-grabbing stuff not supported by the tenor or substance of the rest of the piece.)