It's shaping up to be a cruel summer for the U.S. homebuilding industry, which only a few years ago seemed to be powering the American economy. The troubles are mainly of the economic variety, but homebuilders have also become part of the biggest domestic political fight of this election season-the debate over illegal immigration.

Question: What do you get when you mix a potential drought with the global warming debate and a presidential campaign season?

Answer: At least this year, much higher prices for milk and cheese. The prices of dairy products are shooting up this summer, and one of the reasons is a case study in the unintended effects of government subsidies and regulations.

The U.S. Congress-which does not see $250 billion budget deficits as "unconscionably excessive" nor $34 trillion in unfunded Medicare liabilities as any reason to act-has had it with $3.20 a gallon gasoline.

Sander M. Levin has met the enemy, and he is convinced that it is not us. The Michigan Democrat is a leading voice in a growing congressional chorus that blames the Chinese and Japanese governments for the large U.S. trade deficit.

Levin, chairman of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Trade, convened an unusual joint hearing May 9 with two other trade subcommittees to investigate China and Japan.

News broke last week on one of the most important stories of the decade, and it barely made a blip on the media radar screen. The trustees of the federal Medicare program on April 23 officially warned that the payroll tax dedicated to Medicare isn't raising nearly enough money to cover the costs of the program. By 2013, they said, 45 percent of the program's costs would have to come from general tax revenues.

University administrators for decades have raised prices at a rate that would make anyone else-at least outside the health-care industry-blush ("No way down," Aug. 27, 2005). Somehow they have escaped the "greedy" label, with the public mind much more focused on "big oil" than on "big academia."

Few ideas animate today's Democratic Party as much as the firm belief that income inequality is growing at a grossly unfair rate. The ultra-rich, we are told, are growing much richer while the middle class and poor fall behind. The blame usually goes to globalization or tax cuts as candidates promise to reverse the slide toward what presidential candidate John Edwards calls the "two Americas."