Kookier Than Akin

We have all learned more than we ever wanted to know about the genesis of the kookie idea that a woman's body can somehow "shut down" the possibility of pregnancy if she is raped, that is legitimately raped.

But, buried on page A5 of the Post was a story from Bloomberg News that Gov. Mitt Romney has said he would not re-appoint Ben Bernanke to the Fed. That scares the hell out of me. But, it was the last line of that story, which oddly is not on the Bloomberg site, that alarmed me the most. It read: "And a draft of the Republican Party platform calls for a "gold commission" to study the possibility of returning to the gold standard." Here is another report on the platform language.

Of course, a return to the gold standard is a truly awful idea and it epitomizes the kind of superstitious thinking to which some economists are prone. But, superstition it may be, it has been a near-constant feature on the website of Professor Robert George's American Principles Project. Jeff Bell is APP's champion on the topic. His ideas are so far out of the mainstream of most economists' views, they scarcely merit attention. But, the currency (couldn't help myself!) with which such kookie ideas gain traction on the right is alarming. There are kookie ideas on the left, too, but at least in this election cycle, they seem mostly to be emanating from the right, and the gold standard like Cong. Akin's thoughts on female biology, are justifiably deemed kookie.