The Supreme Court refused Monday to block a defamation lawsuit against The New York Times over columns that linked a former Army scientist to the 2001 anthrax killings...A federal judge had thrown out Hatfill's lawsuit against The New York Times over 2002 columns by writer Nicholas Kristof that faulted the FBI for failing to thoroughly investigate Hatfill. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the suit, and the Supreme Court declined without comment to take up the case.

One of the reoccurring ironies of Washington is that bad things are often hidden in good bills and vice versa. Such is the case with pension reform, now in a House-Senate conference. Among the good things inside this massive bill (which may end up bailing out bad-acting industries) is a reform to allow investment advice to be given to employees by those firms actually involved (via their management of 401(k) and other retirement funds) and therefore able to give advice. Studies show that even employees who set aside money for their retirement do not seek education about investing on their own. The theory here is to increase the supply of basic information by those incented to provide it. The naysayers see this as a "conflict" Yeah, like a good waiter recommending a better dish on the menu? Is ignorance acceptable if it's free of conflict? Can we grow up?

New House majority leader John Boehner has passed this bill three times out of the House but the Senate has ignored it three times. Another reform in the House bill will allow better managers to be hired by more pension funds which ought to result in higher returns. The bill will allow hedge funds to comprise up to 50% of their total assets - double the current limit - from pension plans without being treated as fiduciaries under ERISA. What this really means is that pension funds will win the right to diversify more, to pick from the top shelf of investment managers and, as a result, to be held more accountable to their beneficiaries for performance.

Pension fund managers are among the most experienced and sophisticated investors in the world. They already invest in hedge funds, but the best hedge fund managers don't want anything to do with the hassles of ERISA so they reject investments by pension funds to keep clear of wacky rules by the Department of Labor. Love or hate them, but all will admit that Calpers doesn't need government employees at a backwater branch of DOL imposing limits on their investment strategies. Today, with no change in law, managers of pension funds can invest in venture capital or real estate without ERISA sanctions, so why not enlarge the list of hedge fund investments as a way to diversify risk? (The House bill also would redefine the ERISA threshold so it applies only to those regulated by federal pension law; the current law also counts public and foreign plans in the definition.)

Not any easy topic to follow perhaps, but one that anyone running a multi-billion corporation should be able to understand -- and ought to because it has the potential to boost the retirement security of their own employees. Here is an example (rare indeed) that at least some in Congress do unappreciated but important work.

Of course, if you're an ignoramus or a cowaring anti-business sort, you see this as "weakening" consumer protection.

How then does the New York Times see this issue? No need to guess: here's the predictable editorial, written in their usually smug, misinformed, misleading, psuedo-populist style. Good thing their influence is marginal and declining.

There is still time to rescue this critical legislation — if key lawmakers give up political horse-trading and put public good above corporate interests.

Let's start with Representative John Boehner, Republican of Ohio and the new House majority leader....

You get the idea.

It's not often the words ``sex'' and ``Bank of England'' inhabit the same sentence. David Blanchflower's appointment to the central bank may change that.

Blanchflower is an economics professor at Dartmouth College in the U.S. The U.K. government announced this week that he will replace Stephen Nickell from June 1 on the bank's Monetary Policy Committee, which meets monthly to set interest rates.

It turns out that Blanchflower is interested in sex... Specifically, though, the economist has investigated the relationship between how often people get laid, how much money they have, and how happy they say they are.

In a May 2005 paper called ``Happiness and the Human Development Index,'' Blanchflower and Oswald say that rich nations overemphasize economic growth. ``The industrialized countries should, in our judgment, use a broader conception of well-being than the height of a pile of dollars,'' they write. Maybe we should ``substitute the goal of Gross National Happiness for the more traditional economist's objective of Gross National Product.''

At the past four central bank meetings, Nickell has been the sole advocate of lower borrowing costs. Wouldn't it be nice if Blanchflower found a way to combine calling for interest rate cuts with an exhortation for more lovemaking?

"...once the threat arrives, even if there's an undercurrent of terror in the whole society, people see the consequences and they get accustomed to it, just as they got accustomed to plague in the Middle Ages."

It has been beyond exasperating to watch money managers, who are fiduciaries, vote their clients' shares in support of compliant or incompetent boards in recent years. With the exception of some public pension funds, institutional shareholders have uttered nary a peep about directors on the scene during significant accounting blowups or those who dispensed overly generous pay packages and perquisites to underperforming executives.

The sad fact, of course, is that investment advisers don't want to irk the companies they are doing business with elsewhere in their firms, or trying to.