Michelle Obama's Food Police are on the prowl: if you hear a knock on the door, hide the sugar bowl, the butter dish and the salt. Her campaign to force us all to eat a "low-fat" diet - called "My Plate" - is just getting started.  What's happening in Tennessee is a good example.

Her war on foods that are high in saturated fats, sugar and salt is all in the name of "protecting the children."  Yet there is a strong possibility that the "diabesity" epidemic she campaigns against has been caused largely by the very food police whom she champions.

So argues a devastating new book: The Big Fat Surprise by Nina Teicholz, an experienced journalist who spent eight years tracking down all the evidence for and against the advice to eat low-fat diets. She finds that it was based on flimsy evidence, supported by an intolerant consensus backed by vested interests and amplified by a docile press. And it made us fatter.

Low-fat became a craze. It still is: look at supermarket shelves.  Read Mrs. Obama's press releases.  But it's all a fraud.

"I wouldn't start here if I were you," is the punch line of an old Irish joke, which monetary scholar Kevin Dowd cites to illustrate the deeper and deeper hole the Federal Reserve is getting us into.

Mr. Dowd, in a paper delivered last week (11/14) at the Cato Institute's 31st annual Monetary Conference, concluded:

"The modern financial system has not only kicked away most of the constraints against excessive risk-taking, but positively incentivized systemic risk-taking in all manner of highly destructive ways . We have gone from a system that managed itself to one that requires management, but cannot be managed.

We have gone from a system that was guarded by market forces operating under the rule of law to one that requires human guardians instead -- but we have not solved the underlying problem of how to guard the guardians themselves."

Last month we discussed in Bad News for Hugo how the ugliest man in Mexico right now is Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez.  By getting voters to think that Lopez Obrador would be a Mexican Chavez if elected president this Sunday (July 2), Felipe Calderon has a chance of beating him.

It's a given in most every conservative mind that an Obrador victory would be a disaster for the US, and a Calderon one vastly preferable.  That's because Obrador is an anti-American Marxist and Calderon is a pro-American free market advocate.  It seems a no-brainer to root for Calderon.

I, too, will be rooting for Felipe this Sunday.  Regrettably, the odds favor Obrador.  We can hope he loses, but if he wins, we'd better start thinking fast how to turn the danger of his victory into an opportunity.

Let's start now.

The good news on this side of the Pond is that Britain could soon grow genetically modified crops commercially.  This is a victory for common sense over irrational opportunism, and also for the environment over pollution.

Under pressure from the European Union's health and consumer commissioner, Tonio Borg, and Britain's environment secretary, Owen Paterson, the EU is on the brink of ceding control of the issue to national governments. That suits countries such as France and Austria, who are implacably opposed to GM crops -- and Britain, which thankfully is not.

It is now clear that the opposition to GM crops has been counter-productive for the environment as well as harmful to the economy and the consumer.

Remember, "organic" bean sprouts killed 51 people in one E coli outbreak in Germany in 2011. GM food has killed nobody. There's now simply no way to argue with a straight face, after billions of GM meals have been eaten all round the world, that the technology is a threat to our health. The reverse is actually the case.

So this is a technology that is safe for human health, better for the environment, more effective than the alternative and economically beneficial to consumers and farmers. Let the French ban it if they want to.

What do you think the minimum wage per hour should be? How did you come up with that number?

The federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, and the Obama administration proposed raising it to $10.10 per hour last Thursday (11/08).  Last week, the voters in New Jersey passed a $8.25 per hour minimum wage, while the voters in the town of SeaTac, Wash., passed a $15 per hour minimum wage.

A noted labor economist, Walter Williams, has written: "Among academic economists, there is little or no debate over the unemployment effects of minimum wages. Our only debate is the magnitude of unemployment."

In 1977, Mr. Williams authored a classic paper showing that one of the major reasons for the original federal minimum wage back in 1938 was the desire of racist, white-only unions to keep skilled black tradesmen from getting jobs owing to their willingness to work for less than the union rate.

It should be no surprise that those who argue most strongly for higher minimum wages are unions, seeking protection from those who need the work and would be willing to work for less, and members of the political class who spout lofty slogans about how they are out to protect the working poor. Do both these groups want more unemployment?