On April 1 and May 27 of last year, two tiny tremors were detected by seismographs with magnitudes of 2.3 and 1.5 in England's Blackpool region of Lancashire.  They are being blamed on fracking.  The same claim is being made in Ohio.

It is now official: drilling for shale gas by fracturing rock with water may rattle the odd teacup. But is highly unlikely to cause damaging earthquakes. That much has been obvious to anybody who has followed the development of the shale gas industry in America over the past ten years. More than 25,000 wells drilled have caused a handful of micro-seismic events that can barely be felt.

To call a two-magnitude tremor an earthquake is a bit like calling a hazelnut lunch. Such tremors happen naturally more than 15 times a year in Blackpool but go unnoticed and they are a common consequence of many other forms of underground work such as coalmining and geothermal drilling.

So can we now get on with fracking and get over fear of it? The economic and environmental benefits are vast.

Question of the week:  How do we reconcile Perry's incredible President Zero ad - the most powerful political ad of modern times -

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with his botched debate performances, which keep getting worse, as we saw last night?  Isn't he supposed to be a kick-em-in-the-groin take-no-prisoners Texas Aggie?  And what's up with the you-have-no-heart schmaltz if you deny in-state tuition to illegals? 

Perhaps, however, you think the question should be:  What about Sarah?  When Perry announced and she refrained, it was clear she was waiting to see how Rick would do.  She was never worried about Bachmann, knowing that MB would flame out and she has.  Now that Perry might also, will she jump in?

The HFR has learned there is another reason for her hesitation beyond the patience of a huntress.

Keep this column until April 2013.

In the accompanying table, you will see two forecasts for federal debt-related items: the official Congressional Budget Office's forecast (which is close to the Obama administration's) and a pessimistic forecast (mine).

No forecast is perfect, but it is likely that I will be closer to the mark than the CBO/administration because my assumptions are more realistic.

The Federal Reserve will be under continuing pressure to keep up "quantitative easing," i.e., printing money. This is likely to result in a continuing fall in the dollar, which will cause inflationary pressures to grow, and/or a continuing fall in real wages, as has been the case in recent months.

If the administration and Congress were suddenly to reduce spending enough to reduce the deficit from roughly 10 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) to 3 percent, the Fed could stop printing money and inflationary pressures would ease. But that is not going to happen.

Not the country. Not the people who live in the country. Eliminate the country's name.

"Iraq" is a plain Arabic noun - al-iraq - meaning “the shore and grazing area of a river.” Inspiring, isn't it?

Prior to 1921, there had never been a country called “Iraq” - never in history. “Iraq” was an invention of the British after World War I, who along with the French were carving up pieces of the defeated Ottoman Turkish Empire into colonies called League of Nations Mandates.

Yet there already was a name for the region encompassed by the Ottoman remnants, a name from the mists of time. For thousands of years before it was eliminated from history by reasons known only to the unfathomable British colonial mind, it was called Mesopotamia.

"A conservative," the old cliché goes, "is a liberal who has been mugged." But some liberals who are mugged refuse to admit that it happened.

Observe the rough treatment to which the new American ambassador in Moscow, Michael McFaul, has been subjected since his appointment last January. Since his arrival, the ambassador has been constantly accused in the media of stirring up anti-government protests, and lately he has been ambushed by Russian state-TV crews at his meetings, official and unofficial, suggesting that his phone was tapped.

This comes on top of numerous other strong indications that the Obama administration's attempts to "reset" relations with Russia - a policy spearheaded by Mr. McFaul - have failed. But while McFaul has complained loudly about his recent treatment, he does not seem to realize that he, along with his boss Hillary Clinton, have been mugged in a much broader sense.

Some people, in their pursuit of profit, benefit their fellow humans by creating new or better goods and services, and then by employing others. We call such people entrepreneurs and productive workers.

Others are parasites who suck the blood and energy away from the productive. Such people are most often found in government.

Perhaps the most vivid description of what happens to a society where the parasites become so numerous and powerful that they destroy their productive hosts is Ayn Rand's classic novel "Atlas Shrugged." The just-released movie version is an entertaining, tension-filled struggle between the productive and the parasites who ally themselves with the envious and evil. Go see it - here's the theatre list nationwide .

Bad policies come about from the actions of specific people - individuals in Congress and government agencies - not the Congress or the administration as a whole. Washington is filled with people who are more destructive than constructive. It is useful to name some of the most destructive people in the hope that they will either reform or leave.

Last January, a team of US scientists, led by former Los Alamos lab director Sig Heckler, was allowed to visit the Yongbyon nuclear facility in North Korea. The North Koreans produced a heavy glass jar containing a funnel-shaped piece of metal that was “blackish with a rough surface,” according to Heckler. The jar was warm -- plutonium generates heat -- and “seemed about right in terms of weight” for Heckler. A Geiger counter registered radiation. At a subsequent press conference in Beijing, the scientists announced North Korea has reprocessed enough plutonium for at least four bombs. A few days later, the North Korean government offered to freeze its nuclear weapons program in exchange for massive aid and the lifting of sanctions. The question arises: is this all a con?

President Barack Hussein Obama has laid out the core message of his re-election campaign. It is a message whose claims are blatantly false and whose point is irrelevant to what is of greatest concern to Americans today.

Despite this, there is no evidence so far that his strategy and messaging is not working and won't be successful.

In his speech last week (4/10) at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, the president defined what he called "the defining issue of our time."

This defining issue, per the president, appears to be that America is not fair.

Now excuse me for pointing out the irony of hearing from our nation's first black president a suggestion that America may no longer be a nation where dreams can be realized or where someone can come out of nowhere and make it.

Ironically, I would say that if America is unfair today, it is because politicians and government have the power to do exactly what it is that Obama wants to do: Seize control of the wealth of some and redistribute it to whomever they choose.

The Bible that I read every day calls this theft.

With apologies to Clint Eastwood, we're facing a real-life version of his famous movie that could be entitled The Responsible, The Timid, and The Ugly.

For the past year, the Federal Reserve has been the largest single purchaser of U.S. government securities, buying well more than half of all new debt. The Fed calls this program quantitative easing (QE2), or what normal people would call printing money. The Fed has stated that this program will stop in June. Who is going to purchase all of the new government debt when the Fed stops?

The Chinese and other foreign holders of U.S. government debt are well aware of the increasing probability of higher U.S. inflation and the corresponding further decline in the dollar. Since September, the Chinese have been gradually reducing their holdings of U.S. government securities (i.e., becoming net sellers). The Japanese had been net buyers of U.S. government debt, but they also will now likely become net sellers as they will need funds for rebuilding.

Again, who will fill the Treasury bond-buying gap left by the withdrawal of the Fed, the Chinese and the Japanese?