Solyndra pushed its way into the news primarily as an example of how the "enlightened" push for "green energy" could prove to be a taxpayer-financed disaster, not to mention a brewing scandal, as it turned out that millions were being shoveled into what was widely known to be a failing project, but one that was near and dear the the heart of one of Mr. Obama's billionaire campaign bundlers.  Someone must have forgotten that when the government picks business winners and losers, political considerations are never far behind  --  and, thus, neither is the smell, and often the fact, of corruption.

Perhaps the greatest example of cluelessness in the pages of the New York Times was their bafflement a few years ago over the fact that the prison population was still rising even though the crime rate was falling, apparently unable to discern a possible link between the two. ("Crime Keeps on Falling, But Prisons Keep on Filling" was the impossible-to-lampoon, Onion-worthy headline.) Or as one wit put it: we started lowering the crime rate when we finally acknowledged that the "root cause" of crime is criminals, and treated them accordingly.