It's difficult to say how large virtual economies have become, because governments don't conduct surveys, Castronova said, but the popularity of online cash is reportedly growing by as much as 20 percent per year.

I am now getting to the matter that truly baffles me. What most baffles me is the recent government raid in little LaGrange, Ohio. I have several questions: Why did it take place? How could it happen right here in America? Where in America do they find young men willing to execute such orders? What is happening now? Who is coming to the aid of these persecuted people? What has happened to my country over the past few decades?

Poor Bernie. The man has been ordered to spend 150 years in the hoosegow. What for? Who did he kill? A century and a half seems a little excessive for a financial crime. You could hold up three liquor stores and rape a whole convent and still not get 150 years. With a little bit of good lawyer-ing, a history of child abuse in the family, and good behavior in the big house, you’d be back on the street in 18 months.

But all the papers seem delighted. “Locked up for Life!” says one of today’s headlines. The judge “threw the book at him,” says another. His victims wanted him to get no mercy. The judge gave him none, imposing the maximum sentence. He is “extraordinarily evil,” said the man on the bench.

Justice has been done. Right?

There is no area in which Republicans have further strayed from our traditions than in foreign affairs.

Generations of conservatives followed the great advice of our Founding Fathers and pursued a restrained foreign policy that rebuffed entangling alliances and advised America, in the words of John Quincy Adams, not to "go abroad looking for dragons to slay."

Sen. Robert Taft, the stalwart of the Old Right, urged America to stay out of NATO. Dwight Eisenhower was elected on a platform promising to get us out of the conflict in Korea. Richard Nixon promised to end the war in Vietnam.