• Common Core Nation: My interview with Sandra Stotsky, leading critic of the Common Core State Standards.

• Is there such a thing as legislative intent? In our feature review essay this week, Adam MacLeod reviews Richard Ekins’ The Nature of Legislative Intent. MacLeod notes the author’s main point:

Ekins skillfully defends the ancient idea that a legislature can intend to change law, and the job of courts is to give effect to that intent. The law created by a statute is not merely the assemblage of signs of which the text is constituted. Rather, law is the set of propositions to which the text points. Positive law is a reason for the actions of judges (and others) even when the text by itself is not fully determinate.

• In this report on the plight of artists and their lofts in trendy Manhattan neighborhoods who must receive NYC approval to be re-certified to retain their space, I wonder if the New York Times just defended free speech in campaign finance. Same problem. In this instance, the government is deciding who is an artist. But if this gives the paper of record the willies, then why is it reasonable for the government to decide who is a legitimate publisher and, therefore, exempt from the campaign finance regime?

• Alberto Mingardi at Econ Lib asks an important question: Just who is the Italian prime minister this week?

• An interview with John Gray, perhaps the world’s preeminent prophet of doom.

• Social Justice needs a shot in the arm: Cut off Harvard and you save America.