WASHINGTON — Milton Friedman was not only a brilliant economist — a Nobel laureate, in fact — he was also a gifted writer. In his 1962 book "Capitalism and Freedom," he presciently explained how health care costs were going to leap out of control over the next decades. Sure enough, they did. They multiplied from roughly $1 of every $20 being spent on health care in the 1950s to roughly $1 of every $5 being spent on health care today.

On April 13, Minnesota Congressman and DNC Deputy Chair Keith Ellison told a "progressive" audience that "Women are dying because we are losing elections," specifically alleging that this is the case in Texas and Missouri. It was yet another false claim — even if numerically true, the results would have to be tied to specific actions by Republican lawmakers in those states, and they aren't — in what has been a series of false claims made by Ellison during the past several weeks. Democratic Party operatives posing as "fact-checkers" have been predictably AWOL.

During the past several days, the press mentioned Wheaton College in Illinois when a former student was arrested for multiple burglaries, and when there were new developments relating to a football team hazing incident. On the positive side, the college's partnership with a school for children with disabilities got coverage, as of course did Wheaton's most famous graduate, the just-passed Rev. Billy Graham. But there hasn't been a word in the national establishment press about the Christian college's victory over the Obamacare contraception mandate — a victory which should ripple though all remaining related cases.

Fox's new medical drama The Resident was taken to task on Twitter upon its premiere last week for its completely unrealistic portrayal of what goes on in American healthcare and the January 29 episode "Comrades in Arms" was no different as it portrayed medical personnel ordering unnecessary tests to drive up costs and the hospital administration refusing to treat a dying illegal immigrant. 

The Associated Press reported early Thursday that the bill which ended the government shutdown contains Obamacare-related tax cuts, indicating that Republicans got even more of what they've wanted as a condition for ending the government shutdown. The AP's Marcy Gordon seemed quite unhappy about all of this, as she whined about a projected increase in budget deficits that isn't even a rounding error.