My occasional co-author, Jeff Hummel, has scored a real coup: getting a balanced assessment of Abraham Lincoln published in Illinois. And not just in Illinois but also in the most important Illinois newsaper, the Chicago Tribune. And not just in the Chicago Tribune, but also on Lincoln’s birthday.

Best sentence:

The presidency of Abraham Lincoln thus witnessed the simultaneous culmination and repudiation of the American Revolution.

Note that whereas Robert Higgs dates the growth of big government to the WWI, Great Depression, WWII interventions, Hummel uses Higgs-type reasoning to date it to the Civil War. Indeed, that was the hook I used to persuade Fortune to let me review his excellent book on the Civil War, Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men.