Assorted Links

1.  John Lott breaks down the impact of drilling on GDP and Obama's delay of the Keystone Pipeline.

2. Making law-school two years?  Discussion at the Freakonomics blog.

3. The US government is offering cash prizes for videos promoting Obamacare.

This is sick and disturbing.  In addition to the $30,000 in prizes - taxpayers are probably spending many times that amount on the labor for the people who are administering this contest.

4. Slate has a good story about the gender wage gap (via Lew Rockwell)

It concludes: 

If this midcareer gap is due to discrimination, it’s much deeper than “male boss looks at female hire and decides she is worth less, and then pats her male colleague on the back and slips him a bonus.” It’s the deeper, more systemic discrimination of inadequate family-leave policies and childcare options, of women defaulting to being the caretakers. Or of women deciding that are suited to be nurses and teachers but not doctors. And in that more complicated discussion, you have to leave room at least for the option of choice—that women just don’t want to work the same way men do. 

5. Robert Murphy has a nice post about "minimum wage shenanigans". 

One excerpt:

I can’t find myself making this specific point–is that even if you conceded that “modest” increases in the minimum wage wouldn’t lead to significant drops in employment, that that had no bearing on whether Obama’s proposed 24% increase (to $9/hour) would have an effect.