Paul Gigot hosted a written forum in today's Wall Street Journal about the economic populism of the liberal presidential candidates.  The panelists took on issues ranging from Obama and Clinton wanting to raise taxes, to their various forms of mandated health care coverage, to Obama's ultra-protectionist trade stance.  Some highlights:

On Obama's protectionist stance on international trade:

Moore: Paul, by the way, the greatest antidote to higher inflation--you're right, people are feel a pinch on the wallet--is precisely trade. Because if you look at the CPI numbers--I just looked at them this week--the very industries that are most trade sensitive--things like apparels, toys, computer software--those are all areas where prices are falling. It's only the industries where you don't see a lot of international-trade pressures to lower prices where you see these increases.

On Clinton's health care mandates:

Now let me ask you about young people, in particular. Because as you know, a lot of young people think they're going to live forever so they don't need insurance, and they don't want to pay their marginal income to buy insurance. But--

McCaughey: I am very surprised that Sen. Obama did not raise this issue, because the Clinton plan is an unfair hidden tax on young adults. She would require all young adults, people in their 20s and 30s, to buy health insurance, but more than that, to pay the same price for it as a 55-year-old, as a middle-ager.

Gigot: What's the justification for that?

McCaughey: She says one price for all is fairer. But in fact, what she's doing is requiring young adults, who are already subsidizing the elderly through Medicare payroll taxes, Social Security taxes, she now wants them to subsidize the middle-aged group.

Defense of Democracies launched a new ad campaign over the weekend, asking American's to call their members of Congress to urge them to vote on FISA renewal legislation.  As of midnight on February 16, our ability to collect terrorist communications information overseas was interrupted by the lapse of this legislation, hampering the government's ability to protect America.  To view this ad, click here.

Representative Adam Putnam wrote an op-ed in today’s New York Post regarding the allowed expiration of this FISA renewal legislation:

Ten days ago, their leaders chose to adjourn the House of Representatives without passing a Senate-approved anti-terror bill that had overwhelming bipartisan support. As a result, Democrats left America at significant risk and potentially blind to new terrorist plots.

The Democrats' dereliction of duty left our intelligence community without critical, 21st-century intelligence tools for unearthing those plots. Until the House passes this bill, our agencies are bound by the overly bureaucratic Vietnam-era law known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

FISA was in effect on 9/11, too. A bipartisan congressional inquiry into why our nation was blindsided by those attacks later concluded that "difficulties with the FISA process led to a diminished level of coverage of suspected al Qaeda operatives in the United States."

One of the main contributors to that report was none other than Nancy Pelosi - now the speaker of the House.

John Fund has written a piece today on the promises of presidential candidates to deal with climate change, and the need for debate within this discussion.

John McCain, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton all promise bold action on climate change . All have endorsed a form of cap-and-trade system that would severely limit future carbon emissions. The Democratic Congress is champing at the bit to act. So too is the Climate Action Partnership, a coalition of companies led by General Electric and Duke Energy.

You'd think this would be a rich time for debate on the issue of climate change. But it's precisely as sweeping change on climate policy is becoming likely that many people have decided the time for debate is over. One writer puts climate change skeptics "in a similar moral category to Holocaust denial," another envisions "war crimes trials" for the deniers. And during the tour for his film "An Inconvenient Truth," Al Gore himself belittled "global warming deniers" as unworthy of any attention.