WHILE THE FOX IS VERMIN:

Any Hedgehogs for President? (LAWRENCE KUDLOW, March 13, 2007, NY Sun)

It's easy to understand why the leading Democratic candidates are silent on the matter. Senators Clinton and Obama and John Edwards intend to overturn President Bush's supply-side program, and would do so with the usual liberal mantra of taxing the rich. But Republican silence is baffling in the real-world laboratory where evidence shows the tax cuts have worked. In particular, taxing capital less has unlocked new investment and unleashed record liquidity to fund business and the stock market, even in the face of money-tightening actions by the Federal Reserve.

Just look at the evidence. Wall Street economist Michael Darda points out that real wages from increased job creation have climbed at twice the speed during this business cycle than in the first 66 months of the previous cycle. Boosted by service-sector job creation, non-farm payrolls grew by 97,000 in February, with a net upward revision of 55,000 for the December and January reports. The median length, or duration, of unemployment fell 8 percentage points in the last year, while non-management wages increased 4.1%, almost twice the inflation rate.

The American job-creating machine is firing on all cylinders. Significant gross domestic product-slowing inventory corrections in housing and manufacturing couldn't stop it, nor could unusually bad February weather. Get this: According to Wall Streeter Joe LaVorgna, 505,000 people couldn't get to work because of bad weather last month, the highest number in 10 years and twice the normal seasonal weather effect of the past five Februarys. Yet jobs still rose substantially, and next month's report will likely include another positive payback revision.

It's also a quality jobs boom: Americans with a high-school diploma registered a 4.3% unemployment rate, slightly less than the national average, those with some college education had a 3.6 rate, and those with a bachelor's degree or higher had a rock-bottom 1.9% rate.

The biggest dilemma in the jobs stats is the 7.1% unemployment rate for people with less than a high-school diploma. But taxing the rich will not solve this. Education reform, such as parental school choice and merit pay for teachers, will.

But why the silence from Messrs. McCain, Romney, and Giuliani on all the good news?