There is so much fear wrapped up in this financial crisis that government leaders are willing to support anything, even if this means the bailout bill was concocted mostly between Henry Paulson and his former colleagues as Goldman Sachs.

It is true that action is needed to contain the financial crisis. Many of the most gifted economists--Paul Krugman, Lawrence Summers, and Joseph Stiglitz, for instance-are now in favor of a bailout. Stiglitz, a Nobel Laureate, is the pioneer of "moral hazard" theory, so it's hard to argue that this group doesn't understand the dangers of public largesse.

Before I get on the plane tomorrow, here's a few short items that I missed this week.

THE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES OF OPEN PRIMARY: Under Washington state's "top two" open primary law, candidates are permitted to list their own party preference on the ballot. But Democrats, believing that the Republican gubernatorial nominee is obscuring his unpopular party affiliation with a ballot reference to GOP, went to court to demand that the Republican be listed as a Republican.

VOTING OF THE FORECLOSED: In the most important political story of the week not related to the Wall Street bailout, there are signs that voters who lost their homes to foreclosure and haven't changed their address on voter registration documents may be systematically challenged at the polls -- to prevent them from voting -- by Republican operatives.

USDA ADS STOPPED: The U.S. Department of Agriculture had been running ads that seemed designed to oppose Prop. 2, the California ballot initiative to regulate how farm animals are confined. This week, a federal judge told the agency that, as a government agency, it couldn't take sides in a campaign.