By DEROY MURDOCK, Scripps Howard News Service

Sen. Barack Obama finally captured the Democratic presidential nomination on Tuesday. For this, he deserves two cheers from Americans from coast to coast.

Hot on the heels of its $307 billion farm-subsidy orgy, Congress barely caught its breath before plunging back into another multibillion-dollar spend-a-thon. The next targets of its affection are mortgage holders, soon to be seduced with other people's money.

While Americans focus on the interminable Clinton-Obama celebrity death match, Senator John McCain is using clear-headed, compellingly crafted speeches to propose surprisingly bold, free-market ideas. With one huge exception, the Arizona Republican advocates more limited, open government as his Democratic rivals promise tax hikes and an even busier state.

On Monday, Americans finally will start working for themselves rather than for their government masters. This milestone arrives two days later than in 2007, clearly proving that the era of big government is back with a vengeance.

NEW ORLEANS -- "Slowly."That's how locals here describe how the Crescent City is recovering from August 2005's Hurricane Katrina. While it has many miles to go, however, New Orleans noticeably has advanced since I visited a year ago. It has improved vastly since November 2005, when I witnessed how badly The Storm had socked this Southern belle.

Australia, the land where sinks drain the other way, has alerted Americans that we see Earth's climate upside down: We're not warming. We're cooling.

NEW YORK -- "Incentives matter."That sentence encapsulates the free-market approach to economic growth. Unfortunately, these two words exceed the attention spans of easily distracted Washington politicians.

To paraphrase the late, great William F. Buckley, Jr., someone must stand athwart the federal ethanol program yelling, "Stop!" The emergency brake should be pulled - NOW - before ethanol wreaks further havoc.

How much more pain must Americans endure before our masters in Washington let oil companies punch a few holes in the Alaskan tundra? Must we shiver pennilessly in the dark before we may extract new domestic petroleum deposits? Or shall we simply keep buying $111 barrels of oil from people who want us dead?

Turn your clock back 70 years. Imagine that Wall Street banks and brokerages sold Nuremberg-compliant bonds and stock funds in 1938. American Nazi sympathizers bought financial instruments certified by Berlin-based advisors as free of "Jewish profits" from, say, Salomon Brothers and Bloomingdale's.