Greece and too many other countries have been trying to defy gravity by living the good life on borrowed money. In 2001, the Greeks entered the eurozone, which gave them access to low-rate loans under the pretense that Greece was richer than it was. The seeds of the destruction that resulted in the closure of the banks this week were planted the day the Greeks adopted the euro. None of this should have been a surprise to anyone. The only thing for certain is that the Greeks will now suffer another major drop in their real incomes. The open question is will the Europeans, the Americans, the Japanese and others who also have been living on borrowed money, growing at unsustainable rates, learn the lessons from the latest Greek tragedy, or will they too march off the cliff?

Little illustrates more clearly how frivolous “progressives” have become than the announcement by Treasury Secretary Jack Lew that Alexander Hamilton will be replaced on the ten dollar bill by a woman, identity TBD. This isn’t because there haven’t been many women in American history deserving of the honor. Foremost among them, arguably, is Harriet Tubman (1822-1913), who after escaping from slavery returned to Maryland’s Eastern Shore 13 times to rescue 70 other slaves. During the Civil War, she risked her life to spy for the Union. In later life, she became a leading suffragette. Among other women deserving of honor are Betsy Ross, “Molly Pitcher,” Harriet Beecher Stowe, Julia Ward Howe, Clara Barton, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. But none of these admirable women contributed nearly as much as Alexander Hamilton, after George Washington arguably the most important of our Founding Fathers – and the most anti-slavery to boot. That Mr. Lew didn’t have a woman in mind when he announced Alexander Hamilton would be dumped for one indicates he’s making the move for a cheesy reason: gender politics irrespective of achievement. And now he is learning the hard way how difficult it is to appease those who practice gender politics.

The Confederate battle flag had nothing whatever to do with the gruesome murders Dylann Roof committed in the Emanuel AME Zion church in Charleston, South Carolina. But Gov. Nikki Haley is right to seek its removal from a monument to Confederate soldiers on the grounds of the state capitol. Conservative CNN commentator Erick Erickson explains why. And, as Gov. Haley noted, "the hate-filled murderer" and others of his ilk have appropriated the Southern Cross as a symbol of white supremacy. It no longer matters that for many Southerners who followed it into battle, it wasn't. Robert E. Lee was more critical of slavery than were Union generals U.S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman. Lee was against secession. He fought for the South because he could not fight against Virginia, his home state. We should all thank God the South lost. But it is false and malicious to assert all Confederates were virulent racists, akin to Nazis.

America's Greece is Puerto Rico.  Like Greece, the Puerto Rican government has more debt than it can service, and some are calling for a bailout by U.S. taxpayers. The major Puerto Rican state-owned or controlled enterprises are all losing money, including the power authority which is insolvent. Puerto Rico is an American territory that was acquired from Spain in 1898 during the Spanish-American War. The island has a population of about 3.6 million, which is declining as many Puerto Ricans emigrate to the U.S. mainland or elsewhere because of the continuing economic stagnation. Hong Kong was a small British territory, with the British legal system but no self-government. Yet, it has become rich -- having more than twice the per capita income of the average American -- without receiving aid and subsidies from Britain which the United States has and continues to provide to Puerto Rico. The operative question is why has Hong Kong become so much more successful than Puerto Rico?

Dylann Roof, 21, sat in a Bible study in the Emanuel AME Zion Church in Charleston, South Carolina for nearly an hour before murdering 9 of the parishioners he told police had been "so nice to him." As most of us were recoiling in horror from such evil, "progressives" - pouncing like vultures on fresh killed carrion - politicized this awful crime. "This type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries," said President Barack Hussein Obama. Since 2001, there've been 14 shootings with as many or more victims in Norway, France, Switzerland, Britain, Germany, Finland, Serbia, Brazil and Mexico. He knew this, yet he used Roof's lunacy to promote his Hate America racist agenda -- and to promote gun-control laws for the purpose of disarming citizens.

Two stories dominated the news this week. One is really, really important. The other is frivolous. Of course, the news media focused more attention on the frivolous story. Hackers stole sensitive information from databases of the Office of Personnel Management on 4 to 14 million federal employees, who now could have their identities stolen, or worse. This was a cyber Pearl Harbor which "wrecked American espionage," said John Schindler, a former counterintelligence officer for the National Security Council.  Actually, it was no real hack at all, but we'll get to that. The news media gave more attention to Rachel Dolezal, who was president of the NAACP chapter in Spokane and a part time professor of Afro-American Studies at Eastern Washington University until her parents outed her as being 100 percent white. Conservatives chortle as liberals, who said Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner is a woman because he/she thinks he/she is, perform verbal somersaults to make pseudo-distinctions between him/her and Ms. Dolezal. Once, journalists told us what we needed to know as well as what we liked to hear. It's easier to write about Rachel Dolezal than about the implications of a cyber Pearl Harbor.  But there's another, truly sinister reason.