The closest thing Congress has to its own Tea Party takes place every Wednesday afternoon, in the Gold Room of the Rayburn House Office building. At 1:15, more than 100 congressmen and one aide each gather for the meeting of the Republican Study Committee, and for a little over an hour, the legislators chat about their latest projects to reduce the size of government--or, at least, to stop the latest Democrat effort to expand it.

Regulators around the world, including our own SEC, succumbed to populist fervor following the Lehman collapse and banned short-selling "to protect the integrity and quality of the securities market and strengthen investor confidence."