Philosophy students occasionally wile away idle moments by arguing over what constitutes a truly victimless crime. It's a more complicated issue than one might suppose.

Significantly reducing transit prices can have dramatic effects on getting people to give up driving their cars to work.

Last year at this time, it was the calm before the marketing storm of e-government. Dot-com companies were beginning to burst onto the scene, offering to make it easy and convenient for citizens to go online to pay tickets and taxes and get licenses and permits.

Many state and local officials were livid last spring when the e- commerce commission headed by Virginia Governor James Gilmore recommended against taxing goods sold over the Internet. They felt the report ignored their concern that such action would eat away at their sales-tax revenue and hurt Main Street retailers who still had to collect the tax.

Regardless of real-world pressures, data should be made public. Absent good information, bad information will prevail.