Several readers have e-mailed in response to my article today on New Source Review pointing to the Post story or the TAPped post about the federal study on the costs and benefits of regulation, as if this somehow contradicts something I wrote. My only conclusion is that they could not have read my piece carefully, if at all. My critique of the old New Source Review rules, and qualified defense of the Bush administration’s revisions, are premised on the fact that the old rules, whatever they cost industry, discouraged efficiency enhancing investments. That would be true irrespective of whether the old rules were cost-beneficial.