Some latest must-reads from America’s leading think tanks have a common theme of loss and recovery.

• Derek Scissors and J.D. Foster of the Heritage Foundation have a new paper out on the subject of Japan’s infamous “Lost Decade” — which is actually a misnomer, given that the country’s economic woes have far exceeded a single ten-year period. When liberal American politicians cite Japan’s experience as a defense of the recent porkulus monstrosity, arguing that Japan would have recovered faster if it had enacted a bigger fiscal stimulus earlier, they seem not to understand the fundamental problems that Japan suffered and still suffers. “If the U.S does not fundamentally change its tax, spending, and regulatory policies, this nation risks replaying Japan’s two lost decades, with all that entails,” Scissors and Foster write. Adam Summers of the Reason Foundation offers some related thoughts, explaining the significance of America’s own Lost Decade of the 1930s.

• Karlyn Bowman of the American Enterprise Institute reports in a new public-opinion round-up that Americans believe we are at risk of losing the war in Afghanistan. At least most of them still believe the war is just and necessary. Only 30 percent of Europeans support military action against the Taliban. Within Aghanistan itself, Hamid Karzai’s job-performance ratings have fallen dramatically in recent years, as have those of the U.S. intervention in their country.

• Environmentalists have peddled preposterous promises about energy-efficiency programs for many years, but thanks to a new EPA Inspector General’s report, they’re finally beginning to lose their credibility. The Heartland Institute explains that advocates of the Energy Star program have touted its savings with questionable data.

• In response to yawning fiscal deficits, many state governments are considering another round of steep excise-tax increases on cigarettes. Mike LaFaive of Michigan’s Mackinac Center shows how past tax hikes have driven cigarette retailing underground, with deleterious consequences. A shocking 35 percent of cigarettes consumed in Michigan in 2006 were smuggled.