Quote of the Day

Glenn Reynolds:

The incompetence and venality of America’s political class surprises even those of us who are paying attention.

Homeland Security

The disgrace of the Bush Administration:

One of the negative consequences of the Department of Homeland Security’s push for shamnesty is its shrinking credibility. From the dog-and-pony show raids before shamnesty hit the Senate floor to the smearing of opponents during the legislative debate to the inaction of “emergency” border security appropriations after the bill’s defeat, DHS and its chief Michael Chertoff have abandoned principled enforcement of immigration laws for cynical, open-borders politicking.

We won’t forget the frenetic smear campaign that Chertoff waged against principled opponents of the Bush-Kennedy immigration disaster. We won’t forget that while global jihad marched on, Secretary Chertoff was more worried about the availability of cheap lettuce pickers than about terrorist operatives slipping past our air, land, and sea borders.

The Bush Presidency

Dead in the water.

Borjas On Bush

The Harvard economist takes a look back at the immigration debate and the Bush Administration. Quotable:

Maybe those who faulted the Bush manner of governing — its arrogance, its lack of intellectual curiosity, and its obsession with having its way regardless of inconvenient facts — were right after all.

Also this:

let’s finally all join in and admit the obvious. There is no doubt that making it easier for more and more workers to enter the labor market will lower wages. “Demand curves slope downward” should be the new rallying cry. Perhaps now the economists at the CEA and elsewhere can recover from their amnesia regarding this fundamental law of economics.

How FDR Set The Price Of Gold

Amity Shlaes explains why FDR was bad for the U.S. economy — including this incredible story:

At some points Roosevelt seemed to understand the need to counter deflation. But his method for doing so generated a whole new set of uncertainties. Roosevelt personally experimented with the currency — one day, in bed, he raised the gold price by 21 cents. When Henry Morgenthau, who would shortly become Treasury Secretary, asked him why, Roosevelt said that “its a lucky number, because its three times seven.” Morgenthau wrote later: “If anybody ever knew how we set the gold price through a combination of lucky numbers, etc., I think they would be frightened.”