Friday Funnies

Jay Leno, courtesy of Polical Diary:

"Speaking at a forum organized by Lance Armstrong on cancer research, Hillary Clinton told Chris Matthews if she is elected president, she will declare war on cancer, and then she will support the war on cancer for two years, and then she will be against it for a year, and then she will back out of it all together" -- Jay Leno, host of NBC's "Tonight Show."

Sen. Craig (R-- EW!)

I fear my beloved Republicans have learned the wrong lessons from recent history. Poor Senator Craig cannot find a friend in the Senate Cloakroom. Well, perhaps, that's for the best. But he cannot find a friend in the GOP leadership, and I am not sure that's right.

Really creepy? Yes. But I'd like to compare the Senior Senator from the last stall to members in the party’s Hall of Shame who enjoy their good standing.

• Rep. Tom Foley -- he may be out of good standing now, but his is supposed to be the lesson learned. I suggest that Rep, Foley was propositioning minors and was using his position as a Congressman coercively. He should have been shut down early by leadership that suspected/knew of this behavior.


• Sen. Ted Stevens (R - $$) -- no room in the party for a creepy queer, but crooks may hold leadership positions. Senator Stevens is a crook who stands against everything the party is supposed to embrace.


• Rep Don Young -- see above, what is with these Alaska guys?


• Rep. Jerry Lewis -- I will not call him a crook, but he's a poster child for purchasing incumbency with Federal largesse.

Creepy Craig was at least seeking something consensual with a grownup, and I suspect that he was going to pay out of his own pocket.

For This We Elect Republicans?

Where in the Constitution is the Executive Branch given responsibility for executive pay? Reading the Wall Street Journal (paid link) one can only assume that Senator Edwards has already won the 2008 election and has installed his SEC chief early:

Stepping up its campaign to shed light on the mysteries of executive pay, the Securities and Exchange Commission has sent letters to nearly 300 companies across America critiquing disclosures in this year's proxy statements and demanding more information.

The SEC's requests could set up a confrontation over details the agency wants that companies say are competitive and should remain secret. The federal securities regulator, for example, wants to know more about the targets and benchmarks companies use when they tie pay to performance.

Huh? What?

'bout that consensus

A good friend of this blog sends a link to the U.S. Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works. Specifically, Senator Inhofe’s EPW Press Blog. Looking at recent peer-reviewed research, Senator Inhofe’s staff doesn't quite see the consensus that a certain former Vice President claims.

Of 528 total papers on climate change, only 38 (7%) gave an explicit endorsement of the consensus. If one considers "implicit" endorsement (accepting the consensus without explicit statement), the figure rises to 45%. However, while only 32 papers (6%) reject the consensus outright, the largest category (48%) are neutral papers, refusing to either accept or reject the hypothesis. This is no "consensus."

The figures are even more shocking when one remembers the watered-down definition of consensus here. Not only does it not require supporting that man is the "primary" cause of warming, but it doesn't require any belief or support for "catastrophic" global warming. In fact of all papers published in this period (2004 to February 2007), only a single one makes any reference to climate change leading to catastrophic results.

Quick Election Thoughts

Two candidate (one from each party) were in the news today.

First, John Edwards:

WASHINGTON -- Last week in Hanover, N.H., John Edwards shot off a rhetorical signal flare. "I want to go one step further," he said. Something new was coming. This wasn't going to be just another stump speech about the "Two Americas" -- one for the rich and one for everyone else. He was about to attack his own party, the Democratic Party, which he likes to call "the party of the people."

"The choice for our party could not be any clearer," he continued. "We cannot replace a group of corporate Republicans with a group of corporate Democrats, just swapping the Washington insiders of one party for the Washington insiders of the other."

Of course, he never named the fellow travelers targeted by his broadside. But he left plenty of clues, given Hillary Clinton's time in the White House and Barack Obama's record fundraising. "The American people deserve to know that their presidency is not for sale," he said, "the Lincoln Bedroom is not for rent, and lobbyist money can no longer influence policy in the House and the Senate."

There are usually two ways that a candidates runs for the primary. One can move as far to the fringe as possible and attack fellow party-members or one can run a centrist campaign and attack candidates from the other party. The Democrats, with the exception of Hillary Clinton, have been rather unique in that they have mostly moved to the left and run against President Bush. Given this pattern, the comments by Edwards seem to relfect the following:

• The Edwards campaign has come to the realization that he must make some sort of change to improve his position within the party.


• Hillary may be in trouble. The negative attacks are largely going to be aimed at her simply because she is the front runner and, quite frankly, there is more material. Elizabeth Edwards even stated that Hillary would do more to energize Republicans than any candidate with an "R" next to their name. Unfortunately for Edwards, this negative press aimed at Hillary likely helps Obama in the long run.

The second piece of news is that Fred (or Fred!) Thompson will announce his candidacy on September 6 on his website. The right-wing blogosphere is growing tired of Sen. Thompson because he is attempting "upstage" the fellow Republicans by appearing on Leno on the night of the Republican debate and the fact that he has delayed announcing his candidacy for so long. Nevertheless, I do not think any of the blogosphere's concerns are warranted. Here's why:

• The blogosphere is filled with party activists and libertarian academics that are largely out of touch with the mainstream Americans (for better or for worse).


• Thompson hasn't run a conventional campaign. I actually like this. Besides, more people will watch Leno than the R's debate.


• Thompson has created the perception of being above the other candidates. He should try to maintain this as long as possible.


• What purpose does it serve for Thompson to debate the likes of Huckabee, Brownback, Tancredo, and the other second tier candidates? There is plenty of time left before primary season.


• Staying out of the race hasn't hurt him as much as the conservative pundits pretend. Thompson is still at or near the top of most polls.

StorageMarkets.com

Now, this is cool. The ThreeSources readership includes veterans of the Storage Industry, and predictive markets players and workers, (plus a couple other guys...)

I ran into an old friend and fellow storage warrior last weekend. He is involved with several projects, but one that really caught my fancy was StorageMarkets.com, a predictive market for the storage industry. Industry folk can wager virtual dollars on questions like "When the first 2TB 3.5” hard disk drive will be publicly announced" or "Which hardware implementation of encryption will have the highest market share by the end of 2008?" or "When will a majority of customers require storage systems that support both block and file I/O in the same system as evidenced by sales?"

Hey, there's a switch: the economists' eyes are glazing over!

It is a cool site and I am told that my (work) email address will get me a membership. I can beg for anybody else that is interested. Here is the site, or here is a blog that provides summaries and news items.

The Dems' Fox Debate

Something tells me that jk would love this:

I think that Fox should go ahead with the debate. Take that time you were going to allot for the Democratic Party Debate, and fill it with any empty stage with empty lecterns. Then every few minutes, put a title bar on the screen with different debate topics.

Such as:
"DEMOCRATS PRESENT IDEAS ON WINNING THE WAR" ...crickets...crickets...crickets...
"DEMOCRATS PRESENT IDEAS ON SAVING SOCIAL SECURITY" ...tumbleweeds...
"DEMOCRATS PRESENT IDEAS ON CUTTING PORK” ...cold wind...

Big Oil Collusion

Are you sure about that?

Big oil companies did not conspire to raise U.S. gasoline prices last summer, as it was high crude oil costs and supply problems that caused the spike in pump prices, government investigators said on Thursday.

The Federal Trade Commission said that about 75 percent of the rise in gasoline prices was due to a seasonal increase in summer driving, higher oil costs and more expensive ethanol that was blended into gasoline.

The other 25 percent of the price increase stemmed from lower gasoline production as refiners moved to using ethanol as the main clean-burning fuel additive and lingering damage from hurricanes Katrina and Rita that reduced refining capacity.

So what they're saying is that fluctuations in supply and demand cause prices to go up (and down?) Not some cabal of evil white men?

Get outta here.

It was Only $100 Million

A union shell group raises and spends $100 million illegally, and the punishment is a fine of less than 1% -- I bet they spent more on coffee.

Yet another problem with government regulation of campaign finance -- besides its explicitly contravening the First Amendment -- is that the laws have no teeth. Like the mob, you just budget for some fines in your business plan. John Fund reports on the recent decision against "Americans Coming Together."

The Federal Election Commission has just found that Americans Coming Together, a top union group active in the 2004 presidential election, spent $100 million illegally on federal election activity that year. The agency imposed a fine of just $775,000 -- and not one dime will go back to the union workers who financed ACT's illegal activities with their forced payment of dues.

This is a textbook example of what's wrong with federal election laws. The FEC takes years to catch up with those who break the law, then administers a slap on the wrist on the grounds that ACT disbanded after the 2004 election and won't be engaging in further election activity.

In reality, such groups may disband but their supporters and personnel have every intention of remaining active in politics under another brand name. That perfectly describes the ACT shell game.

Its largest donor was the Service Employees International Union, one of the most politically active labor unions. Its largest non-union donor was billionaire George Soros. And who was the group's president? None other than Harold Ickes, a long-time functionary of the Clinton machine who served as Bill Clinton's deputy White House chief of staff. Mr. Ickes is now a major player in the huge fundraising apparatus of Hillary Rodham Clinton, who unsurprisingly has run into her own campaign finance scandal this week. One of her top donors, Norman Hsu, was revealed to be a fugitive from justice and may have illegally laundered campaign contributions to the Clinton campaign through "straw" or fake donors.

It's clear the FEC can't be relied upon to report on the law-skirting by major political players before voters render their judgment at the polls in 2008. Nor are its sanctions much of a deterrent to those playing for big stakes on the presidential stage. Mrs. Clinton's latest scandal appears to be a near-replica of the 1996 Clinton fundraising scandals, in which 120 people either fled the country to avoid questioning, took the Fifth Amendment or otherwise failed to cooperate with investigators.

The FEC enforcement action against ACT came after a complaint three years ago by the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. Meanwhile, the news media resolutely ignored the story, insisting that looking into the modus operandi of the Clinton machine represented "old news." Here's hoping the press wakes up and realizes the time for vigilant reporting on the 2008 election excesses of all parties is before Americans vote, not years afterward.

I'm sure they'll start with the GOP, John.

Regulate Telecom!

To show the superiority of free markets, I frequently cite telecom (and, of course, the iPod) as examples. So does Mayor Giuliani. When Larry Kudlow asked him about health care he said "How did we make cell phones affordable? We let the market work."

I have to compliment my collectivist foes on strategy. If they can ruin the markets where the markets work, Classical Liberals will no longer have any examples. So, the FCC and a consumer group have decided it's time to regulate the most successful free market in my lifetime.

WSJ Ed Page (paid link):
In a hearing last month, the Consumers Union told Congress that "in Europe and Asia, wireless consumers have better choices" and that "instead of innovating, the wireless community has become a cozy cartel of a few dominant providers with limited device offerings." More recently, the FCC slapped "open access" requirements on a valuable block of spectrum to be auctioned off early next year. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin justified the move to "ensure that consumers benefit from innovation and technological advancements."

But consumers are doing just fine, according to an American Consumer Institute study released last week. Comparing U.S. and foreign telecom markets, it concluded that the U.S. market "offers more choice and is less concentrated than any Western country's wireless market." U.S. consumers have access to more wireless operators and more devices than consumers anywhere else in the world. And the top three wireless providers in the U.S. comprise a smaller share of the market than their counterparts in Europe and Asia.

Americans on average use more than four times as many wireless minutes per month as Europeans, according to the study, reflecting the fact that "U.S. wireless prices are the lowest in the world, with the exception of Hong Kong." This combination of higher usage at lower prices, it says, "presents compelling evidence that the overall consumer welfare derived from wireless service is higher in the U.S. than internationally." In short, calls for more telecom rules and regulations are a solution in search of a problem.

Now, if the Senate could dictate the size and cost of MP3 players...

Fidel's Endorsement

From Reuters:

HAVANA (Reuters) - Ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro is tipping Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to team up and win the U.S. presidential election.

Clinton leads Obama in the race to be the Democratic nominee for the November 2008 election, and Castro said they would make a winning combination.

"The word today is that an apparently unbeatable ticket could be Hillary for president and Obama as her running mate," he wrote in an editorial column on U.S. presidents published on Tuesday by Cuba's Communist Party newspaper, Granma.

Enough said.

On Robber Barons

Hillsdale History Professor Burton W. Folsom, pens a guest editorial in the Wall Street Journal today (paid link) and hits one of my favorite themes. Mexican telecom magnate Carlos Slim is derided as a robber baron. Folsom steps in to defend the robber barons:

Whoever satisfied the most customers would have the largest businesses. Only when Rockefeller sold cheap kerosene to tens of millions of Americans did he become the nation's first billionaire. "We must ever remember," Rockefeller told his partner, "we are refining oil for the poor man and he must have it cheap and good." Ironically, the price of Rockefeller's kerosene dropped to eight cents a gallon in 1885 from 26 cents in 1870 -- all the while he was viciously pilloried as a monopolist by the press, Congress and his competitors.

Ford, Walton and Mr. Gates also had to sell widely to masses of Americans at competitive rates before they rose to the top. Putting a car in every garage, not just the garages of the rich, was Ford's working motto. In serving the most customers, he reaped the largest reward. So did Bill Gates with computers. When America did deviate from free markets -- for example, by granting government subsidies to the Union Pacific and Central Pacific Railroads -- the economy suffered instabilities. But it recovered from the experience and learned a lesson. James J. Hill built the Great Northern Railroad with no federal subsidy -- and outperformed all other transcontinentals.

Rockefeller provided poor people with heat and light to earn his pejorative sobriquet. When people run him down, I always think of the old mining bumpersticker "Let the Bastards Freeze in the Dark!" Not only does Folsom honor the Robber Barons, but he tells Senor Slim: "I knew Robber Barons, Robber Barons were friends of mine, Son, you ain't no Robber Baron." Oh wait, that was Sen. Lloyd Bentsen.

His major opportunity came when President Carlos Salinas de Gortari decided to privatize some inefficient industries. Mr. Slim bought Telmex, the nation's phone company, in 1990 in a controversial auction which was decidedly less than transparent. With that purchase came a six-year monopoly guaranteed by the government. Although Mr. Slim was supposed to relinquish the monopoly in 1997, he used a variety of legal and political tools to maintain it, for example filing injunctions in court to block orders from the regulator to provide competitors fair access to his network. According to OECD figures, Mexican consumers and businesses still pay above market telephone rates. Fewer than one-fourth of Mexican homes have telephones.

With a near monopoly of fixed-line telephones and data access (the Internet), Mr. Slim has reaped windfall profits which, wisely invested, have propelled him to immense wealth. Meanwhile, Mr. Slim's newer ventures -- his construction company and his oil services company -- rely on government contracts for their major business. Recently President Felipe Calderón met with Mr. Slim and urged him to accept greater competition.

Mitt! on Larry! (UPDATED: Tonight Too)

The former Governor of the Commonwealth takes some licks for his health care plan(s) around here, but he will be able to defend himself in a one-on-one interview with Larry Kudlow tonight. CNBC 5:00PM Eastern. It is an exceptional venue to hear the candidates’ economic ideas.

UPDATE I: Part of the interview will be shown tonight (Aug 29), including the discussion of health care. I'm a Giuliani supporter, so discount my opinion as you see fit, but I'd have to say that he was unimpressive last night. He swung and missed at some softballs. "Do we need a SarbOx for lending?" Governor Romney said no, but conceded that there might be a place for Washington to make sure that customers understood their loans.

Hugh Hewitt always talks about how clear and in command of the facts Romney is, and that once people see him, they are really impressed. He did not come across as in control last night, and he won’t find a friendlier interview until he is on Hewitt’s show.

UPDATE II: Here is the video:

Tang®, Yum!

TCSDaily carries an article I cannot agree with. I guess I'm going to have to send back my $500 buyoff from big oil this month.

But Jack Raia, a financial executive in New York, tries to defend NASA as a wealth creator.

Endless technologies were spawned at NASA that have improved the quality of life in the U.S. and in much of the world. Take the weather. Satellites orbit the earth and track storms, providing information to supercomputers on the Earth's surface that perform millions of calculations to arrive at the most likely outcome. Those satellites were placed in orbit by NASA and the computers performing the calculations are spin-offs of NASA programs.

The latest models of Airplanes produced by Boeing and Airbus are made of lighter, stronger materials that were developed for the space program.

In medicine, though a cure for Parkinson's has proven elusive, ultrasound scanners provide more vivid pictures of infants in the womb and greater ability to diagnose problems. Cat scans are an indispensable tool in the detection of many maladies. Though not yet curable, research on osteoporosis, diabetes and AIDS has led to innovations in treatments. All are spin-offs of NASA.

I'll take obvious fallacies for $200, Alex. If NASA did not exist, we would not have satellites? Nobody but the government could do this? Running shoes, light materials for Aerospace applications. Government only.

I grew up in the Apollo days and I'll defend NASA funding for research and exploration. But it's not worth it for Tang. I think Raia does a disservice to claim that the byproducts outweigh what private investment could have accomplished. To do so allows NASA to stray from its mission of discovery and exploration to fund soft, PR projects like the International Space Station and "The First Hispanic Zoroastrian Certified Public Accountant In Space (TFHZCPAIS)."

NASA missions and their funding should be decided on their value as research and exploration; people can then decide how much they wish to fund. It is specious to claim a few commercial by-products as justification.

Luskin's Back

The summer just became a little less doldrumy. Don Luskin is back from vacation.

I suspect Paul Krugman will miss his absence. He takes down a Krugman column today where Krugman makes a perfect pitch for school choice. Only it's sarcastic. The idea of government's not running schools is so foreign to the ex-Princeton prof, he finds the idea humorous.

Unseen Effects of Regulation

Got to laugh to keep from crying. Volvo, highly revered in Boulder County, introduces a new efficiency concept car with a clean burning diesel engine and a new efficient transmission. It will lower emissions and improve fuel economy. But don't detail your Prius for trade-in value just yet:

Unfortunately, Volvo has no plans to introduce the Powershift or the diesel into the U.S. market. Apparently certifying the new engine for the U.S. market is too expensive at this point. And they’re unsure if there is enough customer support to back the effort. Too bad. We think both the transmission—and the diesel—would do quite well here.

Insty linked to this over the weekend and has also linked to 70+ MPG VW diesel cars. But none of them will be available here, because of our regulatory hurdles, designed (everybody now) to increase fuel economy and decrease emissions.

Frederic, call your office.

Bastiat On Iraq

ThreeSources's friend Josh Hendrickson at Everyday Economist has a smart piece this morning. He takes on those who now think that more command-and-control would have helped the Iraqi economy and concomitantly impeded the insurgency.

The EE links to reports that claim a slavish devotion to free market ideology spoiled an opportunity to keep services and jobs active in state-owned enterprises. He then responds with Bastiat's "seen and the unseen."

Messengers Thoma and Holland fail to take account of what is not seen on more than one account.

Thoma and Holland behind the veil of what is seen, conclude that had the administration should have kept the infrastructure in place. It is easy in hindsight to make this call, but it ignores what is unseen. Suppose the infrastructure had been maintained and that the United States “put people to work doing something, anything.” Would this have improved the economic circumstances in Iraq? Bastiat certainly wouldn’t believe so:

I hate to tell people what to do, but I'd suggest one reads the whole thing.

WSJ Steals from Me

I'm not complaining. Without the good folks at Dow Jones, I would have posted less than a third over the years.

Today, the lead Editorial steals my headline, "RomneyCare 2.0," and my thesis (paid link).

So this is a step forward for Mr. Romney on health policy, largely because it doesn't take Massachusetts as its model. Though he still regards that state's 2006 "universal" health insurance program as one of his signal achievements as Governor, his new proposal drops the most coercive elements, such as the individual mandate and the "pay or play" sanctions on businesses. Perhaps this intellectual progress is due to the influence of new Romney advisers Glenn Hubbard and John Cogan, both respected health-care economists.
[...]
One key difference with Rudy Giuliani, who has also proposed similar changes to the tax code, is that the former New York Mayor would allow for interstate insurance and Mr. Romney would not. Mr. Romney says that the logistical difficulties would become a "camel's nose" for national insurance regulations. Maybe so, but that is always a risk with federalism. A far worse camel's nose is the "universal" plan Mr. Romney championed in Massachusetts. As Democratic Presidential candidate John Edwards put it, "If universal health care was good enough for Massachusetts, why isn't it good enough for the rest of the country?"

It's not an unfair question. Mr. Romney's Bay State legacy is now praised by liberals as a prototype for national policy. That's done a great deal to set back the kind of tax reform that he now espouses. The issue for GOP primary voters to consider is why he went in such a different direction in Boston. Granted, a mere Governor couldn't restructure the federal tax code, and he was dealing with a far-left legislature. Yet his willingness to compromise in Massachusetts on core matters of principle, and then trumpet those statist policies as a "free-market" solution, raises questions about how far and easily he'd bend to a Democratic Congress.

Mr. Romney's conversion to free-market health-care thinking is nonetheless welcome -- assuming he believes it.

I hope they don't pick up my typographical errors...

Hard Economic Times

It's tough out west ya know.

The owner of a fast food joint in Montana's booming oil patch found himself outsourcing the drive-thru window to a Texas telemarketing firm, not because it's cheaper but because he can't find workers.

Record low unemployment across parts of the West has created tough working conditions for business owners, who in places are being forced to boost wages or be creative to fill their jobs.

John Francis, who owns the McDonald's in Sidney, Mont., said he tried advertising in the local newspaper and even offered up to $10 an hour to compete with higher-paying oil field jobs. Yet the only calls were from other business owners upset they would have to raise wages, too. Of course, Francis' current employees also wanted a pay hike.

"I don't know what the answer is," Francis said. "There's just nobody around that wants to work."

Unemployment rates have been as low as 2 percent this year in places like Montana, and nearly as low in neighboring states. Economists cite such factors as an aging work force and booming tourism economies for the tight labor market.

Whew... awful... starving babies in the streets, packs of dogs roaming... even a booming economy is bad news.

Texas, On Messing With

Statement by Robert Black, spokesman for Texas Governor Rick Perry, concerning the European Union’s appeal that Texas enact a moratorium on the death penalty:

230 years ago, our forefathers fought a war to throw off the yoke of a European monarch and gain the freedom of self-determination. Texans long ago decided that the death penalty is a just and appropriate punishment for the most horrible crimes committed against our citizens. While we respect our friends in Europe, welcome their investment in our state and appreciate their interest in our laws, Texans are doing just fine governing Texas.

Hat-tip: Insty

"Top Gear" on BBC America

Great news for satellite TV customers. BBC America is now showing the best show the BBC has ever aired: Top Gear with Jeremy Clarkson. I don't know how long they have been showing it, but they advertise a new episode Monday night at 8:00 Eastern and showed a couple of episodes this afternoon. It felt like connecting with an old and dear friend.

I used to watch this in the UK and have been amazed for years that they do not show it here. They have seen the error of their ways. If you have not seen this show and get the BBC America channel, give it a try.

Review Corner

They talk about movie plots as "formulaic;" here's the formula.

Young, idealistic member of X, where X is an element of a disadvantaged racial group in the United States encounters disadvantaged youth and winds up sharing his love of Y, where Y is an element of a popular activity but is NOT an element of activities considered popular for members of racial group X. Youths show great promise in activity Y after initial skepticism and demonstrate level of competency Z. Z is contiguous over a wide domain of X and Y.

I tease but confess that I almost always like these films. One worth watching was "Pride," newly released on DVD. X=African-American, Y=swimming, and I can't give you Z because I don’t do spoilers.

Three and three-quarters stars. If you like these films.

The Universe is Wrong

There's a one billion lightyear wide hole in the universe.

Astronomers don't know why the hole is there.

"Not only has no one ever found a void this big, but we never even expected to find one this size," said researcher Lawrence Rudnick of the University of Minnesota.

Rudnick's colleague Liliya R. Williams also had not anticipated this finding.

"What we've found is not normal, based on either observational studies or on computer simulations of the large-scale evolution of the universe," said Williams, also of the University of Minnesota.

No, it's perfectly normal... perhaps your computer simulations are wrong?

What happened to science? Computer modelling is not science!

Surrenderlicans

I wanted to say something about Senator Warner's attempt to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory. But Scrappleface has done it sooner and better:

(2007-08-24) — Sen. John Warner, R-VA, yesterday called on President George Bush to start bringing troops home from Iraq “to show al Qaeda that the U.S. commitment to fighting Muslim terrorists overseas is not open-ended."

Hat-tip: Insty

RomneyCare 2.0

Governor Romney (Mitt! 'round these parts) is announcing his health care plan today. And it is thankfully not an expansion of the mandated insurance plan enacted under his watch in "the Commonwealth." It sounds closer to the Bush and Giuliani plans. From the news pages of the Wall Street Journal (paid link):

In a speech before the Florida Medical Association in Hollywood, Fla., Mr. Romney will present a program that won't include new government mandates for individuals or companies to buy coverage, policies long considered anathema by many conservatives -- and that were features of the program enacted in Massachusetts.

Instead, Mr. Romney plans to focus on tax breaks and streamlining regulations, policies his advisers say would essentially create a new, freer market for health insurance, driving down costs and providing incentives for individuals to buy their own plans. It is an approach President Bush and many Republican economists have embraced.

In today's speech, Mr. Romney will nod to his 2006 success in the Northeastern Democratic stronghold, aides say. But he will also aim to reassure conservatives by saying that a "one size fits all" solution isn't right for the 50 states. As for why he would use a different philosophy as president than as governor, they say he would have greater powers in the White House. "Massachusetts didn't have the federal tax code to play with," said Glenn Hubbard, a former Bush administration chief economist, now advising the Romney campaign.

We can all evolve. Seriously, this raises the Governor a few notches in my sights, though I will be interested to see how he rhetorically squares this with his previous plan.

Free Health Care

At least Canadians can go to Montana to avoid free health care. This poor woman lives in the UK.

So. We have a woman in hospital waiting for the procedure that will abort her baby, a child she had wanted to bear and raise. Not a pleasant situation at any time, but what followed next was disconcerting to read about even for those who have grown weary of NHS "war stories".

I first saw this in the Times (Baby's birth and death in lavatory of hospital with no trained staff), but there is a considerably more detailed account in This Is London (Mother forced to give birth alone in toilet of 'flagship' NHS hospital) (A very similar account appeared in the Daily Mail.)

Both headlines understate the peculiarly modern horror of what happened. The reader gets a picture of nurses trying to help, but out of their depth because Queen's Hospital did not at that time have a proper maternity unit.

Natalie Solent @ Samizdata, goes on to print accounts that nursing staff refused to help. Whether that is true or not, this is about as grisly a tale as you can hear. I'm no doctor but I cannot believe that this child would noy have had a good chance at being born alive in the US.

Remember this sad story anytime anybody says "Universal Heal..." but remember it when some Michael Moore claims our infant mortality rate is higher than Country X -- you can bet the price of next month's health care premium that Country X doesn't mind allowing a premature baby to die.

If Sicko is correct, this woman was refunded her transportation expenses as she left. I'm sure that was ameliorating.

A Friendly Voice in the Crowd

The Glenn and Helen Show today interviews Law Professor Richard Epstein, about his new book Overdose: How Excessive Government Regulation Stifles Pharmaceutical Innovation.

It's a 35:16 podcast on my favorite topic. It gives me hope that this issue is starting to get a little traction outside of the WSJ Ed Page. There's a long way to go but I look forward to the book.

We're Number Thirty-Seven!

John Stossel lays low a "2000 World Health Organization (WHO) rating of 191 nations and a Commonwealth Fund study of wealthy nations published last May" which ranked the U. S. 37th in health care.

First let's acknowledge that the U.S. medical system has serious problems. But the problems stem from departures from free-market principles. The system is riddled with tax manipulation, costly insurance mandates and bureaucratic interference. Most important, six out of seven health-care dollars are spent by third parties, which means that most consumers exercise no cost-consciousness. As Milton Friedman always pointed out, no one spends other people's money as carefully as he spends his own.

Even with all that, it strains credulity to hear that the U.S. ranks far from the top. Sick people come to the United States for treatment. When was the last time you heard of someone leaving this country to get medical care? The last famous case I can remember is Rock Hudson, who went to France in the 1980s to seek treatment for AIDS.

So what's wrong with the WHO and Commonwealth Fund studies? Let me count the ways.

The US loses points for traffic accidents, lifestyle, violence and an "unfair" apportionment of health care. Stossel takes no prisoners (and scores points for invoking Friedman -- this is an ABC Journalist after all!)

Hat-tip: Mankiw

T-N-RRRRRRRRR!

TNR has broken its silence on the Scott Beauchamp contretemps. Jonathan Chait writes a hit piece on William Kristol:

Kristol's sensibility is perfectly summed up in one representative passage from a recent issue. The topic was The New Republic's decision to publish an essay by Scott Beauchamp, an American soldier serving in Iraq, detailing some repugnant acts he said he and his comrades committed. Legitimate questions have been raised about this essay's veracity. (We've been publishing updates on our continuing efforts to get answers to them at tnr.com.) But Kristol rushed past these questions, immediately declaring the piece a "fiction." Offering up his interpretation of why tnr would publish such slanders, he concluded, in an editorial titled, "They Don't Really Support the Troops":

How dare he expose our making s**t up to advance our political agenda! Read the whole thing, if you can. It seems they were just "edifying their readers."

The Least Intelligent Member of the Senate

It's a great party game and I'd be the first to concede that many of my beloved Republicans are in the running. But Senator Debbie Stabenow of Michigan has a special place in my heart. I once saw Larry Kudlow interview her and she had no idea where he was coming from, did not understand the questions -- I'm not sure she knew where she was.

Today, ThreeSources' big-time-blogger-friend, Extreme Mortman, gives us a quote from the junior Senator:

“The expectations when we took control in January were so high, and we all feel it,” Stabenow told the Lansing State Journal editorial board last week. “We kind of feel like everybody thought the Democrats are now in control of the House and Senate, the war is going to end, we are going to have universal health care, everybody’s going to be able to go to college, no more global warming.”

The disappointment is palpable, Senator. I still have MS and the pop music of the day is jejune and unmelodic.

No Acronym Left Behind

W shill that I am, I have provided some tepid support for No Child Left Behind on this blog. I always thought that President Bush got rolled by Senator Kennedy in his "fool me once" phase of his attempts to work across the aisle. The President was seeking accountability and the Senior Senator from the briny deep was seeking more Federal dollars to hand out.

Everyday Economist links to Cato's Andrew J. Coulson's take on yet another Federal Education Acronymed Restructuring (FEAR). This time it is America COMPETES. Colson points out that it includes no competition.

Just as with the NDEA, we should not be surprised by these [disappointing NCLB] results. Measures like NCLB, America COMPETES, and their fellow alphabetic travelers are the education policy analogues of perestroika — Mikhail Gorbachev’s attempt to “fix” Soviet socialism by tinkering around its edges. Gorbachev’s efforts failed, it is now widely acknowledged, because they omitted certain crucial elements of free markets: prices that are determined by supply and demand instead of by central planners, private instead of state ownership of enterprises – that sort of thing. America’s public school monopolies are like socialist economies in small; centrally planned, uncompetitive, state-owned. Just as Gorbachev’s piece-meal reforms couldn’t fix his system, neither can such half-measures fix ours.

I supported NCLB in the context of the "ownership society" because it seeked to inject some accountability. And, laugh if you will, but anything my Union Teacher Relatives (UTRs) loathed so much had to have some redeeming qualities.

I cannot stand up to Coulson. NCLB had a wisp of competition, but if the Feds cannot break down the union monopoly, they should stay the hell out.

Rudy's Immigration Pander

The WSJ Ed Page (or, as Michelle Malkin would call them, the "Open Borders WSJ Ed Page") asks whether Mitt! and Rudy! are "competing for the Republican Presidential nomination, or for the job of vacation replacement for Lou Dobbs?"

GOP Immigration Meltdown (free link)

Both candidates, however, ignore the reality that more security measures will have limited effect if not paired with a guest worker program that gives foreign nationals more legal ways to access job offers in the U.S. The same goes for the Bush Administration's recently announced plans to step-up "interior" enforcement. Taking U.S. employers to the woodshed won't fix the illegal immigration problem, and it could do real economic harm.

Then again, maybe Hugh Hewitt is right. Trashing the economy and alienating the fastest voting block in the country really is the path to big Republican sweeps in 2008. Yaaay Team!

Taranto Not Needed

WaPo email headline:
Politics Daily: CIA Finds Holes in Pre-9/11 Work

Ya think?

Can You Watch HAMNation?

I don't know if it is Vista® or some other virus (just kidding I am the third-to-last Sharanskyite and the last guy who likes Vista®) but I have not been able to watch the video clips at TownHall in many months.

Granted most of them are just telling me how swell Governor Romney is and how bad "illegals" are, but I have always enjoyed Mary Katherine Ham's HamNation clips. I get the player up, I click, and then I get control buttons but nothing ever plays.

This work for you?

T-N-AAAAAAAAARGH!

False Dawn.
by the Editors.
Why the U.S. Must act in Darfur -- right now!

Well, something sure is false. Say, when TNR supported the liberation of Iraq.

I have complained before that it is disingenuous for them to demand action in Sudan when they have abandoned the effort in Iraq. That's old news and seeking consistency of reason from the left is a loser's game.

BUT! After l'Affaire Beauchamp, you'd think they'd be concerned about another brave generation of idealistic American soldiers, marines and airmen becoming ensconced in the depravity that is war. Why Beauchamp turned into a complete asshole in a staging base. Surely we can't subject innocent troops to this.

I linked to The Nation this morning and told my emailer that at least they were honestly whacked. TNR's fall defies description.

Mitt!

The Club for Growth issues it's Mitt Romney report.

"Governor Romney's economic record contains a mixture of pro-growth accomplishments and some troublesome positions that beg to be explained," said Club for Growth President Pat Toomey. "While his record on taxes, spending, and entitlement reform is flawed, it is, on balance, encouraging, especially given the liberal Massachusetts Legislature. His record on trade, school choice, regulations and tort reform all indicate a strong respect for the power of market solutions. At the same time, Governor Romney's history is marked by statements at odds with his gubernatorial record and his campaign rhetoric."

Romney's strident opposition to the flat tax; his refusal to endorse the Bush tax cuts in 2003; his support for various minor tax hikes; and his once-radically bad views on campaign finance reform all cast some doubts on the extent and durability of his commitment to limited-government, pro-growth policies. His landmark steps in the healthcare arena also exhibit a mixture of desirable pro-free market efforts combined with a regrettable willingness to accept, if not embrace, a massive new regulatory regime.

Despite the reservations, they are OK with him as President.

The State of the Left

A good friend of this blog sends a pair of links to be enjoyed together.

In An Investment in Failure Thomas Sowell points out that, back to Karl Marx, the left has no interest in those rising out of poverty. Once you cease to be an object for their polity, you are -- if I may borrow a word from Senator Clinton -- invisible.

At one point, Marx wrote to his disciples: "The working class is revolutionary or it is nothing."

Think about that. Millions of human beings mattered to him only in so far as they could serve as cannon fodder in his jihad against the existing society.

If they refused to be pawns in his ideological game, then they were "nothing."

No one on the left would say such things so plainly today, even to themselves. But their actions speak louder than words.

Over at The Nation, their words speak pretty loud as well. Barbara Ehrenreich cannot contain her glee that the subprime crisis is Smashing Capitalism but she is mad that it is not self directed. You really have to read this in full (it's blissfully short), but here's a taste:

The American poor, who are usually tactful enough to remain invisible to the multi-millionaire class, suddenly leaped onto the scene and started smashing the global financial system. Incredibly enough, this may be the first case in history in which the downtrodden manage to bring down an unfair economic system without going to the trouble of a revolution.

First they stopped paying their mortgages, a move in which they were joined by many financially stretched middle class folks, though the poor definitely led the way. All right, these were trick mortgages, many of them designed to be unaffordable within two years of signing the contract.

Like my disappointment at "The Glorious Revolution," however, the serendipity of it annoys her.

Personally, I prefer my revolutions to be a little more pro-active. There should be marches and rallies, banners and sit-ins, possibly a nice color theme like red or orange. Certainly, there should be a vision of what you intend to replace the bad old system with--European-style social democracy, Latin American-style socialism, or how about just American capitalism with some regulation thrown in?

Global capitalism will survive the current credit crisis; already, the government has rushed in to soothe the feverish markets. But in the long term, a system that depends on extracting every last cent from the poor cannot hope for a healthy prognosis. Who would have thought that foreclosures in Stockton and Cleveland would roil the markets of London and Shanghai? The poor have risen up and spoken; only it sounds less like a shout of protest than a low, strangled, cry of pain.

Capitalism will survive? Damn.

Bloomberg is correct

Truer words have never been spoken:

"Nobody's going to elect me president of the United States," [Michael Bloomberg] told Dan Rather for a program that will air Tuesday on cable's HDNet channel.

Influential Democrat Senator calls for overthrow of elected leader

Pity the poor Iraqis. They are going to learn about democracy from the likes of Senator Carl Levin. One can question the competence or efficiency of PM Nouri al-Malaki, but he is the first freely elected Prime Minister under the new self-directed Constitution on a free Iraq. WaPo: Senator Calls for Malaki's Ouster

Levin is understandably cranky that the American troops are doing so well -- but it is still irresponsible of him to call for the ouster of an elected leader in a sovereign nation.

Declaring the government of Iraq "non-functional," the influential chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee said yesterday that Iraq's parliament should oust Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his cabinet if they are unable to forge a political compromise with rival factions in a matter of days.

"I hope the parliament will vote the Maliki government out of office and will have the wisdom to replace it with a less sectarian and more unifying prime minister and government," Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) said after a three-day trip to Iraq and Jordan.

But the Democrats are conflicted. Is defeat their goal or should they be content to whack President Bush through any victory? We'll have to convene some focus groups, but in the meantime, there's division.

Still, Democrats have quietly begun to voice a view that Maliki must go; Durbin said he told White House national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley that last week. But they acknowledge that they do not know what would happen next. If it appeared that Maliki had been ousted at Washington's behest, his replacement would be seen as a U.S. puppet -- a "kiss of death" in the region, Durbin said.

And Democratic leaders might feel compelled to ease their antiwar position to allow a new government to take root.

"Imagine if we have to step in with a brand-new leader and a new government," Durbin said. "How many more months would we have to wait?"

I hate being such a partisan hack, but the conduct of the Democratic leadership is so much at odds with our nation's -- and the world's -- interest, I cannot ascribe any good motives.

How Are You Paying Yours?

The Onion brings us this informative graph.



Hat-tip: The Big Picture

Bill Maher, Profile in Courage

Jonathan Last at Galley Slaves is extremely impressed. It seems that Bill Maher is releasing a movie called "Religious," next Easter. And Maher is going to risk Hollywood ostracism by actually criticizing religion. I hope he does not crack under the pressure. Last says “This is why we have artists--to speak truth to the powerful."

Anyway, Maher had this to say about the movie, "We talked to everybody. We went everywhere. We went to every place where there is religion. We went to Vatican City. We went to Jerusalem. We went to Salt Lake City. And I think I’ve insulted everybody!"

Christians, check. Jews, check. Mormons, check. Yup, that's everybody! There's no other important religious group worth mentioning that maybe deserves some fun-poking and that might react badly to being ridiculed. And thank goodness the film will be released around Easter and not some other holy period.

Nobody has seen the movie yet. And maybe Maher really is an equal-opportunity offender. But if he is, I'll be pretty surprised. After all, why go after a religion where offended believers really might kill you when you can get the same thrill beating up on people who never push back.

Some of That Free Health Care

In 1934, Canada saw the arrival of five identical quintuplet sisters. In 2007, a woman starting labor with quadruplets was flown 325 miles to Great Falls Montana to avoid free health care.

There is a difference between health care and health insurance. In capitalistic America, the concentration is on health. In socialistic Canada, the emphasis is on paying the bills. The story ended with how much the American hospital charged. Looks like a quarter-million bucks for a 5-day stay. Given that it was the quadruple birth of 2-pound babies two months premature, I’d say it was a bargain.

This is not to piss all over Canada. Nice nation. Great people. I’m sure most Canadians like their health system. Just remember, though, that Canada’s backup system is in Montana. Americans spend 15% of their income on health care. That’s why Great Falls has enough neo-natal units to handle quadruple births — and a “universal health” nation doesn’t.

Don Surber also brings up the irony of being flown from Calgary, a modern metropolis with more than 1,000,000 people to Great Falls Montana (pop. 56,215).

Sharanskyism, circa 2007

This blog was christened in the heady days of the Orange and Cedar revolutions. Secretary Rice and President Bush were photographed with Natan Sharansky's The Case for Democracy. The second inaugural address was a book report.

The WaPo carries a comprehensive and sobering look at Bush's goal to end tyranny. Peter Baker's piece is titled "As Democracy Push Falters, Bush Feels Like a 'Dissident'" The President says he wears the "dissident" label with pride but I don't think anybody can be satisfied with "falters."

The days after the speech were heady. Eight million Iraqis went to the polls to elect an interim parliament, their purple-stained fingers a global symbol of emerging democracy. A political assassination in Lebanon triggered demonstrations known as the Cedar Revolution that toppled a pro-Syrian government and forced Damascus to end a three-decade occupation. And protests over a stolen election in Kyrgyzstan ousted another entrenched leader in the Tulip Revolution.

"There was this sort of euphoria," recalled Jennifer Windsor, executive director of Freedom House, which promotes democracy worldwide.

Bush and his team tried to demonstrate their commitment. The president met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Slovakia for a tense discussion about the Kremlin's crackdown on dissent. And when Egypt arrested opposition leader Ayman Nour, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice canceled a trip to Cairo. Two weeks later, Egypt released Nour.

When the Iraq poll numbers were nose diving, I told people that I was the last Sharanskyite. Now that the ambition is being blasted from Senator Carl Levin and Rep Ron Paul, I read this blog's beloved tag line and affirm myself to the Case.

Some people I respect around here are comfortable with a Hobbsion bellum omnium contra omnes but I see American economic and security interests are well served by the propagation of liberal values. Today, totalitarian regimes -- maybe someday even the U.S. State Department.

It's going to take time. I would have been a little kinder than Sharansky:

Still, after an invigorating start in 2005, progress has been harder to find. Among those worried about the project is Sharansky, whose book so inspired Bush. "I give him an A for bringing the idea and maybe a C for implementation," said Sharansky, now chairman of the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies at the Shalem Center in Israel. "There is a gap between what he says and what the State Department does," and he is not consistent enough.

The challenge Bush faced, Sharansky added, was to bring Washington together behind his goal.

"It didn't happen," he said. "And that's the real tragedy."

Down, the Republican Party

"Immigration will be to the Republicans what Iraq withdrawal is to the Democrats," says Jeff Birnbaum on FOX NEWS's The Beltway Boys. It is August and the folks at FOX could not round up a liberal to fill Morton Kondracke's seat.





But both conservatives -- I emphasize the word "conservative;" these guys are both more conservative than I -- see the approaching electoral train wreck. They don't blame the other ThreeSourcers directly but...

UPDATE: YouTube is a great forum for nuanced debate. The comments I drew to my posting on Speaker Pelosi made we want to join her side. Today I get this:

The Beltway Boys are for Open Borders. Screw them!

NASA Scientist Lashes Out

Dave Price at Dean's World compares NASA Scientist James Hansen to Ann Coulter. He's dead on, although I bet she has better hair.

When you're working to advance science, the appropriate response when someone finds an error in your data or calculations is contrition (best expressed by an openness to further scrutiny and re-evaluation), and perhaps gratitude that truth has been served. James Hansen, on the other hand... well, read for yourself:

Do read it for yourself. Errors are discovered in his data set, so he calls those who found them "jesters" and impugns their motives. Our tax dollars at work. It is as polemical as Ms. Coulter but I never heard her sound quite so childish.

On the good side, I give Hansen points for using the word 'usufruct,' although he seems a couple of degrees off there as well.

More Media Nonsense

The media has absolutely nothing to say about anything -- at least not enough to maintain 24-hour news channels. First, Obama wasn't black enough. Then Hillary wasn't woman enough. Now, Fred doesn't know which shoes to wear. All this is apparently considered important information when choosing our next leader.

A Stand Up Economist

Hat-tip: N. Gregory Mankiw.

The 08 Race

Zoinks... Senator Foot In Mouth is down by 30 points to Senator Former First Lady in California.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton is expanding her lead in California as excitement for Illinois Sen. Barack Obama is fading among Golden State voters, a new Field Poll revealed Thursday.

The New York senator held a commanding lead over the Democratic field, with 49 percent support to 19 percent for Obama and 10 percent for former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards.

The survey of 418 Californians likely to vote in the Feb. 5 Democratic presidential primary showed Clinton leading -- and gaining support -- in every demographic category and California region measured.

On the GOP side, Mitt! won an Illinois straw poll.

Illinois state Republican party chairman, Andy McKenna, said Romney won the Illinois Straw poll at the Illinois State Fair. "Congratulations to Mitt Romney, whose strong showing today indicates he has begun to put together a strong statewide organization," McKenna said. "There's no question that Illinois' demographics closely match those of the United States and this could be an indication as to whom Illinois voters are leaning toward this coming February."

Romney secured an overwhelming victory with 40.35 percent of the vote. Former Senator Fred Thompson, who is expected to formally enter the race for the GOP nomination next month, came in second with 19.96 percent of the vote.

Rudy! came in fourth, seven point behind Ron Paul, of all people.

The other day, a friend told me that he thinks Fred! Thompson wouldn't be entering the race... certainly I'm getting tired of waiting. Though I will probably support the GOP ticket no matter what, I would be favorably disposed to a Romney/Thompson ticket, if he doesn't run, or a Thompson/Romney ticket if he wins.

If Hillary! trounces the rest of the field, does that adversely impact her choosing a VP from the also-rans? John Edwards toughed it out with John Kerry well into the primary season, possibly helping him secure the nod. (Being a southerner didn't hurt either)

Who is John Galt....

...and where the heck has he been for the last month? I'm sure that everyone's missed my polite rectitude and insightful wit as I've been too busy to post, comment, or even read the blog. Here's why:

This is the "hot box" facility within dagny's new indoor riding arena and horse barn. It's comin' along...

Karl Rove

Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson pens a nice piece about "the architect."

But in several years as a colleague, I found Rove to be the most unusual political operative I have ever known; so exceptional he doesn't belong in the category. His most passionate, obsessive love -- after his wife -- is American history. He visits its shrines and collects its scraps -- carefully archived pictures of President William McKinley's funeral, original ballots from the 1860 election. And from American history Rove knows: Events are not moved primarily by techniques; they are moved by ideas.

Rove's main influence on the Republican Party has not been a series of tactical innovations but a series of strategic arguments. In this way, Rove is the opposite of a cynical political operator. He is not only a partisan for George W. Bush but the most serious, tireless advocate of Bushism.

Netroots

Harrison Bergeron's post last week on "Kos" highlighted what a negative impact the Netroots' tactics will have on their own preferred candidates. Today Kim Strassel interviews a moderate Democrat who survived a Kos-inspired primary challenge: Henry Cuellar (free link).

Yet a lively midweek chat with Mr. Cuellar suggests that this campaign of threats isn't necessarily having the intended effect. If anything, it might be backfiring. "They win when they intimidate people," says Mr. Cuellar. "I've taken everything they've thrown, plus their kitchen sink, and I still stand proud as a moderate-conservative Democrat." He says his triumph over blogger fire has only strengthened his conviction that his party will only win elections if it continues to be a "big tent" open to all views. "To make that tent smaller, to force people--not to persuade, but to force, because these are threats--to quiet down, that's destructive in the long term and the short term."

Though we have different limits around here, I think we all agree that politics is a balance of enlarging the tent for electoral victory and maintaining ideas to make it meaningful.

Kos seems to be bent on creating the smallest Democratic tent and, as hb exposed, not bothering to tie it to any ideas or policy of consequence.

Rudy! Immigration!

I can't sit on bad news. John Fund writes a troubling item in Wednesday's Political Diary:

Rudy Giuliani has decided to become very tough on immigration. Stung by criticism from Mitt Romney that he presided over a "sanctuary city" in the 1990s when New York refused to report the immigration status of illegal aliens, Mr. Giuliani gave a speech in South Carolina yesterday in which he announced: "We can end illegal immigration. I promise you we can end illegal immigration."

The former New York mayor backed up his words by announcing he would push for a "national database of foreigners," an increase of 20,000 border patrol agents to deport illegal immigrant felons, and the erection of a fence along the U.S. border.

All this tough talk amuses anti-immigration forces, which have been critical of Mr. Giuliani ever since he opposed the 1996 welfare reform bill in large part because of its treatment of illegal immigrants. "It sounds like an effort by Giuliani to make himself seem like a hawk on immigration when, in fact, he's been a dove all along," Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies told the New York Sun.

Advocates for immigrants are appalled at Mr. Giuliani's new tack. They point out that while mayor he created the mayor's office of immigrant affairs and also sued the federal government for trying to allow city employees to turn in illegal immigrants who applied for government help.

Indeed, in 1996 Mr. Giuliani gave a speech at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government in which he declared: "The reality is, people will always get in. And the reality is, the federal government does not deport them... So illegal and undocumented immigrants are going to remain, and even increase. And nothing that is now being proposed in Washington would realistically change that very much."

Everyone is allowed to alter his or her position on issues, and Mr. Giuliani says he remains firmly committed to more legal immigration than is now allowed. But nonetheless his current attempt to remake himself into a "Border Patrol" champion is one of the more dramatic and surprising transformations of the presidential race so far. It is further proof of just how much the politics of immigration have changed in recent years.

I'm still on board, but this is easily the most disappointing thing I have read about Giuliani. His position has "evolved" from right to wrong.