Brookhiser in NYO:

The executive and the judicial branches do not take such a lighthearted view of the matter, however. The F.B.I. had been investigating Representative Jefferson for bribe taking for months, and their search was made after obtaining a warrant. Nor does Congress: House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R., Ill.), together with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.), protested the search as unconstitutional. Now, finally, we know: Twelve years in power have been too much for the G.O.P. Their batteries have worn out, and so have their brains. The Democrats will regain control of Congress this fall.

…Mr. Hastert’s betrayal of his own party’s principles is unfortunate because it suggests other betrayals. Applying the law equally is not the only part of the Contract with America that has gone the way of all toilet paper. The Contract also called for a balanced-budget amendment “to restore fiscal responsibility to an out-of-control Congress.” The House, to its credit, passed such an amendment, though it never became law. And now, 12 years later, here we are with an out-of-control Congress.

But House Republicans are not the most unpopular people in America. That title may be reserved for Senate Republicans, or at least the 23 of them who joined 38 Democrats to pass the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006. Illegal immigrants will not have to know English to understand this bill; it’s a welcome mat, and the Republicans who signed it are the doormats. It is not necessary for House Republicans to muster the energy they have shown on behalf of Congressional freezers to defeat the Senate bill. All they have to do is hunker down, and let House/Senate negotiations break down. If they do that, they may snatch some cred yet.

…The pity of it is that if the Democrats retake Congress, President Bush will be impeached, for three reasons: 1. because they can; 2. because Bill Clinton was; 3. because their enrages, who are a minority of the party but a majority of its committed, demand it. It would not be the first time in wartime that the tribal customs of the Anglo-Saxons have astonished the world. (all emphasis mine)

Me: With as much discontent rising among the GOP’s conservative base, I simply can’t imagine a Republican-controlled House much longer. (I’m taking for granted that the Senate will stay under GOP control) Perhaps it will last through 2008 – but, if so, it’s simply because the only party weaker, both politically and ideologically, than the Republican party is the Democratic party. My only hope for Republicans lies in the fact that I have absolutely zero confidence that Dean, Pelosi, and Reid can muster the intelligence and wherewithal to present a coherent, believable message to the American people.

Update: I have no idea why this post looks the way it does. I’ve tried everything…nothing helps. Sorry it’s a hard read.

UPDATE FROM PATRICK: I’ve fixed the post. Looks like some tags went astray.

Samuelson’s column on the immigration bill is most definitely the must-read of the AM.

The Senate last week passed legislation that Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., hailed as “the most far-reaching immigration reform in our history.” You might think that the first question anyone would ask is how much it would actually increase or decrease legal immigration. But no. After the Senate approved the bill by 62 to 36, you could not find the answer in the news columns of The Washington Post, New York Times or Wall Street Journal. Yet, the estimates do exist and are fairly startling. By rough projections, the Senate bill would double the legal immigration that would occur during the next two decades from about 20 million (under present law) to about 40 million.

One job of journalism is to inform the public what our political leaders are doing. In this case, we failed. The Senate bill’s sponsors didn’t publicize its full impact on legal immigration, and we didn’t fill the void. It’s safe to say that few Americans know what the bill would do because no one has told them. Indeed, I suspect that many senators who voted for the legislation don’t have a clue as to the potential overall increase in immigration.

World Net Daily has the scoop.

A big Hotty Toddy to the Rebs for laying the smack down on Vanderbilt to win the SEC baseball championship.  If only our football team could do so well…

Ahmadinejad: We stand by our statements because we’re honest and act legally. We’re no fraudsters. We only want to claim our legitimate right. Incidentally, I never threatened anyone – that, too, is part of the propaganda machine that you’ve got running against me.
You don’t frighten us, English pig dogs. Go and boil your bottoms, you sons of a silly person. I blow my nose at you….I don’t want to talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough wiper. I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.

There’s the NRO perspective.  Then, there’s this logic-defying Opinion Journal perspective.

John Derbyshire explains the likely decision-making calculus of the average currently-illegal immigrant. 

The way the immigration rules are (and, on the Senate plan, will continue to be) structured, citizenship isn’t actually worth a damn unless you just have some irrational, sentimental desire to be an American. It is, in fact, a bit of a nuisance in one respect. Citizens have to do jury duty, but green-card holders don’t. The positive things that citizenship gets you are the right to vote, and the right to hold certain government jobs needing security clearance. Otherwise there isn’t a whole lot of difference between citizenship and green-card status. Both are liable for the same taxes; both have to register for the draft. Since only around half of U.S. citizens bother to vote in national elections, the other half would, for all practical purposes, be better off as green-card holders, in that they’d be excused jury duty. And in fact there is a campaign for giving voting rights to aliens—New York City Council has debated a bill on the subject—so even in the matter of voting, citizenship may not be a benefit for much longer.

Plus, one may wonder just how thoroughly the voter registration bureaucracy would distinguish between citizens and non-citizens in an increasingly immigrant-filled future.

Yeah, I know.  In the South football is king.   But for me, baseball is still the sport.  I’m a huge college baseball fan and a season ticket holder for my alma mater.  Even though I could do without the DH and the ping of aluminum bats, there is still something pure about college baseball.  Very few kids even have full scholarships–they are playing because they love the game.  And what a game it is. 

This weekend Clemson won the ACC Baseball Tournament.  Now it is time for the NCAA Regional and then Super-Regionals.  Then off to Omaha.  The tournament and Omaha make college baseball.  It’s a lesson college football should learn by scrapping the BCS. 

Wilfred McClay reviews Douglas Brinkley’s book about Hurricane Katrina.  (HT: Prof. Knippenberg on NLT.)

Myrna Blyth gives some pointers on how to observe the day.

Christopher Hitchens ends his WSJ column with this:

“Always think of it: never speak of it.” That was the stoic French injunction during the time when the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine had been lost. This resolution might serve us well at the present time, when we are in midconflict with a hideous foe, and when it is too soon to be thinking of memorials to a war not yet won. This Memorial Day, one might think particularly of those of our fallen who also guarded polling-places, opened schools and clinics, and excavated mass graves. They represent the highest form of the citizen, and every man and woman among them was a volunteer. This plain statement requires no further rhetoric.

Suzanne Fields‘ op-ed in the Washington Times worries about the erosion of the teaching of history in the US, and quotes a verse from In Flanders Fields.

You can visit the website of the Arlington National Cemetery, here, and other national cemeteries, here.

The President’s remarks at Arlington today are here. Video is here.

Here’s a sketch of one’s North Mississippi hamlet’s tribute to its veterans.

War movies all day on TCM and AMC.

Human Events Online is all over this issue. You can see how your senator voted here. As far as Republicans…..it’s getting easier now to seperate the wheat from the chaf and see who the real conservatives are. It’s clear to me that for many senators this issue is not about immigration. It must be about government espansion and pandering to a group of potential new voters. Gag me. And, by the way, Human Events wants to hear from you regarding the impact of this vote on Republican presidential wannabes in ‘08. So far, senators such as Cornyn and Sessions are doing the Lord’s work.

It seems that Challies’s review of Driscoll’s book, Reformission, that Steve linked to yesterday, has caused so much of a ruckus, that Tim added another post to clarify some points. Essentially, he’s trying to get across to his readers that he never intended his book review to become a defense or a condemnation for Driscoll’s pastoral style. He simply used a couple of excerpts to point out a few personal concerns. But reading through yesterday’s comments and reading this new take by Chailles today, I have to wonder (as it pertains to Driscoll’s methods of ministry): what’s the big deal?! So he cusses a little. Has a few beers. Tells guys to quit crying, man up, and move on when they slip up and watch pornography. Again, what’s the real problem here? 

It disturbs me to see the masses of people that came out of the woods to slice and dice Driscoll on these issues. Ever since I “retired” from vocational ministry, and moved into the “real” world, I’ve found it interesting and sad to see just how far removed the evangelical church is from actual society. I realized for the first time that many of the things that consume the average fundamentalist evangelical are absolutely foreign to the outside world. Not to say that those things (i.e doctrinal quibbles, church politics, etc.) aren’t often important or necessary at times, but rather that they simply aren’t understood or relevant to the average “non-church-goer.” What’s even sadder than the fact that evangelicals are slowly becoming irrelevant, is the fact that they simpy don’t know it. I sure didn’t.

I really don’t care to write a whole lot on this (even though I suppose I already have), but when I read hundreds of comments from readers condemning Driscoll’s antics (i.e. a few blue comments and a beer) without ever addressing his results (i.e. thousands have come to Christ through his short ministry), i get a little more cynical over the current state of Evangelical Christianity. Is this what we really care about? “Damn,” I hope not. His ministry is thriving and engaging culture in a part of the country that has tended to show little regard for Chrisitian society and ideology. But does that matter, so long as he cusses every now and then in his sermons? Doesn’t seem to…and that’s unfortunate.

Anyway, I’m not here to defend Driscoll per se, (or, to condemn evangelicals for that matter) but to simply suggest, that a missional and emergent understanding of ministry is one that needs to be viewed and considered. As the larger evangelical movement finds itself drifting further from the culture, a missional understanding of the gospel may just be the very thing that helps it find relevance again. At the very least, take notice that it’s working in some places…just ask the changed lives at Driscoll’s Mars Hill Church in Seattle.

Here are the features of the bill, which was drafted by the office of Teddy Kennedy: 

Urging the hiring of 1,000 more Border Patrol agents this year and 14,000 by 2011.

Endorsing Bush’s plan for a short-term deployment of National Guard troops to states along the border with Mexico.

Calling for the construction of 370 miles of fencing on the border.

The guest worker program would admit 200,000 individuals a year. They eventually could apply for a green card, which confers legal permanent residency.

A separate program envisions admission of an estimated 1.5 million immigrant farm workers who also may apply for permanent residency

For illegal immigrants, those in the country for five years could stay, keep working and eventually apply for citizenship. They would have to pay at least $3,250 in fines and fees, settle back taxes and learn English.

Illegal immigrants in the country for more than two years but less than five would have to travel to a point of entry before re-entering the United States legally and beginning the lengthy process of seeking citizenship.

An immigrant in the country illegally for less than two years would be required to leave with no guarantee of return.

Here’s my problem with the amnesty provisions.  The Senate depends on the illegal alien, the person who broke the law, to come clean and truthfully inform the government of how long they have resided here.  Yeah, right.  Many of these aliens already have fraudulent documents, so obtaining “proof” that they have been in the U.S. for more than five years should be no problem.  In other words, this might as well be amnesty for the lot of them.

Lee at A Bama Blog has written the definitive response to Dana Milbank’s shabby attack on Senator Jeff Sessions (R.-Ala.)  It ends with this:

Back in 2004, Dana Milbank co-authored a column with David Broder entitled “Hopes for Civility in Washington are Dashed.” To quote the Instapundit…”Indeed.” Perhaps Mr. Milbank should re-read his own material from time to time.

Read the whole thing.

This piece will make you think differently about the efficacy of National Guard troops on the U.S.-Mexico border.  It reminds us that human traffic is not the only traffic to be deterred.  The drug cartels are not going to take kindly to being harassed along their trade routes. If the Guard is not equiped and authorized to respond to violent intrusion into our territory, this could be a mess.  Fence construction, observing and reporting may be their only role.  I also wonder if the Border Patrol is going to snitch out the Guard locations to Mexican authorities the way they do the Minutemen.  We’ve discussed the tendency for the U.S. to throw half-measures at serious problems before.  These drug guys are mean as snakes and are a formidable enemy when confronted by law enforcement.  As a reminder, I encourage you to listen to this NPR story about such an incident.  I still find it unbelievable that we let these clowns get away with this stuff.

Maybe I was just enamoured at the thought of seeing “THE: David Hasselhoff on last night’s American Idol, but I’m fairly certain that HE WAS CRYING when Taylor was named the next Idol. Yeah, you read that right: HE WAS CRYING!

Am I the only one that saw this? I mean, I know this is pretty emotional stuff (not really) but “Michael Knight” aka “Mitch Buchanan” crying? God help us. Anyone that can track down a picture of this, let me know ASAP…

Update: More fun with the Hoff

Update 2: It seems that Jonah approves of the HoffGallery as well.

First Quarter GDP Growth Fastest in 2.5 Years:

The U.S. economy shot forward at an upwardly revised 5.3 percent annual rate in the first quarter, the fastest growth in 2-1/2 years, as companies built up inventories and exports strengthened, a Commerce Department report on Thursday showed.

Me: And yet Republicans are still getting their butts kicked in the polls. As it turns out, not only are most of them hypocrites and bad policy makers, but they seem to be incredibly inept politicians as well.

Not to worry.  Scrappleface has it covered.

For more info on windfall profits taxes, past and future, check out this study by Robert Shapiro and Nam Pham, showing  that as of 2004, 41% of the market value of oil industry stocks was held by pension and retirement plans (i.e., public and private pension funds, and IRAs). 

Well, three out of four, anyway.  Funny stuff from A Bama Blog.

Just in case you haven’t heard.  Big list of world-wide links here; (disappointing — i.e., no music) Minnesota Public Radio story here (with many links); Bob’s home page here (including all lyrics and many audio clips).

Us younger Boomers have just one question, Bob:  How does it feeeeeel?

More:  Scott Johnson points to a Times of London article on Martin Scorcese’s Dylan documentary, “No Direction Home,” and a great City Journal article on the “made-up ‘tradition’ of American protest music.”

Any SA readers knowledgeable about the research literature on Wal-Mart are hereby requested to take a look at my post on Division of Labour this afternoon.

You might find the following interesting/enlightening:

*  Mark Steyn considers inter alia the Senate vote conferring Social Security coverage on illegal immigrants.

*  The Opinionator makes some demographic predictions for the next hundred years.

*  Roger Scruton has some thoughts on John Stuart Mill, on the bicentennial of his birth.

*  Kevin Hassett reports on the current troubles of certain high-profile plaintiffs’ lawyers.

*  The 2006 edition of the Pacific Research Institute’s ranking of the states as to tort law is now available online.

Dana Milbank’s column today is a remarkably nasty personal attack on Sen. Jeff Sessions (R.-Ala.), apparently triggered by Sessions’s positions on immigration policy and border control.  “Forget Politics. This Battle Is Personal” begins with this:

Alabama’s Jeff Sessions sure knows how to nurse a grudge. Talking about his family earlier this year, the Republican senator recalled that “Lincoln killed one of them at Antietam.”

Now he is turning his prodigious anger on legislation the Senate is expected to approve on Thursday that would allow millions of illegal immigrants to become citizens. In the process, Sessions is taking on the White House, his leaders in the Senate, the Congressional Budget Office and business interests at home.

Nowhere in the column does Milbank explain how Sessions’s position is “personal,” nor does he plumb the source of Sessions’s “prodigious anger” or explain how Sessions’s positions are a function of some “grudge” of his.  Instead, the reader is treated to a textbook example of ad hominem argument, including this passage:  

A short, wiry man with protruding ears, Sessions has become the Lou Dobbs of the Senate. He argues his points not with the courtly Southern tones of the late senator Howell Heflin (D), his predecessor, but with the harsh twang of a country tough — which, in a sense, he is.

So, the reader is left to speculate that, maybe, Sessions opposes an open-border approach simply because he’s a mean-spirited, vicious redneck.

That’s the Washington Post I know and love.

More on Sessions and immigration from A Bama Blog, including a link to this John O’Sullivan column, calling Sessions “a hero of commensense in this debate.”

Update:  Steve Sailer is all over this.

Further update:  Lee at A Bama Blog has a very thorough response to Milbank here.

Hastert really is a blithering idiot:

There is every reason to believe that a member of the House of Representatives was using his physical office on Capitol Hill to hide evidence of massive bribe-taking — bribe-taking that has been caught on tape, by the way. That Congressman is a figure in the Democratic party. The Republican party has been reeling from bribery and corruption scandals of its own. So the Speaker of the House, the leader of Republicans in the House, actually complains to the president that the raid on the Democratic congressman’s office is an unconstitutional violation of the separation of powers. In so doing, he reinforces the image that Congress, which almost never polices itself, cares less abou (sic) corruption than it does about its prerogatives. It also steps on the very important political story that might help diffuse the image of specifically Republican corruption. I don’t know how to put this any other way, and I’m sorry if it sounds insulting, but: Whether you consider him the leader of an institution whose standing among the public is at historically low levels and in need of drastic moral renovation or a leading partisan official whose team is in pretty bad shape and could use a bit of a boost, Denny Hastert is a blithering idiot.(emphasis mine)

Me: They’ll never love you Denny. They’ll never love you…

What’s striking about this story about a Christian club on a school campus is the ways in which the regnant Church-state jurisprudence of much of the 20th century makes even things like this difficult (or at least complicated).  The idea that a principal could (or should) allow a group to have a “Jesus Day” so long as they didn’t use the term “Jesus” because doing so might implicate the Establishment Clause shows just how much misunderstanding the Court (and groups like Americans United for Total Privatization of Anything to do With Religion) has engendered.*

*And, yes, “conservative” groups have engendered their own misconceptions.

Glenn Reynolds has some interesting observations on parenting over at the WSJ.  I’ve been long puzzled about the dramatic decline in birthrates in advanced post-industrial societies.  None of the typical answers seem sufficient.  Things like urbanization and women’s large-scale entry into the workforce do matter, but not enough.  Reynolds points to the ways in which we have made parenting difficult and onerous – we have to have our kids just so, we can’t let them escape our view, for they might fall or hurt themselves or, worst yet, not get into that private college.  So we truck them around to all sorts of activities, we carefully nurture them with the “correct” books, we make everything in our house oh-so safe.  (And his point on minivans is spot-on: it took me months of cajoling to get my wife to give up the dream of the SUV in favor of our Honda Odyssey, which she now loves.  She just didn’t want to be a “minivan” kind of person).

There is a point, though, that I think Reynolds misses, perhaps not surprisingly given his libertarian instincts.  That is, part of the reason that parents are so anxious is that they have good reason to fear what might happen to their kids if left unsupervised.  When I was but a lad, the worst thing on tv in the afternoon (this is pre-cable) was “The Gong Show.” Probably not great for moral or intellectual development, but MTV it ain’t.  What’s more, my parents had a pretty good idea that our neighbors had more or less the same values as we did and so didn’t worry about me “roaming” the neighborhood.  Absent that confidence, there are good reasons not to let the tykes roam.

Anyway, some good food for thought.

With Mississippi’s (my state of birth) primaries coming up on June 6th, I figured I would provide a round up of the various races. First up, the Senate race.

The Candidates:
(R) Trent Lott (Incumbent)
(D) Bill Bowlin
(D) Erik Fleming
(D) James O’Keefe
(D) Catherine Starr
(L) Harold Taylor

Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott is looking for re-election to a fourth term and faces no opposition for the Republican nomination. He’ll face one of the four Democrats battling for their party’s nomination as well as a Libertarian.

There was much speculation several months ago on whether he would run for re-election or retire to venture into the private sector to earn some money after Hurricane Katrina destroyed his home. He opted for another run since he believes that the state needs his clout in Washington due to Katrina.

Lott has generally amassed a conservative voting record (American Conservative Union lifetime rating of 93 out of 100), but really tends to be a Pork-a-saurus, and even brags about it:

“Lott recently told Roll Call that after 30 years as a U.S. senator, he has learned how to work around pesky do-gooders like Coburn. ‘I fold [pork projects] into bills where you can’t find them,” Lott boasted. ‘I’ve been around here long enough to know how to bury it.’”

And he sneered a few months ago in reference to Instapundit’s and N.Z. Bear’s “PorkBusters“:

“I’ll just say this about the so-called porkbusters. I’m getting damn tired of hearing from them. They have been nothing but trouble ever since Katrina. We in Mississippi have not asked for more than we deserve. We’ve been very reasonable.”

I don’t think that you could call a 700 million dollar federally funded plan to rip up a recently restored rail road line and move it to put in a highway in the Katrina devastated MS Gulf Coast “reasonable”.

It would have been nice for a real conservative to challenge Lott in a primary. At the very least, he would feel some heat for his free spending ways. But given Lott’s entrenchment in the state GOP and relative popularity in Mississippi, nobody who had a thought of having a future in the MS Republican Party entered.

Lott and all four Republican candidates for the four House seat are not facing any opposition for party nominations so there isn’t any Republican primaries going on. But it’s a different story for the Democrats.

Vying for the chance to face Lott in the general election are a quartet of Democrats: business consultant Bill Bowlin, State Representative Erik Fleming, business owner James O’Keefe, and peace activist Catherine Starr.

Bill Bowlin ran for the 1st Congressional District in 1990 as a Republican, but lost to incumbent Democrat Jamie Whitten. Now, he’s a bit of a rare bird in Mississippi politics in that he has switched from the Republican party to the Democrats. Among the reasons for the switch, Bowlin states “We certainly can do better as far as managing what’s taking place in our economy. We can also do better serving our elderly and disadvantaged by giving them programs that would serve their needs”. Bowlin’s site doesn’t have much on where he specifically stands on issues, other then general statements on public service and leadership.

Next in alphabetical order of the Democrat candidates is Erik Fleming. Representative Fleming gained some attention on the Internet after Politics1 highlighted Fleming’s very close ties to periennial presidential candidate and conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche. The post linked to a transcript on LaRouche’s site of Fleming’s introduction of the aforementioned candidate at a campaign rally. Plus, that post linked to this endorsement of LaRouche by Fleming which ends thusly:

“Lyndon LaRouche, right now, at this time, is the best candidate running for President of the United States of America. He is a man of great character and strong moral fiber. He is clearly the most prepared candidate for the position. I hope that the rest of the nation is afforded the chance that I have had in getting to know Lyn. I strongly believe that if allowed the same audience as the other candidates, the voters of America will come to the same conclusion I have. Oh, how exciting that possibility would be.”

After Politics1 published that post, Fleming responded with this letter (scroll down) where he states that he is own man, not a LaRouche flunkie, that voters should evaluate his characther, etc. But keep in mind that Fleming doesn’t apologize for his association with LaRouche, though he admits that it could hurt him in the campaign.

Ties to kooky political candidates aside, here’s some of his political stances. He’s against privativization of Social Security, Opposed to drilling in ANWR, but for it in the Mississippi Gulf Coast “as long as issues dealing with the natural habitat are not compromised.” And he’s opposed to school vouchers, but supports “tax credits for private school tuition, home schooling, and tutorial services.”

Continuing on, the next candidate is James O’Keefe. He’s been a pastor, entrepeteur, and he’s the son of former Biloxi mayor, Jerry O’Keefe. On the issues, he’s pro-life, anti-free trade, in favor of stricter border enforcement, and concerning Iraq, he says:

“Our President has budgeted and spent almost a half a trillion dollars on a war in Iraq that has destroyed thousands of lives. Saddam Hussein is out of business and it is time we get out of Iraq. We must leave these people to their own way of life and let them determine the kind of government they desire. Our country has been notorious for setting up puppet governments for financial gain and world domination. Our constitution does not support this style of rule, we are not to be the police of the world, and we are not to be the rulers of the earth. The Preamble to the United States Constitution plainly spells out our quest.”

The last Democrat in the race is peace activist Catherine Starr and there’s not much of anything that I can find out about her.

And finally, there’s Harold Taylor of the Libertarian Party. He spent twenty years in the US Air Force and is currently the manager of Knox Painting Company. Taylor ran in 2002 race in the 1st Congressional District and was recently the chairman of the state Libertarian Party. According to Project Vote Smart, he holds the standard Libertarian views.

Conclusion: I’m not a huge fan of Lott’s; for my taste, he’s too much a pork barrel spending establishmentarian with a huge sense of entitlement to the perks and power of his office. That said, given his popularity and lack of a prominent Democrat to oppose him, like former state AG Mike Moore or former Gov. Ronnie Musgrove, he’ll probably easily win re-election.

Yesterday the Federal Trade Commission released its study of gasoline price fluctuations during and after the Katrina disaster, and Chairman Majoras testified before the Senate Commerce Committee to summarize the report’s findings, which include:

*  No evidence to suggest that refiners manipulated prices through any means, including running their refineries below full productive capacity to restrict supply, altering their refinery output to produce less gasoline, or diverting gasoline from markets in the United States to less lucrative foreign markets. The evidence indicated that these firms produced as much gasoline as they economically could, using computer models to determine their most profitable slate of products.

*  No evidence to suggest that refinery expansion decisions over the past 20 years resulted from either unilateral or coordinated attempts to manipulate prices. Rather, the pace of capacity growth resulted from competitive market forces.

*  No evidence to suggest that petroleum pipeline companies made rate or expansion decisions in order to manipulate gasoline prices.

*  No evidence to suggest that oil companies reduced inventory to increase or manipulate prices or exacerbate the effects of price spikes generally, or due to hurricane-related supply disruptions in particular. Inventory levels have declined, but the decline represents a decades-long trend to lower costs that is consistent with other manufacturing industries. In setting inventory levels, companies try to plan for unexpected supply disruptions by examining supply needs from past disruptions.

*  No situations that might allow one firm – or a small collusive group – to manipulate gasoline futures prices by using storage assets to restrict gasoline movements into New York Harbor, the key delivery point for gasoline futures contracts.

The FTC report also throws cold water on the Congressional enthusiasm for a federal price-gouging statute, by 

describing the challenges of crafting a price gouging statute and the difficulty of distinguishing “gougers” from those who are reacting in an economically rational manner to the temporary gasoline shortages resulting from an emergency such as a hurricane. After discussing the critical role of prices in market-based economies, the policy section concludes that if natural price signals are distorted by price controls, consumers ultimately might be worse off, as gasoline shortages could result.

These results come as no suprise to anyone who knows anything about the long history of antitrust investigations of this industry, and you might think the FTC study would settle the issue — but, alas, you’d be wrong: 

“The FTC ignored the 800-pound gorilla in the room,” said Sen. Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, contending that the agency ignored subtle manipulation by the oil companies. “The oil companies engage in price leadership — setting prices higher than what real competition would merit.”

Quick show of hands:  Who would prefer that Senator Schumer and his peers run the U.S. petroleum industry instead of the current crop of industry executives? 

From Time …..

Pence, a rising star in the House, is suggesting a temporary worker program based on a data base run by private industry. And unlike the leading plan in the Senate and the blueprint sketched by Bush, his “Border Integrity and Immigration Reform Act” would require all applicants to leave the country first. Pence tweaks a phrase from Bush’s address to the nation by calling the compromise “a REAL rational middle ground.” Even though Bush has said his preferred solution “ain’t amnesty,” Pence appeals to hard-liners by calling the compromise a “no-amnesty solution.” …

His plan includes all the security measures of the bill that has already passed the House, and adds a provision for guest worker visas would be good for two years. A limited renewal would be available if the worker studied English and passed an English proficiency class. Federal law already has visa categories A through V. “The visas will be referred to as ‘W Visas,’ ” Pence say in his remarks. “No kidding. I think it is obvious whose support we are trying to garner here.”

My local evening news reported on recent area graduation, showing graduates at one of the colleges.  In the short clip nearly half the students were on their cell phones.  I wonder how many experiences this generation is missing by spending their every free moment on the phone.