Actually, I don't mean brilliant politics here.  It may be.  But I really mean brilliant ethics.  There is no doubt in my mind that people who came to the United States as children, who were raised here and work here and who consider this their culture, not should be allowed to stay.

Spare me, David Brooks.

His column today is about columns.  Well, it starts off about monument designs and why they stink now.  Seriously, who really sees the relative decline of monument esthetics as emblematic of what's wrong with America today?  The music used to be better, too, David.  Maybe that's the problem?  Or maybe you're just wrong?

A colleague of mine, a very smart man but not in sync with me politically, told me a few weeks ago that he believes that I will come to my senses before the election and pull the lever for Mitt Romney.  I will make this decision, he assures me, based solely on Obama's mishandling of the economy and I will realize that the various issues that I have with the Republican party, Tea Party crazies and the religious right, do not apply to Romney.

This morning, Joe Nocera writes an interesting column about the Facebook IPO which I think is ultimately wrong. Nocera's take is that, aside from people angry that the investment banks lowered their revenue forecasts without telling all clients (and simultaneously raising both the price of the IPO and the number of shares sold) that investors don't really have a lot to complain about.