Crying Over Spilled Oil

The big oil spill was topic number one on ABC's This Week today. I'm sorry to say that George Will kicked the alleged liberal reps - Al Sharpton, Bill Maher and Katherine van den Heuvel - all over the set. They had some pretty lame claims that we could do without oil - with wind farms for example - and Will pointed out that wind farms killed a lot more birds than oil slicks. Of course oil does most of its damage in the coastal wet lands.

The fundamental fact is that there is no way for this planet to support billions of people, their cars, planes and energy consuming gadgets without exposing the environment to a lot of actual and potential damage. All options have potentially serious consequences, and the tradeoffs need to be carefully studied.

Immigration was next, and nobody would commit. George Will allowed as how the Obama bill was pretty tough and could have been written by a Republican, but evaded repeated questions as to whether he would support it. Al Sharpton was no more forthcoming.

Americans are on one of their occasional nativist kicks - propelled by recession - and are unlikely to buy into anything that isn't pretty punitive. My bet is that the forces who want to keep immigration dangerous, illegal, and common will win as usual.

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