Entries for March 29, 2006

My U.S. News column this week is on immigration, and since I wrote it (Friday deadline), the playing field has changed. Late on Friday afternoon, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed, by a 12-to-6 margin, a bill with border-security provisions (less stringent than in the House bill passed last December) and with legalization and guest worker provisions (not covered in the House bill at all).

I greatly admire the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz. He covers the media and covers it well. I think he makes every effort to be fair and open-minded and succeeds with only minor exceptions—I'm sure many people would say he does a better job at it than I do. One day some years ago, he wrote an article that included a description of me as a "right-leaning columnist."

Twenty-two years ago, Charles Murray published Losing Ground, in which he advocated abolishing all welfare payments. Even those who were attracted by its reasoning, and by Murray's always elegant writing, considered it wildly unrealistic and wholly out of line with political reality. I was among that group; as Charles reminded me at a book party for his latest offering last night, I wrote something favorable about it in the Washington Post, which I can't find on the Internet.