This never happens, I agreed with every piece in the Wall Street Journal's editorial page today. Usually I read it with the same attitude I adopt when I go to a zoo. I think, holy crap, they've got a red panda, a zebra, and a capybara! Where do they find all these weird animals?

Anyway today is like bizarro-WSJ day.
We have editorials supporting the death of the Byrd amendment, a somewhat esoteric scheme to send antidumping penalties to industries rather than to public coffers in what every sensible person regarded as a disgusting waste of money. They even chastise the Republicans who continued to support it:

In a letter to House Speaker Dennis Hastert, Idaho Reps. Mike Simpson and C.L. "Butch" Otter singled out Micron's Byrd winnings as a reason they would vote against any bill that contained Byrd repeal. Senator Larry Craig wrote to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to defend Byrd. All are Republicans.

Then they tear apart Tom Tancredo for wanting to build a wall sealing off the Mexican border in an editorial subtitled, "Trying to make the U.S. the world's largest gated community." Imagine that! The WSJ using "gated community" as an epithet, when the paper is probably the number one news source for gated communities.

First they mock current attempts to prevent illegal entry:

For the past two decades, border enforcement has been the main focus of immigration policy; by any measure, the results are pitiful. According to the Migration Policy Institute, "The number of unauthorized migrants in the United States has risen to almost 11 million from about four million over the past 20 years, despite a 519% increase in funding and a 221% increase in staffing for border patrol programs."

Then they criticize the bill for being too harsh on illegal immigrants.

Besides mandating the construction of walls and fences along the 2,000-mile Mexican border, the bill radically expands the definition of terms like "alien smuggler," "harboring," "shielding" and "transporting." Hence all manner of people would become criminally liable and subject to fines, property forfeiture and imprisonment -- the landscaper who gives a co-worker a ride to a job; the legal resident who takes in an undocumented relative; a Catholic Charities shelter providing beds and meals to anyone who walks through the door.

Finally they say, you're either with lady liberty or against her.

At some point, the president of the United States will have to get behind the Statue of Liberty or Tom Tancredo's wall.

The last editorial, I shit you not, is a backhanded thank you to the MTA unions for their strike last week. Further they say it was a critical service to the nation, because it raised awareness that states and localities have been ignoring the future costs of their workers' pension programs.

New York's beleaguered MTA at least deserves credit for trying to tackle this problem; ignoring it would in all likelihood have avoided last week's illegal strike. Roger Toussaint, the leader of the transit union, boasted he would not sell out the union's "unborn," workers yet unhired and baptized into his union, by burdening them with higher pension costs. But one way or another, it is unborn citizens who will pay for these public pensions unless the country starts taking their costs seriously.

This has all made me quite dizzy, I've got to go lie down now.