The Braying Yahoo Crew

Perhaps I'm misreading him, but George Will strikes me as a touch irritated with our "increasingly anti-constitutional government":

With the braying of 328 yahoos--members of the House of Representatives who voted for retroactive and punitive use of the tax code to confiscate the legal earnings of a small, unpopular group--still reverberating, the Obama administration yesterday invited private-sector investors to become business partners with the capricious and increasingly anti-constitutional government. This latest plan to unfreeze the financial system came almost half a year after Congress shoveled $700 billion into the Troubled Assets Relief Program, $325 billion of which has been spent without purchasing any toxic assets.

And in the midst of bailout mania and toxic asset insanity, Will reminds readers that more protectionism—cloaked in complaints about the safety of Mexican trucks—is usually countered with an equal dose of protectionism.

Congress, with the approval of a president who has waxed censorious about his predecessor's imperious unilateralism in dealing with other nations, has shredded the North American Free Trade Agreement. Congress used the omnibus spending bill to abolish a program that was created as part of a protracted U.S. stall regarding compliance with its obligation to allow Mexican long-haul trucks on U.S. roads. The program, testing the safety of Mexican trucking, became an embarrassment because it found Mexican trucking at least as safe as U.S. trucking. Mexico has resorted to protectionism--tariffs on many U.S. goods -- in retaliation for Democrats' protection of the Teamsters union.

Reason on protectionism and the ten truths about free trade.