My friend, and co-blogger at Market Correction, Andy Morriss has this superb letter in today's Wall Street Journal:

Holman Jenkins asks "Does Obama Want to Own the Airlines?" (Business World, July 8). I am sure he does not. Rather than own them, the president and his congressional allies want to control the airlines -- a crucial difference as ownership implies taking responsibility.

As Mr. Jenkins notes, the Justice Department's belated intervention against Continental's efforts to join the Star Alliance appears aimed at extorting concessions for the Democrats' union allies. That is not the action of an owner of airline assets but of someone determined to redistribute wealth from airline passengers and shareholders to favored special interests.

If either the administration or Congress cared about competition in air travel, they would relax the protectionist rules that prevent foreign ownership of U.S. airline assets and deregulate American airspace to allow foreign carriers to operate here.

Here's a letter that I sent today to the Washington Post:

In his column in today's Washington Post, Harold Meyerson rightly applauds the fact that Robert Rubin is "concerned with the world's poor."  But I wonder if Meyerson himself gives a damn about the world's poor.

In many of his columns Meyerson argues against free trade.  He does so because it obliges high-wage Americans to compete against low-wage foreigners, and thus allegedly puts downward pressure on Americans' wage rates.  Forget that neither theory nor data support Meyerson's claim about trade's effect on high-wage Americans.  If Meyerson himself were truly concerned with the world's poor, he would unconditionally support free trade - a proven means for raising the wages of low-wage foreign workers.

Here's a letter that I sent recently to the Washington Post: