Given his general antipathy to the National Review line on illegal immigration, I thought JPod’s column this morning was very fair – and a much saner reaction than that of, say, Michael Chertoff. I liked this bit:

These comprehensive legislative solutions – the sorts of bills that run hundreds of pages in length and are written in impenetrable gobbledygook – are almost always disastrous.

Just so. If it’s unreasonable and electorally unviable for conservatives to maintain their enthusiasm for “small government”, we should at least insist on small legislation, or big government made up of lots of small bills, focused (as Mr Clinton would say) like a laser.