Defending Michael Cannon

Let's call this what it is -- a dishonest and unfair hit on Cato Institute scholar Michael Cannon.

Here's the background. On Thursday afternoon, Nicki Kurokawa of the conservative Winston Group tweeted, with obvious sarcasm, a link to an AP article about a local Louisiana sheriff fretting that undocumented workers might bring a "criminal element" to the gulf if brought in for oil spill cleanup. "Oil spills: bad," said Kurokawa. "Illegal immigrants helping to clean up the oil: WORSE. Like, really?"

Hard to get more obvious than that -- Kurokawa, who worked at Cato with Cannon before joining the Winston Group, was making the sort of joke liberals (who see eye to eye with most Cato scholars on this issue) make at the expense of immigration obsessives. But Cannon, in re-tweeting her, clipped off "like, really?" while adding his own joke: "I hear they're very absorbent." You have to put on blinders to miss the fact that Cannon is joking about what he sees as craziness in Louisiana.