The BP escrow fund as Nazi enabling act

Thomas Sowell, one of the nation's most respected conservative columnists and authors, goes there:

[D]uring the worldwide Great Depression, the German Reichstag passed a law "for the relief of the German people." That law gave Hitler dictatorial powers that were used for things going far beyond the relief of the German people — indeed, powers that ultimately brought a rain of destruction down on the German people and on others. If the agreement with BP was an isolated event, perhaps we might hope that it would not be a precedent. But there is nothing isolated about it.

I'm in the Senate right now, where there is no appetite -- really, none -- for criticizing the BP fund. The gap between conservative intellectual leadership and Republican politicians on this issue is as wide as we've ever seen it during the Obama era.