David Brooks has an excellent point in the opening paragraph about the "Trustafarians," those leftist intellectuals who run foundations established with the wealth created by businesses they hate--oil, for instance. Thus we have the Pew Trust spending money from the Sun Oil Company to support more wilderness and less oil exploration. Fortunately, this is all self-limiting. After some period of time, all the money will be gone, and there won't be any more fortunes to fund new foundations. The bad news is that none of us will be alive to behold it.

He skewers the new Homeland Security Department pretty well too. The problem, as I see it, is that it's far easier to retask existing personnel than to fire them and hire new ones. I agree with Brooks' analysis, but I don't support his call for a new independent commission. I would have just beefed up Ridge's agency by giving him status in the cabinet and budget authority and requiring the other agencies to funnel intelligence to that new agency. Otherwise we are just putting new wine in old bottles.