Did you know today was a holiday? It is. It is Flag Day, when we're all supposed to fly the American flag somewhere, in commemoration of the Second Continental Congress's June 14th, 1777 adoption of the design commonly, but, many believe, mistakenly, attributed to Philadelphian seamstress Betsy Ross. The best thing about this holiday, to me, is that it reminds me of my favorite song by the Housemartins. (That's former Housemartins singer Paul Heaton, above, performing it last year.) The worst thing about it is pretty much everything else. I don't like flags.

"Why is Haiti so poor? Well, it has a history of oppression, slavery and colonialism. But so does Barbados, and Barbados is doing pretty well." That's David Brooks, going out on a crazy limb. (He goes out on some others, which we're not even going to address. This one is maddening enough.) For starters. Barbados has a population well under 300,000, and Haiti has a population of over 10 million? Haiti is almost 11,000 square miles and Barbados is 167? This is a question of manageability. More importantly, Barbados has been stunningly smart in occupying the middle ground between neighboring tax haven islands and the highly-regulated (and/or more [...]