Dear Mika: What a terrific show this morning — Morning Joe with no creamer, if you know what I mean!  Who else would have thought of putting Mike Barnacle on a panel to try and pick apart Eugene Robinson’s column on immigration “insecurity” in the Washington Post?  And who would have expected the two of them to agree on anything, especially that the surest way to stop illegal immigration would be to pass a law making it a felony for any employer to hire an illegal alien?

Of course, Mr. Big Business Joe Scarborough steered the discussion away from that and turned it towards protecting the border by building a big wall, which Robinson had debunked in his column.  Eventually, the truth “sneaked across the border,” so to speak, when everybody except Joe agreed border security is impossible when drug users need illegals to bring them drugs, businesses and farmers need their cheap labor, the illegals need the crummy jobs they provide, and politicans need Latino votes just as badly as they need corporate campaign contributions.

Speaking of reforms, I was glad to read on your website that Elizabeth Warren, the chair of the Congressional oversight panel President Obama appointed to investigate the bank bailouts will be on the show tomorrow..  She’s one of the saner and stronger voices in the debate over new financial regulations, or, as we now more appropriately call them, “Wall Street reform.”  From what I’m reading in our remaining newspapers and seeing on television shows, Senator Chris Dodd’s legislation, which is about to pass the Senate, doesn’t get the job done, and I’m confident Elizabeth Warren will take it apart, even though it means disagreeing with President Obama.

I really like Chairperson Warren because she isn’t afraid to take on her boss.  For the same reason in reverse, I have to admit that I was never really fond of your father, not because he isn’t a nice man, or because he was a chicken-hawk, but because he never spoke up against the atrocities being committed by his President-boss, Jimmy Carter.  I mean, where was your dad when Carter started deregulating the banking industry in the first place?  And where was he when Carter deregulated the airline industry and set the stage for the merger of United and Continental that is about to create an airline truly “too big to fail”?

P.S.  I’m thinking about changing the name of this little blog series itself, because I’m falling in love with Elizabeth Warren.  Like most American voters and television viewers, I’m finding myself more fickle by the day.