Yesterday, I took a closer look at the effect of open borders on the subprime mortgage mess. If you’re wondering why you won’t read any in-depth investigative reporting on the subject in the MSM, just read this nauseating profile of bailout architect Barney Frank in the NYT, which dubs him a “liberal wit” and effusively praises his skill at “building bridges to the G.O.P.”

Representative Barney Frank, the rumpled, cantankerous chairman of the Financial Services Committee, plopped down on a leather bench off the House floor last week. After two months of trying to win Republican support for his bill to help homeowners at risk of foreclosure, he had come up short.

The White House had just threatened a veto.

But Mr. Frank, the Massachusetts Democrat and the most prominent gay member of Congress, who always seems on the verge of an outburst, was more philosophical than combustible as he explained the administration’s opposition.

Between an economic stimulus package and the Federal Reserve’s rescue of Wall Street, he said, “they have been pushed into accepting a lot of government help for the market.”

“People aren’t good at doing things they dislike,” he added.

Then, in a flash of trademark wit, he said that asking the White House to support more government intervention was “like asking me to judge the Miss America contest — if your heart’s not in it, you don’t do a very good job.”

With relations between the White House and the Democratic Congress growing more acidic as the presidential election approaches, Mr. Frank, 68 and in his 14th term, has emerged as a key deal-maker, an unlikely bridge between his party’s left-wing base and the free-market conservatives in the administration, particularly Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr.

In the process, Mr. Frank has won praise, even from some Republican colleagues in the House who generally disagree with his politics but say he has treated them with a fair hand and an eye toward compromise.

The “wit” snows the twits.

Capitulationist Republicans: Giving us the “Change We Deserve” so the NYTimes can rub it in your faces.

Pass me the Effexor.