President Bush's speech on immigration this Monday reminded me of a story I heard years ago about the FBI's despotic director, J. Edgar Hoover.

Putting Hoover in charge of the FBI was like making Adrian Monk a czar. He was obsessive-compulsive to the point that he strictly regulated the width of the margins on the memos his underlings sent him.

Since he liked one-page memos, his subordinates frequently tried to cram more words onto the page by shrinking the margins. It drove Hoover wild.

One Friday afternoon, after double-checking the margins on a stack of memos with his ruler, and finding them half an inch narrower than regulation, he issued a terse directive, "Watch the borders!"

He returned Monday to find that his directive had been implemented: Hundreds of FBI agents had been moved to the Rio Grande and the 49th Parallel. Nice work, Adrian.

More on immigration in my next posting.