A friend of mine came to the United States from Spain ten or fifteen years ago and is now a lawyer here. “Benjamin, I tell my friends in Spain all the time, ‘Nothing works here any more!  I should have come to America in the 1960’s when they could put a man on the moon.’”

Is there a lack of competence in America today?:

-The Facebook IPO.

-The president’s economic recovery plan.

-The Etaz Patz murder investigation.

-Google translate.

-The John Edwards verdict (and lack of verdicts).

-The Dominique Strauss-Kahn case.

My friend works for the government and Patz, Edwards, and DSK are all government screw-ups. Doesn’t law enforcement though have a better reputation for competency than other governmental entities, like HHS?  NYPD has a pretty good reputation, doesn’t it?   I know that the Manhattan D.A.’s office was considered the best under Robert Morgenthau. Now under Cyrus Vance, Jr.?  This is an “often wrong, always certain” prediction: they are going to dismiss the case against Pedro Hernandez. They don’t have the evidence. Hernandez’ confession isn’t admissible without evidence of guilt independent of the confession. In more ways than one they don’t have corpus delicti. Federal prosecutors, working out of “Main Justice,” got embarrassed with the Edwards verdicts. It’s not all government though. The Facebook IPO, the largest in history, was completely botched by Nasdaq computers and by Morgan Stanley, the best in their fields in America.  How could Google screw up that translation so badly?  When Google translate is that bad, they shouldn’t offer the translation service. We all depend on Google.