Via CalPundit.

DEMOCRATS AND ECONOMIC PROSPERITY....Ronald Brownstein has a pretty good and thoughtful column about Trent Lott today in the LA Times. But the part that struck me [that is, CalPundit] actually had nothing to do with Lott:

The death of Jim Crow made possible the birth of the modern South; only after segregation fell did the South rise from endemic poverty and economic isolation.

I'd like to believe this unconditionally. However, I wonder if the development of air-conditioning didn't play as significant a role in the "Rise of the South" as desegregation?

And I wonder if desegregation didn't get a significant boost from the migration of morally uncomfortable Northerners to an air-conditioned South?