The louder liberals talk about some ancient constitutional right, the surer you should be that it was invented in the last few decades.

In fact, this alleged right derives only from a footnote slyly slipped into a Supreme Court opinion by Justice Brennan in 1982. You might say it sneaked in when no one was looking, and now we have to let it stay.

The 14th Amendment was added after the Civil War to overrule the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision, which had held that black slaves were not citizens of the United States. …

The drafters of the 14th Amendment had no intention of conferring citizenship on the children of aliens who happened to be born in the U.S. (For my younger readers, back in those days, people cleaned their own houses and raised their own kids.) …

… And then, out of the blue in 1982, Justice Brennan slipped a footnote into his 5-4 opinion in Plyler v. Doe, asserting that “no plausible distinction with respect to 14th Amendment ‘jurisdiction’ can be drawn between resident aliens whose entry into the United States was lawful, and resident aliens whose entry was unlawful.” (Other than the part about one being lawful and the other not.)”

A must read by ANN COULTER. …

UPDATE (Aug. 6): In reply to “Patriot”:

Here on BAB we are a little more circumspect about chief cheerleader for Bush during his reign of terror, who piped up mostly about, safe, small issues, and is a reliable Republican water carrier. We recommend you read through the Coulter Archive on BAB, and the same archive in the Articles Archive for a realistic reappraisal.

Scrutinizing the ever-so sad images of war brought back those horrible years during which, in vain it seemed, I pelted my readers with non-stop facts and doses of reality, the kind these images transmit with such ease. I tried the power of the Jewish teachings; these instruct Jews to robustly and actively seek justice; Just War Theory, developed by great Christian minds like St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine, the libertarian axiom, which prohibits aggression against non-aggressors. And I mentioned over and over again the natural law, and what the Founding Fathers provided: “A limited, constitutional republican government, by definition,” I wrote in March 12, 2003, doesn’t, cannot, and must never pursue what Bush is after—a sort of 21st-century Manifest Destiny.”

If you have a moral compass I ask you to patronize moral writers (provided they have talent, of course), not the apologists who supported this wicked foray, and are still unapologetic about it. All of them, I wager, are doing well—walking around, grins on their smug, death-head mugs, their claws dripping with blood, their wallets stuffed with wads, the Empire’s counterfeit currency. Incitement to murder and war profiteering are lucrative occupations in fin de siècle America.

The blowhards and blonds who slithered on their bellies for Bush (still do)—why do you read them? Buy their sick-making “Obama-this; Obama That” Micky-mouse books? (Okay, some like Coulter and Malkin have real talent, but the rest? Nothing but a T & A show all.)

It’s the story of Job, that Hebrew individualist, all over again; the wicked and the foolisher prosper, the righteous suffer, isn’t it?

“Bill Kristol and Liz Cheney have demanded that Steele resign as head of the RNC for saying Afghanistan is now Obama’s war – and a badly thought-out one at that. (Didn’t liberals warn us that neoconservatives want permanent war?)

I thought the irreducible requirements of Republicanism were being for life, small government and a strong national defense, but I guess permanent war is on the platter now, too.

Of course, if Kristol is writing the rules for being a Republican, we’re all going to have to get on board for amnesty and a ‘National Greatness Project,’ too – other Kristol ideas for the Republican Party. Also, John McCain. Kristol was an early backer of McCain for president – and look how great that turned out!

Inasmuch as demanding resignations is another new Republican position, here’s mine: Bill Kristol and Liz Cheney must resign immediately.”

[snip]

I wrote “A War He Can Call His Own” two years ago, but who’s counting? Truth doesn’t count; celebrity does. For what it’s worth (read the complete column):

“By promising to broaden the scope of operations in Afghanistan, Obama has found a ‘good’ war to make him look the part. By staking out Afghanistan as his preferred theater of war—and pledging an uptick in operations against the Taliban—Obama achieves two things: He can cleave to the Iraq policy that excited his base. While winding down one war, he can ratchet up another, thereby demonstrating his commander-in-chief credentials. …

But that initial mission mutated miraculously, and now we are doing in Afghanistan what we’re doing in Iraq: nation building. Nations building is Democrat for spreading democracy. Spreading democracy is Republican for nation building. These interchangeable concepts stand for an open-ended military presence with all the pitfalls that attach to Iraq. …”

UPDATED I (July 10): I’ve actually, mercifully, never read this Gerson sort. The class of commentators you all reference are the least obnoxious to me, because they have some facility with the English language, and can cobble together a vaguely coherent column. Hey, a neocon must make a living too. These pests have kids to feed.

No, it’s the tits-and-ass idiots that offend me. These are the barely literate females who get lucrative book deals for their here-today-gone-tomorrow epistolary vomit, purely because of a combination of ass-ets, pushy self-promotion (which might include heroic action over and above grinding out grating gerunds), and a knack for not threatening Big Cable Egos.

One of the bad things about the rise to fame of a cretin such as SE Cupp, or the deeply silly Margaret Hoover, for example, is that this program for fem affirmative action has made these dumb dodos believe that O’Reilly and Hannity have them on as side kicks because they are so smart.

The ditzes don’t get that they are on TV weighting in on weighty matters—having never uttered an original thought in their lives—because, however hard they try, they simply cannot make their hosts look bad. Impossible.

I do respect SE Cupp’s training as a professional ballet dancer. That requires incredible skill and dedication, a determination IT has applied to the craft of political circus animal. (Ballet dancer: that’s the one aspect of White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel that I respect too. Ditto Kip Winger.)

How we got from trash to gold, I don’t know, but I’m glad my mind works in mysterious ways. Feast on this embodiment of American manhood. (The hard work that goes into learning to play as tightly as this and move like this is manly.)

UPDATE II: How could I forget this moron among the Fox News menagerie: Imogen Lloyd Webber is an imported liberal airhead who came up with this shopworn shibboleth on The Factor: “we must build bridges with Islam.” “I’m not particularly bright and I put myself under a lot of pressure to do well,” she said of herself. At least she possesses a modicum of self-knowledge, unlike her American bimbette competitors.

Ms. Coulter got called a racist for that mild dig at Thomas. And she’d be called an anti-Semite if she came out with this Thomas tomfoolery:

UPDATE I (June 6): I don’t know what is more pathetic, Thomas or the organized Jewish response to her. More later.

UPDATE II (June 7): The reason the weak, uncharismatic Democrat Lanny Davis is so popular with Demopublicans is that he is, well, weak and inconsequential.

Now he wants to muscle the outlets that make use of this ancient idiot Thomas’ output. (Why does he not petition her syndicator to drop her, and hire this Jewish Woman–your host? Thomas has had a good run. It’s time for new blood.).

Of course the the old sow is apologizing; the public apology is a ritual as meaningful as are tears on Oprah.

Why extract this meaningless muttering from this woman?

As I once wrote, “It’s bad form to coerce or manipulate people into liking, hiring, renting, or apologizing to you. So long as haters keep their mitts to themselves, insulted parties should, if anything, rise above the fray, act graciously—even turn the other cheek. Subjecting people who don’t like you to reeducation programs smacks of busybody social engineering.”

Thomas may be a fool, but Davis and Ari Fleischer are incorrigible, pushy purveyors of political correctness.

UPDATE III: Robert Glisson is sad to see a woman who had it all blow it away. Sympathies here are misplaced.

And why on earth? Although I liked some of Thomas’ anti-war sentiment—has it been up to snuff with Obama?—I’m thrilled that the cow has been put out to pasture. She’s had a good run. When else, but in the age of mass mediocrity, would such a banal bitch obtain such iconic stature?

A top Obama official, John Morton, assistant secretary of homeland security for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement government, told the Chicago Tribune that the Arizona immigration-enforcement law, SB 1070, is not “good government.”

The best way to reduce illegal immigration is through a comprehensive federal approach, he said, and not a patchwork of state laws.

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano backed the bastard up: “ICE,” she said, “is not obligated to process illegal immigrants referred to them by Arizona authorities.

ICE has the legal discretion to accept or not to accept persons delivered to it by non-federal personnel … It also has the discretion to deport or not to deport persons delivered to it by any government agents, even its own.”

FoxNews’ Megyn Kelly called this government by fiat.

This is how it rolls in the US. I’ve long contended that commentators who constantly hail America’s unique freedoms are willfully misleading their followers. States’ rights? Those died a long time ago.

The federal government no longer fulfills its most basic negative duty, and that is to protect its citizens. But this is not new.

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”

Hot Air tracks the issue too.

Update (May 23): Ann Coulter is at her best when she gets legal. She dredges up the “UNITED STATES v. BRIGNONI-PONCE” (1975), in which the SCOTUS unanimously, including every liberal on the Court, decided that “border police could take into account the Mexican appearance of a car’s occupants. They could not do random stops based on nothing but that ‘appearance.’” The Arizona law does not go as far as the SCOTUS’ ruling.

Another interesting point made by AC: “Iconic labor leader, and civil rights activist Cesar Chavez, along with Ralph Abernathy, successor to Martin Luther King, marched against illegal immigration.”

Via the Charlotte Observer: “Sarah Palin headlined the NRA convention in uptown Charlotte Friday afternoon, speaking to a crowd of 9,000 gun rights supports at Time Warner Cable Arena.”

MSNBC TV has just reported (falsely, I hope) that Palin went on to call on Hollywood to clean up its violence-glorifying, crime-impacting ways before demanding that law-abiding citizens give up their guns.

First, implicit in this stupid exhortation is the unfounded notion that graphic visuals cause violence. How like Tipper! In their censuring attempts, conservatives like Palin remind me of Democrat Tipper Gore and her comical attempt in the 1980s to censor rock lyrics.

Also following from the Palin premise is that, should Hollywood clean up its act, so to speak, we gun owners will indeed consider giving up the right to protect sacred life and property.

Can’t this woman ask my girl, Michelle Bachmann, to help her formulate a logical thought!

Update I (May 15): Thanks to Jack Slater (Letter of the Week) for putting things into perspective as to Palin. I ask Myron to repeat some of his classic observations about the woman. No one is listening; you have to repeat ad nauseam.

(Incidentally, the only individual on the NRA Invited Speakers list who deserves accolades for his efforts on behalf of liberty is … the Democrat (once Reagan appointee), Jim Webb.)

With few exceptions, no amount of analysis I’ve provided on this blog has moved the Republicans who read it (and yes, that was a pejorative) any closer to the truth. Coulter, Palin; Limbaugh, Hannity—they can rest assured. Their futures and fortunes are guaranteed by a blind following as ignorant as it is loyal. All you puppies want is to wag your tails for your masters or mistresses, and forget their hypocrisy and intellectual corruption over the years. I won’t even advise that you read my Palin archives (avoid it) on the main site and on the blog; I know you are more comfortable with feeling warm and fuzzy than following the facts and the principles.

Palin is wrong on almost everything except on energy. On energy and environmental issues she is indeed an ace. That’s all.

Coulter recently appeared on CNN together with some actress, Aisha Tyler, an avowed Obamaite (Tavis Smiley was excellent compared to… Anderson Cooper). The lefty was better than the conservative Queen Bee who could muster only a few silly, spiteful quips in support of freedom.

If you believe these characters are the republic’s last hope, then you deserve their brand of freedom (although Iraqis don’t). They and the wars they’ve whored for are, by and large, what got us into this financial morass.

Update II (April 16): McCain supports Gov. Brewer. Palin is worse than useless on immigration. Anyone who cares about what Peter Brimelow calls the “National Question” will apprise himself of Palin’s hollow, “we-are-a-nation-of-immigrants” positions. She motivates her support for protecting the border with reference, mainly, to national security—not crime, sovereignty, the transformation of the country’s character.

The other characters for whom everyone goes to bat aim to bring the country back to Bush and Laura’s party (Laura approves of BHO’s Kagan appointment). It’s curious that readers would see this as serving to awaken Boobus Americanus.

“The Democratic and Republican parties each operates as a necessary counterweight in a partnership designed to keep the pendulum of power swinging in perpetuity from the one set of colluding quislings to the other, and back.”

And their supporters play musical chairs along with them.

Glenn made the final leap today to a non-interventionist foreign policy emphasizing American interests and self-defense and no nation building. He said the words, “I am with Ron Paul.” This could be good for the country—unless Beck is forced by his backers (FoxNews) to back down.

For example, this reasonable remark of Obama’s is drawing FoxNews ire:

“It is a vital national security interest of the United States to reduce these conflicts because whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower, and when conflicts break out, one way or another we get pulled into them. And that ends up costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure.”

I will post the Beck YouTube feature as soon as it’s up (readers are welcome to beat me to it).

Update: “America Is a Republic, Not an Empire” by Glenn Beck:

“The example we set now is what pisses everyone off: We say we’re going to spread democracy, but we bed dictators, we bow to Saudi princes, when it’s to our advantage. George Washington wanted us to be like the Swiss: Enemy of none, friend to all. Places like Germany — hey, we’re glad you are all straightened out, but we’re pulling out, you’re on your own. We’re not staying. We need to get out of the Korean Peninsula and Japan. No longer will we be the world’s loiterers.

The United States spends approximately $102 billion annually to maintain troops, equipment, fleets and bases overseas — if you count Iraq and Afghanistan it jumps to $250 billion. Well, I’m tired of being the world’s policeman. And in many cases we are the world’s loiterers. We need to have a “no loitering” policy.

That policy comes from the progressives. The Republicans say we’ll send in the “green helmets” and just nation build our way to global security. The liberals want to do it through the United Nations; they want to send in the “blue helmets” — which we pay for.

This doesn’t work. I don’t want to nation build. I don’t want a global government or military force.

And for all the Don Rumsfelds out there watching who are cursing me out right now because they think no time is a good time to cut defense spending. Well, maybe this will help. This chart shows who accounts for all military spending in the world.

Almost half of all military spending in the world — 47 percent — is America. The next biggest spender is Europe — that’s not even a country, they spent $289 billion on military-related expenses. We almost spent that much outside our country for our own defense!

So don’t tell me we can’t afford to cut back. Clearly we can.

And when we are in a situation like Afghanistan, we fight to win it. With all of our technology today, why can’t we get in and out of Afghanistan in a couple of years? Because the politicians have their grimy little fingers on everything. Take the military off the leash; if you decide to go to war, unhook those dogs and get the hell out of the way.”

Update II (April 16): Together with the Cato Institute, the author of the blog Downsizing the Federal Government in particular, Beck has been running pragmatic, hour-long workshops on where and how much to slash. Pretty much everything. The man is a force of nature.

Back to the matter of Beck’s “I’m with Ron Paul on foreign policy” statement: This too is a very important development. Beck is pulling away from the neoconservative pack at Fox. By declaring war on their gratuitous wars he has driven a wedge between himself and the likes of Hannity, O’Reilly, Krauthammer, Kristol, and all the followers (I don’t know a Republican ditto head who doesn’t go along with the war-all-the-time = a strong national defense formula). The unity of the ditto heads on war policy was unshakable.

Again: By denouncing the war talisman, Beck, a major star on the Right, has created oscillation in the ossifying GOP. He has broken a united front which—thanks to the likes of Hannity, Coulter, Malkin, O’Reilly; National Review, Weekly Standards—seemed unchallenged.

The apparatchiks of this machine have designated certain groups as protected species. Thus, the bedrock of western law, the rights of the individual, is turned on its head. Based on your membership in a group, you get to claim protected species rights—and acquire a lien on the property of other groups, who become prime potential offenders. The quasi-judicial Tribunal then acts on these definitions in the substance of its decisions. It’s all great for social cohesion.

And the designations keep growing. Last I covered the quasi-courts, it was deliberating as to whether to extend protection against discrimination on the grounds of “social conditions.” In other words, much like in the US, you do not posses absolute rights to your property. However, over and above the infraction against freedom of association and property that is American Civil Rights law, the Canadian kangaroo code would make it an offense to refuse to rent your apartment, for example, to a welfare recipient.

Devastating complaints have been launched against individuals whose speech the protected species dislike, often bankrupting and destroying innocent individuals guilty of exercising property rights or expressing politically incorrect thoughts.

In a truly free society, the kind we once enjoyed, one honors the right of the individual to associate and disassociate, invest and disinvest, speak and misspeak at will. Simple. So long as your mitts stop at my mug, you ought to be free to do as you wish. (Including ingesting drugs and ending one’s life, for vices are not crimes. “If for harming himself a man forfeits his liberty, then it can’t be said that he has dominion over his body. It implies that someone else—government—owns him.”) People ought to be arrested only for crimes they perpetrate against another’s person or property.

Particularly apt is Ann’s swipe, in “Oh Canada,” at the mob mentality and congenital stupidity issuing from the free-thinking Millennials (whom I’ve described at length in “Your Kids: Dumb, Difficult And Dispensable”):

the Ottawa University Student Federation met for seven and a half hours to hammer out a series of resolutions denouncing me. The resolutions included:

“Whereas Ann Coulter is a hateful woman;

“Whereas she has made hateful comments against GLBTQ, Muslims, Jews and women;

“Whereas she violates an unwritten code of ‘positive-space’;

“Be it resolved that the SFUO express its disapproval of having Ann Coulter speak at the University of Ottawa.”

At least the students didn’t waste seven and a half hours on something silly, like their studies.

Update I (March 25): Where do you think “The Silly Sex?” would land this writer were she to return to Canada? Or “Women Who Wed the Wrong Wahhabi”? Or “‘Obsession’ By Muhammad”?

Update II: Coulter has never called for the conversion of Jews, as Myron (and lefties) contends. I’ve long since “Disentangled [That] Coulter/Deutsch Dust-Up”:

Although some Christian denominations have watered it down, a general filament of the Christian faith is the belief that salvation is predicated on accepting Christ. If Coulter were more than a brash, bonny (if bony) babe, she’d have explained that doctrine: To get past the Pearly Gates, Christians believe one has to accept Christ.

“But is belief in ‘perfection’ or ‘completion’ through Jesus tantamount to hostility to Jews?” asked Gabriel Sanders of the Jewish daily “Forward.” And he replied, quoting Yaakov Ariel, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a specialist in Jewish-Evangelical ties: “A conservative, Jesus-oriented faith doesn’t mean, in and of itself, that people are anti-Jewish. Some of the more favorable attitudes toward Jews have developed in Evangelical circles.”

FoxNews: “Pro-life Democrats have reached a deal with President Obama to ensure that no taxpayer money goes to abortion services, Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., who led Democratic lawmakers opposed to the Senate bill, said Sunday.”

Stupak made the announcement surrounded by a handful of Democratic lawmakers who had held out their “yes” votes on a massive health insurance overhaul set for a vote on Sunday over abortion. The swing appeared to give Democratic leaders enough votes to pass the 10-year, nearly $1 trillion legislation.

Only the brainless quibble about the correct constitutional position: abortion is to be regulated by states and individuals, not federales.

But conservadems and their Republican pals have managed to muddy the voice of freedom with their constant pules for fetuses (not their own), instead of standing on a refusal to raid coffers not theirs. Abortion is a side-issue, a mere distraction in the fight against the further bureaucratization of health care.

The Ann Coulter cohort continually instruct tea party goers to get behind this or the other Republican if he or she is for “prayer in schools, against abortion and gay marriage.”

Polls confirm what you and I know: freedom-minded individuals don’t give a tinker’s toss about these conservative fetishes.

Conservadems and damn Republicans still don’t get what the opposition to this Bill—and the Tea Party groundswell—is all about.

Incidentally, Bachmann is everything Palin is not.

Update (March 21): PELOSI PALOOZA. Pelosi says that a welfare program resembling Social Security and Medicare in size and significance further brings american society closer to the values espoused by the Founding Fathers and framers of the Constitution.
Not even historians to the regime will deny that the likes of John Locke (b. 1632, d. 1704), with his natural rights doctrine, were the inspiration for the American Founders. That bitch is such a colossal ignoramus.

The vote is in process. It has passed: 219 yeas to 212 nays.

“We can’t have a free market in health insurance until Congress eliminates the antitrust exemption protecting health insurance companies from competition. If Democrats really wanted to punish insurance companies, which they manifestly do not, they’d make insurers compete.

The very next sentence of my bill provides that the exclusive regulator of insurance companies will be the state where the company’s home office is. Every insurance company in the country would incorporate in the state with the fewest government mandates, just as most corporations are based in Delaware today.

That’s the only way to bypass idiotic state mandates, requiring all insurance plans offered in the state to cover, for example, the Zone Diet, sex-change operations and whatever it is that poor Heidi Montag has done to herself this week.

President Obama says we need national health care because Natoma Canfield of Ohio had to drop her insurance when she couldn’t afford the $6,700 premiums, and now she’s got cancer.

Much as I admire Obama’s use of terminally ill human beings as political props, let me point out here that perhaps Natoma could have afforded insurance had she not been required by Ohio’s state insurance mandates to purchase a plan that covers infertility treatments and unlimited ob/gyn visits, among other things.

It sounds like Natoma could have used a plan that covered only the basics – you know, things like cancer.

The third sentence of my bill would prohibit the federal government from regulating insurance companies, except for normal laws and regulations that apply to all companies.

Freed from onerous state and federal mandates turning insurance companies into public utilities, insurers would be allowed to offer a whole smorgasbord of insurance plans, finally giving consumers a choice.

Instead of Harry Reid deciding whether your insurance plan covers Viagra, this decision would be made by you, the consumer. (I apologize for using the terms “Harry Reid” and “Viagra” in the same sentence. I promise that won’t happen again.)

My bill will solve nearly every problem allegedly addressed by Obamacare – and mine entails zero cost to the taxpayer. Indeed, a free market in health insurance would produce major tax savings as layers of government bureaucrats, unnecessary to medical service in America, get fired.

For example, in a free market, the government wouldn’t need to prohibit insurance companies from excluding “pre-existing conditions.”

Of course, an insurance company has to be able to refuse new customers with “pre-existing conditions.” Otherwise, everyone would just wait to get sick to buy insurance. It’s the same reason you can’t buy fire insurance on a house that’s already on fire.

That isn’t an “insurance company”; it’s what’s known as a “Christian charity.” …

The complete column is “My health-care plan.” Read it on WND.COM, where you can read my take tonight on the latest developments. Title: “Heeere’s Health-Scare.”