Category Archives: Conservatism

UPDATED: Where Are Tenth-Amendment Advocates On Senate Amnesty Bill?

Conservatism, Constitution, Federalism, IMMIGRATION, Republicans, States' Rights

In “Democracy And The Immigration Political Steamroller,” I inquired after the Tenth-Amendment Center. Why was it AWOL in the current amnesty fiasco?

To its credit, The Heritage Foundation has not gone along with the open-border crowd, and has made some sharp points about the top-down federal approach that characterizes the Senate’s “Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act”:

8. Disregard for Federalism

The Tenth Amendment of the United States Constitution clearly articulates that powers not explicitly delegated to the federal government are thereby reserved to the states.[46] The Founders understood that in order to know what is truly necessary and prudent for the protection of citizens’ rights and liberties, one must be in constant interaction with the people. For this reason, the Founders felt that states fostered the best-equipped individuals to represent the interests of public safety on behalf of their own citizens.

States also have a unique familiarity with their communities that enables them to better navigate the difficult issues of detection, detention, and deportation of illegal aliens. Following this same rationale, many legal experts believe that state and local governments retain inherent authority to enforce federal civil law. Opponents to this practice, however, feel the federal government should be the controlling voice when determining immigration policies and border security, with little to no guidance from the states themselves. As was the case with Arizona’s S. B. 1070 immigration law, when the state attempted to implement requirements it felt necessary to determine the immigration status of an individual, the federal government saw the state as an obstacle rather than an ally.[47]

Yet, with fewer than 6,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, failing to use the one million state and local law enforcement personnel to supplement federal personnel makes little sense. State and local law enforcement would, in fact, be a powerful force multiplier for immigration law enforcement. Yet, S. 744 continues to promote a top-down federal approach to addressing immigration while leaving minimum room for real collaboration.[48]

The bill does include a select few instances where some form of collaboration presents itself between the state, local, and federal governments. For example, four of 10 appointed members to the Southern Border Security Commission are to be representatives of the four states along the southern border. One representative is to come from each of the states and be either the governor or someone appointed by the governor.[49] Also, with approval from the Secretary of Defense, a governor may order personnel of the National Guard of his or her own state to perform operations and missions in the southwest border region for the purposes of assisting U.S. Customs and Border Protection.[50] These instances, however, are very limited.
State and local law enforcement would be a powerful force multiplier for immigration law enforcement. Yet, the Senate bill promotes a federal top-down approach to addressing immigration, leaving minimum room for real collaboration.

Otherwise, the bill provides no clear proposal for partnerships between the federal and state or local governments. Indeed, the legislation makes no mention of effective collaborative immigration enforcement programs, such as Section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows the federal government to enter into agreements with state and local law enforcement to “act in the stead of ICE agents by processing illegal aliens for removal.”[51]Instead, it pushes a federal-government-knows-best-and-will-fix-all mentality.

Read Heritage’s 9 other points.

Advocates of the Tenth and states’ rights are clearly AWOL.

UPDATE: Jack Kerwick isn’t. He’s out there wrestling with the illogic of the concepts immigration fetishists deploy to beat you about the head. “Toward an Honest Discussion of Immigration”: Read it!

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UPDATE IV: Ann Coulter Is Sally-Come-Lately To Mass Immigration Vexation, But She’s Still Splendid

Ann Coulter, Classical Liberalism, Conservatism, Ilana Mercer, IMMIGRATION, Reason

As I’ve written before, Ann Coulter has been late to blossom politically (otherwise she’s very pretty). Having avoided the immigration vexation until recently, Ms. Coulter has realized the need to become a single-issue powerhouse NOW, so as to make up for her past, politically correct driven neglect.

Sean Hannity cowered in the corner, tonight (June 20, 2013), preferring to cleave to a “gaffe President Obama made in Ireland.” Not Ms. Coulter. As Mediaite (?) puts it, “Coulter quickly shifted to immigration reform, ‘the most important issue facing our nation’ right now.'”

“But before the Obama bashing could go much further, Coulter quickly [more like masterfully] pivoted to immigration. She said that a lot of TV hosts are misleading the public on the bill, and slammed Republicans supporting immigration reform for using the same ‘silly’ arguments and ‘lies’ the Democrats are to justify the bill’s passage. Hannity couldn’t fathom why securing the border first is such a controversial idea in the first place.”

Coulter declared that the Democrats only want reform ‘“because it will help them electorally,” and smacked down the “idiot argument” that Hispanics will somehow “hate Republicans more” if this doesn’t pass. …
Coulter concluded that the Republicans cannot take up any bill that even mentions immigration until the Senate is majority-Republican. She sent a direct message to anyone with a Republican representative who backs the reform bill: “Punish them, voters.”

More regaling than the humdrum report above was watching Ms. Coulter point out that Irish doctors and engineers listening to Hussein’s silly speeches are not favored immigration candidates under Teddy Kennedy’s 1965 immigration bill.

It’s easy to forgive Annie-come-lately for years of silence when she invokes her trademark power syllogisms. For example, likening the silly liberal “argumentation” regarding “de facto amnesty” thus:

“We have de facto amnesty for murderers in America as thousands of murderer are not caught. Do we grant them amnesty?”

Splendid.

By the way, there is someone who has been covering “The Immigration Scene” forever.

Click “Immigration “ on the Articles Search, for four pages of columns going back to 1/30/2002. Some of us are consistent and consistently correct.

UPDATED I (June 20): James Huggins (on Facebook): Ms. Coulter is spot on but a decade late. That’s a big and calculated “mistake.” Unless you recognize how PC she’s been—you cannot appreciate how professionally suicidal the folks at VDARE, NumbersUSA, Michelle Malkin, and yours truly have been all along.

UPDATE II (6/22): From Facebook thread, again: I mean, James Huggins—and you should know what I mean by now—that Ann Coulter could have effected change a long time ago. You and I know she’s smart enough to have done what she’s doing now, back WHEN IT COUNTED. She’s jumping into the immigration debate now, when it no longer matters. We’ve passed the tipping point. “The D-Bomb Has Dropped.” Ultimately, the woman does what’s safe. There is nothing dangerous or admirable about that.

UPDATE III: Immigration Reform Bill: Full text. Try making sense of this bit of proposed legislation. It ought to be forbidden to write, much less pass, a bill written in such impenetrable legalese.

UPDATE IV: Jack Kerwick:

Whether border security attracts or alienates voters is of no consequence: a country’s borders must be secured. It is conditional upon nothing other than the relationship that obtains between a citizenry and its government.

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‘Barack Obama Is The President That Nixon Always Wanted To Be’

Barack Obama, Bush, Conservatism, Constitution, Individual Rights, Law, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism

As was observed in this week’s column, “Obama’s The Sinner; Holder His ‘Sin Eater,’” Professor Jonathan Turley has been doing the job most liberals and conservatives refuse to do: Argue that, as I put it, “Barack Hussein Obama’s philosophical fingerprints are all over his administration” and its scandals.

Turley has been magnificent, and must be losing many of his liberal pals for refusing to worship at the alter of Obama.

In March this year, Turley made the case, in a USA Today column, that “Barack Obama is the president that Nixon always wanted to be,” and that, “In 2013, Obama wields those very same powers openly and without serious opposition. The success of Obama in acquiring the long-denied powers of Nixon is one of his most remarkable, if ignoble, accomplishments.”

Turley traverses the ugly terrains of Obama’s expansion of the “warrantless surveillance” over his subjects. There is little you can do to oppose such surveillance, thanks to BHO.

As has Obama asserted “his sole authority” “to decide what is a ‘war,’” so that even the cockroaches in congress can no longer control the imperial presidency in the matter of war powers.

Then there are the “attacks on whistle-blowers and Journalists.” This is quite remarkable, but under the Espionage Act of 1917, “Obama has brought twice as many such prosecutions as all prior presidents combined.

Obama has not only openly asserted powers that were the grounds for Nixon’s impeachment, but he has made many love him for it. More than any figure in history, Obama has been a disaster for the U.S. civil liberties movement. By coming out of the Democratic Party and assuming an iconic position, Obama has ripped the movement in half.

This Turley interview with film maker John Cusack is particularly good because so specific.

TURLEY: “That’s exactly right. In fact, President Obama has not only maintained the position of George W. Bush in the area of national securities and in civil liberties, he’s actually expanded on those positions. He is actually worse than George Bush in some areas. …”

MORE.

What a shame that in the universe of a civil libertarian like Turley, individual rights do not extend to the sphere of economics and property rights. That would mean becoming a libertarian. How about that? (See also “Obama And Bush: Partners In Government Giganticism.)

Conservative Cowards And Cretins

Conservatism, Intelligence, Political Correctness, Race, Republicans

On May 7, I informed you about the Group of Eight’s 6.3 trillion-dollar amnesty plan. One of its authors, Robert Rector, is a known entity—a familiar and reliable number cruncher on the costs of mass immigration. The other is Jason Richwine, Ph.D., a promising newcomer.

Alas, one is never too young, too bright and too impolitic to fall afoul of conservative cowardice and cretinism.

Heritage has fired Jason Richwine. Writes Pat Buchanan:

Jason Richwine, the young conservative scholar who co-authored the Heritage Foundation report on the long-term costs of the amnesty bill backed by the “Gang of Eight,” is gone from Heritage.
He was purged after the Washington Post unearthed his doctoral dissertation at the JFK School of Government.
Richwine’s thesis:
IQ tests fairly measure mental ability. The average IQ of immigrants is well below that of white Americans. This difference in IQ is likely to persist through several generations.
And the potential consequences of this?
“A lack of socioeconomic assimilation among low IQ immigrant groups, more underclass behavior, less social trust and an increase in the proportion of unskilled workers in the American labor market.”
Richwine defended his 166-page thesis before Harvard’s George Borjas, Richard Zeckhauser and Christopher Jencks, who once edited the New Republic. But while his thesis was acceptable at Harvard – it earned Richwine a Ph.D. – it has scandalized the Potomac priesthood.
Our elites appear unanimous: Richwine’s view that intelligence is not equally distributed among ethnic and racial groups, and is partly inherited, is rankest heresy. Yet no one seems to want to prove him wrong.
Consider Richwine’s contention that differences in mental ability exist and seem to persist among racial and ethnic groups.
In the Wall Street Journal last month, Warren Kozak noted that 28,000 students in America’s citadel of diversity, New York City, took the eighth-grade exam to enter Stuyvesant, the Bronx School of Science and Brooklyn Tech, the city’s most elite high schools. Students are admitted solely on their entrance test scores.
Of the 830 students who will be entering Stuyvesant as freshmen this fall, 1 percent are black, 3 percent are Hispanic, 21 percent are white – and 75 percent are Asian.
Now, blacks and Hispanics far outnumber Asians in New York. But at Stuyvesant, Asians will outnumber blacks and Hispanics together 19-to-1.
Is this the result of racially biased tests at Stuyvesant?

This is so tiresome.

And check out the typically sub-intelligent equivocation coming from the conservative’s male version of S. E. Cupp: Matt K. Lewis.

Isn’t it time for Charles Murray of the Bell Curve fame to come to the defense of the multiple regression analysis, and other perfectly uncontroversial statistical methods?

America in the Age of the Idiot.