Under HIS Direction

Barack Obama, Federalism, IMMIGRATION, Law, The Courts

“The Obama administration’s lawsuit against the state of Arizona offers a revealing window into the Holder Justice Department. And the picture isn’t pretty, ” writes Kris W. Kobach.

Consider what we learned when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton first let the cat out of the bag and told us about it during an interview in Ecuador. Clinton showed who was sitting in the driver’s seat when it came to the Justice Department’s decision: “President Obama has spoken out against the law because he thinks that the federal government should be determining immigration policy. And the Justice Department, under his direction, will be bringing a lawsuit against the act.”
The key words here are “under his direction.” In other words, the White House is calling the shots. The same political calculations that drove Obama to criticize the Arizona law in April also drove the filing of the suit. While that is fine for policy decisions in other executive departments, the litigation decisions of the Justice Department are different. Past administrations — both Republican and Democratic — have taken care to insulate these decisions from political forces.
The reasons for doing so are obvious.
The decision to file civil charges or to file a civil lawsuit should be based purely on the strength of the legal case against the defendant, not on politics. And when it comes to the Arizona law, the federal government’s case is a weak one.

“When one considers the Arizona lawsuit in contrast to last year’s Justice Department decision to drop the voter-intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party, the conclusion becomes inescapable. In the Black Panther case, the defendants had failed to answer the charges against them, and all the Department had to do was ask the judge for a default judgment. But the political appointees of the Holder Justice Department came in and ordered the career department attorneys to drop the case.

So the department dropped a slam-dunk case and yet files a suit that is half-court shot. Neither decision makes sense if the law is guiding the department’s litigation decisions. But both decisions make perfect sense if political calculations are foremost.”

[SNIP]

I’m appalled that other states have not stood up loudly for Jan Brewer who, while not the sharpest knife in the draw, is at least sharp enough to understand the importance of defending Arizonans against trespass, from within (the feds) and without (alien scofflaws and welfare consumers).

Has anyone heard what the Republican beauty queen Sarah Palin has to say about the Federal government’s frontal attack on Arizona? Where is Bachmann on the matter? Are republicans covering up for the terrible two’s relative silence on the topic?

UPDATE II: The Law Of Rule Doubles Down

Affirmative Action, Barack Obama, Energy, Free Speech, Justice, Law, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Political Correctness, Race, Racism

A member of the South African opposition (as I have already mentioned) characterized the effects of the ANC’s deployment of law as living under the law of rule rather than the rule of law. This characterization applies equally to Big Man Obama and his posse.

According to Fox News’ Megan Kelly, who does some fine reporting, the decree to dismiss the New-Black-Panther voter intimidation case originated with 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Recall: the thugs who received a reprieve flanked the voting location in formation shouting variations on “kill crackers and their kids.”

A note to libertarians celebrating free speech and the beauty of an exhortation to kill in a “free society”: I’m sympathetic even to the last, believe it or not. But this is not about free speech. this is about a legal apparatus under which some are better than others. Don’t get me wrong: we’ve always lived under such an apparatus; my new book, Into The Cannibal’s Pot, (completed now and being prepared for publication), records this very reality. However, it has become manifestly obvious that things have gotten way worse (albeit on the same continuum) under the racial rule of Brother Barack.

To those interested in the law’s position on speech, here it is stated in one of my columns:

American jurisprudence allows the regulation of speech only under very limited circumstances. .. the jury would have had to find that … [the] speech posed a “Clear and Present Danger.” While the Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment doesn’t protect words that are likely to cause violence, the required threshold is extremely high. And so it should be.

However, speech that falls under the rubric of civil and voter rights law seems to get different treatment—when uttered against the pigmentally privileged.

UPDATE I: To prove this post’s point, the White House is threatening another lawsuit against Arizona. I believe it will try, this time, to make the racial profiling fiction stick. Is this an attempt to prosecute an infraction that has yet to occur? You see what I mean by the law of rule. As I write, coverage of this is hard to come by on the Net, so please do some digging.

UPDATE II: BHO will not abide by a “no you can’t!” The Law had ruled against the Rule in the matter of a moratorium on deep-water offshore drilling.

“[J]udge, Martin L. C. Feldman of United States District Court, issued a preliminary injunction against the enforcement of a late May order halting all offshore exploratory drilling in more than 500 feet of water. A ‘blanket, generic, indeed punitive, moratorium … with no parameters, seems to assume that because one rig failed and although no one yet fully knows why, all companies and rigs drilling new wells over 500 feet also universally present an imminent danger,'” is how the judge justified smacking BHO. (Here is District Judge Feldman’s decision.)

But the law of rule wants an outcome of its own. And so, th “Obama Administration Issues New Moratorium on Offshore Oil Drilling.”

UPDATED: 'Brace For Impact!' (Breaking: BHO EXPERT AGREES)

America, Business, Capitalism, Debt

“[A] very successful entrepreneur now living abroad” wrote to John Derbyshire, in response to an article Derb wrote detailing what a “terrible country the US is” if you want “to start an imaginative new enterprise”:

“Capitalism is dead in the US . . . The US was not destroyed by the Russians, the Chinese or even the militant Islamists. They did it to themselves . . . The $104 trillion debt is beyond any possible means of repayment. The only way out will be to monetize the debt by hyperinflation . . . I’m now watching the final days from 8,000 miles away . . . In November 2008, half of the US electorate put a loaded ballot in their mouth and pulled the trigger . . .”

Derb: “There’s a 40-foot tsunami in plain sight on the horizon, and we’re playing beach volleyball. Can Petraeus turn Afghanistan around? How unpopular is the healthcare bill? Will the feds sue the state of Arizona? (What’s that distant rumbling sound?) Is Turkey a friend or an enemy? Should Rahm Emanuel go? Is Elena Kagan gay?” [Or should Bill Kristol resign … Pat Buchanan said something to the effect that Americans are a deeply silly people in serious times.]

Vox Day writes: “The car has already hit the tree and the bumper is already in the process of buckling inward, so there is no time to turn the wheel or fasten seat belts. It is too late to do anything but scream.”

Derb “favor[s] aerodynamic analogies over Vox Day’s merely automotive ones. So: Heads between knees, arms over heads, hold that position. Pray if you’re inclined to. Brace for impact!”

UPDATE (July 12): I’ve searched the Net high-and-low, news outlets, Reuters too, are not reporting what Bill O’Reilly has just announced. A member of BHO’s commission-to-investigate-and-approve-the-levels-of-debt-the-USA-is-carrying has said we are on the road to ruin. Isn’t it curious how left-liberal mainstream media doesn’t even break vital stories any longer? If Bill is right, and I have no reason to believe otherwise, the man is a former Clinton official.

Talker Juan Williams, a simple sort who has long championed Keynesian deficit spending, denying that huge debt is in any way economically deleterious, suddenly got religion on austerity. It is as I said in the post asking the Punditocracy to quit, truth comes into existence in America as soon as someone in the establishment pronounces it, usually a decade or so after we’ve been screaming it from the rooftops.

UPDATE II: The Punditocracy Must Resign (T & A Show)

Ann Coulter, Conservatism, Foreign Policy, Human Accomplishment, Intelligence, Media, Music, Neoconservatism, Republicans, War

If I’ve learned anything about the American Mind it is this: Truth doesn’t exist until someone in the establishment pronounces it, usually a decade or so after it has been in circulation. Better Late than never, you say. Fine, then. Let’s fawn over the celebrated Ann Coulter for finally clashing with neoconservative Bill Kristol. The first part of the Coulter column, however, would make Bill proud. This section is redeemable:

“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 weighing 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.