One more time, just to head off disparaging comments about my libertarian purity: I hate having to defend cops running around demanding "your papers, quickly!"
May my Maker forgive me for hiding behind the Jesuitical saw about ends justifying means. If He requires atonement via an extended stay in Purgatory or New Jersey, so be it.
Jul 29, 2010
Arizona and the Feds
And so the judge says "no" to Arizona. By extension, the denial of local authority here also applies to at least eight other states who are in one stage or another of doing as Arizona tried to do.
It's tempting to get off a line or two about Judge Bolton as a Clinton appointee, but she was nominated by John Kyl, who sports the sanity of a Midwest upbringing. His dad even performed as an Iowa congresscritter (R) and was not indicted.
It's tempting to get off a line or two about Judge Bolton as a Clinton appointee, but she was nominated by John Kyl, who sports the sanity of a Midwest upbringing. His dad even performed as an Iowa congresscritter (R) and was not indicted.
The lawsuit will proceed at a boring pace now, but there is a lively battle for public opinion worth our attention. The AP, and others, speculate this morning that Judge Susan is telegraphing a message that that the Obama Administration will not tolerate uppitiness from the states. The item cautions that her suspension of all that really matter in the Arizona immigration law will chill similar sentiments on other states.
Could be, Could also not be. It depends on how serious we slathering freedom-freak libertarian types are about nullification, and here I stand on the brink of a dangerous position. Nullification has an ugly ring of facile nostalgia for the days of black slavery. So does its cousin, interposition. Neither doctrine justifies defending a massa-servant relationship of one class of American citizens to another nor of the old Jim Crow laws, nor of government-mandated racial segregation. Nullification, as the term is used here, is not a means of attacking a race; it is an ambition to protect a nation.
It may bring life to a theoretical dispute about the the right of a political subdivision of the United States to protect its citizens from a serious local threat, even though the peril may result from politically inspired federal action, or inaction.
---
---
Citizens of basket-cases posing as countries flee their thug-ridden homes to places like The United States because they are driven by economic desperation, and because they lack the will to organize for the redemption of their own home lands. They find it more convenient to follow the coyote across the border to a place where the natives have already made the necessary sacrifices to create a land of relative freedom and opportunity.
The crossing is, of course, illegal. National law makes it so. We were told repeatedly that the people of Arizona enacted a border control measure which mirrors the federal statutes only because Obama and his predecessors, hand-in-hand with rabbitty national legislators, lacked the courage to enforce the laws they, themselves, enacted to re-assume control of our southern boundary.
As the case oozes through the court system, perhaps the Arizona body politic could instruct its law enforcers to suspend dwelling on the statute Judge Susan finds wanting.
Enforce the national law.
Can do? Sure:
the law on this question is quite clear: arresting aliens who have violated either criminal provisions of the INA or civil provisions that render an alien deportable "is within the inherent authority of the states."
The first difficulty I see with this form of practical nullification is perhaps one hundred thousand criminal complaints making an untidy mess in the office of the federal attorney for Arizona between now and Labor Day. If this happens, I will lose no time in sending him a card expressing my profound sympathy.
As the case oozes through the court system, perhaps the Arizona body politic could instruct its law enforcers to suspend dwelling on the statute Judge Susan finds wanting.
Enforce the national law.
Can do? Sure:
the law on this question is quite clear: arresting aliens who have violated either criminal provisions of the INA or civil provisions that render an alien deportable "is within the inherent authority of the states."
The first difficulty I see with this form of practical nullification is perhaps one hundred thousand criminal complaints making an untidy mess in the office of the federal attorney for Arizona between now and Labor Day. If this happens, I will lose no time in sending him a card expressing my profound sympathy.
Jul 28, 2010
Let's Make a Deal
So Congressman Rangel is now thinking about making a deal. His previous offer was to admit being just a little bit corrupt, but not very much. The usual inside sources now say he's thinking of admitting he is quite a bit corrupt, but that, really now, he did not steal quite as much as he is accused of stealing. This would permit the attention span of the voting public -- such as it is -- to be diverted before the re-election campaigns heat up.
Laboring the obvious, the victim of whatever theft he committed was the Republic he has sworn to serve, term after term after term.
One of the questions this raises is how this opportunistic octogenarian got away with it for so long. I'm sure it could have nothing to do with a New York (et al.) press corps slavishly devoted to any politician adored by a substantial and monolithic sub-culture satisfied to be, economically, little more than well-slopped hogs.
In case you missed a recent little essay here, this is the fellow who thinks he is qualified to write a law ordering your children into two years of lightly sugar-coated slavery.
Laboring the obvious, the victim of whatever theft he committed was the Republic he has sworn to serve, term after term after term.
One of the questions this raises is how this opportunistic octogenarian got away with it for so long. I'm sure it could have nothing to do with a New York (et al.) press corps slavishly devoted to any politician adored by a substantial and monolithic sub-culture satisfied to be, economically, little more than well-slopped hogs.
In case you missed a recent little essay here, this is the fellow who thinks he is qualified to write a law ordering your children into two years of lightly sugar-coated slavery.
The American Brown Shirt Act of 2010
This perennial is back under the name of the "Universal National Service Act" of 2010. As usual its time has not yet come, but that doesn't keep our home-grown authoritarians from trying. When they get their way, every young American (up to the somewhat un-young age of 42) will be conscripted for service to The American Crown. It restores the military draft, and adds a novel feature -- erasing that language of the 14th Amendment barring involuntary servitude.
If you can't or won't pick up a gun, Uncle Sam will put you to work enforcing the law, rooting out terrorists (a term conveniently undefined in the bill), or laboring on public works projects.
It is a relic of the enchantment of our senior elected statists for the1920s and 30s when the USSR persuaded our intellectual elite of the beauty of an entire national population marching in lockstep toward a glorious future under a Glorious Leader. Skeptics, and especially individualists, were not excepted, and the posters of the period continue to inspire the likes of Charlie (I didn't steal nothin') Rangel.
Congressman Rangel, Democrat of Harlem, heir to the toolbox of Adam Clayton Powell, is the sponsor of this bill, just as was been for its 2006 and 2008 incarnations. His co-sponsors in previous years have included congress critter Yvette Clark who is widely known as the Democrat from Flatbush who has a great deal of trouble remembering if she graduated from college and, if so, which one, Oberlin or Medgar Evers. (The answers are "no" and "neither one.")
Another earlier sponsor is our old pal James Mc Dermott, Democrat from the twee side of Seattle. You may know him as Baghdad Jim for his 2002 trip to Iraq where Babylonian delights were said to paid for by Saddam Hussein's spies.
Look, there are 535 men and women in Congress, and only a handful are mentioned here in relationship to the universal service scheme which serves as the factual basis for accusations that His Obamaness wants a massive corps of civilians under his personal command. In fact, not enough of the 535 buy into this putative New American Order enough to pry the bills out of committee.
But there are enough of them to frighten any thinking citizen out of his wits.
Rangel -- this year's lone sponsor of H.R. 5741 -- may, but probably won't, be booted for public malfeasance beyond the tolerance of even his Capitol colleagues. He may leave voluntarily when the heat is turned up. But even if he somehow departs, the statist dream remains alive and well on the miasmic Potomac banks.
It may be that we are just one more economic implosion away from having universal serfdom start looking pretty good to the folks who want a chicken in the pot and the trains to run on time.
If you can't or won't pick up a gun, Uncle Sam will put you to work enforcing the law, rooting out terrorists (a term conveniently undefined in the bill), or laboring on public works projects.
It is a relic of the enchantment of our senior elected statists for the1920s and 30s when the USSR persuaded our intellectual elite of the beauty of an entire national population marching in lockstep toward a glorious future under a Glorious Leader. Skeptics, and especially individualists, were not excepted, and the posters of the period continue to inspire the likes of Charlie (I didn't steal nothin') Rangel.
Congressman Rangel, Democrat of Harlem, heir to the toolbox of Adam Clayton Powell, is the sponsor of this bill, just as was been for its 2006 and 2008 incarnations. His co-sponsors in previous years have included congress critter Yvette Clark who is widely known as the Democrat from Flatbush who has a great deal of trouble remembering if she graduated from college and, if so, which one, Oberlin or Medgar Evers. (The answers are "no" and "neither one.")
Another earlier sponsor is our old pal James Mc Dermott, Democrat from the twee side of Seattle. You may know him as Baghdad Jim for his 2002 trip to Iraq where Babylonian delights were said to paid for by Saddam Hussein's spies.
Look, there are 535 men and women in Congress, and only a handful are mentioned here in relationship to the universal service scheme which serves as the factual basis for accusations that His Obamaness wants a massive corps of civilians under his personal command. In fact, not enough of the 535 buy into this putative New American Order enough to pry the bills out of committee.
But there are enough of them to frighten any thinking citizen out of his wits.
Rangel -- this year's lone sponsor of H.R. 5741 -- may, but probably won't, be booted for public malfeasance beyond the tolerance of even his Capitol colleagues. He may leave voluntarily when the heat is turned up. But even if he somehow departs, the statist dream remains alive and well on the miasmic Potomac banks.
It may be that we are just one more economic implosion away from having universal serfdom start looking pretty good to the folks who want a chicken in the pot and the trains to run on time.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)