The kind of alien ICE wants to deport

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=159377

This article leaves some questions unanswered. Has he sought protection from the Israeli government? Are the Israelis offering to protect him, or have they thrown him under the bus? I doubt that they have abandoned him, but I do have to wonder. Does he believe that they cannot protect him?

ICE actively ignores the presence of millions of illegal aliens in America, but they pay extra special attention to this guy. Why? And by why, I mean what is the real reason. The excuses listed in the article don't hold water. (Are there other reasons the article doesn't mention?) I don't know exactly, though I do wonder how much walking into the DHS office and making himself known to them had to do with it. A Bureaucracy is just a fancy name for organized incompetence. Had he kept a low profile odds are they never would have done a damned thing about him, just like they neglect their duty to deport all of the other illegal aliens.

He came here legally, but did not leave when his visa expired, so he is an illegal alien, albeit one with a strong case for seeking legal asylum.

If it were up to me I'd find out what the Israelis are offering him. If they can't or won't protect him then I'd give him asylum here. In fact I'd probably offer him asylum regardless of what the Israelis say. He has worked to save the lives of Americans and is now being threatened by a common enemy. If he doesn't deserve asylum, then who does?

Fox News misses the point

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/05/28/calif-college-offers-scholarship-to-illegals

If rule of law is to mean anything at all, all branches of government must take appropriate action to ensure that the law is followed.

A community college is a public institution. While it isn't responsible for enforcing immigration law, it is responsible for ensuring that its admissions standards and processes are compliant with that law.

The article above raises the issue of a scholarship, privately funded but publicly administered. The real issue is that illegal aliens are being admitted to public colleges in the first place.

Another politician panders during an election year

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/13/AR2010051304351.html

This article is downright shameful. I couldn't understand why the author was saying the things he did, until I looked at who he is:

"The writer, a Republican, represents Florida's 14th District in the U.S. House."

Suddenly, everything became clear.

Florida has a large Cuban community. This is an election year. He's just pandering to them.

Of all the illegal immigrants in this country, Cuban refugees have the least to fear I would think. They are fleeing communist tyranny. I for one would NEVER support a policy that returns them to Cuba, and I don't think there are many conservatives or libertarians who would. The people of Cuba are victims of a criminal regime and deserve our friendship and support.

If you have not clicked on the link, you should. That article is a good example of what could best be described as a diffused straw man attack. He never quite articulates what exactly it is that is wrong with the law, other than that it is "bad." The complaints that he does make are inaccurate.

First he blathers about Obama and the Dems in order to establish his credibility with conservatives.

Then he drags in the internment camps where we stuck Japanese Americans during WW-II. While regrettable, and something that I hope does not happen again, that bit of history has NOTHING to do with the current law. It is a complete non-sequitur.

Then he talks about securing the border. Nice idea, but without comprehensive enforcement of immigration law throughout the nation, making the border harder to cross just isn't good enough. Once an illegal alien enters the country, he or she is home free. Making it harder to get here helps, but is only part of the solution.

Next he starts pretending that the law is about protecting the majority over the minority. This is just another way of pretending that the law is derived from ethnocentrism. The purpose of this law is to remove illegal aliens from the country. The fact that most illegals in AZ come from the country next door, with a different culture and language, is a coincidence, not a causal factor. Americans (including the Latinos he implies are being targeted) have nothing to fear from this law. The only people who will be touched by this legislation are illegal aliens.

Next he pulls the "Where are your papers?" canard out of his arse, which is a grotesque perversion of what the law actually states. If the police pull you over, they want to see your ID. It makes no difference whether you are an illegal alien or not. They're asking for your ID to determine who you are. It has been this way since time immemorial. To pretend that this now constitutes some sort of fascist attack on our liberties, or racist attack on a privileged ethnic group, is ridiculous.

If he is this dishonest, then why would anyone want to vote for him?

I can only conclude that this guy is yet another individual who has not actually read the law in question.

But you can:

http://www.azdatapages.com/sb1070.html

The Prophet Mohammed

This is an image of the Prophet Mohammed.

Islamofascist asshats who disapprove of this image can kiss my ass.

Arizona is not the problem

Arizona is taking up the task of enforcing immigration law because the feds are deliberately avoiding their duty to do so.

The problem here is not Arizona. The problem is a federal government that has abandoned the rule of law.

What legitimacy can a government have when it not only fails to enforce its laws consistently, but refuses to enforce some laws altogether?

The legitimacy of any state is derived from its people, not the other way around. This is something that many Americans have forgotten. Many Americans seem to think that the government is there to tell us what to do and that we have no choice but to obey. Government officials are not our masters. They are not feudal lords and we are not peasants and vassals. They have no authority except that which defined by law. Authority that carries with it the obligation to enforce that law.

The sole purpose of state power is to enforce the law. The powers of the state are defined, and limited, by law. The authority to enforce the law carries with it the OBLIGATION to do the same. Just as the state cannot assume powers not defined by law, neither can it neglect to enforce the law using the powers it has been given.

Any government that neglects its duty to enforce the law as written is illegitimate. Any government official who acts in bad faith and shirks his or her duty to enforce the law as written has violated their oath of office and should be subject to civil, if not criminal, prosecution.

It doesn't matter if you're Red or Blue, Winners win and Losers lose

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/10/opinion/10douthat.html

The above article notes that couples consisting of professionals with college and (especially) graduate degrees tend to have stable marriages. They also tend to live together before marrying, marry relatively late in life, have children at a later age (and fewer children at that), and have few children out of wedlock.

Meanwhile couples consisting of negligibly educated bottom-dwellers tend to have unstable marriages and suffer from all of the other ills that most people associate with them.

The article goes on to describe the winning formula as a "Blue" lifestyle and the losing formula as a "Red" lifestyle.

These labels are completely arbitrary. They were chosen to damage the brand equity of conservativeness in general.

I'm no fan of social conservatives, but neither do I pretend that they are losers. There are plenty of social conservatives who are well educated, have good jobs, and strong marriages. The same is true of many liberals.

Meanwhile there are other social conservatives and other Liberals who aren't so well educated, who don't have real jobs, whose relationships are dysfunctional, and who engage in self-destructive bullshit (drug abuse, etc, etc, etc, etc).

The difference is not between Red and Blue, but between winners and losers.

Winners win.
Losers lose.

The difference between a winner and a loser is not WHERE they are in the game, but WHO they are at a fundamental level.

Even when you change the rules of the game, once the dust settles you will find the very same people on top, and the very same people on the bottom, as you did before the board was shuffled.

Political ideology is not nearly as strong an indicator of personal and professional success as are basic competence and character.

You can only turn a winner into a loser by destroying that person. You must kill them or otherwise devastate them in such a way that they never recover. What you can't do is turn them into a loser by taking from them the rewards that they have won from life by being a winner. Do this and they'll simply go out and win them all over again, or perhaps choose other goals that they will be equally successful at achieving. What they won't do is turn into a loser.

Neither can you turn a loser into a winner, except perhaps by some form of psychotherapy not yet invented by which a person's fundamental character can be forged anew. A loser can become a winner, but only through the realization that they are in fact a loser and through the determined effort to effect inner change. You cannot change a loser into a winner by handing them the rewards that come from being a winner. Anything you give them will be squandered and wasted, and they will be no better off than before, and in fact will often be worse. Losers who suffer a windfall often find that they finally have enough money to really get themselves into trouble.

Regardless of which direction the winds of fortune blow, both losers and winners will always gravitate back to the station in life that their own character has destined them to occupy.

Attempting to apply such transparent culture-war labels to these two camps is as dishonest as it is ridiculous.

The Manchurian President

http://hotair.com/archives/2010/05/01/on-my-desk-the-manchurian-president/

The problem with a book like this, and books like these in general, is that they are books. To read them requires that a person actually spend the time and money to procure a copy.

Who is going to do this? The people who already know (or strongly suspect) what is in the book and approve of its message.

I know the authors want to make money from this book. They spent time and money of their own to research and write it. But if they really want as many people as possible to be made aware of the information they have uncovered, posting that information to blogs and other websites is the best way to disseminate it.

The truth matters, but truth that people are unaware of is truth that cannot help them. If the average American had good knowledge of who and what Obama is during the Dem primaries, he wouldn't be in the White House now. We might have Hillary instead because McCain was such a loser, but we wouldn't have Obama.

Modern politics is an information war. The lefties control most of the media and use that to block and distort the truth while promoting lies. Writing a book that will only be read by republicans, conservatives, and libertarians, and even then only by those eager to spend the time and money to do so, is literally preaching to the choir. They already know that Obama is bad. They buy and read this book to confirm that assessment of him. Independents and honest leftists (also known as future libertarians) won't get this information because they aren't looking for it. You have to put it out there where they are likely to encounter it, or at least encounter someone from the left trying to discredit it.

Think for a moment about the stings that brought down ACORN. Had O'Keefe and Giles written a book about their experiences, instead of providing video on the internet, nothing would have happened. Breitbart uses the power of mass media to get the truth out there, and the authors of this book should consider doing the same.