http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324439804578106721494547456.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion Barack Obama brings to 16 the number of presidents elected to a second term. The total is 18 if you include Theodore Roosevelt and Harry Truman, who were elected only once but had served nearly four years of a predecessor’s term. Mr. Obama would be well advised to consider the history of these second […]
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/11/08/republicans-slow-down-the-blame-game/ In yesterday’s “Bleary Eyes” post, I wondered whether evangelicals failed to turn out for Mitt Romney on Tuesday. The answer is no. My fellow evangelicals turned out and voted for him. His being a Mormon did not cost him a significant number of our votes. Allahpundit’s got the numbers. So evangelicals turned out and […]
http://pjmedia.com/spengler/2012/11/07/if-you-believe-in-staples-clap-your-hands/?print=1 When Staples founder Tom Stemberg took a star spot at the Republican convention last August, the weakness in Mitt Romney’s message should have been obvious. The retailer’s price already had fallen by a third since March; a month later, Staples announced a 15% cut in its floor space and 3,200 layoffs. I don’t mean […]
http://pjmedia.com/andrewmccarthy/2012/11/08/the-wsj-v-romney/?singlepage=true
I’ve elsewhere addressed other shortcomings in this morning’s Wall Street Journal editorial urging Republicans to reassess what is portrayed, in the wake of strong Hispanic electoral support for President Obama, as their hostility to immigration. Here, I’d like to focus on the editors’ swipe at Mitt Romney’s endorsement of “self-deportation”:
… Mr. Romney … often pandered to his party’s nativist wing (especially after Texas Governor Rick Perry entered the primaries), even endorsing what he called “self-deportation.” That may have endeared him to one or two radio talk show hosts, but it proved a disaster on Tuesday.
This is an unworthy rebuke, as is the Journal‘s tired demagoguery that portrays any law-and-order argument on illegal immigration as both “nativist” and a call for “mass deportation” (see, e.g., today: “But the right response isn’t mass deportation—as politically infeasible as it is morally repulsive”). Nobody on the right is calling for mass deportation, any more than we are calling for a mass round-up of, say, cocaine users. Illegal immigration is not terrorism. Yes, it is against the law. But when a problem is merely illegal, as opposed to a threat to national security, the task of law-enforcement is to manage it in a manner commensurate with its relative seriousness, not attempt to extinguish it. To extinguish it would amount to punishment that does not fit the crime and a prohibitive expenditure of resources better allocated elsewhere.
That is why a well-ordered, just society is based on prosecutorial and sentencing discretion. We don’t require every crime to be prosecuted and every sentence to be harsh and definite. We try to put people of sound judgment in prosecutors’ offices and on the bench. We then trust them to make good decisions about whom to prosecute (going after cocaine importers and distributors instead of addicts, for example) and how to punish them within a broad range (selling a small amount of marijuana may merit a probation sentence even though the statute makes it punishable by up to 20 years’ imprisonment).
“Self-deportation,” so derided by the Journal, is exactly this sort of prudent, humane law-enforcement. The idea is to resist harassing those illegal immigrants who are not serious criminals with arrest, prosecution, imprisonment and deportation. Since enforcement resources are finite, you deport only the serious criminals (i.e., the illegal immigrants who violate laws besides the immigration laws) and you target enforcement resources at the businesses that knowingly hire illegal immigrants, since employment is the magnet for illegal immigration. This is to be pro-law and order, not anti-business or anti-immigrant: If businesses need the ability to hire foreign workers, you enact immigration laws that satisfy those needs. The idea is to promote legal immigration to the extent it helps our society. If employment prospects for illegal aliens are slim because employers are severely discouraged from illegal hiring, many illegal immigrants will self-deport — i.e., they will decide on their own that it is in their interest to go back home.
I find illegal immigration to be a vexing problem. Like most problems, it has been exacerbated by federalization. As I’ve previously argued (see, e.g., here), the framers left law-enforcement (including the expulsion of trespassers) to the states; the central government’s role was to set the qualifications for citizenship and protect the states from foreign invasion. If we went back to that, states could make their own immigration enforcement policies. Some would be hostile to non-citizens, some would be embracing, most would be in-between, and it would be much easier to adjust policies based on local employment and social conditions. This would be infinitely better than what we have now — for the states, the immigrants, and our public discourse.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/11/the_revenge_presidency_begins.html What’s with the revenge theme coming from two successful black multimillionaires? First it was Barack Obama. Now Beyonce has posted this vengeful message on her Tumblr account following Romney’s defeat: Take That Mitches Beyonce did delete this childish garble after a while but it still makes you wonder why a 32-year old pop star […]
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/reckoning?f=puball My friend was being too pessimistic – I thought.Months ago he said the country will continue its downward slide because those who depend on government have become the majority, and will always vote to keep those government benefits coming no matter what. Yes, those people who depend on government for everything are increasing, I […]
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/the-gops-present-dilemma A few years ago a friend of mine decided that he would try to climb a particularly difficult rock climb in New York’s Catskill mountains. As he described it, he reached a point where he had to carefully balance between his life-long fear of heights and his desire to not be found in skeleton […]
Video: Jamie Glazov on Jihad Denial
by Frontpagemag.com
Frontpage’s editor discusses his new book “High Noon For America,” David Horowitz’s work and influence, and much more.
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/frontpagemag-com/video-jamie-glazov-on-jihad-denial/
http://politicalmavens.com/
Emboldened by the success of their candidate, the Times has a rip-roaring double header today (ll/8/12) with ample opportunity to slam Israel and project some negative stereotypes about Jews. The first article, by Middle East Bureau Chief Jodi Rudoren, bears the misleading title “Netanyahu Rushes to Repair Damage With the President” as the pretext for bashing the Israeli prime minister with selective quotes from hand-picked pundits. Here’s Mitchell Barak (a pollster/strategist you’ve probably never heard of): “Netanyahu backed the wrong horse. Whoever is elected prime minister is going to have to handle the US Israel relationship and we all know Netanyahu is not the right guy.” Translation: He’s certainly not the Times’ guy. And here’s Ehud Olmert: “Given what Netanyahu has done these recent months, the question is: Does our prime minister still have a friend in the White House?” Journalistic query: Would it have been ethical to identify Mr. Olmert as a possible opponent of Mr. Netanyahu in the next Israeli election? Here’s Ms. Rudoren herself, editorializing with some classic slurs about the Jews of AIPAC: “And freed from electoral concerns, the second term president may prove likelier to pursue his own path without worry about backlash from Washington’s powerful and wealthy pro-Israel lobby.” What she was thinking: I hope the readers notice that I omitted hook-nosed so as not to appear guilty of lookism. And finally, mirabile dictu, the Times publishes a quote by Bob Zelnick (former ABC correspondent) that totally contradicts everything they strategically printed about Obama before Nov. 6th: “My sense is that he both dislikes and distrusts Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and that he is more likely to use his new momentum to settling scores than to settling issues.” Ipse loquitur.
Resisting War, Terrorism, And Genocide (First of Three Parts) All things move in the midst of death, even nations and civilizations. From 1948 to the present day, certain of Israel’s prime ministers, facing war, terrorism, or even genocide, have been deeply reluctant to admit core national vulnerabilities. Indeed, rather than acknowledge the plainly exterminatory intent […]
