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November 2018

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Europe’s Migrant Disaster Should Teach America a Lesson Even Hillary Clinton now admits the Continent erred in allowing entry of too many unvetted ‘refugees.’ By Jason L. Riley

By on November 28th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/europes-migrant-disaster-should-teach-america-a-lesson-1543362209

Political up-and-comers like New York’s Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez might feel comfortable comparing Central American migrants to Jewish families fleeing Nazi Germany, as she did in a tweet the other day. But some elder statesmen in her party seem to know better.

Take Hillary Clinton, who surprised a lot of people last week when she told a British newspaper that “Europe needs to get a handle on migration.” She said the Continent’s leaders should make clear that they are “not going to be able to continue to provide refuge and support” to any and all who want to come. Border chaos fuels anti-immigrant populism, be it in the U.S. or Europe—and she should know. During the 2016 campaign, Mrs. Clinton’s focus was making the Mexico border more open rather than more secure, and she believes that’s one of the reasons Donald Trump was elected president.

Delivering the Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture in South Africa in July, Barack Obama went further. “It’s not wrong to insist that national borders matter, [that] whether you’re a citizen or not is going to matter to a government, that laws need to be followed,” he said. Newcomers, Mr. Obama added, “should make an effort to adapt to the language and customs of their new home. Those are legitimate things, and we have to be able to engage people who do feel as if things are not orderly.” CONTINUE AT SITE

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Endangered Species Habitat Check The Supreme Court rules 8-0 against a federal land grab for the dusky gopher frog.

By on November 28th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/endangered-species-habitat-check-1543365316

Amid all the hand-wringing about a polarized Supreme Court, note Tuesday’s unanimous decision for regulatory sanity. The case concerned whether a frog’s “critical habitat” can include land where the frog doesn’t live and can’t survive.

Weyerhaeuser v. U.S. Fish and Wildlife involves more than 1,500 acres in Louisiana that the government declared “critical habitat” for the dusky gopher frog, which is protected under the Endangered Species Act. Two problems: The critter hasn’t been seen in those parts for about five decades, and it can’t survive on the land without clearing forest canopy.

The timber company that operates on the land sued on the sensible grounds that the place can’t be critical habitat if the creature would die on arrival. The law allows Fish and Wildlife to designate certain unoccupied areas as critical habit but only if they’re essential to the conservation of the species. The designation threatens development on the land and could cost the owners $34 million by the government’s estimates.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled for the government in a decision with no limiting principle—by the circuit’s logic, a desert could be critical habitat for a fish, as more than a dozen state attorneys general pointed out in an amicus brief to the Supreme Court.

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