I'm not going to review yesterday's entire address here but want to provide some basic relevant comments:
- Obama signaled that a blanket amnesty is not forthcoming. (There had been some speculation in conservative blogs and media that Obama was set to announce a blanket pardon, which many would regard as an abuse of power and an impeachable offense.): "Our nation... has the...obligation to control its borders and set laws for residency and citizenship... The 11 million who broke these laws should be held accountable."
- Obama made misleading use of statistics: "We have more boots on the ground on the Southwest border than at any time in our history. crime along the border is down... And statistics collected by Customs and Border Protection reflect a significant reduction in the number of people trying to cross the border illegally...So the bottom line is this: The southern border is more secure today than at any time in the past 20 years." It's more complicated than what the President suggests. First, there's no doubt that the recession has impacted the nature, distribution and extent of illegal immigration; for instance, a number of undocumented workers work in construction, and construction has suffered since the burst of the housing bubble and recession. In fact, the reach of Mexican drug trafficking cartels, by one estimate, reaches to 230 American cities, even as far away as Anchorage, Alaska. Immigration estimates are suspect; for example, there are extensive cross-border tunnels. I also believe that the official count of crimes is likely understated since illegal-on-illegal crimes are understated. But there's no doubt that Arizona and Texas (among other) sheriffs find themselves outstripped in terms of dealing with UNPRECEDENTED, nonstop up-ticks in immigration-related pursuits, which means that whatever the federal government has done is insufficient. Moreover, the nature of changing crime patterns, e.g., Phoenix becoming a leader in kidnapping crimes, clearly correlated with northern Mexican drug violence, undermines Obama's implicit assertion of a stable, improving immigration crime problem.
- "It’s logistically impossible and wildly expensive...to round up and deport 11 million people." Some figures put it closer to 20 million, but regardless--let's look at the general nature of the problem. First, we have a number of cities which actually promote themselves as "sanctuary cities", and we have ominous signs in terms of cities like Philadelphia deciding they don't want to cooperate with ICE. We need to make it clear that cities and states not cooperating with ICE activities risk losing any and all federal funding. Local and state officials aiding and abetting illegal immigration should be prosecuted. The US government should require reimbursement from Mexico for healthcare expenses of their citizens. Businesses employing undocumented workers should be criminally prosecuted for failing to validate workers properly (not simply, as Secretary Solis suggests, for violations of minimum-wage laws), not just fined. The US government should crack down on banks (e.g., Wachovia and other money transfer companies) and other businesses frequented by undocumented workers or drug criminal elements. In essence, undocumented workers will leave of their own accord if they can't find work. We can also provide no-questions-asked awards leading to the prosecution and conviction of coyotes and other criminal elements and infiltrate immigrant communities, invest more resources in tunnel detection and biometric identification technologies, and deploy border patrol and National Guard troops on a risk-based approach. Can we deport 11 million undocumented residents overnight? Perhaps not. But we got to 11 million by under-staffing or -investing in border protection and immigration enforcement.
- "Laws like Arizona’s put huge pressures on local law enforcement to enforce rules that ultimately are unenforceable. It puts pressure on already hard-strapped state and local budgets..." Local law enforcement is simply following through on someone already suspected of violating Arizona's (non-immigration) laws. In fact, ICE "catch-and-release" policies often result in recidivist criminal behavior that cost border state and county budgets already. It is true that if Obama and ICE fail to exercise their federal responsibility to detain illegal immigrants, it essentially force Arizona to subsidize even more immigration-related costs.
- "Under the leadership of Senator Kennedy, who had been a longtime champion of immigration reform, and Senator John McCain, we worked across the aisle to help pass a bipartisan bill through the Senate. But that effort eventually came apart. And now, under the pressures of partisanship and election-year politics, many of the 11 Republican senators who voted for reform in the past have now backed away from their previous support." Ironically, Barack Obama, you and other Democratic senators passed poison-pill amendments in 2007, aimed at removing Democratic concessions in the immigration bill (e.g., to weaken a viable temporary worker program, merit-based factors and/or end chained immigration). In the meanwhile, despite of the fact that all GOP senators since 2008 have insisted on border protection first, Obama has largely ignored border state governors' pleas for additional manpower (and only recently announced a small fraction of the troop levels requested), has routinely used raw numbers to power past GOP resistance on the stimulus, the budget, and health care. He's made it clear he expects a quid pro quo (to Jon Kyl (R-AZ)) of amnesty for improved border protection. Obama claiming that the GOP is using the issue for partisan purposes is, at best, hypocritical.
- Obama Posed an Implausible Link Between Illegal and Legal Immigration. Obama is trying to link Latino and European immigration by making reference to hardships, hard work, and ethnic prejudices against them. However, other than some lip service over streamlining the expensive process to attaining a green card, Obama really doesn't address things like obsolete country quotas, professional/education and other merit-based factors--and the fact that more recent immigration reforms have favored Latino, low-skilled immigrants
The Steele/Afghanistan Kerfuffle: Steele Is Right
Michael Steele, the RNC Chair, has gotten caught in yet another gaffe:
Keep in mind again, federal candidates, this was a war of Obama’s choosing. This was not something that the United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in,” he said. “But it was the president who was trying to be cute by half by building a script demonizing Iraq, while saying the battle really should be in Afghanistan. Well, if he is such a student of history, has he not understood that you know that’s the one thing you don’t do, is engage in a land war in Afghanistan?Neo-conservative William Kristol responds, angrily:
Resign as chairman of the Republican party...the war in Afghanistan was not "a war of Obama’s choosing." It has been prosecuted by the United States under Presidents Bush and Obama. Republicans have consistently supported the effort.Bill Kristol, your analysis is shallow and unworthy of an editorial from The Weekly Standard; why don't YOU resign?
The fact of the matter is that Obama and the rest of the Democratic Presidential field in 2008 had taken a position that the liberation of Iraq had been Bush's war, an unnecessary war, a resource hog that diverted necessary manpower from the Afghanistan/west Pakistan theater where the "real" terrorists were based. The Democrats made it a priority to redeploy zero-sum forces from Iraq to the Afghanistan theater.
Obama had essentially boxed himself in on the Afghanistan war, because he had termed it the "real war". That's why Steele called it 'a war of Obama's choosing'. Steele is not making reference to the fact that the Americans and the British, in October 2001, began Operation Enduring Freedom, by providing air and logical support for the Northern Alliance (an Afghanistan opposition force) to liberate major metropolitan areas from the Taliban. Keep in mind that Bush's initial demands were for the Taliban to turn over Osama Bin Laden and fellow Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups based in Afghanistan and allow verification inspection of their camps.
The Afghanistan occupation, which became more internationalized in 2006 within a NATO context, eventually resulted in propping up a weak, corrupt national government while the Taliban has fought a mostly guerrilla war using lawless western Pakistan (along with terrorist allies, including the remaining Al Qaeda leadership) as a base. Obama, unable to win significant manpower commitments from its allies (America has more casualties than the rest of NATO forces combined), reluctantly agreed to a higher-risk, lower-increase strategy from recently terminated McChrystal's options and also announced, in advance, initial withdrawal within the near future.
Now, the way I'm interpreting what Steele said is, "Look, it never was in our national interests to occupy Afghanistan and prop up a corrupt government. Afghanistan is no longer a base for terrorism. We have a Commander in Chief whom is making politically motivated decisions."
I don't think recently confirmed Gen. Petraeus is a miracle worker. Iraq is a much different place than Afghanistan; it had spent decades until a strong central government. I think Kristol doesn't want to be responsible for the "who lost Afghanistan" . I think Obama's convoluted decisions and statements have, if anything, convinced the Taliban they are winning, and Steele is saying, "Look, Obama make that commitment for political reasons, when he should have known from history that Afghanistan has not had a politically stable government for years. It's not in the GOP's interest to rubberstamp Obama's military decisions.
I am not an isolationist, but I'm not a neo-conservative. I think we have to pick our battles very carefully. There are more dysfunctional, amoral governments than we have forces to deal with, and we have our forces disproportionately tied up in two small Gulf region countries which are not even nuclear powers.
Political Cartoon
Nate Beeler points out that the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court justices have become mostly an exercise in political posturing, particularly in the aftermath of the unconscionable Bork hearings, where candidates basically keep their mouths shut and sidestep the partisan political bait. I don't particularly fault Kagan as a Harvard administrator for suing over federal funding/military recruitment issue, although I disagree with it (and the Supreme Court also disagreed with it). For example, there are some things you have to do reflecting your role versus your judgment. And in judicial decision making, you may find yourself ruling based on stare decisis, even though you disagree with the reasoning behind the original decision (say, for example, Roe v Wade). I'm not a US Senator, but if I was on the committee, I would be focusing more on her professional judgment analyzing opinions filed in past SCOTUS decisions (including dissents or concurring decisions): which opinion, if any, would she have concurred, or would she have filed a separate opinion? What are the pros and cons of various opinions? I'm more interested in understanding her process of analyzing a case than in the outcome.
I don't agree with conservatives making a "chicken-or-the-egg" issue over her lack of judicial experience. Certainly her academic experience attests to her background in the law, and as Solicitor General, she certainly has exposure presenting cases before the Supreme Court and engaging in salient, substantive discussions with the justices. There is no such specified criterion (of judicial experience) in the Constitution, and it has certainly not been applied to past GOP nominations to the Court of Appeals (e.g., lacking experience as a district judge). In fact, it's not usual in the private sector for certain companies to go outside the company--even outside the industry (e.g., Lou Gerstner of IBM, whom came to the tech titan from American Express and Nabisco). As a veteran problem solver who has done interdisciplinary research and often finds himself thinking outside the box, I personally think diversity of experience can bring a fresh perspective to the bench.
Quote of the Day
All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual.
Albert Einstein
Musical Interlude: Chart Hits of 1982
Sheena Easton, "You Could Have Been With Me"
Olivia Newton-John, "Physical"
The Police, "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic"
Laura Branigan, "Gloria"
America, "You Can Do Magic"
