Larry Hogan for Governor of Maryland

Recently, toward the end of the two-month hiatus in my postings, there was a primary in Maryland. And one consequence of my being a Republican, a distinct minority in this state, is that while the Democrats had many, many contests from Governor down to County Council, I saw one single contest on my ballot: for Governor. For every other partisan position, there were either no candidates at all or exactly as many candidates as positions to fill, so every candidate was running unopposed. (There were contests for Board of Education and one judicial contest, but I never vote in the former and I had no knowledge of the candidates in the latter.)

For Governor, my choice became clear not long after I began investigating my options: first of all, two of the four candidates, Ron George and Charles Lollar, were hardly serious candidates, though I did get one piece of literature from George and none (until one arrived after Primary Day) from Larry Hogan, who was a serious candidate, and in fact the favored one. The real choice was between Hogan and David Craig.

Interestingly, one of the things that convinced me to vote for Hogan was Craig's campaign literature — in fact most of what convinced me to vote for Hogan was what his opponents, Craig and George, and their blogging supporters, said. One piece of Craig's literature began by proclaiming that he had a 100% rating from Right to Life and a high rating from the National Rifle Association — meaning that on both issues he was opposed to my own positions. However, I certainly have no problem voting for pro-gun, “pro-life” Republicans if they don't make these their chief issues, as I understand that I don't agree with any candidate on everything. But in Craig's case, he made these two the cornerstones of his campaign, and immediately lost me.

Other things that Craig, George, or their blogger supporters said turned me off as well, and turned me to a strong Hogan supporter. Hogan was Appointments Secretary in Governor Bob Ehrlich's administration, and he was criticized for daring to put (gasp!) Democrats in some appointed positions. Well, this being a Democratic-majority state, any Republican Governor is going to accomplish nothing if he refuses to accommodate some of the Democrats' wishes. Giving them a role in his administration was a good thing, as long as he generally pushed a Republican program, which he did.

Well, it seems that most Republicans agreed with me (well, not most, but certainly more than there were Craig, George, or Lollar supporters individually), so Larry Hogan is the nominee, and has my support even more strongly for November than in the primary, though in this Democratic state, I realize he is definitely an underdog against Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, the Democratic nominee. Brown won the Democratic primary even more decisively than Hogan did the Republican primary, receiving as many votes as his two significant opponents, Doug Gansler and Heather Mizeur, combined. Of course, Brown has going for him some of the same things that Barack Obama did in getting the Presidency: both are offspring of black fathers and white mothers, raised in white (or at least not black) neighborhoods, who became identified as black when they set up their political bases in black areas. I do have to say, however, that Anthony Brown is better-qualified to be Governor than was Obama to be president in 2008; eight years as Lieutenant Governor probably gave him some ideas of how a Governor can do his job.

My gripe with Brown does not concern his competence, however. He has been Martin O'Malley's Lieutenant Governor, and his entire campaign so far has made it clear that he intends to continue O'Malley's policies, which are in my mind mistaken. For example, one of O'Malley's first moves on becoming Governor was to raise the State sales tax 20%. He has pushed through things like a State version of the DREAM Act; although one of those things he pushed (legalizing gay marriage) I support, most of them are moves in the wrong direction. We need to change, and Hogan is the only candidate who even wants to change things. Thus Larry Hogan is my candidate for Governor.

"Moderates," "centrists," and labels

Among the blogs I read frequently are some that use the terms “center” or “moderate.” For example, there is Solomon Kleinsmith's “Rise of the Center” and Rick Bayan's “The New Moderate.” And while I generally think of myself as a “moderate,” I certainly have my disagreements with these blogs. In fact, the comment pages of this blog have seen discussions with Kleinsmith highlighting strong disagreements. Presumably, if other “moderates” read this blog, they also disagree with me on some of the issues I discuss. Which is why I hate these one-word labels.

One thing that got me to thinking again about these labels, and why they are so problematic, is the recent spate of news articles about Jeff Bezos' support — backed up with two and a half million dollars! — for the pro-gay marriage side in the referendum to be held in Washington State. We will have a similar referendum in Maryland this same November. And I will be voting for gay marriage, of course, as anyone who has read this blog could figure out. But I will also be voting to scuttle another law that Governor Martin O'Malley has pushed through Maryland's legislature: the so-called “DREAM Act.” (Unlike the Federal version, Maryland's simply extends in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens resident in Maryland — although they are actually not properly termed “resident in Maryland” since they are not legally resident anywhere in the United States!) In a sense, this is a “moderate” position, as I'm supporting a “left” position on one issue and a “right” position on the other. But I would bet that more people are going to vote exactly the opposite way from me on both issues. And are they to be called “moderate” as well?

Kleinsmith, I know from his comments on this blog, has his own definition of “centrist.” And I don't think I would qualify, though I will not try to put words into his mouth, so I'll let him, if he is still reading this blog and decides to comment, say whether he would call me a centrist or not. But two years ago I supported a primary candidate for Senate, Dr. Neil Cohen, who frankly proclaimed we needed a “moderate” candidate. And I did this mainly because he and I were in agreement on a lot of issues. I certainly agreed with Cohen a lot more than I did with Eric Wargotz, the eventual nominee. And I agreed with him even more than I did with Barbara Mikulski, the actual winner of the Senate election that November. So in that sense I do qualify as a “moderate.”

And yet, I don't really know what that means. Two people might both call themselves “moderates” and yet differ on every important issue.That's what is so bad about one-word labels.

The Arizona law on immigration

Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled on Arizona v. United States, involving Arizona's laws on illegal immigration. And its ruling was split in a way that both sides seem to be spinning to their advantage. I read a post by Marc L. Miller and Gabriel J. Chin called “S.B.1070 rides off into the sunset,” which discussed the decision in the following terms: “At its core, S.B. 1070 is a use of the state police power and state criminal law to enforce and punish federal immigration violators; at its core this is what a majority of the Supreme Court rejected.” Yet, on the same site, Jay Sekulow wrote a post that said: “The Supreme Court’s decision in Arizona v. United States represents an important victory for Arizona and proponents of the States’ authority to protect their borders and citizens when the federal government fails to do so.” Were the two discussing the same decision?

I think, clearly, Arizona failed to get all it sought, but got enough that one can say that “half a loaf is better than none.” Many parts of the law were not challenged at all; the Court's refusal to invalidate the immigration status check provision means that illegal immigrants cannot simply try to get by under the radar. If even a routine traffic stop might mean that they are going to sit in jail awaiting a ruling from ICE, they may find things a bit hotter. But the fact that some other provisions were invalidated (especially the one that illegal immigrants could not work legally in Arizona) does mean Arizona failed to get rid of at least some of the problems that it saw.

The question, “is this half a loaf?” has not fully been answered, though — the effects of this decision will not be ascertainable until the law has been allowed to take effect as fully as the Court permitted. There will still be people charging “racial profiling” and this may lead to further challenges to the law. What really needs to be done is for the Federal government to enforce its own laws.

Obama's assault on the rule of law

As I said in a recent post, President Obama's unilateral decreeing of a substantial portion of the DREAM act brings the issue of constitutionality to the fore. I would like to add some words to this, taken from a posting by Andrew C. McCarthy on PJ Media:

In continuing the dramatic shift from American constitutional democracy to rule by executive fiat that has marked his tenure, President Barack Obama now claims that the illegal aliens, to whom he purports to grant what effectively is amnesty, are “Americans … in every single way but one — on paper.” That is false. They are not Americans under the only thing that matters, the thing the Obama administration has chanted like a mantra — while riding roughshod over – since its very first day in power: the rule of law.

The Constitution and congressional statutes are written on parchment. That is the only relevance of “paper” in this equation — as the “hard copy” of our social contract and of the laws enacted pursuant to it. Under the Constitution, Congress, not the president, is endowed with such a power: “To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization.” Congress exercises this power by passing laws. Under the Constitution, which Obama took an oath to preserve, protect, and defend, and under the laws it is his duty to execute faithfully, illegal aliens — no matter how sympathetic their plight, no matter how blameless they may be for the illegality of their status — are not citizens of the United States. They are not Americans. Period. It is not “paper” that separates them from our body politic, it is the law, of which Obama is supposed to be servant, not master — as I argued in this September 2011 essay for The New Criterion: “The Ruler of Law — On ‘Justice’ in the Age of Obama.”

Nevertheless, immigration is only the context of the president’s latest usurpation. It is a critically important issue, yes, but the real gravity of what Obama has done lies not in the subject matter of his edict but in the authoritarian assumptions of its issuance. They transcend mere arrogance: the president proposes to eviscerate our constitutional system. He claims nothing less than the dictatorial power to pronounce what the law is. This usurpation, moreover, complements the dictatorial powers he has already claimed to enforce only the laws of his choosing and to use the police powers of his office to deprive the sovereign states and the people of their constitutional prerogatives and rights.

To be sure, a president has not only the authority but the duty to refrain from enforcing congressional statutes that violate the Constitution. Presidents are no less duty-bound in this regard than the federal courts, which are obliged to hold that such enactments are null and void when the question arises in litigation. That, however, is not what Obama is doing.

As John Yoo observes, there is no conceivable argument that the federal immigration laws are constitutionally suspect. Obama simply rejects them as a matter of policy preference. That itself is a blatant violation of his constitutional oath.

Lest we forget, the president of the United States is the only federal official required by the Constitution to swear, as a condition precedent to assuming the vast powers of his office, that he will “faithfully execute the office of president of the United States, and … to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Nor ought we forget that every nominee to the Supreme Court and the office of attorney general is grilled by the Senate regarding his or her willingness to abide by and enforce those laws and precedents with which he or she, on policy grounds, disagrees. It is a bedrock principle that once the people’s representatives enact a law to which there is no plausible constitutional objection, government officials must honor that law — regardless of their personal views about it — unless and until it is repealed or amended through the process prescribed by the Constitution.

Nor can prosecutorial discretion remotely justify Obama’s gambit. Resources are finite. Practicality demands — and the law acknowledges — that good-faith judgments must be made by the Justice Department and other Executive Branch agencies regarding which violations of law are a priority to address and which may go unaddressed. President Obama, however, is not saying the Executive Branch lacks the resources to enforce the immigration laws. He is proclaiming that he chooses not to enforce them.

Moreover, he is not simply refraining from law enforcement. He is affirmatively obstructing the states from enforcing their sovereign right to police their territories. He furthermore proposes to confer positive benefits on a class of illegal aliens in order to legitimize their status, something it is in the power only of Congress to do and something which Congress — having considered the matter carefully, and having heard the objections of the American people — has specifically declined to do.

This is another instance of Obama’s brazen lack of regard for the system he is duty-bound to honor: He claims he cannot sit back and wait for Congress to act; but as he well knows, lawmakers have acted: They said “no.”

Obama is not merely failing to enforce the immigration laws. He is destroying the system on which our liberty depends, a system he swore to safeguard. This oath was a solemn one, of far greater consequence than, say, a pitcher’s oath to testify truthfully to Congress about steroid use — an incident over which the federal government has spent millions of taxpayer dollars in an effort to convict Roger Clemens of a felony, notwithstanding the utter absence of any federal interest in the integrity of professional baseball.

We are entitled to conclude Obama defrauded the American people in taking his oath of office. He prefaced the oath by unabashedly declaring his intention to “fundamentally transform the United States of America.” He followed the oath with a series of usurpations designed to do just that. This highlights another mendacious aspect of Obama’s pandering to the hard Left on illegal immigration and, symmetrically, on election fraud (the policing against which he similarly obstructs).

The president says the young illegal aliens he has in mind are “Americans” except on paper. But who is Obama to say what an American is? By his own self-heralding, he is here to transform the United States. His mantra is “change.” He has stacked his Justice Department and the rest of the Executive Branch sprawl with progressive operatives whose obsession is to transmogrify America culturally, economically, and politically — to alter our very nature. When Obama talks about someone being “an American” or something being one of “our values,” he is not talking about the America that is; he is invoking the authoritarian, collectivist, redistributionist, post-sovereign, transnational America of his design.

It ought not matter whether we agree or disagree with Obama’s policy objectives on immigration — or the glut of areas from the use of force to labor relations to state sovereignty to socialized medicine to debt to diet, etc., on which he presumes to dictate rather than honor the law. Our social compact as a body politic demands that policy objectives be pursued within a system of divided powers in which the prerogatives of the president and of the federal government are strictly limited. Obama rejects this bedrock principle. Therefore, we must reject him.

If he is not removed from office — and if, while he retains office, politically accountable actors at the federal and state level continue their feckless failure to use their constitutional muscle to block him and rein him in — this will no longer be America. Not even on paper.

So much of what McCarthy has said agrees with my own thoughts that I repost the page in full. But the key sentences of this post deserve emphasis: “Our social compact as a body politic demands that policy objectives be pursued within a system of divided powers in which the prerogatives of the president and of the federal government are strictly limited. Obama rejects this bedrock principle. Therefore, we must reject him.” That is the big issue to be settled in 2012.

Changing the issue

Because of President Obama's decreeing a substantial part of the DREAM act unilaterally, without authorization by Congressional action, he has changed the issue. It is no longer a question of whether the DREAM act is desirable. It now has become a question of separation of powers under the Constitution.

Even someone who wants to see the DREAM act become law can oppose this act by the President, because the Constitution (Art. II, Sect. 3) states that the President “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”

When Pres. Obama decided that he would not support the so-called “Defense of Marriage Act” in the courts, he had a constitutional basis for doing so — he believed (and I believe rightly) that the DOMA was unconstitutional, and that he was supporting the higher law (the Constitution) against the lower law (DOMA). In this action, I supported him. But the President has not claimed that our immigration laws were unconstitutional. Therefore he has an obligation under Art. II, Sect. 3 to “take Care that [this law] be faithfully executed.”

As I earlier said, this should be cause for impeachment, but will not, because the political facts of life will prevent it — none of the Democrats in the Senate will vote to convict, and they constitute a majority, not just the ¹/₃ that can kill an impeachment.

At least one Congressman says he will sue. This is a worthwhile effort, but the way our court procedures work, it will take years for this suit to get through the court system. The much faster procedure is to retire Barack Obama this November.

This is NOT Chicago!

In this country, there are city charters that give the mayors a lot of power and others which have relatively weak mayors. I understand (though I've not read the charter in any detail) that Chicago has a charter that, on its face, provides for a relatively weak mayor. But in fact, not only two generations of Richard Daleys, but even earlier mayors of Chicago, found it possible to exercise far more powers than Chicago's charter allowed them. Chicago has a “weak-mayor” charter, but it has had very strong mayors in fact.

Why is this important to us, outside the city of Chicago? Because we currently have a President, Barack Obama, who may have been born in Honolulu (despite “birther” claims), but whose political life has all been spent in Chicago. And he seems to think that the national government is to be run like Chicago's — with an executive who is not bound by a Constitution's limited allocation of powers. First he simply construed the Constitution in ways it had never been construed before, like making “recess appointments” when the Senate was not really in recess but simply off for a weekend. Now he's actually creating new legislation, which Congress has never approved (and in fact voted down) — as in his recent unilaterally-implemented DREAM Act. But this is not Chicago. We believe in our Constitution. And hopefully the American people will tell Barack Obama this, in the only way that will get it across to him, by electing someone else this November. And the obvious choice for “someone else,” of course, is Mitt Romney, who will restore this country to Constitutional government.

Obama's decreeing the DREAM Act

Fred Bauer yesterday posted the following on his blog, A Certain Enthusiasm:

Today, the White House offered a de facto amnesty of an unknown number of illegal immigrants. The AP has some details:

The policy change, announced Friday by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, will affect as many as 800,000 immigrants [though it could be far more---FB] who have lived in fear of deportation. It also bypasses Congress and partially achieves the goals of the so-called DREAM Act, a long-sought but never enacted plan to establish a path toward citizenship for young people who came to the United States illegally but who have attended college or served in the military....

Under the administration plan, illegal immigrants will be immune from deportation if they were brought to the United States before they turned 16 and are younger than 30, have been in the country for at least five continuous years, have no criminal history, graduated from a U.S. high school or earned a GED, or served in the military. They also can apply for a work permit that will be good for two years with no limits on how many times it can be renewed.

The policy will not lead toward citizenship but will remove the threat of deportation and grant the ability to work legally, leaving eligible immigrants able to remain in the United States for extended periods.

A key point raised by Daniel Horowitz: no law by Congress has been passed enabling this immunity from deportation or the granting of work permits. Whether one agrees with the result of a selective amnesty that creates a class of permanent non-citizen workers or not (especially in a time of high unemployment), we should pay attention to the implications of process here.

If the president can claim the ability not only to selectively halt the prosecution of various laws but also to create new legislative mechanisms for work permits for immigrants, what limits are there to the president's power? Could the president just choose to stop enforcing civil rights laws and create new standards for voting instead? Could the president choose to avoid collecting taxes at the legally specified rate and instead create new tax rates? Could the president set separate new rates for Republicans or Democrats or women or men? (After all, the administration's new immigration rule treats one age group differently from another.)

President Obama's move could have radical implications for executive power. It could also have implications for the pending Supreme Court case about Arizona's recent immigration law. The federal government's brief there suggests that the executive branch has a broad latitude in deciding what laws to enforce and how to enforce them. In this move, the Obama administration has taken that principle to a new level, not only choosing not to enforce certain laws but also creating new measures. If the Supreme Court endorses the administration's position for Arizona outright, some on the court may feel that they are giving the administration a green light to extend its executive reach even further.

It seems that President Obama feels he is beyond the Constitution: he can create a law that Congress has not passed. There will not be a 2/3 vote in the Senate to remove him, so impeachment is not going to happen, but this is really one more reason that President Obama must be retired. Our processes have to wait until an election in November and an inauguration in January, but this would be faster than going through the courts. And who would have standing to sue?

The volatility of the polls

I don't think I've ever seen the polls as volatile as they are now. Real Clear Politics shows a CNN Poll taken May 29-31, showing Obama leading by 3 points, and a Rasmussen poll taken May 30-June 1, showing Romney leading by 4. That's a difference of seven points, and the polls are supposedly only a day apart with a 2 day out of 3 overlap. Either one of them is selecting poorly (or both are!) or the public cannot be trusted to give their true intentions.

But if the numbers are this volatile, can we put any credence in the polling results? I think that about all we can say is that, as of now, it's close. And a lot will happen anyway between now and November. I'm sure that Tuesday, when Scott Walker either wins the recall election, as most polls say, or loses it to Tom Barrett, there will be some movement in other polling numbers: if Walker wins, people will realize that you can fight Big Labor, for example, while some weak Obama supporters may reconsider their choice. Then the Supreme Court will be heard on Obamacare and the Arizona illegal immigration law. If the Obama administration loses on either or both, will it energize the Left (who might want to redo the Supreme Court majority by giving Obama time to appoint new Justices)? Or will it energize the Right, who will point to Obama's assault on the Constitution and make them even surer they want to get rid of him? And, of course, if the Court goes the opposite way, we would see possible reactions that are mirror images of these.

There is a good chance that, by July 1, the polls will look a lot different from the figures we see today. And certainly by November, a lot of people will change their mind.

An important month

Tomorrow is the first of June. A June that will be one of the most important months, outside of election-year Novembers, in U. S. political history.

Next Tuesday, of course, will be an election, though only in the State of Wisconsin. But this election will show whether ordinary people can take politics away from Big Labor. Governor Scott Walker has tried to get his state's finances in order, and his method has been to take some of the power that public employee unions have exercised in the State away. This has gotten him the unions' deep enmity, of course, so he is forced to fight a recall election — an extreme rarity in this country. Only two Governors have actually been removed by recall in the history of the United States. (A third was put up for recall, but impeached and removed by that process before a recall election could be held.) But it looks as though he will win. Polls show a majority of Wisconsinites will vote to keep Gov. Walker. They are not going to be puppets of Big Labor.

The other extremely important occurrences that will happen this month will be Supreme Court rulings. Both the Arizona illegal immigration law and “Obamacare” are expected to be the subjects of Court rulings this coming month. Both can have a serious impact on what the powers of the Federal government are considered to be. There is a good chance that both rulings will go against Pres. Obama, which will be important reins on the unfettered Federal domination of power that he seeks. A Mayor of Chicago can override the will of his city's people, and Pres. Obama has tried to do the same on a national level. But he will, hopefully, be shown that there are constitutional limits on his power.

Two referenda

It appears that there will be two referenda on the Maryland ballot this November on legislation that has been pushed by Governor Martin O'Malley. And while O'Malley has gotten behind both of them, and similar groups are forcing referenda on both, I'm of quite different minds on the two. And I expect to vote one way on one, and the other way on the other.

The first is the “gay marriage” question. I will certainly vote to keep the law as it was passed by the Maryland General Assembly (State legislature) and signed by Gov. O'Malley. What reason the opposition has for wanting to reverse this law I do not understand. I have not seen a single point made in opposition to gay marriage that holds up to scrutiny, and it is clear and simple a bigoted attempt to make things difficult for homosexual Marylanders.

On the other hand, Gov. O'Malley is also pushing a State version of the so-called DREAM Act. It would make illegal aliens living in Maryland — without the legal right to do so! — eligible for in-State tuition reductions at Maryland's public higher education institutions. I cannot see why Marylanders' state taxes should go to help these people get an education in Maryland, while, say, a United States citizen who has his primary residence in one of the other 49 States does not get this break. If Gov. O'Malley wished to eliminate the in-State/out-of-State differential, it might be justified. But to put illegals ahead of, for example, residents of Delaware or Virginia makes no sense to me. They have no business even being in the state, for goodness' sake!

The last big controversial Supreme Court case of the year

This week, the Supreme Court will hear arguments on Arizona v. United States, dealing with the State of Arizona's law to deal with illegal immigrants in the State. The Obama administration says that Arizona had no right to pass such a law, because the Federal government has primary responsibility over immigration policy. Arizona, however, maintains that everything it has legislated is in conformity with Federal law, that it is an attempt to harmonize State law with Federal immigration law, and it is attempting to deal with Federal laxity in enforcing its own laws.

Once more, as with “Obamacare,” the Court will hear arguments and then leave us in the dark as the Justices make their decision, which will not be announced for months. It is a frustration that the Court's way of doing things is so slow, but I suppose this ensures that the process is deliberative rather than political. But I find it hard to wait.

Maryland's DREAM Act fixation

One of the editors of the local Washington Examiner, Barbara Hollingsworth, writes a column with which I often disagree. (Among other things, she is bitterly opposed to mass transit, except possibly buses, and I've personally exchanged e-mail with her over this.) But today, she wrote a great column, which I will happily quote:

Montgomery Circuit Court Judge Marielsa Bernard's abrupt dismissal last month of a lawsuit brought by Judicial Watch against Montgomery College's Board of Trustees for granting discounted tuition to illegal immigrants is not the end of the discussion. Judicial Watch plans to appeal the ruling, which could spark the beginning of a re-examination of sanctuary policies nationwide.
The Judicial Watch case was not even on Bernard's docket when she inappropriately intervened and took it away from another judge to whom it had been assigned. A founding member of the Hispanic Bar Association with close ties to CASA de Maryland, a tax-funded advocacy group for illegal immigrants, Bernard ruled that the three plaintiffs — all Montgomery County taxpayers — had no legal standing to sue the college because financial aid is supposedly the sole province of the Maryland Higher Education Commission.

And how's this for unintended irony?

In order to qualify for the in-county rate, students must prove they either live in Montgomery County or that they graduated from one of the county's public high schools within the past three years. In other words, the tax-supported community college imposes its own residency test to determine how much tuition to charge students — but somehow feels free to ignore legal residency requirements under existing federal and Maryland state law.

The community college allows illegal immigrants to enroll at the in-county rate of $107 per credit, about half of the $219 per credit charged for in-state Maryland residents and a third of the $299 paid by out-of-state students. All else being equal, an undocumented Guatemalan living in Silver Spring would pay half as much tuition as a U.S. citizen from Upper Marlboro.

Maryland Del. Patrick L. McDonough, R-Baltimore County, agreed to audit the college when Montgomery state legislators and County Council members refused a request to do so from their constituents. The audit found that the college's long-standing policy, which has apparently been in place for at least a decade, may have cost Maryland taxpayers as much as $10 million, McDonough told The Examiner. "Maryland taxpayers must pay for this deficit."

"They know they're wrong," said McDonough — who helped spearhead a successful citizens petition drive to suspend implementation of the controversial Maryland Dream Act, which grants in-state tuition to illegal immigrants statewide, until a 2012 voter referendum. "Public officials do not have the right to violate the law and use tax funds — including the $147 million Montgomery College gets from the state — any way they want. If that right already existed, why was the General Assembly required to pass SB 167, the Dream Act, which would have allowed it?"

In Montgomery County, the law has been twisted so far that it is now used as a vehicle to reward and protect illegal immigrants while law-abiding citizen taxpayers are forbidden from challenging the misuse of their own money in court. This is supposed to be "fair."

"It's unbelievable that the biggest community college in Maryland is proudly and publicly admitting that it is misusing tax dollars, that members of the County Council and the county executive all think this is a good idea, and that a judge has now inappropriately issued a decision that upends 150 years of legal tradition and says that Maryland taxpayers do not have the right to sue public officials. This will not be tolerated or ignored," McDonough vowed.

If he's right, and this sanctuary college in a sanctuary county in a sanctuary state is finally held accountable for its illegal use of tax dollars, there's no telling how far this could spread.

Now, this time, I think Hollingsworth is right, and I applaud her raising these points.

A euphemism that obscures

It is interesting that people trying to get things like the DREAM Act or other laws that make it easy for illegal immigrants to get the privileges of citizens (or residents) never call them "illegal." They always use the euphemism "undocumented." (I just saw an example in a local paper, the Montgomery Gazette.)

You'd think that someone had just forgotten to fill out a form, or lost his papers. But in fact, the correct thing to call them is "illegal." They are here in violation of the laws of this country. If that isn't what "illegal" means, I don't know what the word means!

This country is a nation of laws. The immigration laws are on the books and just as much valid laws as anything in the statute books, whether for murder, theft, or anything else. Anyone in violation of our nation's laws deserves to be punished, not abetted. The states of Arizona and Alabama are doing the right thing — if the Federal Government will not enforce its own laws, the States need to do it for them.

Problems with the DREAM Act

There has been a proposal (titled the DREAM Act) which would legalize some of the illegal immigrants in this country. It specifically would apply to people who had been brought to this country as young children and would require military service or a certain amount of education to legalize them. At first glance, this seems reasonable: the children are not the ones who made the decision to violate this country's laws, and by either getting an education or actually serving this country in the military, they would be making a useful contribution in exchange for legalization. But I'm not very happy with some aspects of this proposed law, and I recently saw another blog post, by a certain David Arredondo of Ohio, with similar objections to my own. Arredondo's ideas are not identical to my own, and I'd like to compare the two, so this post will not merely present my ideas, but also compare his with mine.

The most important problem with the DREAM Act in my eyes, and one which Arredondo also agrees is a serious problem, is that under our laws, once the affected young people have qualified for citizenship, their parents (who are the ones who made the decision to violate this country's laws) would get preferred status toward obtaining citizenship. This would be rewarding an illegal act. Arredondo suggests modifying the DREAM Act to "[s]uspend current immigration law that allows their parents who brought them here illegally from qualifying for Permanent Residency." I would favor that same change, and with this part of his post I fully agree.

Where I part company with Arredondo is that he would eliminate the educational route to legalization, making military service the only path. Now Arredondo is quite correct in stating that "[t]hose of us in the higher ed industry know that 2 years of studies doesn’t qualify a student for much." But the solution to that problem is to require four years, including the earning of at least a bachelor's degree. Arredondo would have, as I said, all these illegals only able to qualify by military service, so that if they wanted an education, they would first have to spend 4 years in the armed forces and then use GI Bill benefits to get that education. I can't go with that. Going into the military entails a willingness to get shot at. I think that is asking too much. (Full disclosure: I succeeded in getting an exclusion from the draft when I was of draftable age. I fully admit that I am enough of a coward that I pulled every string that was available to me to get that exclusion. Now, with the draft no longer in force, requiring military service of any group of people seems to me to be too much of a price to ask them to pay. If they are willing to serve, fine and dandy. But there are more ways to serve the needs of this nation that putting oneself in the line of fire.)

So, like Arredondo, I could only accept the DREAM Act with modifications, but of his two modifications, only the one he gives second would be my choice. His first, eliminating the educational path, is not one I would favor, but rather the educational path should be made more selective, requiring a useful level of education rather than the too-trivial two years currently proposed.

There is also another post on David Frum's FrumForum blog, dealing with changes that he would like to see made to the DREAM Act. Some of these make sense as well; perhaps all would be improvements, though I am not totally certain, but I'd like to point my readers there to consider them.

On Mark McKinnon's program (Part 3 of 3)

The last four of Mark McKinnon's proposals:

9. Go nuclear. The ultimate green strategy, good for the environment, good for the economy and therefore doable, is a natural-gas-to-nuclear-power plan proposed by contrarian Robert Bryce. Wind and solar power are land-intensive, a green sin, but not energy-dense, and affordable only when heavily subsidized. And wind power must be supplemented with hydrocarbons for reliability. Texas leads the nation and is sixth globally in wind production, yet only 8.7 percent of installed capacity is dependable during peak demand. And it provides only 1.2 percent of the state's total energy need. In Denmark, the poster child for wind power, neither carbon dioxide emissions nor hydrocarbon consumption have been reduced. Natural gas resources in the U.S. are equivalent to three times the known oil reserves of Iraq. Natural gas is the near-term solution for cleaner fuel and the bridge to the fuel of the future—nuclear, the most carbon-neutral, power-dense, relatively affordable and available energy source. As Bryce says, "If you are anti-carbon dioxide and anti-nuclear, you are pro-blackout."

I have long agreed with this proposal. People are afraid of Three Mile Island-type scenarios, but nobody was harmed by Three Mile Island. People were seriously affected by Chernobyl, but that was a type of reactor we don't think of building in the U. S., precisely because of the hazards associated with it.

10. Get right. Repealing the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy in the U.S. military and legalizing same-sex marriage are issues of equality for all. Sixty percent of Americans favor allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military. Gay people serve their countries openly in the British, Canadian, and Israeli military. Don't Ask, Don't Tell is discriminatory, and it limits our ability to recruit and retain the greatest numbers of the best and brightest, especially critical while we are still fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, both back this needed reform. And for the first time since Pew started tracking opinions on same-sex marriage 15 years ago, fewer than half of those polled now say they oppose legalizing the institution. Republicans constantly claim to be the party that defends the Constitution. In my opinion, we have no legitimate right to that claim until we get right on gay rights. It's way past time for the GOP to come out in support of equality for all.

Frankly, I've said enough on this topic that anyone reading this blog knows McKinnon's proposal has my full approval, so I need to say nothing more.

11. Open the borders. Any act that proposes 16,000 additional IRS agents can't be good. But President Obama is right: "Consumers do better when there is choice and competition." Unfortunately, the misnamed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act does neither. Seventy-nine percent of Republican voters, 56 percent of voters not affiliated with either party, and a majority of voters in the battleground congressional districts still favor repeal. As an alternate strategy to lower costs, it's time to open the borders to allow the purchase of private health insurance across state lines, and to allow consumers and businesses to associate for better pool rates. Just six months after the bill was signed into law, consumers face increasing premiums, fewer choices when it comes to health-care insurers and providers. Squeezed by Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement payments below cost and mounting liability insurance costs, doctors may soon be an endangered species. There's a reason doctors have flocked to Texas since 2002: tort reform. Tort reforms are needed to protect patients' access to health care providers.

When I first looked at his title, I thought this proposal was going to deal with illegal immigration, but actually, as will be seen below, that is his next proposal. In fact this #11 is a really common-sense proposal. Some pieces of it have already been endorsed on this blog; I really agree with just about all of it.

12. Recognize reality. It's time to fix illegal immigration. Voters in Arizona and Texas are rightfully frustrated by the federal government's disinterest in protecting our sovereignty. Though unemployment numbers are high, low-skilled immigrants actually expand the size of the overall economy. Punishing those who work hard, who do not hurt others, and who seek a path out of poverty for their families is not the answer. The fixes need to begin now, and begin in parallel. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has the right plan. Secure the border; ceding a no-go zone to foreign drug lords on American territory is not acceptable. Deport illegal immigrants with felony convictions. For the 11 million already in this country, provide a tough but fair path forward which would include paying fines and back taxes, passing background checks, proving English proficiency and going to the back of the line to work toward lawful permanent residence. We need to expand and simplify the farm-worker program to address seasonal work needs. Issue all legal U.S. workers, including citizens and immigrants, a biometric ID card. And strengthen the penalties and enforcements for employers. At the same time, we need to expand the number of visas issued for high-skilled workers in science and technology, the next Einstein may be waiting.

This is probably a pretty reasonable way to handle it. It is close to the plan which was proposed by both George W. Bush and John McCain, but extremists on both sides led to its being scuttled.

McKinnon closes by saying:

It's not a brand that brings the middle together. It's a shared belief: The promise of America still exists. Though the system is corrupted, and government now rules as the master, not the servant, the ideal of liberty balanced by responsibility lives on—right in the middle.

That is a pretty good summary.

What will the Supreme Court do?

It looks as though there are going to be some interesting issues before the Supreme Court in the next year or so. There are the three gay marriage cases (Perry v. Schwarzenegger, challenging California's Prop. 8, and Gil v. Office of Personnel Management and Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, two Massachusetts challenges of the federal Defense of Marriage Act), Ken Cuccinelli (Virginia attorney general)'s challenge to the individual mandate in the Obama health care law, and the Obama administration's challenge to the Arizona anti-illegal-immigration law. Quite a bunch of controversial cases, and it will be interesting to see what the Supreme Court does with them!

It is hard to predict. The California gay msrriage case, for example, had a conservative lawyer on the team representing the pro-gay-rights side. And there are all sorts of issues involved in all these cases, many of which have not been before the Supreme Court before. And of course, the Court has some new justices: Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, without much of a judicial history. We just have to sit and wait.

The gay marriage decision

I'm pretty happy, actually, with the California district judge's decision setting down Proposition 8. (I've generally favored the "civil union" compromise, but only on the basis of being easier to attain in the near future.) But of course, opponents of the decision may point to the fact that it was issued by a gay judge. (It would have had more convincing effect if the judge were straight.) Nevertheless, it was a good decision in my opinion. (And it is very nice that one of the lawyers for the pro-gay-marriage side was a prominent conservative lawyer! Why political conservatism should get linked with homophobia is beyond me.)

It will, of course, be appealed, almost certainly all the way to the Supreme Court, and nobody can tell, at this point, how that is going to turn out. But that is the way our system works. We now have two recent judicial decisions, one of which I dislike (the one on Arizona's anti-illegal-immigrant law) and one of which I applaud (this one), both of which are really initial steps on a path to the Supreme Court. Both bear watching.

A stupid judge

Judge Susan Bolton, a Federal judge in the district court for Arizona, has granted a preliminary injunction to the Federal Government against the Arizona law on illegal immigration. She did not give the Federal Government all that it requested — there are clauses that were allowed to go into effect — but Arizona cannot enforce some of the more controversial parts of the law for the time being.

The final decision has not been made by Judge Bolton — and when it has, an appeal will certainly be made by the State of Arizona — but even this much is a stupid action on her part. The whole case rests on a question of the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution — which addresses conflicts between Federal and State laws. But the Arizona law does not attempt to nullify a Federal law. How any judge can see a case of the Supremacy Clause applying is beyond me. The Arizona law clearly states that it is enacted in conformity with the applicable Federal law. The judge issued a 36-page ruling, and while I have only partially read it, I do not see anywhere where Judge Bolton has made a case that there is, in fact, a conflict between the Arizona law and Federal law. She is clearly acting as a politician, and not a judge. She was appointed by Pres. William J. Clinton, and does not want to rule against a Democratic administration on what has become a highly partisan issue.

So now we await the appeal. It probably will need to go to the Supreme Court, which I trust to be reasonable.

Marijuana and immigration

Marijuana is a dangerous, mind-altering drug. So dangerous that there are Federal laws that say that even possession of it is a crime. But the potheads of several States have managed to convince their State legislatures to enact laws making it legal to prescribe it for "medicinal" purposes. This, despite the fact that the medical profession has declared that there is no valid medicinal use for the drug, so "medical marijuana" is a serious oxymoron. So these States' laws are in conflict with Federal drug laws, as well as with common sense.

On the other hand, the State of Arizona has enacted a law that basically states that if you are illegally in this country under Federal law, it is also a violation of State law for you to be in Arizona. Obviously, no conflict with Federal law; it simply gives the state the power to declare illegals to be in violation of Arizona law, so they can be punished in accordance with State laws.

The Obama administration has declared that it will not enforce Federal law in the States which have flouted Federal drug laws to legalize "medical marijuana," but it intens to bring a lawsuit against Arizona, whose law is fully in accordance with Federal immigration law.

Isn't this absolutely crazy? But I guess that potheads vote, and are more likely to vote Democratic, while most Arizonans vote Republican anyway.

Arizona's new anti-illegal-immigrant law

It is interesting to see left-wingers railing against Arizona's new anti-illegal-immigrant law (or as they like to call it "Arizona's new anti-immigrant law," ignoring its direct targeting of illegal immigrants).

Of course, many of the left are simply pandering to Hispanic voters, who sympathize with the illegal immigrants because many of them (even if they themselves have become U. S. citizens) have illegal immigrant relatives).

And in turn those Hispanics seem to feel that this country ought not to enforce its own laws. Though, I wonder what they would think if the country refused to enforce its other laws, and countenanced, say, the discrimination of people against Hispanics in violation of its anti-discrimination laws!

All Arizona has done is to say that, if you're in violation of U. S. law by your presence in this country, and if you're in the State of Arizona, you are also in violation of Arizona State law, as well. And no sensible person should have any objection to this.

But some people say that jurisdiction over immigration law is preempted by the Federal Government under the Constitution. It is true that Article VI Clause 2 of the Constitution establishes the supremacy of Federal law over State law in matters under Federal jurisdiction (and the Federal government, by virtue of the Constitution's grant of power over foreign affairs, has power over immigration, even though immigration is nowhere mentioned in the Constitution), but certainly Article VI would only invalidate Arizona's law if it were in conflict with Federal law. It is not; it in fact, directly incorporates Federal law into Arizona law!

In fact, if anything, those States that have attempted to legalize "medical marijuana" like California, are the ones who should be called on the carpet for trying to nullify Federal law. (I put the phrase "medical marijuana" in quotes, because it is clear that marijuana has no valid medical purpose.) But the leftists who are taking Arizona to task would not do this to those States, because these people approve of such actions.

The facts are these: The Federal Government has refused to enforce its own laws on immigration, and Arizona has seen fit to take the law into its own hands because the Federal Government has abdicated its responsibility. People clain the new law will lead to racial profiling, as though this is worse than the current situation where illegal immigrants are burdens on law-enforcement, public health, and such.

And it is supposed to be so much of a burden to carry identification to prove one's legal presence here. Well, I'm legally in this country (I was born here!) and the number of times I've had to show identification in recent years is pretty large. If I have to carry identification, it is no great extra burden for them to do so.

Actually, there is one clue that should be emphasized more. These people often say that "nobody is illegal." Thus they talk of "immigrants," lumping legal and illegal immigration together, and totally misconstrue the purpose of the Arizona law. As far as they are concerned, the immigration laws of this country do not have any force, but this selective nullification is unjustified, and once more, I reiterate: violation of our anti-discrimination laws would not be so pleasantly received by these people!