Is Arizona's New Immigration Law Constitutional?

We have an interesting situation developing in Arizona. Last week, the Arizona legislature passed and the governor signed a law which says, in effect, that the state will work harder to enforce the existing federal immigration laws.

The left is having a cow, of course. They are concerned that enforcing the law is racist.

"Racist." Where have we heard that before?

So the left is now crying "Unconstitutional." It is unconstitutional, according to the left, to merely enforce federal law. The constitution, by the way, does give the government the authority to set and enforce immigration policies.

Now, remember back ... ALL THE WAY BACK .... to about three weeks ago when the Health Care System Destruction Act of 2010. Remember the congressmen who said that the constitution doesn't matter? The only thing that mattered, way back then, was to make sure that all those uninsured citizens who were just dropping dead in the streets from lack of health care, got covered. They AREN'T covered, but we did get health care destruction/reform shoved down our throats. Constitutional or not.

So, now that there is an issue in which the left wants to limit the power of government, the left is crying "foul." We CAN'T ignore the constitution.

Hypocrisy? Thy name is Democrat.

Duck and Cover

By JOHN MCCORMACK (From the Weekly standard)

After signing the national health care bill, Barack Obama said he welcomed a campaign fight over the law. "Bring it on," he dared Republicans. He toured the country to boost the law's popularity. And on April 3, a Rasmussen poll showed that voters trusted Republicans more than Democrats on health care by a 16-point margin (53% to 37%)--a significant shift from just one month earlier when that number was essentially tied.

It looks like Obama's rambling 17-minute answer to a question about why we should be paying more taxes for Obamacare didn't do much to reassure voters about a bill they've consistently opposed for nearly a year. Other congressmen, like Paul Hodes of New Hampshire, have had a similarly difficult time directly selling the health care bill to their constituents. So, Politico reports, some Democrats, like Congressman John Boccieri of Ohio, have taken a different approach: hiding from their constituents.

Boccieri is not alone. He’s one of a number of House Democrats who’ve kept a low profile over the recess, a group largely defined by the level of political jeopardy they face this fall.

Like Boccieri, they tend to represent highly competitive seats. One of them, Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-N.D.), has not held any events in Republican-oriented North Dakota to talk about health care, his staff acknowledged. This week, he’ll talk about Social Security.

The offices of other endangered members, ranging from veterans such as Reps. Alan Mollohan (D-W.Va.) and Allen Boyd (D-Fla.) to junior members such as Reps. Ann Kirkpatrick (D-Ariz.) and John Salazar (D-Colo.), did not return messages asking about how they had promoted health care last week.

"Duck and cover" just might be a better motto for the Democrats than "bring it on."

A Trip Down Memory Lane

"I Don't Care about the Constitution"

Confronted by an angry Tea Partier with a camera Thursday, an Illinois congressman said in front of several constituents at a town hall that he doesn't care whether the new health care law violates the Constitution, as some critics have claimed.

In a video posted on You Tube, Adam Sharp of the St. Louis Tea Party asked Rep. Phil Hare which part of the Constitution authorizes the government to mandate that all Americans buy a private product such as health insurance. The Illinois Democrat replied, "I don't worry about the Constitution on this."

"Jackpot, brother," Sharp said.

Hare cringed in disgust and said, "Oh please. What I care more about, I care more about the people dying every day who don't have health care."

It's a good thing that Rep. Hare (D-Village Missing an Idiot) cares so much more about all those people just falling over dying from lack of health care. It's getting so that you can hardly walk down the sidewalk in a typical American city without tripping over the people that are falling over, dead, from a lack of health care. Around here, we don't even push them over to the gutter any more like we did back in the Bush days. There's just too many of them.

Racism Accusation Reigns on O'Reilly

I usually find Bill O'Reilly entertaining, funny and sometimes thought provoking. However, as I've mentioned on this blog before, O'Reilly seldom has the wits to match his guests. He's no dummy, but he's also not as clever or as brilliant as the people he brings on.

The left, of course, is in the "You're Racist" mode, trying to sell the already-passed Health Care System Demolition Program to the American people with the idea that Health Care reform is great because anyone who opposes it is racist.

On Tuesday, O'Reilly had two guests on his program that played the race card effectively. Al Sharpton was invited by O'Reilly to respond to a Miami Herald opinion article which charged that the "Tea Party had an element of racism running through it." Sharpton defended the statement by playing semantic games with O'Reilly, and O'Reilly obviously never caught on.

Sharpton cleverly rephrased what the opinion writer said and told O'Reilly that there were, indeed, "elements of racism within the TEA Party movement," a phrase using similar language but which changed entirely the meaning of the author. He then argued that if even two or three people out of millions of TEA Party activists are even the least bit racist, then the TEA Party has "elements of racism" within it. After making this point, which O'Reilly had trouble arguing, he slipped back and forth between "elements of racism within" the movement and "an element of racism running through" the movement, which implies that the TEA Party has an inherent racist element in it's fabric and that every member must be, to some degree, racist to be associated with the party.

While I think Sharpton is un-American, a Marxist, and uses the cloak of religion for credibility, (while he, himself has no problems with lying to achieve his own ends), he's certainly no idiot, and has a great command of the language. He knew what he was doing. O'Reilly was no match.

In a later segment, Alan Combs appeared. Combs seems like a smart enough fellow, but seems to view his job as spouting whatever the democratic talking points for the week are. If Gibbs and Pelosi and Reed were to come out tomorrow and say that the sky is red, Combs would be telling us all exactly what shade of red the sky is and how racist it is to deny that the sky is red.

This week, of course, the talking points are that ObamaKare is Great because the TEA Party is racist. It's a theme, apparently. And in the segment, which was not about race at all, Combs started his argument stating that (essentially) anyone who opposed ObamaKare does so because they don't like having a black man in the White House. Monica Crowley, his "co-guest' (if there is such a thing) started to argue with Combs, but O'Reilly was insistent that Combs have his say, even though he pointed out there is no evidence to the contrary.

I find these things very offensive.

In fact, I'm going to make a statement that many will probably disagree with, but here goes: I think that making the accusation of "racist" to someone for whom there is no real evidence of racism, is as offensive as using the "n-" word.

There, I said it.

Watch for more accusations of racism over the next few months (and probably years) as the left continues to try to peddle the idea that voting against democrats is a racist move. They will continue to tout the "fairness" of their programs against the "racism" of the Republican ideas.

Frankly, I think it takes a twisted sense of morality to define "fairness" as taking stuff away from the person who has worked hard to get it, in order to give it to the person who has not worked for it.

... but then again, I'm racist.

Stupidak's Vote Paid For With Earmarks

A government watchdog group called the Sunlight Foundation, has uncovered the "payoff" for Bart Stupidak and ten other House members who exchanged their vote on health care for earmarks. I looked all over the news for this and found nothing. A google search (using logical words from this story) also uncovered NO RESULTS in the "news" section. (This article was found under a blog search). If you wonder how they were able to get the needed votes to pass the "Health Care Theft of Freedom Act", now you know...

A day after Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., and ten other House members compromised on their pro-life position to deliver the necessary yes-votes to pass health care reform, the “Stupak 11″ released their fiscal year 2011 earmark requests, which total more than $4.7 billion–an average of $429 million worth of earmark requests for each lawmaker.

The eleven members were the focus of high level pressure by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other top Democrats because they threatened to vote against the health care reform bill, whichpassed the House on Sunday, March 21, by a seven vote margin. Granting earmark requests are one of the ways leadership can encourage members to vote their way.

Stupak requested more than $578 million in earmarks, including $125 million for a replacement lock on the Sault Ste. Marie, $25.6 million to build a federal courthouse in Marquette, Mich., $15 million to repaint the Mackinac Bridge and $800,000 to preserve the Quincy Mining Company smelter near Hancock in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

In 2009, the first year that members disclosed earmark requests, most members requested far more earmarks than were funded by the Appropriations Committee, which approves or denies requests. According to Taxpayers for Common Sense, Stupak’s funded earmarks–including those he requested jointly with other members–totaled $28.6 million.

Despite a newly enacted ban on earmarks to for-profit firms, Stupak requested a total of $52 million for companies in his district out of the $65.9 million he requested from the Defense Appropriations bill.

The POTUS Dog and Pony Show

The following is from Michelle Malkin:

Because we haven’t seen Barack Obama campaigning enough on TV the past two weeks, the White House broadcast his meeting with the Senate Democratic Policy Committee Issues Conference this morning.

The audio stream is here if you are just dying to hear him and aren’t near a boob tube.

The event was a dog-and-pony show with the majority’s most vulnerable Senators — Arlen Specter, Michael Bennet, Blanche Lincoln, Evan Bayh — getting hand-picked by Harry Reid to ask “tough” questions (Will you join me in this? Sign on to that? Etc. Etc.).

At one point, President Obama started trashing “cable TV” again, reports Brian Stelter. Obama singled out Fox and CNN and told the Senators in the audience to turn the TVs off and stop watching the “echo chamber.”

After 5 minutes, I reached for the remote control and took Obama’s advice.

Obama on Scott Brown

Obama, Pelosi, Reid and their official spokesmen have an explanation for the election of Scott Brown.

Republican Scott Brown was elected in the heavily democratic state of Massachusetts over democrat Martha Coakley because ... get this .... people are angry and frustrated over the 8 years of Republican President George W. Bush.

Yes, you heard that right, Obama blamed, once again, 8 years of the Bush presidency for, not only everything that has gone wrong since the year 2000, including me losing a pair of socks the other day, but the Bush Presidency also makes people SO ANGRY that they want to vote for more Republicans.

Now, to be fair, actually the official spin from the White House and other liberals, is that there is a general anti-incumbancy mood. The electorate is still unhappy with unemployment, "evil banks and other corporations" and the business as usual attitude in Washington that any incumbent in the coming year is very likely to lose his or her seat.

Of course, there is one little, tiny fact that they are overlooking.....

Martha Coakley isn't an incumbent.

More Perspective on Reid's Racist Comments

These comments are a week or so old, but I just ran across it. (Yes, I'm behind in my reading.) Likely, some of you have already read them. In case you hadn't, it's an excerpt from a blog by Ann Coulter (who is seldom wrong on anything) and it puts a humorous, but painfully accurate twist on the revelation that Harry Reid made blatantly racist comments about Barack Obama while at the same time insulting the American electorate by accusing us all of being racist ....

As long as we're mulling the real meaning of Reid's words and not just gasping in awe at the sorts of things Democrats get away with saying, I think Reid owes America an apology for accusing the entire country of racism. A country, let us note, that just elected a manifestly unqualified, at least partially black man president.

On the other hand, Reid couldn't have been expecting Republicans to vote for a Democrat, so I gather Reid was accusing only Democratic voters of being racists.

I don't disagree with that, but I'd like to get it in writing.

I think the Democratic platform should include a statement that the Democrats will not vote for dark-skinned blacks with a Negro dialect. Check with Harry Reid on the precise wording, but something along the lines of "no one darker than Deepak Chopra."

The "whereas" clauses can include the Democrats' history of supporting slavery, segregation, racial preferences, George Wallace and Bull Connor -- and also a precis of their treatment of dark-skinned Clarence Thomas.

Quote of the Day

John Kerry (following last night's Democratic defeat in Massachusetts:

I hope as a party we don't succumb to the temptation to form a circular firing squad.

Hmmm...A circular firing squad could eliminate all the current leaders of the Democratic Party as well as their legions of grossly overpaid consultants, advisers, and strategists, as well as the leftist, socialist liberal scholars and thinkers in leadership positions.

And that's a bad idea...why, exactly?

Scott Brown and Health Care

We appear to be on the edge of political shift. Republican Scott Brown is now likely to win a Senate race in a liberal democrat state that has been held by the biggest liberal icon for almost half a century. And by all appearances, his election is a repudiation of Obama, his policies, and in particular, ObamaKare.

There are two potential responses from the democratic party:

The first could be the recognition that the American people don't like what is going on and try to improve policy. Polls are clear that the American people don't like the direction the country is going. As much as they thought we were heading the wrong direction a year ago, they REALLY think we are heading the wrong direction, now. In fact, a significant number of people who voted FOR Obama, would rather have George W. Bush back in office than continue the direction we are heading.

So the democrats COULD look at their positions and policies and try to fix them. Everyone agrees that the current health care bill is a piece of crap. It's too expensive. It doesn't fix many problems. It doesn't cover everyone it's supposed to cover. It doesn't control costs. It doesn't address many of the problems that lead to more expensive health care.

Instead of saying "Well, now we HAVE to push it through because we might lose our filibuster proof majority," they could be saying, "We have an opportunity to fix this. We could work with Republicans to develop a bipartisan bill that actually addresses real problems; a bill that the nation would support."

The other response could be "We HAVE to push through a crappy bill because it's what we want and for political reasons we have to do SOMETHING."

Which option do you suppose the dems will chose?

Who Should Vote

Musings reports on a story from the Orlando Examiner that reveals something the Democrats know that the rest of us don't. Some of us on the right think that Obama, Pelosi, Reid and the left are committing political suicide with policies and laws that take America down the path toward a socialist and totalitarian state.

We all know that Democrats seldom do things that are not in their own best interest. They have an agenda, but the top of the list in that agenda is to increase their power and influence.

What we don't know is that the democrats have a plan to pass "Universal Voter Registration." They are pushing legislation at the federal level that would override state laws and would require states to go through all welfare rolls, driver's license lists, property tax lists and essentially any other list that would have the names of residents on it, and register all of those people to vote.

The democrats know that those who are interested and concerned about what is going on in this country will register and vote. They also know that those who are more likely to vote democrat, including welfare recipients, drug users, and other low-life, are less likely to actually register and vote.

I don't have to spell out the implications of such a plot.

What I did want to bring to the table is what I consider a radical thought. It is my belief that people who do not pay taxes and people who do not pay attention to the election process should NOT have the right to vote.

In other words, if you don't have a vested financial interest in the nation, why should you choose who gets to spend our money? If your only interest is in GETTING something from government, of course, you'll vote for who gives you the most goodies, not for who is going to be fiscally responsible.

Furthermore, if you don't have a clue who the candidates are and what they stand for, why should you be allowed to vote for them? It amazes me how many people vote who don't have any idea what the platforms of the parties are or what the candidate the are voting for (or against) stands for. A simple test that would determine if a voter has even a very basic understanding of what the issues are and where the candidates stand would go a long way toward improving the voting process.

Yes, these ideas would be unpopular. It seems to be accepted wisdom that in our democracy, everyone should vote. The more the better. The more, the fairer.

I disagree, and I think the founding fathers also disagreed. If you remember back to your history/government classes, the founding fathers did not allow everyone to vote. Only the male head of household voted. And land owners were represented in the process to a greater degree than non-land owners. (i.e. taxpayers got a larger representation).

While this may seem unfair in many ways, it seems to me that if you want to take part in the political process and in what the government is doing, you should have as a minimum, at least two responsibilities: 1. Take part in what the government is doing by paying taxes. and 2. have an understanding of what is going on.

Democrats Don't Pay Taxes (Again)

A day before she clinched the nomination to fill a vacancy in the Missouri House of Representatives on Saturday, St. Louis Democrat Hope Whitehead paid a visit to City Hall.

Not to mobilize supporters, but to pay hundreds of dollars in outstanding taxes.

Her trip downtown was more than just civic duty. Under state law, candidates with overdue tax bills are ineligible for the ballot.

When her obligations were met, a panel of city Democratic leaders gathered Saturday to nominate Whitehead, 50, to fill the vacancy created by former state Rep. Talibdin El-Amin, who submitted his resignation in September after pleading guilty to federal bribery charges.

Apparently, it must be a federal law that democrats who want to be in positions of power CANNOT pay taxes until it is politically expedient to do so. I guess that's a good reason to become a Democrat.

Obama Not Watching

After spending many days and millions of tax-payer dollars campaigning in Virginia and New Jersey, it's clear that Obama has no coat-tails.

One year ago, Obama handily won Virginia and New Jersey, and now his star-power has dimmed to a twinkle as both Virginia and New Jersey elected Republican candidates into high office.

Apparently the White House spin machine was not ready to explain the results. It was a nice touch not having to listen to Obama lecture us about how wonderful and bright he is and how he inherited every problem under the sun from the previous administration. The White House issued a statement after the GOP win saying the president was "not watching election returns and would not be making any remarks on the results." Bet me.

The key question now is: how are the Blue Dog Democrats going to view this big new political news? This was the first real poll of public sentiment about big government, big tax and spend, and the Obama-Pelosi-Reid drive to socialize America as fast as possible.

To be clear, these elections were not purely a referendum on Obama. Each candidate and each state has its own unique nuances. However, enough voters expressed that the Obama presidency played a role in their decision to affect the outcome. Clearly, independent voters, the ones who actually decide elections, are unhappy with the direction Obama is taking us.

Size Isn't Everything, but How Big Was It?

The big news from the weekend, of course, was the TEA Party / 9.12 project march on Washington over the weekend. It's interesting to watch the reaction from the Left-Wing Media complaining that this is a "fringe element of racists."

Denial isn't just a river in Africa, as the saying goes.

Hot Air points out that size isn't everything. A huge anti-war march was held in Washington in 2003 when 65% of Americans supported the War on Terror. Still, the crowd that showed up was bigger than expected. The New York Times reported "the magnitude of the rally took authorities by surprise, with throngs of people streaming from the White House to Capitol Hill for more than three hours."

Estimates vary.

... and "Vary" is an understatement. Some leftist blogs are reporting that 20,000 to 30,000 marched on Washington this past weekend. The city officials are reluctant to give out numbers, but the city fire department claims 75,000 people were in attendance. O'Reilly reported the 75,000 numbers as "fact" because the numbers were "unbiased." He feels that the unionized, mostly democratic, mostly black D.C. Fire Department employees would have no reason to intentionally under-report the numbers.

Other estimates have ranged from 1.75 million to 2.5 million.

I don't know. I've looked at the photos and video of the crowds. It looks like a LOT of people, but I have no idea whether the number is closer to 50,000 or closer to 2 million. Still, the numbers approach, if they don't exceed, the numbers for the million man march and the million mom march.

What's more important than the actual numbers is the demographics. While there were few hard-core leftists joining in on the protests, those protesting were not simply conservatives. There were a large number of independents, including people who voted for Obama in 2008. There were also a huge number of people who have never been politically active in their lives.

What this signals is a change in mood and attitude in America. Polls are showing that independents are increasingly opposing Obama and the Democratic party, not just on the health care issue, but on other big government spending programs.

This does not bode well for Democrats in the coming elections.

I recall hearing a couple of Democratic pundits, including James Carville, who said immediately following the November election of Obama, that the Democrats and leftists would be in power for at least the next 20 years.

Twenty years sure have flown by.

Had Obama governed in the center, pushing a few leftists policies here and there, and tried to keep his poll numbers up, they may have been right. As it is, the left is seeing 2009 and 2010 as their "big opportunity." They intend to push every leftist bill, policy and ideal through this year and next. In doing so, they are increasingly alienating not just those who consider themselves fiscally conservative, but also libertarians, independents, and even moderate democrats.

The administration is denying what's going on, of course. They want to insist that the TEA party crowd is a fringe element. They want to push their agenda. I hope they continue to convince themselves that they have the support of America behind them. The continued push to the left is what is going to hand Congress back to the right in 2010 and the White House in 2012.

Is Health Care Reform "Dead"?

I'm hearing talk from pundits (radio, TV and print) that health care reform, or at least health care reform with the "public option" being the cornerstone, is dead. Do you think it is?

I think this is unabashed optimism on the part of conservative commentators. It may even be part of the strategy to get people to relax a little bit, only to get people going again if and when Congress tries to push through a plan that will destroy our current system.

I don't think there is any way health care reform is dead. And when I say that, I mean a leftist view of health care reform that includes either long term or short term plans to include a government-run system that would be designed to eventually run insurance companies out of business, leaving us with a single-payor, socialist program.

The left has been drooling over socialized medicine since the 1950's (or earlier). This is their big chance. What conservatives fail to understand about the left is that they have really drunk the kool-aid. They believe that socialism is the solution to America's problems. They really believe they can push through a plan that Americans don't want, and when the voting public sees just how "good" it is, and how much it "helps" America, they will be redeemed and be voted back into power. They want to be part of the legacy. They want to have their name attached to the biggest sweeping socialist takeover in the history of our country. They think that's a good thing.

Keep in mind that many of these leftists are nearing or well past what most of the rest of us would consider "retirement" age. Even if they get voted out of office, they have pensions, not to mention the opportunity to be lobbyists and speaking opportunities. They don't necessarily need to be in power, if they think they can accomplish a huge majority of what they have been working for all their lives in this one year.

(Don't pick apart the sentence "they don't need to be in power." It's all relative, and I'm trying to get inside their thinking. Yes, they want to be in power.)

The bottom line is, the left sees 2009 as their one chance to do "everything."

Health care "reform" is not dead. Nor is any other liberal program they think they might be able to ram through between now and when the campaigns heat up next year.

Ted Kennedy's Final Hypocrisy

When I read the news article about Kennedy's flip flop on how Massachusetts should replace a Senator unable to fulfill his term, I began formulating how I might post a blog titled "Ted Kennedy's Final Hypocrisy." Doug Bandow of American Spectator published the following article this morning that says what I was going to say much more eloquently than I could have.

By Doug Bandow on 8.28.09 @ 7:50AM

It's a curious spectable. The Left turns someone who left a young lady to die in a car accident into an icon. Then after some of us remember the bad as well as the good about the man's life and character, his groupies shout outrage. They might want to ponder just a minute the life that Mary Jo Kopechne might have led had she not died as a result of Sen. Kennedy's recklessness and negligence 40 Julys ago. As Stacy McCain observed:

When news broke that Ted Kennedy had died, many people had a reaction quite similar to my own: "Mary Jo Kopechne could not be reached for comment." It's an old line I'd used often over the years whenever Teddy made news. While I thought I'd stolen it from Ann Coulter, someone else said it actually originated more than two decades ago as a Chevy Chase punchline on Saturday Night Live.

Far more current is the political, rather than moral, scandal of the Senator's last public utterance: his hypocritical call for the selection of his replacement by the governor through appointment rather than by the people through special election. Even a few Democrats are uncomfortable with this rush to let the politicians substitute their preferences for that of the public--the very people who Sen. Kennedy and others supposedly spent their lives defending. Reports the Wall Street Journal:

The question of how to fill Mr. Kennedy's seat is vexing Democrats. In 2004, Mr. Kennedy supported a special election rather than a gubernatorial appointment. Yet more recently, he wrote to Mr. Patrick and legislative leaders, urging that Massachusetts give the governor the power to appoint an interim successor.

Mr. Kennedy wrote that the governor should receive "an explicit personal commitment" from the appointee not to become a candidate in the special election. Mr. Patrick has supported the idea, and brushes aside concerns that Democrats were being inconsistent: "Massachusetts needs two voices in the United States Senate," he said this week.

In 2004, Democrats took the opposite tack. When some Republicans complained of the cost of a special election, Democratic Rep. William Straus said such reasoning might have been used in a "totalitarian country" and that "one person, whoever happens to be governor, will not make the decision for you."

In an interview Thursday, Mr. Straus stood by his words, saying he recently heard from many other Democrats who feel Mr. Patrick is making a mistake.

Mr. Straus said there always will be a pressing issue in Washington that seems more important than having an election. "We need to hold ourselves to the higher principles of democracy," he said.

Massachusetts state Sen. Brian A. Joyce, a Democrat who headed the election-laws committee in 2004, agreed. "If we were to allow an appointment, it would be wholly undemocratic," he said. "When you cut through the rhetoric on both sides, it's pure partisan politics."

There's nothing new about politicians switching sides for rank political purposes. But the Senator's conduct should be kept in mind as the encomiums about his "principles" flow. Yes, he was an ideological liberal. But he also was a hypocritical pol little different than so many of his colleagues in Washington and Massachusetts. And his final public action was to push to strip his constituents of their right to decide on his successor.