Immigration
September 20, 2017 — Steven Hayward
I’ll probably never be able to make up my mind fully about President Trump, and I am sure a number of our commenters will pounce on this opening. But just about every time I think he’s blundered or shown himself not up to the job, something changes my mind as the dust settles. First, as Scott and Paul noted, his speech to the UN this week was terrific. Geez—you’d think
»
September 19, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Stephen Montemayor covers the courts for the Star Tribune. As the local courts reporter, for example, Steve has covered the several cases of the “Minnesota men” yearning to take up the jihad to smite nonbelievers and extend the sphere of Islam. That’s not the way Steve sees it, of course. If I may borrow from the diagnostics of former blind sheikh prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, what we have here is a
»
September 18, 2017 — John Hinderaker
This morning, Nancy Pelosi was speaking at a press event in San Francisco when the room was invaded by more than 100 demonstrators claiming to be “DREAMers,” i.e., people who were brought to the United States illegally when they were young. The demonstrators took over the event, drowning Pelosi out and eventually driving her from the room. Their complaint was that Pelosi and her fellow Democrats have sold their families
»
September 14, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Late last night, in an update to a post about DACA, I noted that President Trump reportedly had just made a deal with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi regarding DACA-style legislation. The alleged deal would protect the roughly 690,000 people covered by the current DACA program (but not, I take it, other “dreamers”) and would include a package of border security measures, excluding the wall, that’s “acceptable to both sides.”
»
September 13, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
In the public imagination, the dreamers are folks who were brought to the U.S. by their parents as young children. They are unfamiliar with the country where they were born and would be lost if forced to return there. They are hard-working and law abiding. Many attend college or serve in the military. But one can be a “dreamer” for purposes of benefiting from DACA without fitting any part of
»
September 11, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
I wrote here about how Rep. Luis Gutierrez called John Kelly, President Trump’s chief of staff, a “hypocrite” and a “disgrace to the uniform he used to wear.” Kelly served in the military for more than 40 years. Gutierrez never served a day. However, he became hysterical over Trump’s decision to phase out the DACA program, while giving Congress the opportunity to implement its protections. Gutierrez claimed that Trump’s action
»
September 10, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Last week, in denouncing President Trump’s decision on DACA, former President Obama proclaimed the decision inconsistent with “who we are as a people.” Obama was repeating a familiar refrain from his presidency, during which he often trotted out the “who we are as a people” theme to attack those who disagreed with his left-wing views on immigration, refugees, health care, Islamic terrorism, etc. I criticized Obama’s latest incantation on several
»
September 10, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Stephen Montemayor covers the courts for the Star Tribune. If you’ve been following the saga of the “Minnesota men” — young Minnesota Somali Muslims who have conspired to lend a hand to ISIS over the past several years — you will want to take a look at Montemayor’s Star Tribune story on six open cases involving support for ISIS in Minnesota. St. Louis Park is the Minneapolis suburb that was
»
September 7, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Our friends at the Grabien video clip service have compiled a remarkable illustration of the Democrat/media echo chamber, cued in this case by Ben Rhodes (thank you, Monica Showalter). The video shows why you haven’t been able to avoid hearing that President Trump’s (allegedly) ending DACA is “cruel” (video below). If only. Grabien provides an excellent companion to the video here.
»
September 7, 2017 — Steven Hayward
I’m not one to go in for the “Trump is playing six-dimensional chess” theories of his transcendent political brilliance, and while I think he is willy-nilly gesturing toward Bill Clinton’s famous “triangulation” strategy with yesterday’s debt ceiling deal with the Democrats (which may work very well for Trump politically), I wonder whether Trump may be setting up to turn on the Democrats on a compromise over DACA. It is pretty
»
September 6, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
President Trump has published ill-advised tweets before, but last night he outdid himself. Trump tweeted: Congress now has 6 months to legalize DACA (something the Obama Administration was unable to do). If they can’t, I will revisit this issue! The tweet undermines the rationale for Trump’s suspension of DACA, namely that it usurps power vested with Congress by the Constitution. He takes essentially the same position President Obama took. The
»
September 6, 2017 — Steven Hayward
It’s outrageous how heartless President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions are about immigration and the DACA program. Hiding behind “the rule of law” like this: [T]here are those in the immigrants’ rights community who have argued passionately that we should simply provide those who are [here] illegally with legal status, or at least ignore the laws on the books and put an end to deportation until we have better
»
September 5, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Rep. Luis Gutierrez, Congressman open-borders himself, went on a rant today against John Kelly, the White House chief of staff. Gutierrez pronounced Kelly, who served in the Marines for more than 40 years, “a hypocrite who is a disgrace to the uniform he used to wear.” Gutierrez added that Kelly “has no honor and should be drummed out of the White House along with the white supremacists and those enabling
»
September 5, 2017 — Steven Hayward
The “Ratchet Effect” is the well-known theorem that once liberals get a social welfare program in place, it is nearly impossible for a subsequent conservative government to roll it back. Margaret Thatcher did privatize a lot of nationalized industries in Britain, but then socialist or Labour Party governments did the same thing in New Zealand, Australia, and even France back in the 1980s, as the incompetence of government ownership of
»
September 5, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Former President Obama takes to Facebook to attack President Trump’s decision to phase out DACA. As one would expect, Obama’s piece is a masterpiece of misdirection. Scott has posted the full text of Obama’s statement. As Scott says, the former president indulges in his favorite pastimes: question begging, condescension, and attempting to make his opponents out to be indecent, immoral and stupid. I found this passage from Obama’s statement telling:
»
September 5, 2017 — Scott Johnson
One of the defining characteristics of President Obama that we disliked most was his disdain for the rule of law. If he could get his way, he might take the prescribed route to his destination. If not, he took a shortcut, with his phone and his pen. He even bragged about it. Obama’s DACA program — a supposedly temporary stopgap — represents the quintessence of his monarchical disposition. Before he
»
September 5, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
President Trump should have ended the DACA program, or at least announced its phasing out, as soon as he took office. Nonetheless, his decision to announce its phasing out now, assuming he sticks to it, represents a victory for the rule of law. The legal status of “dreamers” is a matter for Congress, not the executive, to decide. Even President Obama said so before he elected to decide the matter
»
