More and more often I find myself agreeing with the The Sutherland Institute and their policy positions. This new essay takes me even further down that road.
Kudos to these authentic conservatives for a stance on immigration that actually makes sense. It is so refreshing to see self proclaimed conservatives move beyond the standard “I oppose illegal immigration because it is illegal” argument. Nearly all of the ills presented in this standard anti immigrant argument would be alleviated if the immigrants were made legal and permitted to work within our system as natural citizens do.
I haven’t read the whole essay yet but am curious how far down the immigration road Sutherland is willing to go. Are they also arguing for open borders? It is hard to justify support for making illegal immigrants legal while also arguing in favor of closing the border to others who would come here to make better lives for themselves if they could immigrate legally. I’ll report further after I’ve read the whole essay.
H/T KVNU’s For The People
It isn’t often that I can say Bob Lonsberry is exactly correct about something. This article is one of those few cases.
UPDATE 04/18/2008 11:03AM: Guy Murray at Messenger and Advocate has an even better rundown on the weakness of Texas’ case after the first day of hearings.
H/T Alienated Wannabe
Glen Warchol has a description of our heroic immigration system in action.
We need real immigration reform and I’m not talking about a bigger fence at the borders. We need a system that allows non-criminals into our country to work or recreate as they wish. If they want to be citizens make the process strict but streamlined. If they just want to work here we should make sure they meet a limited number of qualifications and then tax their earnings appropriately. Legalize immigration and the vast majority of its ills will disappear.
Or we could adopt the typical conservative immigration plan which is to demand that our government keep doing things the moronic way we do now…only more.
Because there apparently aren’t enough real criminals to pursue in Utah, Attorney General Shurtleff wants everyone to remember that he’s looking to fine people who bet on March Madness brackets this year.
Utah: The state where it will always be illegal to be an adult.
UPDATE 03/11/2008 11:07: I like VOU’s proposed solution to the silliness that is Utah’s extreme gambling prohibition.
Here is an interview Brian Schweitzer (Democratic governor of Montana) recently had with NPR. It is very short and sweet and forceful explanation of the foolishness that is “Real Id”. Give the interview a listen then try to imagine Gov. Huntsman being that cool. Pretty hard eh?
It would sure be nice to have a chance to support a candidate like Mr. Schweitzer in Utah. Do you think it is possible that a state like ours, so heavily influenced by cultural Mormonism, could ever elect someone known for his willingness to kick butt in the fight for our freedoms and rights instead of someone well-known because he’s really rich, really pretty, and really Mormon?
Sen. Buttars came out against his own bill (mentioned a couple times on this site) because it would make an incredibly dumb law.
I’d love to know where the change of heart is coming from. It is possible that he truly didn’t understand its implications when he sponsored and has now seen the light it but I doubt that is the case. It is more likely that this is part of his damage control process after several bad “public relations” moves.
In the end it doesn’t really matter. Kudos to Sen. Buttars for putting this bill out of its misery. It really was an ugly one.
H/T Senate Site (Note: The Senate Site’s “Morning Workout” posts are a really cool way of following news on the legislative process. I follow the links every day. Thank you SS!)
Mayor Becker thinks Sen. Buttar’s bill to make police misconduct confidential is a great idea. Apparantly Salt Lake County already has this policy for their police officers and Becker’s SL City officers want the same deal.
Becker is every bit as wrong to support this as Sen. Buttars.
Police who don’t answer for misconduct are a bigger risk to Utah’s citizens than the criminals they are charged to detain.
UPDATE: 2/14/08 2:25 PM: Glen Warchol just posted his take on this development. He’s exactly right.
Why would Sen. Buttars propose a bill that would make police officer misconduct confidential? I’d love to give the guy the benefit of the doubt every once in a while but when he pulls moves as obviously stupid and bad for Utah as this…its hard.
Here is the text of SB260
Our police are given a near monopoly on the use of force in our society. Their use of that monopoly keeps us safe and it is a great arrangement. That doesn’t mean that we don’t need safeguards in place to protect the people from misuse of police power. This misuse happens all over our country on a regular basis. We don’t need to make it easier to hide. Its all pretty simple really. Anyone who would want to make police misconduct easy to hide is either very confused or working some agenda. Either way Utahns will suffer if Sen. Buttars has his way.
I’d recommend that Sen. Buttars and everyone else read The Agitator on a regular basis. Radley Balko has done a great job cataloguing police misconduct across the country. It happens all the time and Americans are more powerless than ever in fighting it. We don’t need people making things even worse in our state.
UPDATE 2/11/08 10:53: I just saw that Ethan is already covering Sen. Buttars poor legislating this session. Props.
A Mississippi legislator proposed a message bill he knew would fail in an effort to “shed a little light on the number one problem in Mississippi.” His bill would require that restaurants turn away the obese rather than serve them.
Right now bills like this are just used to raise awareness. When taxpayers become responsible for paying each others medical bills under the socialized healthcare plans proposed by some politicians ideas like this will be taken more seriously as efforts to save taxpayer money.
H/T Boing Boing
Bruce Schneier is my hero.
If you set up the false dichotomy, of course people will choose security over privacy — especially if you scare them first. But it’s still a false dichotomy. There is no security without privacy. And liberty requires both security and privacy. The famous quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin reads: “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” It’s also true that those who would give up privacy for security are likely to end up with neither.
H/T Agitator
Sen. Greg Bell is asing for comment on SB16, a bill he has proposed that will provide monetary compensation for innocents who were wrongly convicted but later proven to be innocent (not the jokers who get out on a technicality).
This seems like a good idea. My only concern is that the law would only compensate victims at a rate equal to the average yearly wage in Utah for each year the innocent was confined up to 15 years. It seems to me that when we’ve screwed up this badly that we owe these people a lot more than that.
It is too bad we can’t take the money needed to pay for this out of the salary or pension of the prosecutors who wrongly put these people in jail.
My favorite 4th amendment activist group has a post on their blog about the recent taser incident which occurred here in Utah. Give it a read. Everyone should know the correct way to deal with police encounters.
Here’s Judge Andrew Napolitano on the unconstitutionality of the Patriot Act:
The Patriot Act’s two most principle constitutional errors are an assault on the Fourth Amendment, and on the First…
…So FBI agents can write their own search warrant [under the name “national security letters”] with just the permission of their superior, no judge at all, nobody at the main Department of Justice, and serve it essentially on any entity they want, and if they serve this search warrant on your doctor, lawyer, grocer, or mailman, and that doctor, lawyer, grocer, or mailman tells you they received it, then that doctor, lawyer, grocer, or mailman, can be prosecuted for a felony, face five years in jail. What part of the First Amendment’s “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech” do they not understand?
This creates a Soviet-style conundrum for the recipient, who can’t even tell his or her lawyer or general counsel about getting the search warrant. You can’t hire outside counsel to challenge it, you can’t mention it to your spouse on the pillow, to your priest in confession—not even to a federal judge in a federal courtroom where all language except perjury should be permitted. This is a conundrum the likes of which government has never visited even under the Alien and Sedition Act. If they prosecuted you for criticizing [President John] Adams you could complain about it to your heart’s content without being charged with another crime.
These are issues our nation’s founders started a war over. Obviously contemporary Americans think a lot less of their own civil liberties than their forebears.
Read the whole article.
I voted today. You should too! Find out where you can vote early and enjoy the short lines and get an “I Voted!” sticker before all your friends and family.
Paul Mero recently published a 44 page propaganda piece attempting to use early Utah and LDS church history to support his contention that Utah’s taxpayers need to subsidize private school students. I don’t think the piece will succeed in convincing many people of the benefits of the current voucher plan but it does make for some interesting reading.
Mero’s defense of Mormon theocracy in the late 1800’s and his contention that the territory government was doing everything right with its schools and everything else in the years right after pioneers arrived here is my favorite part of his argument. It shows just how out of touch he really is. You’d almost think after reading his screed that Mero would prefer that Utah still be a state run by an LDS church from the 1850s. Mormons would still participate in polygamous marriages, church run schools would be paid for by taxpayers and we’d all live in the Nation of Deseret instead of the United States of America. That we don’t live in that blessed state of existence is all due to the fact that the U.S. brought its blasted public schools to Utah and forced a willing populace to send their kids there.
Thanks Mr. Mero…but I’ll pass.
For more response to Mr. Mero’s piece check out:
“Paul Mero - Armchair Prophet” at Utah Amicus
“Why Exploit Religion For Politics” at Accountability First
