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.
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.
I’m usually pretty open to admitting I’m wrong about things I’ve written on this site. I was a big booster of the Iraq invasion when it started and eventually, after being smacked down by Ed and a couple others who left comments, I came to see what a huge mistake that was. It is time again for me to use this blog to publicly correct my position on an issue and change my course.
I’ve made several posts on this site critical of UTOPIA and other public efforts to create new communications networks. I was wrong. Jesse has a great post summarizing the history of telecommunications and the terrible mess our government has made of things. I highly recommend that anyone interested in this issue check out the linked post above and FreeUTOPIA.Org. A lot of political forces are aligned against UTOPIA and that is unfortunate because it seems to be the only possible chance for Utah to break out of the current mess.
UTOPIA is not just a cool gadget that local governments are promising residents or an effort on the part of those governments to get involved in providing phone/cable/internet services. It is an effort to create an environment where real competition exists between providers of communications services on a completely new and neutral network not controlled by the regional telephone companies that for decades have bribed, threatened and sued anyone threatening their dominance. The current communications market is anything but free. Qwest and its counterparts in other areas of the country own congressmen, senators and whole state legislatures that they’ve paid dearly for in an effort to defend their government granted monopoly. It is time for an end to the status quo.
UTOPIA and other local municipal broadband efforts should be applauded and supported by those who claim to believe in the efficacy of free markets.
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.
Daniel posted this story from the telegraph which discusses a poll of doctors in Britain who believe medical procedures in their National Healthcare System should be withheld from the old or obese. I’ve stated before that I believe single payer healthcare solutions create a situation where government takes more responsibility than ever for engineering “acceptable” behavior. This story supports my concerns.
From the Telegraph:
Doctors are calling for NHS treatment to be withheld from patients who are too old or who lead unhealthy lives.
Smokers, heavy drinkers, the obese and the elderly should be barred from receiving some operations, according to doctors, with most saying the health service cannot afford to provide free care to everyone.
Fertility treatment and “social” abortions are also on the list of procedures that many doctors say should not be funded by the state.
Admittedly most doctors in Britain aren’t saying things like this but a sizeable percentage are. I think a system like the British one garantees that in the long run government has a much greater stake in its citizens lives than it should. We don’t need something like that in the U.S.
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.
I have purposefully tried to stay away from commenting on foreign policy for quite a while on this site. I just find the subject too depressing to dwell on. On this day every year the topic of U.S. foreign policy is more significant to me than normal so I figured today I’d link to the most insightful blog post I could find relating to our nation’s present troubles then link to it and feel like I’ve fulfilled my quota on this topic for the next year or so.
He doesn’t know it but Frank Staheli, a veteran of the Iraq war and a Utah blogger, is one of my heroes. He is completely wrong on the latest Republican scheme to provide a new welfare entitlement for people who don’t need it in the form of tuition vouchers but that can be forgiven. Frank is absolutely correct in everything he says when he blogs on the topic of American foreign policy. If anyone ever needs to know what’s right for our nation in the post 9/11 years I’m happy to refer them to Frank. Here’s his post today…it doesn’t directly relate to America’s post 9/11 policies but it covers what I think are the most important points. I’m grateful that he is out there making the case for a more humble and thoughtful American foreign policy. It would sure be great if Utah’s politicians who hold national office would listen to him.
Our current healthcare system is broken. It is too expensive and it provides incentives for people to make poor decisions on their own healthcare spending.
I’ve commented in the past about what national Democrats need to do to keep my support here, here, and here. Basically I encouraged my party to do their level best to not be corrupt greedy incompetent fools like the Republicans they were replacing. I’ve been trying, with ever diminishing success, to ignore the fact that they’ve become everything I was hoping they’d avoid becoming.
“The House Appropriations Committee has decided to insert earmarks into all of the FY08 spending bills during the conferencing committees, instead of during the initial House-only process.
This will prevent lawmakers like Jeff Flake from offering amendments to strip out wasteful pork projects…which is EXACTLY why David Obey, the Approps Chairman, is changing the rules.
Rep. Obey responded to concerns about his actions by stating, “It’s my job to protect the committee.”
Thanks Rep. Obey for betraying the trust voters gave you by putting our party in power. You’ve “protected your committee” and made it easier for politicians in Washington D.C. to raid the national treasury for stupid stupid projects that have nothing to do with the constitutional purpose of our government or the best interest of all Americans
I’m a proud Utah Democrat but I sure hate the smear job our national politicians have perpetrated on our party’s reputation. It is really embarassing to see my party acting worse than the corrupt Republican hacks who were in power before. How can we legitimately argue that America is better off when Democrats win elections? The bozos we put in power in 2006 provide daily evidence in the form of their money grubbing and corrupt policy stands that it makes no difference who wins national elections.
Is it obvious why I tend to avoid national partisan politics more and more on this blog? America loses no matter which party is in power.
Here is a short summary of George W. Bush’s anti-conservative policies while in office. I blog this mostly for personal future use next time someone tries to claim Republican leaders are actually conservative.
It seems that Congressman Chris Cannon isn’t the only one in our government who is making up facts about crimes in our country in an effort to artificially increase our fear of terrorism. The inspector general of the Justice Department has reported that the DOJ and FBI have been fudging the data on reported terrorism cases.
UPDATE: Dr./Senator Tom Coburn on Social Conservatism Vs. Fiscal Conservatism:
“You can look at abortion, you can look at all the social issues you want, but none of those matter if we’re not good stewards of the nation. I’m not going to be critical of the people who are pro-abortion. They have a different set of values than me. I can see their position, and I won’t demean it. I counsel lots of women—and I love them to death—who have been through abortion. I’ve done two abortions myself, to save the lives of women. When you talk about abortion, emotion gets into it. But you can understand the position of the other side. When you look at what’s happening with the American dollar, it is not as nuanced. The dollar is sliding against all major currencies in the world, because people are losing faith in our ability to repay all these loans. We’re living on borrowed financial time. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Democrat or a Republican. Those are the facts…”
“When you’re delivering a baby and the baby’s getting in trouble, and you can see the baby’s heartbeat, which is normally about 130 or 140 beats per minute, going down to fifty or sixty, and you’re standing there watching it go down, you know you’ve got about three minutes to make a decision. You can use a pair of forceps and try to pull it out, you can use a vacuum extractor, or you can leave labor and delivery, put her on the table, put her to sleep, cut a hole in her belly, and take it out with a C-section—but you’ve got to do something, and you’ve got to do it now. That baby’s life depends on what you do in those three minutes. And that’s exactly where we are in our country today. We are in those critical three minutes. If we wait to act, it’s going to be too late. We’re going to lose the baby.” (emphasis mine)
Coburn is exactly right. I have friends who are “conservatives” who support Republicans because they are concerned about social issues like abortion and homosexuality. When I point out how bad Republicans have been for the fiscal health of our nation they lack much concern at all about the poor economic judgement their party has shown. The really sad thing is that it is the economic stuff that is actually vital to the survival of our republic.
If you were trying to defend a government policy of revoking constitutionally protected rights what rhetoric would you use to try to convince the public that you were in the right?
AG Gonzales: I meant by that comment that the Constitution doesn’t say that every individual in the United States or every citizen has or is assured the right of habeas corpus. It doesn’t say that. It simply says that the right of habeas corpus shall not be suspended.
Thank you Part of the Plan for linking video of an extended part of the conversation between Sen. Arlen Spector and Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez. Everyone should hear what the chief law enforcement officer of the Bush administration thinks about the U.S. Constitution. His argument seems to be that habeas corpus isn’t expressly granted in the Constitution so the prohibition in that document against taking it away is basically meaningless. The extended conversation is even more damning than the brief portion I quoted above.
