Jumping the line

We had lunch today at a trendy new Mexican food place near our home.  Very good food and attentive service. 

While eating we had the chance to have a friendly chat with the 19-year old counter girl, who is from Chihuahua, Mexico.  She freely admitted in her excellent English that she's in the country on a tourist visa and is looking forward to studying at a local college in the fall.

Two things are very wrong with this situation, though - visitors on tourist visas are barred from enrolling in higher education institutions, and they are expressly forbidden to work while in this country.  This otherwise charming person is doing both, most likely with a fraudulent or stolen Social Security number. 

A significant percentage of illegal immigrants to this country don't arrive by trekking through the desert or wading across a river.  They simply arrive on a tourist visa and never leave.  This person is one of them, and she is knowingly breaking several of our laws in the process. 

Immigration reform activists, why should this person get to stay when so many others around the world wait their turn and come here legally?

The value of a Harvard Law education just dropped

Harvard Law School Professor Charles Fried testified before the Senate the other day that he believes the government can just ignore the Constitution and 230 or so years of legal precedent and force you to buy whatever it wants you to:

"Yes. We hear that quite a lot. It was put by Judge Vinson, and I think it was put by Professor Barnett in terms of eating your vegetables, and for reasons I set out in my testimony, that would be a violation of the5th and the 14th Amendment, to force you to eat something. But to force you to pay for something? I don’t see why not.  It may not be a good idea, but I don’t see why it’s unconstitutional."

We seem to have been quite mistaken -  we were under the impression they had knowledgeable professors at Dear Old Hah-vahd.  Instead, they appear to have persons who ascribe to the Obama School of Constitutional Studies, which holds the view that the government can do pretty much whatever it pleases, as long as it has "good intentions" for doing so.

They're completely wrong, of course.

Best to send your children somewhere else for their law degree.  You'll save money and they'll get a better education.

A must read

Victor Davis Hanson takes a multi-week field trip to observe firsthand the wreckage of his once-great home state of California, and the journey leaves him with several insightful (and poignant) observations.  Here's just one of them:

"Fresno’s California State University campus is embroiled in controversy over the student body president’s announcing that he is an illegal alien, with all the requisite protests in favor of the DREAM Act. I won’t comment on the legislation per se, but again only note the anomaly. I taught at CSUF for 21 years. I think it fair to say that the predominant theme of the Chicano and Latin American Studies program’s sizable curriculum was a fuzzy American culpability. By that I mean that students in those classes heard of the sins of America more often than its attractions. In my home town, Mexican flag decals on car windows are far more common than their American counterparts.

I note this because hundreds of students here illegally are now terrified of being deported to Mexico. I can understand that, given the chaos in Mexico and their own long residency in the United States. But here is what still confuses me: If one were to consider the classes that deal with Mexico at the university, or the visible displays of national chauvinism, then one might conclude that Mexico is a far more attractive and moral place than the United States.

So there is a surreal nature to these protests: something like, “Please do not send me back to the culture I nostalgically praise; please let me stay in the culture that I ignore or deprecate.” I think the DREAM Act protestors might have been far more successful in winning public opinion had they stopped blaming the U.S. for suggesting that they might have to leave at some point, and instead explained why, in fact, they want to stay. What it is about America that makes a youth of 21 go on a hunger strike or demonstrate to be allowed to remain in this country rather than return to the place of his birth? "

If you read nothing else this week at least check out Hanson's entire piece.

The old saying goes something like "As California goes, so goes the rest of the nation".  If that maxim is indeed true then we as a country are in big trouble indeed.

They must have slept through literature class in high school

Bike Bubba has the best take we've seen on the meddling doofuses who have taken it upon themselves to censor all the "offensive" words out of an upcoming edition of Huckleberry Finn.  Words that are crucial, by the way, to the book's central theme of Huck coming to understand and appreciate the humanity of the put-upon Jim, as well as being an indicative history of the racial strife of that period.

How are people supposed to learn from (as well as not repeat) the mistakes of the past once they've been whitewashed (pun intended) out of existence?

Are we going to see these self-appointed guardians of America's precious little snowflakes call out Alex Haley's Roots as next in line for evisceration, since after all that Pulitzer Prize-winning tome contains the exact same words (and on many more occasions, as well as graphic depictions of racism and slavery)?  Or are these moral arbiters of free speech going to state with a straight face that it's perfectly OK to use those words in the latter instance because Roots was written by a black man?

The British babies threw a tantrum

As many as 50,000 British university students rioted in London yesterday because that utterly bankrupt Nanny state has had the temerity to ask them to pay a higher portion of their college tuition instead of completely mooching off the taxpaying subjects.

Egged on by the usual suspects of anarchy-promoting leftist organizations (isn't it odd how conservative groups never advocate random violence and the destruction of private property?  Maybe because those people actually own something instead of living a pointless life of sponging off the public teat), the students assaulted the headquarters of the conservative Tory party, causing significant damage to the building and several injuries to the riot cops who were attempting to control the mob.

Here's one supposedly educated female Cambridge student's take on the protest:

"The majority is a completely non-violent protest. I’m not really worried about violence against property or objects, smashing buildings is completely fine, it’s a great image of our anger. I’ve got no problem with that at all as long as nobody gets hurt."  (emphasis ours)

Well fine then, ma'am.  But don't complain to the police when someone destroys your house because they are upset with something you've done or said.  After all, it's a "completely fine" message of "anger".

Britain's future.  Aren't they charming?  (AP - from the article)

This is the inevitable result that occurs when people who have been given entitlement upon entitlement for multiple decades get told that the free ride is coming to an end.

Hopefully this episode starkly illustrates to everyone the inevitable result of the road that Dear Leader wishes to take America down, and why we must redouble our efforts to stop our country from one day turning into today's Britain.

Here's what "gun-free" zones accomplish - nothing

21-year-old Arizona State University student Zachary Marco was shot and killed on campus last night in an apparent armed robbery gone bad.

The carry of firearms by law-abiding citizens is banned on public universities under Arizona state law, but that impotent fact didn't seem to affect the murderous assailants who executed this innocent student for the few dollars he had on him.

If Mr. Marco had been legally armed and able to defend himself, would he be alive today?  Maybe, maybe not.  We're positive he would at least liked to have had a choice in the matter.

"Lawful" gun-free zones do nothing but place the very people they purport to protect in mortal danger from these sorts of brutal thugs, who target these areas on purpose because they have complete assurance that no one will be able to successfully fight back.

"'This is really bizarre,' [sophomore Leila] Anderson said. 'At night it is kind of scary here.' She added that for freshmen, the campus is their home. 'If I was a freshman I would be really scared.'"

We would be terrified as well, if it were us that was forced to walk a dark campus alone at night with all effective means of self-defense forbidden to us.

The students there have now learned a vital lesson they will never receive in a college classroom - only they are ultimately responsible for their own safety and well-being, and it behooves them to prepare for the all-too-common time when that possibility indeed becomes a reality.

"Moonbeam" promises the moon but fails to say how he'll pay for it

California gubernatorial candidate Jerry "Moonbeam" Brown manages to keep a straight face while vowing that there's "enough wealth" to admit all illegal alien students to public universities at in-state tuition rates, even though that dysfunctional state is hopelessly bankrupt due in no small part to policies he implemented the last time he was in charge there:



What an incompetent, pandering boob. 

We're no huge fan of Meg Whitman, mostly due to her irrational banning from eBay of firearm parts (and even accessories) during her tenure as CEO.  At this point anyone has to be better than this tired old liberal retread, however.

If this clip isn't enough to anger the hard-working taxpayers of California enough to deny Brown another chance to screw things there up even more then nothing will.

Reality has yet to set in for him

The people of Massachusetts, of all places, have thankfully seen fit to derail, hopefully for good, President Obama's ham-handed government takeover of one-sixth of our nation's economy by handing the Senate seat held by liberal Democrat (and socialized medicine advocate, at least for other people) Ted Kennedy for over four decades to a center-right Republican.  Good for them.  What a stunning rebuke of health-care "reform" from citizens who already chafe under a failing similar scheme in their state.

We should also note that one year ago Friday the President decreed that the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba would be permanently closed by this date.  That's not going to happen anytime soon, either, to the eternal consternation of Al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen, who were no doubt eagerly looking forward to reuniting with a few more of their terrorist leaders.

Happy anniversary, Mr. President.  Boy, this socialist agenda stuff is proving mighty hard to implement, isn't it?  Maybe you should have acquired just a smidgen of leadership and real-world management experience before seeking your position.  That might have helped a bit.

Mr. Obama is undauntedly soldiering on, however, apparently not learning a single lesson from any of his many failures to date.  We find out today that he is pushing to nationalize yet another large sector of our economy, this time the student loan industry:

"The plan’s fate, however, is determined largely by Obama’s other major initiative – health care reform. Because reconciliation may only be used on one bill per year, Democrats must wait to see if it is needed to pass health care reform. If it is, they will have to combine both the student loan and health care proposals into one bill before using reconciliation to bypass an inevitable Republican filibuster."

Oh, we dare you.  In fact, we double-dog dare you to go ahead and do that, Congress.  That course of action would instantly seal your political deaths come November and you know it.  Keep on robotically enacting Mr. Obama's radical agenda and quite a few more of you will no doubt soon be joining Ms. Coakley on the street.

Are the President's plans and reputation worth the Democrats paying that heavy of a political price?  We'll soon find out, that's for sure.

Muckraker Television

An experiment in a new medium. Please forgive the muffled audio that occurs in the first minute or so of the clip, as we're still shaking out the production bugs. The dialogue during that period should nonetheless be understandable.

Constructive feedback would be much appreciated.