Category Archives: culture

It’s Onerous to Become a Citizen?

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Dan Siciliano, a Stanford Law School professor, thinks so.

People think it’s automatic, short and easy.  [In reality] the pathway to citizenship is onerous.

Here are the requirements for becoming a citizen:

  • the immigrants must a $680 fee
  • pass an oral exam
  • present five years’ worth of tax returns
  • submit to a background check for things such as criminal convictions.
  • pass an interview with an immigration officer who tests their ability to speak, read and write English

Yeah, that’s onerous.  The fee serves as a (light) screen against the indigent.  Current immigration law makes it illegal to allow in those who will be burdens on our society, who can’t earn a living.  The five years of having paid income taxes provides current, empirical evidence of the immigrant’s ability to earn his own way and to contribute to his new community.

Any nation has the right to keep out other nations’ criminals—that’s what the background check does.

It’s a hard concept, but English is the language of the United States.  Not Spanish, or French, or Arabic, or Farsi, or….  Businesses are foolish to stand on ceremony and demand their customers speak only English.  But the preservation of American society and culture—that which made us a great nation—demands that political speech be done in English.

The Racism of the Supreme Court

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During oral arguments concerning Shelby County v. Holder, a case that asks whether the several states and lesser jurisdictions must, in accordance with Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, continue to submit their voting plans to Federal supervision and prior permission, came these shocking remarks:

Justice [Elena] Kagan: “Under any formula that Congress could devise, it would capture Alabama.”

Never mind that under any other formula that Congress could devise, it would not notice Alabama at all.  Formulae of this sort find what their developer want found—it’s the purpose of the formulae.  Kagan knows this.

Justice [Sonya] Sotomayor: “It’s a real record as to what Alabama has done to earn its place on the list.”

True enough.  It’s also a real record as to what Alabama has done to earn it way off the list.  Sotomayor knows this.

Justice [Stephen] Breyer: “Imagine a state has a plant disease, and in 1965 you can recognize the presence of that disease. … Now it’s evolved. … But we know one thing: The disease is still there in the state.”

Once a racist, always a racist.  Because we know.

These liberal…Justices…need to look in a mirror.

Cowed by Terrorism

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Apparently, terrorism works in Europe.  With Bulgaria having officially determined that Hezbollah was behind the terrorist bombing of an Israeli tour bus in Burgas on the Bulgarian Black Sea last summer, we’re getting some…interesting…responses in the rest of Europe.  These responses center on European continued hesitancy to declare Hezbollah a terrorist organization, as other nations outside of Europe (and one and a half within the EU (the UK is only willing to designate, euphemistically, the “military arm” of Hezbollah a terrorist organization) have done.  We’re getting, for instance, things like the following.

The European Union’s Catherine Ashton, High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (!), says,

The terrorists who planned and carried out the Burgas attack must be brought to justice…the High Representative underlines the need for a reflection over the outcome of (Bulgaria’s) investigation.

She can’t say the word “Hezbollah,” and since it was only Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian (the bus driver) who died, there’s still time, and need, to “reflect” on the meaning of the murders.

EU Counter-Terrorism Coordinator Gilles de Kerchove, expanded on this reluctance:

There is no automatic listing just because you have been behind a terrorist attack…It’s not only the legal requirement that you have to take into consideration, it’s also a political assessment of the context and the timing.

It’s true enough that terrorist butchery has political overtones in the terrorists’ purposes, but responses to such murders have no politics at all involved—there are only morality and the duty of a government to protect its citizens.

Former French intelligence official Claude Moniquet adds

Calling it terrorist would limit France’s ties with Beirut and put French targets and personnel in Lebanon at risk of retaliation.  The Bulgarian report doesn’t alter this realpolitik. There were always plenty of smoking guns.

It’s important to avoid annoying terrorists, lest the latter turn their ire on us.  And there’s the standard offer of excuses for this carpet knightery.

Even the newspapers seem more interested in ducking and covering than in meaningful response.  Sylke Tempel, editor of the German magazine Internationale Politik, told the New York Times,

There’s the overall fear if we’re too noisy about this, Hezbollah might strike again, and it might not be Israeli tourists this time.

There it is again: don’t offend the terrorists; they might hurt us next.

All of this reminds me of Spain’s withdrawal from the war on al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan in direct response to a terror bombing of a Madrid railroad station.

Indeed, Europe’s reluctance to angrify Hezbollah is an old and venerable policy.  Spiegel International Online notes (the first link above),

For decades, European governments have preferred to avoid confrontation with Hezbollah as long as its terrorism was not directed at continental targets.  In spite of a 1983 Beirut bombing that killed 58 French peacekeepers and 241 American Marines, deadly attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets in Buenos Aires in 1992 and 1994 (which Argentine prosecutors pinned on the group), and its military support for the embattled Syrian regime of Bashar Assad (whom the EU has repeatedly called upon to step down), Brussels has resisted naming Hezbollah a terrorist outfit.

The problem is that this timidity does not affect only Europe.  Like paying the kidnapper’s ransom, it puts the rest of us at risk, also.  It rewards the terrorists for their actions rather than contributing to their destruction.

Progressive Gun Control Agenda

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Here are some of their thoughts.  A more complete listing of their proposals is at The Dailey Caller:

Reinstate and strengthen a prospective federal ban on assault weapons: These weapons are designed to fire a large number of rounds in a short period of time.  They constitute a lethal threat to law enforcement and other first responders.

This is…foolish.  There is no such thing as an “assault” weapon, other than a carefully manufactured-by-legislation definition.  Not even the military has “assault weapons.”

Moreover, the threat to law enforcement and first responders from this sort of mythical weapon, or the semiautomatic rifles on which this mythology is purported to be modeled, is far less than is the threat of pistols, knives, clubs, fire (especially when responding to arson fires), drunk drivers, and so on.  This excuse fixes a nonexistent problem.

Reinstate a prospective federal ban on assault magazines: These magazines hold more than ten rounds and allow a shooter to inflict mass damage in a short period of time without reloading. Banning them will save lives.

This, too, is nonsense.  There is no such thing as an “assault magazine,” other than a carefully manufactured-by-legislation definition.  Here, too, even the military has no such things.

Moreover, the threat to lives from these artifices pales compared to the real causes of killings, some of which were enumerated just above.

Both of these, also are useful—critically so—in allowing private citizens to defend themselves.

There are these, too:

Require a background check for every gun sale, while respecting reasonable exceptions for cases such as gifts between family members and temporary loans for sporting purposes: It is estimated that four out of ten gun buyers do not go through a background check when purchasing a firearm because federal law only requires these checks when someone buys a gun from a federally licensed dealer.

The rest of this item is a red herring; I’ll ignore it here.  Four out of ten sales don’t go through a background check because they’re private sales from one citizen to another.  With the cost of a background check running to hundreds of dollars, this serves only to suppress those private sales.  On top of this, requiring a background check for a private sale represents an atrocious invasion of privacy for the purchaser by the seller—even if the seller has no intention of the invasion other than an arbitrary, superfluous law requires it.

Strengthen the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) database: Immediate action is needed to ensure the information in the NICS database is up to date.  Many federal and state agencies remain deficient in transferring important records to the database.

No.  This is simply Progressives demanding government compile dossiers on honest American citizens on the off chance that a small number might prove unsavory.  This is nothing more than a presumption of guilt without due process—without even probable cause.  The United States isn’t France.

Some of their thoughts are on the right track, though.

Pass legislation aimed specifically at cracking down on illegal gun trafficking and straw-purchasing: Straw-purchasing is when a prohibited buyer has someone with no criminal history walk into a gun store, pass a background check and purchase a gun with the purpose of giving it to the prohibited buyer.

Nice idea, but it’s not necessary, and we already have too many mostly redundant laws on the books.  And the areas of non-overlap are nothing more than sources of confusion and litigation.  Moreover, this is a law honored in the breach, as DoJ’s Fast and Furious illustrates.

Prosecute those prohibited buyers who attempt to purchase firearms and others who violate federal firearm laws: Federal law bars nine categories of people—including felons and those prohibited because of mental illness—from buying guns.

Absolutely, enforce the laws on the books, including applying the sanctions the laws supply.

Close the holes in our mental-health system and make sure that care is available for those who need it: Congress must improve prevention, early intervention, and treatment of mental illness while working to eliminate the stigma associated with mental illness.

This is on the right track, but government involvement must be absolutely minimal.  In the Soviet Union, the government defined disagreeing with the government as a form of mental illness.  We don’t need the USSR’s gulag reborn here.

Support responsible gun ownership: Congress should support safety training, research aimed at developing new gun safety technologies and the safe storage of firearms.

Certainly. As soon as Congress has reformed our tax code to simplify it and lower rates in parallel with greatly reduced Federal spending, so our economy can finally recover and we as a nation can afford this sort of expenditure.  At that point, Congress should begin jawboning with the States to do this sort of thing.

Given the active interference with individual freedom and responsibility represented by those first few items, though, I have to ask: what problem are the Progressives actually trying to solve—disarming the population they wish to govern, or reducing violence?

Washington, DC

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Washington[.] It’s a wonderful world, a place where every problem of life can be reduced to just two words.  Gun control.  Immigration reform.  Climate control.  The deficit, which of course can be solved in two words: a “balanced approach.”  Things so hard haven’t been so simple since Tinker Bell taught children to fly in “Peter Pan,” also with two words—pixie dust.

I was tempted to file this under my Humor key word.  But Daniel Henninger is as deadly serious as the disconnect this quote describes.