Tag Archives: political parties

“I’m Confused”

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Here’s an exchange (edited slightly for spacing) between Senator Mazie Hirono (D, HI) and ICE Executive Associate Director for Enforcement and Removal Operations Matthew Albence as the latter testified before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary last Tuesday.

Albence: I think we’re missing the point. These individuals are there because they have broken a law.

Hirono interrupted, insisting that the illegal immigrants being held in the detention centers “have broken a law only as deemed so by” President Donald Trump.

Albence: No, Ma’am—they are there for violation of Title VIII of the US Immigration and Nationality Act, OK?  That’s illegal entry; it’s both a criminal and civil violation. They are in those [detention centers] pending the outcome of that civil immigration process. They have broken the law.

Hirono: My understanding is that under zero tolerance these are no longer civil proceedings, but in fact are criminal proceedings. Is that so?

Albence: They were criminal proceedings when the Border Patrol prosecuted them. But at the conclusion of that process—once the individual came into ICE custody—they would go through administrative proceedings.

Hirono: I’m confused.

That law, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, is 66 years old, and it’s been enforced with varying degrees of diligence for all of those two-thirds of a century.

Hirono knows this.  Her pretended confusion says volumes about her; sadly, it adds not a syllable to any necessary discussion about our immigration laws and the appropriate disposition of those who break them.

Voter Fraud

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Progressive-Democrats like to decry claims of voter fraud, denying the very existence of it and deprecating those who worry about its impact on elections, even as they worry—correctly—about Russian attempts to alter our elections.

However.

Non-American citizens are increasingly found on voter rolls thanks to covert registration methods, with nothing actually stopping them from casting a ballot in an election.

For instance,

Elizaveta Shuvalova, a Russian citizen who became a US citizen only last year, was registered as an eligible voter in 2012 and added to the San Francisco voter rolls, The Washington Times reported.

She was perplexed to find herself in the voter rolls, saying she wasn’t an American citizen and didn’t even register to vote.
…
The woman’s voter log shows that she signed up as a Democrat in July 2012.

It’s not just California [emphasis added].

The Public Interest Legal Foundation…found that nearly 5,600 people on the voter rolls in Virginia were deemed as non-citizens, with a third of them voting in previous elections.

These same Progressive-Democrats object to Voter ID laws, too.

A Next Step

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A step has been taken to mitigate the destructiveness of Obamacare.  A new rule has been promulgated by the Trump administration that will

allow for the proliferation of cheaper, less-comprehensive health plans that have been restricted by the former Obama administration.

Under the rule, actual health insurance plans will be allowed that cover a range of health-related matters that more closely align with a customer’s interests.  These plans also will be good for a year and be renewable for a total of three years, a drastic improvement over Obamacare’s limit of 90 days.  A further improvement of this rule:

The plans don’t have to cover people with pre-existing conditions, and insurers can charge higher premiums based on a consumer’s health status.

This is a good interim step, but more is necessary.  One additional step should be the elimination of the time limit on the duration/renewability of these plans.  What should be available in the health insurance market place should be a market decision—a decision of the buyers and sellers.  Government has nothing legitimate to say in this arena.

No Need to Waste the Time

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…arguing the matter.  In an opinion piece, The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board called out “Tricky Dick Schumer” (their appellation) for his stalling effort centered on his demand for millions of pages of documents from Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s past pursuant to evaluating Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court.  Schumer has said he’ll try to block any discussion of Kavanaugh’s fitness until he gets those millions of docs.  The WSJ also noted that

Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley [R, IA] is trying to work out a document deal with ranking Democrat Dianne Feinstein.

This against the backdrop of

The White House has said it is willing to produce some 80,000 document pages and 200,000 email pages from Mr Kavanaugh’s time in the White House counsel’s office.

The WSJ was too mild, though.  There’s no need for the Senate to go along with the Progressive-Democrats’ hysterical obstructionism.  Grassley should accept the White House’s offer—it’s already larger than what the Progressive-Democrats demanded of then-Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch—and then he should hold the hearings, regardless of Feinstein’s attempts to stall, and hold the committee vote.  After that, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R, KY) should hold the floor vote on Kavanaugh while ignoring Schumer’s attempts to stall.

The Senate has actual work to do; it has no time for the Progressive-Democrats’ childish games or temper tantrums.

There Are Votes

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…and there are votes.  In a Letter to the Editor in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, a writer notes that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez got only about 16,000 votes out of a population of around 700,000—let’s say, with a naïve guess, 175,000 voters and out of a skosh under 28,000 votes actually cast in her primary.

That’s true as far as it goes. However, now she’s getting much more important votes—and lots of them—in the Progressive-Democratic Party as more and more Party members enthusiastically embrace her ideas.  She’s well and truly succeeding in moving the Party toward an outright socialist platform.