Tag Archives: politics

More on Birthright Citizenship

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Jed Rubenfeld, Professor of Law at Yale Law School, had an op-ed in Sunday’s Wall Street Journal in support of the concept of birthright citizenship. In it, he hung his hat on the “visitor” aspect of our Constitution’s 14th Amendment jurisdiction phrasing.

The 14th Amendment guarantees citizenship to everyone “born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” The opacity of the “jurisdiction” language allows reasonable people to land on either side of this issue. But in 19th-century legal usage, being “subject to the jurisdiction” of the US had a long-settled, straightforward meaning. As Chief Justice John Marshall explained in Schooner Exchange v McFaddon (1812), it meant being subject to US law.
Could you be prosecuted in an American court and imprisoned in an American jail for violating American law? If so, you were subject to US jurisdiction.

That “vulnerable to prosecution and jail” means “subject to US law” is at the core of the misunderstanding here (I’m eliding the question of whether a then-56-yr-old “settled meaning” remained settled after the 14th Amendment was ratified), including to birth tourism—whereby a pregnant woman enters the US for the express and sole purpose of giving birth on US soil so as to garner citizenship for her baby, after which the now-mother leaves with her baby to return to her home nation. Such “visitors,” while so subject, are not subject to US jurisdiction, but only to US government power and authority.

Birth tourists subject themselves only to some of our laws—that small subset of them that lets them enter our nation legally and then avail themselves of our medical-related duty of care laws. They otherwise remain within the control of their home nation laws and so retain the jurisdiction of their home countries, to which they fully intend to return as soon as they’re able to travel after giving birth. They’re holding themselves apart from and outside of our nation’s full and complete jurisdiction—which is what our 14th Amendment requires, even for birth tourists.

Illegal aliens go even farther: they hold themselves completely outside our jurisdiction by holding themselves completely outside our laws: they’ve disregarded our laws from the outset by their entering illegally. They render themselves subject only to the power of our government even as they, too, are subject prosecution and jail—or deportation.

This misunderstanding by Rubenfeld (and others) expands on the matter:

When a foreign army invades and conquers another country’s territory, that land becomes subject to the conquering country’s laws.

Not at all. That conquered territory becomes subject only to the conquering country’s power and ability to impose its laws. Even as long ago as Emer de Vattel, in his The Law of Nations, this was well understood.

The Left’s repeated ignoring of these simple facts does not make those facts nonexistent.

Unfortunately (cynically?), Rubenfeld, like others pushing this argument, leave wholly unaddressed those last.

Another Reason Why…

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…no member of the Progressive-Democratic Party can be trusted in any way. Elizabeth Warren (D, MA), for instance, in her letter to Businessman Elon Musk, who’s working the additional duty [sic:] of pro bono member of DOGE’s leadership, claimed that:

American taxpayers will shoulder the burden of tax cuts for Tesla, and they deserve answers about your efforts to secure massive tax breaks for billionaire corporations[.]

Here are some facts underlying Tesla’s income tax liability:

• much of Tesla’s $7.1 billion in net income last year doesn’t come from selling electric vehicles, solar panels, or battery storage
• $2.8 billion came from the sale of regulatory credits to other auto makers that need to comply with government EV mandates
• $1.6 billion in interest income on cash and short-term investment holdings. [Progressive-]Democrats can thank the Biden inflation for allowing companies to earn higher interest on their cash holdings
• Tesla recorded nearly $600 million in book income from price appreciation in its bitcoin holdings, but this is akin to an unrealized capital gain
• [Tesla] lost money every year it was in business from 2003 until 2020. All companies are allowed to carry forward net operating losses to offset future tax liabilities
• [Progressive-Democrats] exempted most net operating losses from the Inflation Reduction Act’s 15% corporate alternative minimum tax, including categories that include Tesla’s loss carry forward
• Tesla recorded $625 million from tax credits for its electric vehicles and $756 million for its solar and energy storage business last year

o these tax credits can also be carried forward to offset future tax liabilities
o Tesla had $1 billion in renewable energy tax credits on its books at the end of last year

Warren, and all of her Party cronies, are well aware of these things. Warren, and her cronies in Party, lie.

Moral Bankruptcy of Some University Managers

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The Trump administration is investigating quite a number of universities over allegations of rampant antisemitism and discrimination generally infesting them. The managers of those institutions are upset, and with their upset, they’re demonstrating their blatant moral bankruptcy.

Administrators, professors and prospective students at major universities across the country are expressing concerns about the future of higher education as the Trump administration restricts funding for DEI and investigates schools for charges of antisemitism.
School officials “are in an impossible situation with facing the unknown as to what may happen down the road,” Ohio University alumni association board member Kim Barlag told The Wall Street Journal.

There’s nothing at all impossible about doing a right thing, nothing at all impossible about moving against the bigotry rampant at those institutions. Many of those institutions’ managers are just sulking and doing the academic equivalent of holding their breath until they turn blue. Typical is this from West Virginia University via its “spokesperson” April Kaull:

[O]ur nation’s research universities cannot maintain research programs essential for continued national prosperity [unless Federal research funding is continued].

This is cynical and disingenuous, and grown adults should know better than to throw a temper tantrum. It’s perfectly straightforward for university managers to do the things promised in those universities’ bragged about policies—free and unfettered enquiry, with freedom of speech and of academics. In fine, stop the antisemitic bigotry, cut out the discrimination on any basis other than plain academic talent and performance, expel those students who routinely violate those tenets, and fire those university personnel—including tenured professors—who violate those tenets. That just takes a modicum of moral courage.

Of course, I’m being generous to suggest these personages are morally bankrupt—that implies that they had morals to begin with. Condoning, or even merely accepting, bigotry—antisemitic, racial, sexist, whathaveyou—demonstrates a complete lack of moral sense.

Another Target for Reduction

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DoJ’s Civil Rights Division is, as ex-AG Eric Holder (D) once bragged, Justice’s “Crown Jewel.”

But that’s only because it’s populated with far-Left lawyers who grew up in the ACLU’s extremist creche. Indeed, as Hans von Spakovsky noted from his time in the division,

Nearly all the career lawyers come from liberal advocacy groups, and all carry in the mindset: “I can do exactly what I was doing for the ACLU, only now with the power of government behind me.”

The division is infamous for its resistance to authority other than its own, which it coalesced out of the æther:

…resistance to direction, even direct orders. Career attorneys refuse to work on cases with which they disagree. Others mulishly take part with the goal of misleading superiors on legal questions or sabotaging cases. Lawyers send letters, make threats or initiate proceedings without sign-off from leadership.

These are bureaucrats who’ve self-selected for RIF as part of the initial round of reduction in personnel. Following that initial culling, the division would benefit, and so would DoJ and more broadly us average American citizens, from a much broader and deeper RIF of personnel and concomitant elimination of all of those job slots.

Here’s hoping Harmeet Dhillon is confirmed and she gets the backing she needs. That reduction in personnel job slots is the first step in quelling the naked revolt in the division and bringing it back under control.

A Modest Proposal

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The Wall Street Journal editors (I seem to have been picking on them lately…) have a modest proposal regarding student debt and forgiveness.

Congress created the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program in 2007. It lets borrowers who work for government or tax-exempt organizations get unpaid debt forgiven after 10 years of payments. Its supposed goal was to help government and nonprofit employers compete with private businesses that can pay more.

The editors correctly note that in the years since its inception, the program has become badly abused and used to reward[] a politically favored group of workers and can make it harder for private businesses to compete. Based on that, the editors recommend the Republican-majority houses of Congress repeal the program altogether.

They’re correct in that, but I’d go a ways farther. Congress should make student loan relief available through our existing bankruptcy laws. Additionally (critically additionally), Congress should take the Federal government out of the student loan business altogether: no more Federal government student loans and no more Federal government guarantees of other lenders’ student loans.

And one more step: require colleges (including junior and community colleges) and universities and trade schools to publish the regionally average salaries and wages for each major the school offers or each trade certification program the trade school offers at the five-years employed mark. Associated with that, those schools should be required to be the ones extending the student loans or be either co-signers or guarantors of other lenders’ loans to their students.

Without the ability to hide behind Other People’s Money in the form of purely third party or Government loans, the abuses likely would screech to a halt.