We Protest School...err...Immigration Policy!

1. I agree with Michelle Malkin about the affect of the protests. Unwittingly these walk outs will only help push the reforms that they are protesting (to the extent that they even know what they are protesting). This same thing happened in the mid '90s with prop 187 in California (that sought to deny social services to illegals). As memory serves, the measure was pretty close in the polls; that is until there were similar walk outs with thousands of students waiving flags and stopping traffic. The front page of the LA times had a 16 yr old hoodlum on the front page with a huge Mexican flag running down the middle of the street. I and many others knew that day, that 187 would pass. It would pass because those images symbolize everything that actual voters in this state actually fear. These walk outs are counter productive to their own interests and do not trigger sympathy but rather fear and outrage from those who actually have political power in this country. These protests will more likely lead to the opposite of what these students want (assuming most of them really want anything but an excuse to skip class thinly veiled as a principled stand).

2. Second, I fully agree with Dennis Prager's comment that the flaunting of the Mexican flag is simply ingratitude and there is nothing worse than an ingrate. The parents of these students fled the corruption, poverty, disease, and chaos of Mexico for the opportunities, stability, wealth, and order of the United States. Yet they celebrate the country whose ruling elite would rather engage in graft than provide a stable and prosperous society for their own citizens? Ingratitude is a very ugly thing and most Americans will not stand for it.

3. I have seen some talking heads on TV say silly things like this is the maturation of the Mexican political movement in the US. There is nothing mature or sophisticated about mobilizing teenagers to skip class. They are not voters, they will not impact voters (except to vote against them) and they will not be taken seriously. To impact this system one needs to build sustained grass roots organizations that can put pressure on government at all levels for years, even decades. These walk outs are not evidence of this. That being said, some day these students will be voters, and the hispanic vote is growing and that is something that in time cannot be ignored. But these students are not hispanic voters nor do they represent them.

4. On the Hispanic vote. The good news is that these protestors are still a minority of the hispanic community. Hispanic voters are often conservative on social issues but trend liberal on economic issues. Even on immigration, while most of them would be for more liberal policies, more than one would think favor tightening border security. For instance one recent survey found that 56% of hispanics favor maintaining or reducing immigration levels, but not increasing. Also 53% of latino voters favor laws denying drivers licenses to illegals. Also 55% believe they have to speak English and 79% believe they have to believe in the US Constitution to be considered American. High numbers also believed that moral values and the war on terror were important policy issues. My point is that these punk students do not represent most of the more responsible hispanics (legal or illegal) in this country. I also believe in the historical ability of American culture to assimilate those who come to our country (that is provided that we can actually control the amount of people that come at any one time).

5. In my view there is only one responsible party on the issue of the war on terror and only one party that recognizes the serious threat that radical Islam truly is. If that party is to maintain power, they must find a way to address security issues at the border. Meaning they must close it and control it. And they must do so without alienating hispanic voters with nativistic rhetoric or unreasonable policies, because a significant proportion of those hispanic voters could be allies (and increasingly so) in sustaining a political coalition. Republicans must maintain a winning political coalition well into the future; a coalition that will in turn allow Republicans to continue to fight the war on terror, rather than denying it exists as their opponents do. Hispanics must increasingly be considered part of this coalition an can be if the issue is handled correctly.

I believe Republicans must focus first and foremost on closing and controlling the borders and do so primarily for security purposes. That is the single most threating problem in terms of security and immigration. If this is not done then there is no reason to discuss any other programs guest worker or otherwise. However, I would not rule out such programs if the border were truly controlled.

Christmas Time at the Supreme Court

It is Christmas time at the ol' SC. Yes Christmas in spring. This is the time that the court starts handing down its decisions that it heard in the fall. What makes it particularly interesting this year is we will begin to see glimpses of just what we got in John Roberts and to a lesser extent Sam Alito (only because he participated in fewer cases). It will be like unwrapping Christmas presents and seeing exactly what President Bush and the Senate gave us citizens. Will it be someone who upholds the rule of law and the written fixed nature of the Constitution or will they turn out to be one or two more "squishy" judges who enjoy altering the Constitutional text on a whim as fits their personal views of justice or societal standards.

Take a look at Georgia v. Fitzgerald which recently came down. Check out Robert's dissent, it is very promising. Scalia and Thomas are worth reading as well.

There is a point of caution in this case...yet again Kennedy drifted to the left on this case...I predict and fear that he is moving solidly into the Souter, Ginsberg, Stevens, Breyer camp...I would be surprised if he were a vote to overturn current abortion laws on future cases. That still leaves the Roe majority in place with 5 votes if I am reading tea leaves correctly.

THE CASE: The case involved whether or not an "unreasonable" search was conducted by police when the wife agreed they could search the premises but the husband refused. The Police entered on the wifes permission and found drugs and the husband was convicted.

THE MAJORITY: The Majority ruled that this was an unreasonable search because "widely shared social expectations" should govern police conduct here. They argue that if a welcome is mixed then social expectations should dictate that a guest would stay out. As such this search was "unreasonable" and violated the husband's constitutional rights.

ROBERTS DISSENT (excerpts):
The Court creates constitutional law by surmising what is typical when a social guest encounters an entirely atypical situation. The rule...provides protection on a random and happenstance basis, protecting, for example, a co-occupant who happens to be at the front door when the other occupant consents to a search, but not one napping or watching television in the next room. And the cost of affording such random protection is great, as demonstrated by the recurring cases in which abused spouses seek to authorize police entry into a home they share with a nonconsenting abuser.

...

This exception is based on what the majority describes as “widely shared social expectations” that “when people living together disagree over the use of their common quarters, a resolution must come through voluntary accommodation.” Ante, at 6, 9. But this fundamental predicate to the majority’s analysis gets us nowhere: Does the objecting cotenant accede to the consenting cotenant’s wishes, or the other way around? The majority’s assumption about voluntary accommodation simply leads to the common stalemate of two gentlemen insisting that the other enter a room first.

Nevertheless, the majority is confident in assuming—confident enough to incorporate its assumption into the Constitution—that an invited social guest who arrives at the door of a shared residence, and is greeted by a disagreeable co-occupant shouting “ ‘stay out,’ ” would simply go away.

...

The fact is that a wide variety of differing social situations can readily be imagined, giving rise to quite different social expectations. A relative or good friend of one of two feuding roommates might well enter the apartment over the objection of the other roommate. The reason the invitee appeared at the door also affects expectations: A guest who came to celebrate an occupant’s birthday, or one who had traveled some distance for a particular reason, might not readily turn away simply because of a roommate’s objection. The nature of the place itself is also pertinent: Invitees may react one way if the feuding roommates share one room, differently if there are common areas from which the objecting roommate could readily be expected to absent himself. Altering the numbers might well change the social expectations: Invitees might enter if two of three co-occupants encourage them to do so, over one dissenter.

The possible scenarios are limitless, and slight variations in the fact pattern yield vastly different expectations about whether the invitee might be expected to enter or to go away. Such shifting expectations are not a promising foundation on which to ground a constitutional rule, particularly because the majority has no support for its basic assumption—that an invited guest encountering two disagreeing co-occupants would flee—beyond a hunch about how people would typically act in an atypical situation.

I will post more on this decision as I digest it...

Our Interconnected World

Victor Davis Hanson has an interesting postmortem on the Ports deal...

In retrospect, America went collectively insane over the possibility that a company owned by Dubai's government would operate several of our ports.

Rarely has reason been so routed by pure emotion. Dubai is a Westernizing state that long ago left the 8th century and accepts the modern world of globalized commerce and finance. This member of the United Arab Emirates has — especially after Sept. 11 — passed on intelligence, hosted our fleet and provided a foothold in the Gulf near Iraq and Iran.

No doubt some members of its extended government, as is true of many of the monarchies of the Gulf, have triangulated against the United States. But then so have China, Russia and most of Europe.Yet if we are going to win this war against radical Islam, it will be through drawing the Arab world into the global system of Western jurisprudence, politics and business. The perceived defamation of a proven Arab consortium only hurts our cause.

To understand the fiasco, we must allot blame to almost everyone involved. A Republican administration — almost daily accused of talking down to "the people" — somehow feels no need to reveal how its own familiar world of transnational corporations works. Much less does anyone up on Olympus explain to us mere mortals below why our long-term strategic interests would remain safe with ports owned by Dubai's government.

The result of still more of this Harriet-Meyers "trust me" approach is that the ports deal is pilloried as near traitorous by prairie-fire conservative talk radio, blogs and cable news. The administration apparently never thought that the hyped caricature of Arabs guiding cranes on our docks was going to provide good fodder.

Meanwhile, the Democrats, who have lectured us ad nauseam about ethnic stereotyping, couldn't resist the political opening. So they jettisoned this old sensitivity to score jingoist points by suggesting that an Arab fifth column could, in theory, gain control of our ports.It was surreal to hear Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., the multicultural guru, lecture us about the dangers of these Gulf middlemen — even as her huckstering husband advised the United Arab Emirates how to finesse the American Congress.

The American public was supposedly outraged that an Arab country would oversee the operation of its major ports. Yet did we have a clue that a Chinese company took over operation of Panama Canal ports during the Clinton administration? Do most realize that the People's Republic has amassed such a pile of U.S. dollars that it soon will control the very financial solvency of the United States?

If we are truly worried about autonomy, consider that our entire southern border with Mexico is nearly wide open. Or that former politicians like Vin Weber and Bob Dole (who also has a wife in the Senate) get richer thanks to their connections to Gulf State sheikdoms.

For a country that is addicted to imported petroleum, hooked on cheap imported goods, and eager for illegal alien labor, and which has hundreds of military bases abroad, it is a little late to worry about dangerous foreign ganglia.The port deal reveals deeper pathologies than the hypocrisy of our politicians and ignorance of the public. A now hyper-media is fueled by a 24-hour news cycle — regardless of whether there is enough earth-shattering news to justify thousands of salaried telejournalists. And 2006 is an election year, in which Democrats see advantage and Republicans fear losses.

But more importantly, the Dubai port deal shows how at odds are American perceptions and reality. For the last half-century, we have been living in a complex interconnected world of mutual reliance. Soon we will import more food than we grow. We already burn more oil than we pump. For years we have bought more than we export, and we borrow far more than we lend. To justify these precarious dependencies, America assures foreign business leaders, investors and lenders that our markets remain open and immune to the distortions of xenophobia and provincialism.

Americans may not like that devil's bargain, but it was made long ago and, for better or worse, we are long past being an agrarian republic. The resulting singular affluence of the American consumer derives from just these tradeoffs in our autonomy — and the trust we receive from those who loan and sell us things we cannot immediately pay for. So rejecting the Dubai port deal is not only hypocritical, but in the end dumb.