No More Self-Delusion on Immigration Policy

Michelle Malkin reminds us how quickly sound, successful public policy can be derailed by politicians.

In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Bush administration created NSEERS, the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System.

Administered and championed by Justice Department constitutional lawyer, immigration enforcement expert and now-Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, NSEERS stopped at least 330 known foreign criminals and three known terrorists who had attempted to come into the country at certain official ports of entry.  NSEERS required higher scrutiny and common-sense registration requirements for individuals from jihad-friendly countries ...

That higher scrutiny included 30 extra minutes of interviewing at ports of entry, digital fingerprint checks, and verification of exiting the country, as well as registration and monitoring of temporary visa holders. In addition to blocking unfriendly visitors, NSEERS also resulted in "the apprehension of dozens of illegal alien felons."

Once in office, however, the Obama administration

...indefinitely suspended the NSEERS pilot program and has no plans to revive it in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings."

Now the Gang of Eight Republicans want conservatives to jump in bed with these security saboteurs for another Amnesty Now, Enforcement Never plan? Who’s [Senator Marco] Rubio kidding? Only himself.

It is hard to argue with Malkin on this point. This administration has made no secret of its desire to overhaul immigration policy and make citizens—and voters—of illegal foreign nationals currently in the U.S. Yet given Obama's record on NSEERS and other immigration policies already in place, it seems all too likely that, if comprehensive immigration reform is passed, Mr. Obama will permanently get his millions of new citizen voters, and any promised future prevention and enforcement policies will be temporary at best.

Boston Terrorists Funded by Welfare

"The Tsarnaev family, including the suspected terrorists and their parents, benefited from more than $100,000 in taxpayer-funded assistance — a bonanza ranging from cash and food stamps to Section 8 housing from 2002 to 2012," reports the Boston Herald. "'The breadth of the benefits the family was receiving was stunning', said a person with knowledge of documents handed over to a legislative committee today."

A life of relative ease gave them time and opportunity to go radical and deadly. And we wonder why so many American taxpayers want to slam the door on easy immigration—and welfare—policy?

Polls: Give us Liberty over Security

"According to a pair of recent polls [Washington Post & Fox], for the first time since the 9/11 terrorist hijackings, Americans are more fearful their government will abuse constitutional liberties than fail to keep its citizens safe," reports WND.

A Fox News survey polling a random national sample of 619 registered voters the day after the bombing found despite the tragic event, those interviewed responded very differently than following 9/11.

For the first time since a similar question was asked in May 2001, more Americans answered “no” to the question, “Would you be willing to give up some of your personal freedom in order to reduce the threat of terrorism?”

Parker: How Abortion Has Changed America

"Let’s be clear that pro-aborts and pro-lifers differ on far more than technicalities about when life begins. They differ about what life is," writes Star Parker.

20-week baby in utero (WEBMD)

In the state of Pennsylvania, where Gosnell was doing his dirty business, abortion is legal until the developing child is 24 weeks - 6 months - old. Among Gosnell’s many transgressions was performing abortions after 24 weeks.

But Planned Parenthood, and their guest speaker, our president, oppose that 24-week limit. They believe abortion should be legal until the child is born.

[snip]

Justice Kennedy, who wrote the [Partial Birth Abortion Ban] decision, included a description of one of these procedures on a 26-week-old infant. It takes a certain deadening of the heart, of the soul to read the description of the little baby clasping his fingers and toes as the doctor jams his scissors into his skull, and still believe this should be permitted.

Since Roe v Wade, we’ve given birth to a new materialistic culture of narcissism where reverence for life itself is gone. Life has become a commodity and people use each other as cavalierly as they destroy innocent young life.

As our reverence for life has diminished, so has our reverence for the institutions that surround and support it.

Scholars at the Brookings Institution observed in 1996 that Roe v Wade contributed to the collapse of marriage and the dramatic increase in out-of-wedlock births. The idea that children were part of a sacred institution called marriage started disappearing.

The sense of honor, the sense of shame disappears in this culture of self.

Deliberately Delaying Flights

"Extortion in the Skies" is how columnist Debra Saunders describes the FAA's 'sequester' cuts causing unnecessary flight cancellations and delays for many travelers. The Obama administration's response to complaints: If you don't like it, make Congress raise more taxes. But, argues Saunders,

...it's not as if these folks haven't paid taxes. Taxes and fees on domestic travel can represent some 20 percent of the cost of a ticket. The flying public gets to pay the full freight and in return gets deliberately slowed-down traffic.

At least cartoonists are finding humor in the administration's childish behavior.

Hawkins: Abolishing Abortion in Our Lifetime

Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life, recently spoke with the Conservative Women's Network about the work of her organization is doing through chapters on 700+ college campuses.

Abortionist Gosnell Means Libs Lose their 'War Against Women'

Remember the 'war against women' ... and the 'women's health' mantra? Both were blown to bits, argues Noemie Emery, by the Grand Jury's report on abortionist Kermit Gosnell: "one patient 'was left lying in place after Gosnell tore her cervix and colon,' another 'was held for several hours after Gosnell punctured her uterus' ... a third 'went into convulsions ... fell off the procedure table, and hit her head on the floor.'

All this was covered up or ignored by pro-choice supporters, by the state, and by a representative of the National Abortion Federation who inspected the clinic, was disgusted.

Other clinics knew Gosnell's reputation and referred clients to him, the health of women being less important than the unfettered right to abort past delivery. Any "choice" advocate who uses the word "health" in this context after these horrors deserves to be stoned off the stage.

Juggling Work and Family

Two recent articles, both by feminists, suggest contemporary feminism is struggling to find its way. In Female Ivy League Graduates Have a Duty to Stay in the Workforce, Keli Goff posits an extreme view, arguing women have a greater obligation to their gender, and those who wish to be wives and mothers should stay out of Ivy League schools entirely:

There's nothing wrong with someone saying that her dream is to become a full-time mother by 30. That is an admirable goal. What is not admirable is for her to take a slot at Yale Law School that could have gone to a young woman whose dream is to be in the Senate by age 40 and in the White House by age 50.

In Why Women Should Embrace the Good Enough Life, Elsa Walsh argues that the periodic "discussion about women and feminism, work and family" has become "a narrow conversation, centered largely on work, as though feminism is about nothing more than becoming a smart and productive employee and rising to the top."

Parenthood and family are much more central to our lives than this conversation lets on. The debate has become twisted and simplistic, as if we’re merely trying to figure out how women can become more like men. Instead, let’s ask: How can women have full lives, not just one squeezed around a career? It helps to take a longer view of a woman’s life...

Walsh offers a bit more conservative advice to her own daughter based on that longer view.

Bikini ... or Not

"Most U.S. women will be wearing modest one-piece swinsuits this summer," notes the U.K. Mail Online, reporting these findings of a poll of 2,321 American women by a money-saving coupon website: 53% will choose a one-piece suit, 29% a tankini, and 18% a bikini. The study found that 82% of us don't think we have "the perfect beach body," so we purchase swimwear based on how flattering it is to our body shape.

Katie Pavlich Takes Firearms Safety Academy

Townhall editor and Institute campus speaker Katie Pavlich (pictured below) is taking a multi-day firearms safety training course in Arizona, and she posts these informative articles about her experience:

Welcome to Gunsite Academy: The Truth About the AR-15
Day One at Gunsite: All About the Basics
Gunsite Day Two: Fighting Out of a Threat
Defensive Pistol: We Will Teach You How to Save Your Life
Why Do We Need High Capacity Magazines? To Stop the Bad Guys

Slapping the 'Bitter Clinger' Label on Liberals

"Mr. Obama's remark about rural Pennsylvanians clinging to guns and religion is the coin of the realm in his crowd," writes Daniel Henninger in the WSJ.

But let's put their shared consensus another way: Somehow it became a conventional view in contemporary American politics that it is non-urban conservatives who in every case have to accommodate their beliefs to a national culture created by people who live somewhere else. "They" must adjust on abortion, guns, school prayer, sexual mores and all the rest of it. Liberals, meanwhile, not only feel no need to concede anything but use the commanding heights of the press and academia to define anyone who dissents from their ever-evolving national culture as a political fringe obsessed with people, one might say, who aren't like them.

Not Such a Feminist Paradise

"Sweden seems to be an egalitarian, feminist utopia. So why are American women so far ahead of their Swedish counterparts in breaking through the glass ceiling?" asks Christina Hoff Sommers in a well-documented article in AEI's The American this month.

Sweden has the kind of very generous 'family friendly' policies that American liberals dream of, including:

• a 16-month leave policy for new parents — male and female; and
• a parental right to work only part-time (at a reduced salary) until his or her child is 8 years old.

But it turns out that even in the feminist paradise state, women take advantage of the policies (the mommy track) while men stay focused on the career track. In 2012, Swedish officials reported 1 in 3 women (33%) took the part-time parental work option, compared to only 1 in 10 men (10%). Not surprising, women hold fewer high-level jobs than men, too.

Sommers cites the following findings of two major recent studies on the impact of 'family friendly' work policies on women: 

• Swedish-style 'family friendly' work policies "make employers wary of hiring women for full-time positions at all."
• European "broad-based welfare state policies impede women's representation in elite competitive positions."

With fewer welfare-state work policies than Europe, the United States is a better environment for women who want to break the glass ceiling. Writes Sommers:

Truth About Abortion Makes Media Sick, Silent

"Infant beheadings. Severed baby feet in jars. A child screaming after it was delivered alive during an abortion procedure. Haven't heard about these sickening accusations? It's not your fault," writes liberal commentator Kirsten Powers in USA Today. "Since the murder trial of Pennsylvania abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell began March 18, there has been precious little coverage of the case that should be on every news show and front page. The revolting revelations of Gosnell's former staff, who have been testifying to what they witnessed and did during late-term abortions, should shock anyone with a heart."

Powers lambastes the mainstream press for ignoring the Gosnell murder trial.

NBC-10 Philadelphia reported that, Stephen Massof, a former Gosnell worker, "described how he snipped the spinal cords of babies, calling it, 'literally a beheading. It is separating the brain from the body." One former worker, Adrienne Moton, testified that Gosnell taught her his "snipping" technique to use on infants born alive.

Massof, who, like other witnesses, has himself pleaded guilty to serious crimes, testified "It would rain fetuses. Fetuses and blood all over the place." Here is the headline the Associated Press put on a story about his testimony that he saw 100 babies born and then snipped: "Staffer describes chaos at PA abortion clinic."

"Chaos" isn't really the story here. Butchering babies that were already born and were older than the state's 24-week limit for abortions is the story. There is a reason the late Democratic senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan called this procedure infanticide.

She doesn't let the abortion industry off the hook, either.

Planned Parenthood recently claimed that the possibility of infants surviving late-term abortions was "highly unusual." The Gosnell case suggests otherwise.

Regardless of such quibbles, about whether Gosnell was killing the infants one second after they left the womb instead of partially inside or completely inside the womb — as in a routine late-term abortion — is merely a matter of geography. That one is murder and the other is a legal procedure is morally irreconcilable.

The truth is that the Gosnell trial makes everyone sick. (The full Grand Jury report is here, but don't read it on a full stomach.) In the end the only differences in the barbarianism of the Boston Marathon terrorist and Kermit Gosnell are the ages of their slaughtered victims and the duration of their atrocities (Gosnell has been doing his evil deeds for 40 years).

Concludes Powers: "The deafening silence of too much of the media, once a force for justice in America, is a disgrace."

Thatcher's Lessons for Conservatives Today

Britain was an economic disaster. Its conservative party had lost and was divided. Enter Margaret Thatcher, and "the world changed because of it," explains Ben Domenech:

Ted Heath, the Mitch McConnell of his day, had won the Prime Ministership stressing more free market views, but then embarked on all sorts of disconcerting steps: income and price controls, dropping his labor union reforms like a hot rock, subsidies for industry cronies, nationalizing Rolls Royce. Thatcher was originally seen as a Heath acolyte within the Tory wing, given a cabinet position in Education – but the distance between them grew, and she became closer to fellow Cabinet member Keith Joseph, forming a tiny band of back benchers disagreeing with the aims of the party leadership. She did not oppose him or undermine leadership publicly, but she was careful to keep this cronyist approach to industry-driven governance at arm’s length.

Heath’s approach failed at the ballot box. After losing the election in 1974 ... he took it as a sign that the Tories had to move leftward in order to adapt to the opinions of the nation. Thatcher disagreed, and that made all the difference. When Joseph announced that he would challenge Heath for party leadership, Thatcher was the only Cabinet member to endorse him; when Joseph was forced to withdraw (thanks to demography comments implying the working class really ought to consider using birth control more regularly...), he was forced to withdraw. So Thatcher insisted she would run.

She won party leadership"on the first ballot."

That’s all fine, the press said at the time. But this was leadership of a down in the dumps party, one out of step with the populace. The dominant assumption was that she would have to moderate to become acceptable to the British people. She did not. Instead, she repackaged conservative principles with a message of common sense and optimism, attacking nonsensical regulation, union dominance, and high taxes with verve. She promised hope and growth, not dour austerity, and insisted that acceptance of a nation in decline was a choice, not an inevitability.

She won [the general election]. And the world changed because of it.

Margaret Thatcher, RIP

We join so many others mourning the death of Britain's first and only woman prime minister, Baroness Margaret Thatcher (pictured with Luce Institute president Michelle Easton in June 2010).

Dubbed the "Iron Lady" by a Russian journalist for her staunch opposition to communism and the Soviet Union, Lady Thatcher was a formidable free-market conservative who successfully fought the socialist trend in her own nation, crushing union strangleholds and privatizing "vast swaths of British industry" that had been taken over by government. She "transformed a nation in one decade," reported one news service today, "putting Briton back among the leading industrial nations of the world."  (For a review of her considerable achievements, read "A Heroine and a Hate Figure — for Better or Worse Baroness Thatcher Remade our Nation.")

We collected some of our favorite video clips of her in tribute below, and it is followed by a few samples of her wit and wisdom as quoted in Statecraft.


"Whether manufactured by black, white, brown or yellow hands, a widget remains a widget, and it will be bought anywhere if the price and quality are right. The market is a more powerful and more reliable liberating force than government can ever be."

"The larger the slice taken by govenrment, the smaller the cake available for everyone."

"When all the objectives of govenrment include the achievement of equality — other than equality before the law — that government poses a threat to liberty."

"The accumulation of wealth is a process which is of itself morally neutral. True, as Christianity teaches, riches bring temptations. But then so does poverty."

"Socialist have always spent much of their time seeking new titles for their beliefs, because the old versions so quickly become outdated and discredited."

"Individualism has come in for an enormous amount of criticism over the years. It still does. It is widely assumed to be synonymous with selfishness. ... But the main reason why so many people in power have always disliked individualism is because it is individualists who are ever keenest to prevent the abuse of authority."

Guns and Crime

In this Virtual State of the Union, the Virtual President talks about why politicians prefer to talk about gun control rather than crime control:



For more of Bill Whittle's wisdom, check out his Afterburner channel.

Cheney: Start Fighting Back, Conservatives!

President Reagan warned that we are always one generation away from losing freedom in America. Liz Cheney argues it will be lost much sooner if conservatives don't get back in the fight, and she doesn't mean 'moving left'.

The president has launched a war on Americans' Second Amendment rights. He has launched a war on religious freedom. He has launched a war on fossil fuels. He is working to nationalize one-sixth of the economy with job-killing ObamaCare. He wants to collect a greater portion of every American paycheck, not for the purpose of paying down the national debt but to expand his governing machine. He doesn't believe in creating a bigger pie with more opportunity for all. He believes in greater redistribution of a much smaller pie. If you're unsure of what this America would look like, google "Cyprus" or "Greece."
...
We are conservatives. We believe in limited government, low taxes, a strong national defense, individual freedoms, self-reliance, the importance of the family, and the miracle and authority of America's founding documents. We know that government is best that governs least and governs closest to the people. We know that the private sector is the engine of economic growth. We know that America is the exceptional nation, the best that has ever existed. We know that the men and women who wear the uniform of the U.S. military are the greatest fighting force and the greatest force for good that the world has ever known. We know that preventing this president from enacting devastating policies is not obstructionism. It is patriotism.

Read the full piece in the Wall Street Journal.

Hillsdale's Online Courses

Don't know much about the Constitution? ...Western Civilization?  ...American history? Hillsdale College can fix that with their on-line courses at no cost to you (a donation is invited if you can, but not required). Just register at their website to join their current American Heritage--From Colonial Settlement to the Reagan Revolution course in progress, or begin with one of their earlier courses:

• History 101—Western Heritage—From the Book of Genesis to John Locke
• Constitution 201—The Progressive Rejection of the Founding and the Rise of Bureaucratic Despotism
• Constitution 101—The Meaning and History of the Constitution

Where You Live Matters

While others theorize about the effects of public policies on our lives, William Ruger and Jason Sorens did the hard work of calculating them. "States that protect more of their residents' freedoms and make it easier to run businesses enjoy a steady inflow of people from more burdensome ones. They also enjoy higher personal income growth," conclude the authors in the new report, Freedom in the 50 States.

We score all 50 states on over 200 policies encompassing fiscal policy, regulatory policy, and personal freedom. We weight public policies according to the estimated costs that government restrictions on freedom impose on their victims.

The online version of the report is interactive, enabling you to select and weigh the factors important to you to rank the states.

We happily concede that different people value aspects of freedom differently. You can personalize the ranking and pick and choose which aspects of freedom you value and see how the states stack up.

The top ten states in overall freedom ranking of personal and economic freedoms are:

1. North Dakota
2. South Dakota
3. Tennessee
4. New Hampshire
5. Oklahoma
6. Idaho
7. Missouri
8. Virginia
9. Georgia
10. Utah 

The report was published by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.