More on Immigration

Hot Air takes the anti-Trump side of the question, arguing that the Immigration Act of 1965 makes it illegal to use national origin (the Trump order doesn't, in fact, use religion) as a criterion.

However, 8 U.S. Code § 1182 -- current by an act of 2015 -- holds:

(f) Suspension of entry or imposition of restrictions by President
Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.

This is the sort of thing that courts ordinarily sort out, and I suspect the courts will chew on this one for a while. It may well be that the Congress has passed incompatible laws, which means sorting out which one overrules the other. Still, I expect a vigorous Article II defense from the Trump administration, and even the Supreme Court is only co-equal to the Presidency.

We may be living with this for a while. Good to see that the green card issue, at least, has been sorted out. General Kelly came down on the matter today, and I doubt Trump will buck one of his Marines.

UPDATE: Looks like Trump's base is in no way shocked by this move, as you'd expect given that he campaigned on this for like nine months. One expects that the Quebec mosque shooting will underline the point of wanting to check immigrants carefully -- at least one shooter was from Morocco, which isn't even on Trump's list.

With that plus the pending SCOTUS nomination, the politics of this may settle down. The courts can then do their work in peace.

UPDATE: The Intercept says that the widespread reports that the shooter was Moroccan are false.

UPDATE: The Quebec police now believe the one shooter acted alone, with what news reports are describing as 'two rifles and an AK-47.' I assume they don't know why that's a strange thing to say. Apparently he is a nationalist, which in Quebec means having an intensely French identity.

Oh No, Retaliation

Who Armed ISIS?

Obama and Clinton, says Democratic Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard. She's an Iraq War vet, by the way.

Legal, But Wise?

I don't doubt that Andrew C. McCarthy is right when he says that Trump's exclusion order for terror-involved countries is legal. There is plenty of precedent, even among liberal icons like Obama (who closed the Iraqi refugee program for six months in 2011), Carter (who barred Iranians during the hostage crisis), and FDR (who used an EO to bar Japanese and German immigration to the United States). Trump is clearly within well-established Constitutional norms even for modern Democratic presidents.

On the other hand, it's striking to me that the order permits Saudis but not Lebanese. Yes, Hezbollah is from Lebanon, but al Qaeda is from Saudi Arabia if it's from anywhere. I have read that the list of countries was put together by the Obama administration, but clearly the two biggest sources of terror -- if we're honest -- are Iran and Saudi Arabia, with radicals in Iraq and Syria being largely proxies of these actors.

The opposite side of the order is that it bars people from certain countries even if they are green card holders, Kurds who have been fighting ISIS, people who have demonstrated a commitment to the United States by working with us as interpreters, and so forth.

I get that the order is quite temporary, pending better vetting methods for the most part. It's also much less radical than its opponents are suggesting. It certainly isn't a "Muslim ban," and indeed doesn't even target a number of Islamic countries with large Islamist terrorism problems (e.g., Pakistan and Turkey). Countries like Egypt and Indonesia, which have large Muslim populations and terrorist groups but also governments that are pretty committed to managing them, are also untouched.

Some of the criticism is therefore unwarranted. Still, the order is both too wide and too narrow in different respects. What is the right course of action for us as citizens at this juncture? Should we urge our representatives and Senators to push for an alteration in the policy?

UPDATE: Here is the full text of the order, for the lawyers among us.

UPDATE: Priebus walked back the green card ban today, which is the most obviously wrong part of the ban.

FedEx Declines To Shoot Own Foot

Federal Express has made a decision in the case of a driver who stopped a flag-burning. They claim that the driver in question "remains a FedEx employee" and that this will not change.

Now, among the many jobs I have held in my long life was one contract gig pressure-washing FedEx trucks, which are required to be clean and presentable in order to maintain the corporate image. As at that time, and I have not heard that this has changed, FedEx drivers were also contractors rather than employees. My guess is that the 'employee' in question probably owns his own truck, and is properly speaking a small businessman in his own right. Yeoman farmers, more or less.

"Does 'Armed' Equal Dangerous?"

Of course it does, in answer to Hot Air's question. The whole point of carrying arms is to be more dangerous.

’Dangerous?,’ cried Gandalf. ‘And so am I, very dangerous: more dangerous than anything you will ever meet. . .And Aragon is dangerous, and Legolas is dangerous. You are beset with dangers. . .for you are dangerous yourself, in your own fashion.’

Anyone carrying a weapon is dangerous. Some of us are dangerous even if you should happen to catch us without a weapon. The police cannot be chided for handling them as such. There is a reasonable question about how, in a free society that respects the right to bear arms, police should handle a dangerous but not aggressive or anti-social interaction. But of course "armed" means "dangerous." Specifically, it is a subset of the category "dangerous."

California Leavin'

A bit from a Wall Street Journal article raises a couple of rude questions in my pea brain, and a rude notice.  California is beginning a more-or-less serious effort to secede from the union. The bit is this: the US would have to approve a constitutional amendment to allow a secession.

The questions are these: what would Californians think if the required amendment passed unanimously--or perhaps only with New York, Illinois, Washington demurring?  What would Californians think if those States approving the amendment did so with enormous majorities?

The rude notice is this: California secession dreamers can begin collecting signatures to place a  nationhood proposal on the November 2018 ballot, after language for the measure was approved this week by the state’s attorney general.  Notice that: in California, the citizens are allowed to have only those referendum ballots whose political speech is approved by the California government; they don't get to vote on the things they think are important without Government oversight.  What must California citizens think of that?  Oh, wait....

Eric Hines

Hotcoldwetdry

If I'm reading this New Yorker article correctly, the same shadowy forces that once undermined a scientific consensus for nuclear winter then turned their attention to undermining a scientific consensus for global warming.  They were equally nefarious both times, either because they're very bad people or because their money comes from very bad people, or both.  The conclusion seems to acknowledge grudgingly that science is corrupted when it's in service of the nation-state's political objectives, but the lesson we're to draw is that we're not entitled to be skeptical of global warming unless we're also skeptical of claims that nuclear war would be just peachy keen for the  environment.  Well, okay then.

Honestly, I remember when The New Yorker had smarter authors and lots better editors.

DB: Grief-stricken Navy mourns the departure of beloved Secretary Ray Mabus

"In news that has every sailor and Marine in the Department of the Navy literally wailing with inconsolable grief..."

SNL ... Enters the Twilight Zone?

I don't know if I can handle SNL being funny again, and making non-progressive points. That shakes my worldview.

Anyway, the skit I'm referring to now is on Hulu, which I'm not sure how to embed here, so here's the link to SNL's Susan B. Anthony skit.

And after that, if you want more, Acculturated has an article about SNL doing a skit pointing out that our feminist foremothers did not support abortion.

Should Have Opened Fire Earlier

NSFRPOW (Not Safe for Rational People ... or Work)

Country Heroes, More or Less ...

I swear, if I ever make it to a Corb Lund concert, I'm going to wear a "Free Lester Cousins" t-shirt.

Sounds Like a Good BASIS for Education

From Naomi Schaefer Riley at the New York Post:

...

While America is falling behind globally — we were ranked 24th in the world on the most recent Program for International Student Assessment scores — BASIS is soaring. In math, reading and science three BASIS schools ranked above Shanghai, Korea, Finland and Singapore. If BASIS schools formed a country it would be ranked top in the world. Even compared to students whose families are in the same income brackets, BASIS is still performing 18 percent better on average.

But there’s a catch. If you’re looking for a place that will coddle your kids, you’ve come to the wrong school. As headmaster Hadley Ruggles tells me, “Brooklyn is a progressive place, and it looks like we have rolled back the clock.”

The students are taught grammar. Math in the early grades involves drilling. Students are required to take three years of Latin. Writing is focused on analytical work, not “journaling.”

... Students as young as eighth grade are taking APs and scoring well. Plus, middle-schoolers take biology, chemistry and physics classes three days a week each.

The teachers have come from top college and graduate programs, and many have left their own fields to teach.

...

The fearless regulation killer

I had vaguely heard of the Congressional Review Act, which permits Congress to nix a regulation within 60 legislative days.  A bright young feller showed up at this week's Republican retreat and pointed out that the deadline isn't 60 days after the regulation is issued, it's 60 days after the later of the date it's issued or the date the agency issues a report on it.  In most cases during the recently concluded administration, the agencies didn't bother.  That means Congress can vote down a whole slew of regulations with a majority vote--no filibuster.

“If they haven’t reported it to Congress, it can now be challenged,” says Paul Larkin, a senior legal research fellow at the Heritage Foundation. Mr. Larkin, also at Wednesday’s meeting, told me challenges could be leveled against any rule or guidance back to 1996, when the CRA was passed.

The best part? Once Congress overrides a rule, agencies cannot reissue it in “substantially the same form” unless specifically authorized by future legislation. The CRA can keep bad regs and guidance off the books even in future Democratic administrations—a far safer approach than if the Mr. Trump simply rescinded them.

Republicans in both chambers—particularly in the Senate—worry that a great use of the CRA could eat up valuable floor time, as Democrats drag out the review process. But Mr. Gaziano points out another hidden gem: The law allows a simple majority to limit debate time. Republicans could easily whip through a regulation an hour.

March for Life

Here is a healthier take on a recent political slogan.

A Renaissance for Truth

In all sorts of information operations or psychological warfare, credibility is the currency and truth is a force multiplier. The common theory is that powerful regimes want to disrupt our ability to know the truth so they can create their own reality. In fact, this is what weak regimes do. Powerful regimes tell the truth, and then make the things they want to be true happen.

At some point, the parties that be are going to remember that. Somebody is going to decide to stop the hyperventilating, stop the shutting-off of debate, stop with the name-calling and social bullying, and just tell the truth. Whoever does it first, and builds the reputation for speaking the truth no matter what, is going to win this political exercise. Then they'll have the power to make true many of the things that they wish were true.

UPDATE: Via Anarchyball.

Ceaușescu's America

I'm reading this collection of interviews with women who voted for Trump. At least one of them has something quite interesting to say.

I defected from Ceaușescu's Romania. You don’t grow up in a regime like that and not think about state control over human lives. Today I’m a libertarian. I believe in small government. I’m pro-choice. What I find most threatening in a democracy is extremism. She’s an ideologist and would’ve appointed Supreme Court justices with extreme positions. My vote was more an anti-Hillary vote.

I’ve lived here since 1993 but I’m still a European at heart and read the European papers. Let me tell you, Benghazi was covered with graphic detail. Reading the news in Europe I understood how censored the news in the U.S. has become, giving me flashbacks of a Commie regime. I also resented that when I opened the October issues of my fashion magazines, the editors all endorsed Clinton for president.

I've read lots of people talking about Trump in totalitarian terms, but here's the voice of a woman who really lived under a totalitarian system. Hillary Clinton was the one she recognized as reflective of it. Of course, the uniformity of expressed opinion -- and the media censorship -- is consensual here, where it was enforced by secret police there. How much does that matter? At least some, and perhaps a lot.

Billions down the drain

There was some freaking out dressed up as fact-checking over President Trump's inaugural reference to billions of dollars dumped into failing schools for no benefit to students.  No need to take his word for it; here's the outgoing administration's analysis of the very expensive "School Improvement Grant" program.  A direct quote from the Executive Summary:

Overall, across all grades, we found that implementing any SIG-funded model had no significant impacts on math or reading test scores, high school graduation, or college enrollment.

* * *

The SIG program aimed to support the implementation of school intervention models in low-performing schools. Although SIG was first authorized in 2001, this evaluation focused on SIG awards granted in 2010, when roughly $3.5 billion in SIG awards were made to 50 states and the District of Columbia, $3 billion of which came from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. States identified the low-performing schools eligible for SIG based on criteria specified by ED and then held competitions for local education agencies seeking funding to help turn around eligible schools.

No doubt the Keynesian spending stimulus was crackerjack, but funneling resources to the schools that are failing the most egregiously, while merciful to the struggling schools, doesn't seem to be very merciful to the kids trapped there. Maybe rewarding failure gets you more failure.  It's interesting that the money ostensibly was spent on a variety of techniques associated with change and reform.  Something tells me they were reforming the wrong things.

There's a lot of gobbledegook about "comprehensive instructional reform strategies, teacher and principal effectiveness, and operational flexibility and support," but it's not obvious to me what really changed in the schools that got the money.

One goal of SIG is to promote the use of instructional practices that have the potential to increase academic rigor and student achievement. The SIG application criteria focused on practices to reform instruction in seven subtopics: (1) Using Data to Identify and Implement an Instructional Program; (2) Promoting the Continuous Use of Data to Identify and Address the Needs of Individual Students; (3) Conducting Periodic Reviews of the Curriculum; (4) Implementing a New School Model; (5) Providing Supports and Professional Development (PD) to Staff to Assist Both English language learners (ELLs) and Students with Disabilities; (6) Using and Integrating Technology-Based Supports; and (7) Tailoring Strategies for Secondary Schools. We collected data on five of these subtopics through school survey questions that asked about eight practices aligned with SIG objectives in these areas (Table IV.1). Because none of the questions from the school surveys aligned with the third or fourth subtopic, we excluded these subtopics from the analysis.

What I'd love to see is a study of contrasting schools with differing percentages of graduates of teaching colleges versus practically any other background, and taking into account the school's freedom to remove incurably disruptive students from the classroom or even from the school. I'm afraid many of these radical "turnaround" and "transformation" models were only pushing the food around on the plate.

Let's Halt the Eclipse

A proposal from our Brexit friends. It's not the worst idea ever, if it can be done.

Ace of Spades

Actually it's a shovel, not a spade.