1) Chuck Norris has the answer to the illegal immigration debacle (here – and why exactly didn’t I think of this, I wonder to myself)…
…our Founders enforced four basic requirements for "enrollment and acceptance" into American citizenry. We still utilize them (at least in policy) to this day, but we desperately need to enforce them. The Heritage Foundation summarizes: "Key criteria for citizenship of the Naturalization Act of 1795 remain part of American law. These include (1) five years of (lawful) residence within the United States; (2) a 'good moral character, attached to the principles of the Constitution of the United States, and well disposed to the good order and happiness of the United States'; (3) the taking of a formal oath to support the Constitution and to renounce any foreign allegiance; and (4) the renunciation of any hereditary titles."
You hear that, you illegals trying to get over the danged “fence” (as “Straight Talk” McCain calls it here) from Mexico into Arizona and New Mexico? Start renouncing those hereditary titles PDQ!
Actually, anyone applying for citizenship already has to take a test, as noted here (I don’t know if Norris knows that or not). And I’d really like to see how the teabaggers would do if they had to take it as a condition of their citizenship as well.
Another thing – Norris is, as you might expect, a teabagger also (here), and I’m more than a little fed up with this notion that, somehow, people of his political ilk can claim to either be knowledgeable in or supporters of the U.S. Constitution, particularly when, as noted here, some of them don’t know that that confers on the U.S. government the right to collect taxes. The Constitution also stipulates, under Article I, Section II, that the government shall conduct a census every ten years, and as noted here, there are teabaggers who have a problem with that also.
And just wait until next week, boys and girls, when Chuck “will lay out his plan, drawing inspiration from our Founders, for dealing with the 12 million-plus illegal immigrants in our country today.”
Somewhere, I have a feeling that our founders are glad they can deny any knowledge of Norris whatsoever.
2) Also, the AEI’s Danielle Pletka is all up in arms over the recent statement from the U.S. and U.N. Security Council member nations about Iran (here)…
There was a collective sigh of relief in D.C. about the U.N. resolution—after all, it’s taken the administration months on end to dilute the thing down enough to get the Chinese and Russians to sign on. Some had even feared that the president would take up the lousy deal cut by (Brazil and Turkey) and restart negotiations with Iran toward a fuel swap. Wow, I was told, lucky the real men in the administration—Hillary Clinton and U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice—won that internal squabble.
Oh, please – as noted here…
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran agreed Monday to ship much of its low-enriched uranium abroad and then rolled out a new obstacle to nuclear compromise by insisting it would press ahead with higher enrichment – bringing it closer to being able to make atomic warheads.
The deal forged with Turkey and Brazil appeared to be another attempt to stave off U.N. sanctions – a doubtful endeavor judging by reactions from the United States and other Western powers.
The White House showed deep skepticism about the pact, warning it still allows Iran to keep enriching uranium toward the pursuit of a nuclear weapon.
"Given Iran's repeated failure to live up to its own commitments, and the need to address fundamental issues related to Iran's nuclear program, the United States and international community continue to have serious concerns," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said.
…
Western nations insisted Monday they remained on the sanctions track.
"Our position on Iran is unchanged," said Prime Minister David Cameron's spokesman, Steve Field. "Iran has an obligation to reassure the international community, and until it does so, we will continue to work with our international partners on a sanctions resolution in the United Nations Security Council."
French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero agreed, saying the world was awaiting "credible answers from Iran" on its nuclear agenda.
For his part, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev cautiously welcomed the agreement but said it may fail to fully satisfy the international community. He alluded to Iran's intention to continue its higher-enrichment activities as a cause for concern.
Yes, Iran is a bad actor, and there’s really very little we can do aside from diplomatic maneuvers unless (God forbid) the shooting starts for real, as they say.
Which I think would be fine with Pletka, by the way, based on this…
Danielle Pletka, born in Australia, is Vice President for Foreign and Defense Policies at the neocon American Enterprise Institute. Andrew Sullivan, who once worked for her, has described the integrity of her scholarship in an article she wrote urging Washington to tighten the screws on Iran: "The form is set by the neoconservative agenda and she mobilizes a narrative that fills in the blanks to serve that agenda. Unwilling if not incapable of producing an article any other way, she is more than content to reverse engineer her position … Her final statement is telling. ‘…Iran neither needs nor wants accommodation with the West,’ and it is clear to me this would have been her conclusion regardless of what the preceding 800 words had been." Pletka supported the Iraq war, was a leading cheerleader for Ahmed Chalabi, believes in torture, and wants to go to war with Iran.
Of course, given her raging aggression, maybe we should call Pletka “Daniel” instead.
3) Finally, I have a bit of a “two-fer” of current and former Repug politicians in action, beginning with Jim DeMint (here) and ending with a co-author of the “Contract on America.”
Basically, it turns out that DeMint’s track record as a supposed Tea Party “kingmaker” isn’t so hot; his support of Marco Rubio in Florida drove out Charlie Crist, to the point where Crist, as an independent, stands much better odds of winning the general election (actually, what DeMint really did here, as opposed to outing Crist, was to really throw a monkey wrench, as they say, into the campaign of Dem Kendrick Meek – I would guess that that was DeMint’s plan all along, but that gives him way too much credit).
Also, DeMint supports Chuck DeVore in the Repug senatorial primary in California (DeVore is last), and DeMint also supported Sen. Marlin Stutzman who was defeated by former U.S. Sen. Dan Coats in the May 4th Repug primary in Indiana.
So I’m starting to wonder if the Tea Party really isn’t The Club for Growth in disguise, wearing funny hats and carrying misspelled and often racist signs.
Still, this doesn’t prevent a certain Baby Newton Leroy Gingrich from trying to curry the favor of the teabaggers, as noted here (another tempting quote from the disgraced former speaker, another dig at Obama, and another plug for another book, with appropriate commentary from Jed L. here, who astutely notes that Gingrich isn’t winning over the teabag crowd by endorsing Sen. Mr. Elaine Chao).
But just returning to the Politico story on Gingrich, I want to point out that this is nothing but rote Beltway stenography by Mike Allen. And I’ve been trying to find a way to reference this profile on Allen by Mark Leibovich of the New York Times a little while ago, and I finally have the opportunity (here).
It is exhaustively researched, and, while reporting thoroughly and dispassionately, Leibovich wants to cast Allen as a sympathetic figure. And in many ways, he does. However, there are some personal tidbits cast about concerning Allen’s personal life that, while not creepy, are certainly odd…
…even Allen’s supposed confidants say that there is a part of Mikey they will never know or even ask about. He is obsessively private. He has given different dates to different friends for the date of his birthday. I asked three of Allen’s close friends if they knew what his father did. One said “teacher,” another said “football coach” and the third said “newspaper columnist.” A 2000 profile of Allen in The Columbia Journalism Review described his late father as an “investor.”
It is almost impossible to find anyone who has seen his home (a rented apartment, short walk to the office). “Never seen the apartment,” volunteered Robert L. Allbritton, Politico’s publisher, midinterview. “No man’s land.” When sharing a cab, Allen is said to insist that the other party be dropped off first. One friend describes driving Allen home and having him get out at a corner; in the rearview mirror, the friend saw him hail a cab and set off in another direction. I’ve heard more than one instance of people who sent holiday cards to Allen’s presumed address only to have them returned unopened. One former copy editor at Politico, Campbell Roth, happened to buy a Washington condominium a few years ago that Allen had just vacated. She told me the neighbors called the former tenant “brilliant but weird” and were “genuinely scared about some fire-code violation” based on the mountains of stuff inside.
Allen deserves credit for working tirelessly and establishing himself as an “influential,” to use the Beltway parlance. And he is portrayed in good measure as a kind, decent person in Leibovich’s story.
However, when whoever or whatever comes after us writes the story of our current life and times, one theme that will emerge will be undue deference to authority by our corporate media in the face of catastrophic political decision making. And as far as I’m concerned, Mike Allen is one of the most culpable people on that score, no matter how many people read his “cross platform” missives.
