…so death follows Wikileaks.

Assange is giving us a wonderful lesson in why things are classified during war. His cavalier attitude toward the safety of the people he exposes to mortal danger, as if a really terrible context like a war provides justification for adding further risk to their lives (and his repeated, and thus far unsupported, accusations that Afghans who help us are criminals), is beyond immaturity and callousness, though—it is monstrous.

Julian Assange is the worst sort of moralist, one whose sense of justice is so selective (secrecy is of utmost concern for Wikileaks’ sources and employees, but not the government), and his comprehension of consequences so short-sighted and defined by ideology rather than fact, that he doesn’t care who he has to offer up to murderous @#!*% to satisfy his sense of moral outrage. It is the same morality that leads the ELF to destroy car dealerships using chemical explosives out of a concern for the environment.

…I’m not sure this is in keeping with the official Shirley Sherrod narrative.

The Progressive Committee on Condemnations in the service of Teachable Moments has called an emergency session to figure out how to address such unscrupulousness.

Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers;
A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked;
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
Where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?
Because part of that peck belongs to Blacks, women,
gays, Hispanics, the transgendered, and others
who have been traditionally discriminated against,
and so — in order to rectify the effects of such
discrimination — are deserving of the fruits of
Peter Piper’s labor, even if Peter Piper never
discriminated against them personally. And
regardless of whether or not they’ve ever even
tried picking their own fucking pecks of peppers.
Perhaps Peter Piper should have picked a peck
of not-being-a-white-man. The dumb cracker.

Pardon me for once again wading into the racial waters — after all, doing so is notoriously unhelpful to the Tea Party movement (at least, that’s what I’ve been told, and so I apologize for my part in destroying the country by taking the focus of Paul Ryan momentarily) — but it seems to me that Mr Obama’s dubious descriptor for racial makeup, in addition to being decidedly fraught (especially for someone who fancies himself post-racial), creates quite the opportunity for those who’d like to see left-Democrats truly prove their post-racial assertions. Because what Obama argues, essentially, is that we are MOST OF US, as Americans, “mongrels” in a sense — meaning that most of us are, as Americans, racially-mixed, separated only (it follows) by the signifiers of “race” that become dominant in our appearance: skin color, hair texture, lip and nose typography, eyelid makeup, etc. Those rather arbitrary (by genetic standards) signifiers, then, are the only things separating us — save the fact that such things have been historically overdetermined.

Let’s rehearse his exact words:

“We are sort of a mongrel people. I mean we’re all kinds of mixed up. That’s actually true of white people as well, but we just know more about it.”

The fact that “we” — meaning blacks — “just know more about it” is a testament to historical race-consciousness here in the U.S.

But one must ask, precisely who is it now that is so desirous of keeping us race-conscious? Is it those who advocate for a color-blind society? Or those who continue to divide us into “identity” groups and grant set asides to preferred members of preferred groups?

President Obama has admitted that the differences between whites and blacks, save for how we’ve treated race in the past, is essentially not “racial” at all. And so the question becomes, if this is really what the President believes, why is it so important to him — and the left in general — to keep past treatments at the forefront both of a national conversation on race and in every piece of new legislation, if not to continue a type of divisive classification that he himself doesn’t believe to exist at any level other than the social level he and his fellow-travelers continue to keep foregrounded?

The time is ripe to confront the President with the editorial position of someone like Democrat Jim Webb. Because if we are all mongrels, why is it that some mongrels appear to be more equal than others — and the left seems to be perfectly at ease with such a thing?

WSJ:

The immigration debate is reviving the explosive idea of denying citizenship to children born on U.S. soil if their parents are in the country illegally.

A U.S. senator and a state lawmaker in Arizona, both central players in the battle over immigration law, separately proposed this week that “birthright” citizenship be denied to the children of illegal immigrants. They said the change would help stem the flood of illegal border crossings.

“People come here to have babies. They come here to drop a child,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) said Wednesday night on Fox News. “That shouldn’t be the case. That attracts people here for all the wrong reasons.” Mr. Graham is a onetime partner with Democrats in crafting a proposed overhaul of immigration laws.

Immigration-rights activists say citizenship isn’t a significant driver of illegal immigration, because a child has to reach age 21 to petition for permanent legal residency for his or her parents.
Such calls to change what has been a bedrock feature of the immigration system are sure to set off contentious debate. “It’s an extreme position, and Sen. Graham knows this,” said Angela Kelley of the left-leaning Center for American Progress. “He’s not one to tamper with the Constitution, so I’m surprised he would even suggest this.”

In Arizona, Republican state Sen. Russell Pearce, the architect of the immigration law that drew a legal challenge from the Obama administration, said he wanted to deny U.S. citizenship to children born in his state to illegal immigrants.

At issue is the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, enacted in 1868 to ensure that states not deny former slaves the full rights of citizenship. It states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

Mr. Graham, speaking on Fox, suggested that changing birthright-citizenship rules would require a constitutional amendment. “We should change our Constitution and say if you come here illegally and have a child, that child’s not automatically a citizen,” he said.

Personally, I don’t believe such a constitutional amendment is necessary; instead, all that’s needed is a proper reading of the 14th Amendment, and then a walking back of whatever bad precedent based on previous faulty readings has taken legal hold. To wit: the clause, “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” modifies the subject, “all persons born or naturalized in the United States” — suggesting that all those who are born or naturalized in the United States and are subject to its jurisdiction are to be considered citizens. And yet being born in the United States illegally to non-citizens would mean that these children are foreign nationals — illegals — and while subject to our laws as visitors (as would be foreign visitors here on visas, etc.), they are also subject to the jurisdiction of their home countries. (American Indians, for instance, still under tribal jurisdiction, were not granted citizenship as a result of the 14th Amendment.)

Given that the 14th Amendment was intended to confer citizenship on emancipated slaves — whose forebears were brought here as chattel and against their will — it seems a perversion of intent to argue that the same Amendment should then be turned around and used to automatically grant citizenship on those whose forebears come here willingly — and illegally — in effect (if not intentionally) as a way to game the system and create a backdoor approach to obtaining citizenship.

To those pols and immigration-reform advocates interested in revisiting the Hart-Celler Act, my suggestion would be to do so based on the actual intent of the 14th Amendment. Because if that is successful — even only by way of influencing public perception — the onus for justifying the continuance of such policies, especially during a time of contentious border unrest, would lay with those who wish to see illegal immigration continually incentivized at a time when real unemployment in the US is at around 16%, and the deficit is spiraling out of control thanks largely to ever more social programs being “financed” by the government.

A change in state law redefining who is a citizen would likely draw a legal challenge, as did Arizona’s effort to change state immigration law.

Under Mr. Pearce’s proposal, Arizona would refuse to issue a birth certificate to any child unless at least one parent could prove legal presence in the U.S. “The 14th Amendment has been hijacked and abused,” Mr. Pearce said. “We incentivize people to break our laws.”

The U.S. is home to about 11 million illegal immigrants. There are nearly four million whose children are U.S. citizens, according to a 2009 report by the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research group in Washington.

Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which calls for cracking down on all immigration to the U.S., said that citizenship as a birthright isn’t automatic in many countries in the West.

“We should not allow language from 1868 to enslave our thinking…in the 21st century,” Mr. Stein said. “It is defeating the purpose of immigration control.”

Mr. Pearce was sponsor of SB1070, the law that required police to check the immigration station of anyone they stop if they suspect unlawful presence. On Wednesday, a federal judge blocked that provision and others, pending further legal review. Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, who signed the bill into law, has promised to appeal the injunction.

On Thursday, close to a thousand protestors chanted, drummed and participated in street blockades throughout downtown Phoenix to show their intent to resist SB1070, regardless of the judge’s decision to temporarily enjoin the most controversial portions. Many were arrested.

“We don’t want no police state! Stop the injustice, stop the hate!” hundreds chanted in front of the office of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who supported the law and whose deputies have made it a priority to detain illegal immigrants.

“Arpaio, listen, we’re at war!” others cried in Spanish.

Okay, then. If that’s the case, perhaps it’s time both sides began fighting. No?

(h/t Terry H)

(Bolding mine.)

The latest version of the CLEAR Act is slated for a floor vote in the House this week as Democrats look for ways to use the Gulf oil spill as a means to pass elements of their unpopular energy agenda.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) stripped out authorization for an independent investigation into the Gulf disaster.

The Natural Resources Committee unanimously passed the amendment in committee markup July 14 offered by Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) that would establish a bipartisan, independent, National Commission on Outer Continental Shelf Oil Spill Prevention.

Unlike the commission set up by President Obama — packed only with environmental activists and no petroleum engineers — the commission unanimously approved by the Natural Resources committee would be comprised of technical experts to study the actual events leading up to the Deepwater Horizon disaster.

Not a single member of the committee voiced opposition at the bill’s markup.  The Senate has also approved an independent commission.

“To investigate what went wrong and keep it from happening again, the commission must include members who have expertise in petroleum engineering.  The President’s Commission has none,” Cassidy, the amendment’s author, told HUMAN EVENTS after the announcement.  “It defies common sense that this amendment passed unanimously in committee, only to be deleted in the Speaker’s office.”

Rep. Doc Hastings (R-Wash.), top Republican on the Natural Resources Committee said the Obama’s administration’s commission was set up to protect the President.

“By deleting the bipartisan, independent oil spill commission that’s received bipartisan support in both House and Senate committees, Democrats have shown they are more interested in protecting the President than getting independent answers to what caused this tragic Gulf spill.  Some of the biggest failures that contributed to the Gulf disaster are the direct responsibility of the federal government and by deleting this bipartisan, independent commission, Democrats ensure that only the President’s hand-picked commission will be digging into any failures of his own Interior Department appointees.  There is widespread agreement that no member of the President’s commission possesses technical expertise in oil drilling, and several are on the record in opposition to offshore drilling and support a moratorium that will cost thousands of jobs,” Hastings said.

The bill also sets up myriad regulations and new standards and laws for drilling that have nothing to do with offshore drilling.

“Even more outrageous is this bill’s attempt to use the oil spill tragedy as leverage to enact totally unrelated policies and increase federal spending on unrelated programs by billions of dollars. What does a solar panel in Nevada, a wind turbine in Montana, uranium for nuclear power, or a ban on fish farming have to do with the Gulf spill? Nothing — but the spill is a good excuse to try and pass otherwise stalled or unpopular new laws,” Hastings said.

Another member of the committee, Rep. John Fleming (R-La.), pointed out the hand-picked Obama commission is just getting underway with no findings or recommendations made.

“This ‘fix it’ bill is being rammed through without an accurate and full understanding of what actually went wrong. The Presidential Commission is just barely beginning its work, no investigations are yet concluded, and the failed [blowout preventer] still on the ocean floor, yet we are voting on a bill without knowing what went wrong,” Fleming said.

“Furthermore, at a time when Washington should be focused on creating jobs, this bill will do just the opposite by hampering future energy development and stifling job creation along the Gulf Coast,” Fleming added.  “This knee-jerk legislation — coupled with the Administration’s damaging Moratorium on offshore drilling — will worsen, not help, the situation.”

Yet the House is poised to vote this week on the CLEAR Act, likely Friday.

“This bill has less to do with preventing another spill than it does preventing domestic energy production,” Cassidy said.

More at the link and here.

I feel like I’m being expected to pay my own ransom.

UPDATE: Related:

“Americans are sick and tired of their elected leaders making backroom deals to ram through unpopular, 2000-page bills that no one has read,” said Chairman Price.  “They are sick of out-of-touch politicians, and they are tired of being ignored.  A number of Democrats, including members of their leadership, have recently expressed a desire to ignore the public will and use a lame duck session to pass liberal legislation Americans do not want.  Today I gave my Democrat colleagues an opportunity to show they are finally ready to listen to the American people.

“Our system of government rests upon the consent of the governed, but it is quite clear that Democrats no longer have Americans’ consent.  The public’s trust in this Congress has been repeatedly broken.  Voting for a national energy tax and other items on the liberal wish list in a lame duck session would shatter it beyond repair.  Republicans are fully prepared to do what is necessary to restore Americans’ trust in their elected representatives.  We know it will be a long road, but it is one well worth traveling.”

Yeah, but, well, teh GOP!

MORE, from Hot Air: Did the government cause the Gulf spill?

A new report by the Center for Public Integrity, based on testimony from people on scene and Coast Guard logs, contains evidence that the platform sunk because of a botched response from the Coast Guard, which failed to coordinate firefighting efforts and to have the proper resources to fight the fire.

And MORE yet: The terror, the terror.

Which, awesome! Can’t wait to get the transcripts from that cross examination.

Plus, I like this as precedent. Without knowing it, Sherrod’s suit might help beat back the incoherent linguistic assumptions that the left has built its entire epistemological foundation upon — and to which it hitches its entire rhetorical wagon. To wit: imagine what happens to the left if a court decides that you simply can’t make up your own shit, then attribute that shit you’ve just invented to others, as a way to harm or discredit them, under the guise of some form of personal “interpretation”.

– That is, unless the courts adopt the standard that you can’t wage such dishonest rhetorical violence against members of protected groups, but that it’s perfectly alright — as a function of the First Amendment — to do so against an evil person, who is easily identified because he or she happens to be a white conservative like, say, Bill Bennett or Tony Snow or Rush Limbaugh or Laura Ingraham, et al.

Hell. I can think of a few conservatives who might even defend the practice. You know — so as to show their compassion for the Other and what not.

But that’s a post for another day.

I know. Shocking!

President Obama’s Mid-Session Review, an update of the Budget published by the Office of Management and Budget in February, shows that the deficit is increasing and unemployment will remain high for years to come.

The Mid-Session Review, issued on Friday, July 23 at 3:00 pm – just when people might head off for a weekend at the beach or by the pool – is not even listed on the OMB home page under “What’s New.” Unlike last year, OMB Director Peter Orzsag does not discuss it in the OMB Blog. Rather, it is one small line item under a heading entitled “The President’s Budget,” just after the appendix.

It’s unusual for the Mid-Session Review to come out on a Friday. It has happened only one other time this decade, on Friday, July 30, 2004.

According to Ethics and Public Policy Center fellow James Capretta, formerly associate director at OMB under President George W. Bush, “The fact that OMB released the mid-session review at 3 pm on a Friday afternoon is a dead giveway that they were trying to bury it as much as possible.”

A quick glance through this recent report shows why. Next year’s budget deficit is projected by Mr. Obama’s own analysts to be $1.4 trillion, up from $1.3 trillion projected in February. Over the next decade, under his own policies, the cumulative deficit would be $10 trillion. And the national debt would rise from $6 trillion in 2008 to $19 trillion in 2020.

These are Mr. Obama’s numbers, not those of his Republican critics.

[...]

Government receipts are projected to be lower, not just in 2010 and 2011, but through 2017, because fewer Americans will be working. When fewer people work, the government collects less tax revenue.

Outlays are also projected to be lower, which should be good news. But a third of the savings over the next decade are attributed to Medicare, either through the new health care law, which mandates cuts in Medicare, or through savings in the current program.

These Medicare savings are a mirage. Congress has repeatedly overridden statutory Medicare cuts, the latest being cuts of 21% in physician reimbursement, due to take place on June 1. Instead, Congress voted a 2.2% increase. With an expanding elderly population, other planned cuts are equally unlikely.

[...]

The most serious issue facing Americans today is lack of employment opportunities and how to deal with growing spending and entitlement programs.

What is the path to economic prosperity? Many Democrats recommend raising taxes on upper-income taxpayers in order to shrink government deficits and rein in growth of the national debt. Many Republicans – and some Democrats – counter that these tax increases would slow economic growth by reducing incentives to work and invest.

For one sensible observation on tax increases and growth, look no further than a new paper published in June’s American Economic Review, the flagship journal of the economics profession. It was written by Council of Economic Advisers Chair Christina Romer and her husband David Romer, both professors at the University of California (Berkeley).

Entitled “The Macroeconomic Effects of Tax Changes: Estimates Based on a New Measure of Fiscal Shocks,” the paper distinguishes between the effects of tax changes arising from legislation and increases in effective tax rates that occur automatically, for instance as individuals move into higher tax brackets.

The Romers conclude that legislated tax changes had far more effect than had automatic tax increases. Looking at data from 1947 to 2007, and examining the legislative record behind the tax changes, they conclude “Our estimates suggest that a tax increase of 1% of GDP reduces output over the next three years by nearly 3%.” A major reason is that higher taxes have a markedly negative effect on investment.

The Mid-Session Review, which underscores the worrisome economic and fiscal conditions that prevail, should be a warning that our current policies are unsustainable. As Mr. Obama, along with other Americans, awaits the July jobs numbers due out on August 6, he might want to glance at his CEA chair’s latest paper.

Meh. Deal with it, people. After all, he won!

Because Yes you did!

Byron York:

Gallup’s latest weekly compilation of polling data on President Obama’s job approval rating shows him at 85 percent among black Americans, down from a 94 percent approval rating among blacks as recently as March. The 85 percent figure is also Obama’s lowest-ever as president among African-Americans in the Gallup weekly poll. The poll data is from July 19 to 25, meaning Gallup sampled opinion as the Shirley Sherrod matter, and the Obama administration’s handling of it, exploded into controversy.

Obama’s approval rating among Hispanics in the latest poll, 52 percent, is also his lowest rating among that group in Gallup’s weekly measurement. He was in the low-to-mid 60’s earlier with Hispanics earlier this year.

Obama’s approval rating among whites is 38 percent, mostly unchanged from recent weeks but down a few points from the beginning of 2010. Overall, Obama’s weekly job rating is 45 percent approve, 47 percent disapprove, down from a 51 percent approve, 42 percent disapprove in February.

All of which raises the question: What the fuck are those 45 percent thinking?

Go. Do what you gotta do, people, and send your thoughts and prayers.