Victor Davis Hanson Discusses New Book, The Dying Citizen (VIDEO)

His book's at Amazon, The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America.

And this discussion is excellent. He's so cool and rational about everything. 

WATCH:

The End of Citizenship

From Michael Lind, at the Tablet, "Having converted their own republic into a borderless credit union, Americans have to borrow other people’s national pride":

In the spring of 2022, speculation in the commentariat that partisan rivalries were bringing the United States to the verge of actual civil war abruptly came to an end. With few exceptions, Americans of left, right, and center rallied around the national colors. Postmodern multiculturalism and anti-Enlightenment paleoconservatism suddenly were marginalized by romantic nationalism of the 19th-century variety. As war fever swept America, progressives and conservatives joined in denouncing not only the enemy government but also the enemy people and their enemy music, enemy literature, and enemy cuisine. Americans displayed the national flag in every imaginable form and pledged undying hatred of the nation’s foes.

The nation that Americans celebrated was not their own, but rather Ukraine, following the brutal Russian invasion of the former Soviet republic. Liberal Americans who would have thought it vulgar if not fascist to wave the Stars and Stripes took selfies with the blue and gold of Ukraine’s national flag. Democrats and Republicans who routinely demonize the leaders of the rival American party engaged in a kind of sentimental, uncritical hero worship of Ukraine’s president, Volodomyr Zelensky, which would have been mocked had its object been Joe Biden or Donald Trump. Neoconservatives and centrist liberals used the Ukraine war as an opportunity to settle scores by accusing opponents in the rival party and rivals in their own parties of moral if not legal treason for less than total and uncritical support of a foreign country with which the United States does not even have an alliance.

Whether the war in Ukraine is a final aftershock of the first Cold War or the first major proxy war in Cold War II remains to be seen. The sudden outburst of vicarious Ukrainian patriotism on the part of many Americans—as well as people in similar North Atlantic democracies—seems like a Freudian “return of the repressed.” Taught that celebrating their own national traditions is racist and xenophobic, and deprived of opportunities to play a meaningful role in national defense, many Americans and Western Europeans have found an outlet for a lost sense of belonging by borrowing the national pride of another nation.

Long before the United States began selling green cards—the tickets to U.S. citizenship—to rich foreigners by creating the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Visa Program in 1990, American citizenship had been devalued. From the days of the Greek city-states and the Roman republic to the city-republics of the Renaissance and the cantons of Switzerland, citizenship in the fullest sense originally involved active participation of citizens—a group not only male but also usually smaller than the population as a whole—in the government of their communities, as electors, office-holders, jurors, and citizen-soldiers.

In practice, the ideal of the amateur, omnicompetent citizen—a member of the militia today, a town or county council member tomorrow and a juror next week—could be realized only in small, relatively undeveloped communities. The ideal of the self-sufficient family farmer with a musket and a copy of the Constitution on the fireplace mantle was a casualty of economic centralization and modernization. Most Americans are proletarians who live from paycheck to paycheck, and a majority of American workers are employed by firms with more than 500 employees and supervised by salaried corporate bureaucrats.

The ideal of the male citizen-soldier who earns his civil rights by contributing to the defense of the republic survived for a while by being transferred to the colossal modern nation-state, whose citizens, mostly unknown to one another, are united by common culture, institutions, location, or some combination of the three. For a time, the mass national conscript army and its reserves were thought of, however implausibly, as the heir to the local militia. The older tradition of civic republicanism inspired the linkage of military service to government benefits like the GI Bill and other privileges for veterans. That link was all but eliminated by the abolition of the draft in 1973. Today’s American military is a professional force, more like those of premodern European bureaucratic monarchies than frontier militias.

The right to vote remains, but its power has been diluted, even as it has been extended in law and practice—first to white men without property, then to white women, and finally to nonwhite citizens. In a world of industrialized nation-states, in which even small countries are vastly more populous than the city-republics of antiquity and the Middle Ages, scale alone ensures that the influence that any one individual can exert by voting periodically in free and fair elections is negligible.

While the positive duties formerly associated with citizenship have gradually been discarded, there has been a trend to establish government requirements for the provision of positive rights or benefits, from public or publicly funded education and public retirement spending to guaranteed health care. As a result, in the United States and other Western democracies, it is widely accepted in the 21st century that national citizens have a right to various public goods and welfare services without any need to earn the benefits at all, purely on the basis of their status as citizens of a particular nation-state.

Already by the 1960s and the 1970s, the link between a citizen’s personal contribution and a citizen’s right to government benefits was being questioned...

Keep reading.

 

Victor Davis Hanson, The Dying Citizen

 At Amazon, Victor Davis Hanson, The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization Are Destroying the Idea of America.

Trump's Challenge is to Unify the Nation?

I don't think so.

If he could rally his base with red meat he'd be better off in the long run. As we saw with the left's reaction to the administration's offer of legalizing 1.8 so-called "Dreamers," nothing's going to satisfy the fanatical hate-addled left.

But see David Fahrenthold, at the Washington Post, FWIW (via Memeorandum), "Trump's steep challenge in his first State of the Union address: Uniting a fractured country":

President Trump will give his first State of the Union address at 9 p.m. Eastern time, talking up the U.S. economy and calling for bipartisanship — after a year in office during which his aggressive, mercurial politics often overshadowed the former and undermined the latter.

“For the last year we have sought to restore the bonds of trust between our citizens and their government,” Trump plans to say, in a speech excerpt released by the White House on Tuesday evening.

In another excerpt, Trump will say “This is our New American Moment. There has never been a better time to start living the American dream.

Trump also intends to use the speech to call for a bipartisan deal on immigration. On Thursday he proposed a deal that would allow “dreamers” — young immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children — to be given a path to citizenship, in exchange for an increase in border-security funding and large cuts to legal immigration.

“So tonight I am extending an open hand to work with members of both parties, Democrats and Republicans, to protect our citizens, of every background, color, and creed,” Trump will say, according to the excerpts.

That tone will be markedly different from the one that Trump used in a Twitter messages earlier last week, in which he taunted the Senate’s top Democrat, Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) for not agreeing to a bipartisan immigration deal. That tweet came after a short-lived government shutdown, which ended when Democrats backed down.

“Cryin’ Chuck Schumer fully understands, especially after his humiliating defeat, that if there is no Wall, there is no DACA,” Trump wrote. “DACA” is an acronym for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, an Obama-era program that allowed some “Dreamers” to avoid deportation.

And Trump’s call for bipartisanship and an end to division seemed unlikely to change the tone in Washington — where, in the hours leading up to Trump’s address, lawmakers seemed more divided than ever. One major cause was the fight over a House Intelligence Committee “memo” that purportedly raises questions about federal investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Many Republicans have used that memo, which was written by staff members of the committee chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), as a reason to question the validity of scrutiny of Trump and his staff by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.

The divisions over immigration will be visible in the gallery that overlooks the House chamber. More than 50 Democratic lawmakers have invited “dreamers” to attend as guests to dramatize their demand for legal status. In response, Republican Rep. Paul A. Gosar (Ariz.) tweeted that he had asked the Capitol Police to check all guests’ IDs, and arrest “any illegal aliens in attendance.”

In Trump’s box, he has guests who will highlight the threat posed by MS-13, a criminal gang active in both the United States and Central America. Trump’s guests will include a federal immigration agent who has investigated the gang, and two sets of parents whose children were killed by MS-13 members...

More at that top link.

Farms Facing Shrinking Immigrant Labor Pool

First thing I thought when I started reading this piece, is, "No, American workers worked Central Valley fields in the 1930s and '40s, workers escaping the devastation of Dust Bowl America (the Okies).

The piece does mention them, as a sop to history.

I just know that if wages were high enough, Americans would take these jobs. I would have picked cantaloupes in the 1980s if owners were paying me $12.00 an hour. The Times had a piece last year where growers near Sacramento were paying $15.00 and up (with some growers expecting to pay wages from $18.00 to $20.00 an hour).

It's simple economics. There's no shame in working an honest job. The fact that dark-skinned people have done it for so long doesn't mean that hard-working U.S. citizens won't work the fields. Immigrant labor drags down wages. Growers like it that way, giving the shiv to regular citizens.

At LAT, "Born in the U.S.A. and working in the fields — what gives?":

Farm labor from Mexico has been on the decline in California, and farmers are having trouble finding U.S.-born workers to make up the difference https://t.co/B8lcJDmfG3

— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) January 5, 2018

Nicholas Andrew Flores swatted at the flies orbiting his sweat-drenched face as he picked alongside a crew of immigrants through a cantaloupe field in California's Central Valley.

The 21-year-old didn't speak Spanish, but he understood the essential words the foreman barked out: Puro amarillo. And rapido, rapido! Quickly, Flores picked only yellow melons and flung them onto a moving platform.

It was hard and repetitive work, and there were days under the searing sun that Flores regretted not going to a four-year college. But he liked that to get the job he just had to "show up." And at $12 an hour, it paid better than slinging fast food.

For Joe Del Bosque of Del Bosque Farms in the San Joaquin Valley, American-born pickers like Flores, though rare, are always welcome.

For generations, rural Mexico has been the primary source of hired farm labor in the U.S. According to a federal survey, nine out of 10 agricultural workers in places like California are foreign-born, and more than half are in the U.S. illegally.

But farm labor from Mexico has been on the decline in California. And under the Trump administration, many in the agricultural industry worry that deportations — and the fear of them — could further cut the supply of workers.

But try as they have to entice workers with better salaries and benefits, companies have found it impossible to attract enough U.S.-born workers to make up for a shortage from south of the border.

Del Bosque said he'll hire anyone who shows up ready to work. But that rarely means someone born in the U.S.

"Americans will say, 'You can't pay me enough to do this kind of work,'" Del Bosque said. "They won't do it. They'll look for something easier."

For some immigrants working the fields, people like Flores are a puzzle — their sweating next to them represents a kind of squandering of an American birthright.

"It's hard to be here under the sun. It's a waste of time and their talents in the fields," said Norma Felix, 58, a Mexican picker for almost three decades. "They don't take advantage of their privilege and benefit of being born here. They could easily work in an office."

Most don't last long, she said.

"There is always one or two who show up every season," Felix said. "They show up for three or four days and turn around and leave."

Agriculture's reliance on immigrant labor, especially in the American West, goes back to the late 1800s, after the completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad, said J. Edward Taylor, a UC Davis rural economist.

"The domestic farm workforce was simply not big enough to support the growth of labor-intensive fruit and vegetable crops," he said...

Florida Driver Pulls Over Cop for Speeding (VIDEO)

At the Orlando Sentinel, "Florida driver pulls over police officer for speeding."

And watch, via CBS News 2 New York:

Is Ted Cruz a 'Natural Born Citizen'? (VIDEO)

Personally, I think this whole Ted Cruz birther issue is just stupid.



In just a couple of days the MSM's spent more time on it than on Obama's eligibility, at least from the point of view of critical vs. sympathetic analysis. (Nothing shall derail the political momentum of Democrat candidates.)

Breitbart dredged up Cruz's mom's birth certificate, so that's not in question, while Obama never actually released his long-form birth certificate, only a printout of "certification of live birth" from the county government offices there in Hawaii. (A real birth certificate includes medical information, full legal name at time of birth, doctors' signatures and all that --- none of which was included on the county printout.)

Here's the Bretibart piece, via Memeorandum, "Exclusive: Birth Certificate for Ted Cruz's Mother." I have no idea if it's actually authenticated, but I haven't seen anyone claiming Cruz's mom wasn't born in the U.S. Or at least not yet.

Professor Thomas Lee, of Fordham Law School, provides a high-brow scholarly analysis, at the Los Angeles Times, "Is Ted Cruz a 'natural born Citizen'? Not if you're a constitutional originalist."

Perhaps, but then the Supreme Court makes the final decision on these issues. I expect the law's settled enough nowadays to show that one American-citizen parent is enough to constitute presidential eligibility for the children.

More video at CNN, "Sen. Ted Cruz on State of the Union: Part 1," and "Sen. Ted Cruz on State of the Union: Part 2."

Ted Cruz and Donald Trump Take Different Paths to Iowa Voters

Cruz camps out. Trump swoops in.

At the Los Angeles Times:

Donald Trump launched his TV advertising just after New Year's with his familiar swagger: He was so far ahead in the polls that it might be a waste, he said, but he felt guilty for not spending his money.

The reality was more sobering.

After six months of branding opponents and critics as losers, Trump faces the threat of becoming one himself in Iowa, the first state to hold a Republican presidential nominating contest. The ads are a crucial part of Trump's strategy to keep Ted Cruz from beating him in the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 1.

Cruz's appeals to evangelicals, tea party followers and other conservatives have made the Texas senator the current favorite in Iowa, though the New York billionaire remains a solid front-runner in the rest of the country.

Cruz's surge in Iowa is jeopardizing Trump's quest to "run the table" by winning every GOP primary and caucus nationwide.

The two are taking sharply contrasting approaches to Iowa. Trump has darted in for occasional rallies before huge crowds, relying on TV news coverage to reach Iowans. He typically spends a few hours in the state, then returns to New York in his private jet. Trump's rallies Saturday afternoon in Ottumwa and Clear Lake came after an 11-day absence from Iowa.

Cruz has devoted far more time and resources to the state, following the playbook of previous Iowa caucus winners Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum...

More.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz on Faith, Family, and Donald Trump (VIDEO)

Following-up from earlier, "Donald Trumps Says Ted Cruz's Citizenship Could 'Be a Big Problem' (VIDEO)."

This is a great interview. You'll fall in love with his family.

Via ABC News Nightline:

Donald Trumps Says Ted Cruz's Citizenship Could 'Be a Big Problem' (VIDEO)

At USA Today, "Donald Trump: Ted Cruz's citizenship could 'be a big problem'."

Nancy Cordes reports, for CBS Evening News:

A Window Into the Mobile Life of Teenagers

This topic is endlessly fascinating to me, for one reason is that I don't think the points applies exclusively to teenagers.

At the New York Times, "App Makers Reach Out to the Teenager on Mobile":

A focus group of teenagers and their mobile habits found that they love Instagram, the photo-sharing app, but are terrified their posts will be ignored or mocked.

More.

Governor Jerry Brown Signs Bill Authorizing Automatic Voter Registration

Despite the leftist hullabaloo, this will have little affect on voter turnout. Even automatic registration won't get malignant pseudo-citizens to vote, especially Latinos.

At LAT, "Gov. Brown approves automatic voter registration for Californians."

And at Twitchy, "Hillary Clinton jazzed over California’s new automatic voter registration at DMV."

Matthew McConaughey Shares Photo of Wife Camila Alves Obtaining U.S. Citizenship

Actually, it's McConaughey and the whole beautiful family, on Twitter.

He's a great guy, a true patriot.

What's the Right Way to Teach Civics?

Just teach it, for crying out loud. But teach it a lot. Make it a central part of universal education, not just something that comes up in the 8th and 11th grades. And teach it well. I've had students change majors to political science after taking my class. It doesn't happen a lot, but if you connect and make history and politics come alive, it will happen.

In any case, see Vauhini Vara, at the New Yorker.

Surge of Chinese Applicants Tests U.S. Colleges

It'd be racist to call this an "invasion," but no doubt the Chinese are gaming America on a number of fronts. The birth tourism racket is over the top, for example. And now here comes college admissions fraud. Top that off with the surge in Chinese immigrants, to the point that they've overtaken Hispanics as the top immigrant group to the U.S., and you can see how this stuff's getting out of control.

At WSJ, "Wider admissions from overseas leave schools vulnerable to fraud, experts say":

As U.S. universities search farther afield for international students, they are boosting not just their cash flow and their campus diversity, but also the likelihood of admissions fraud, experts say.

On Thursday, a U.S. attorney in Pittsburgh announced indictments against 15 Chinese nationals on charges that they cheated on college-entrance exams by hiring impostors to take the tests for them. Several of the students ended up at schools across the U.S.

“This is a group of Chinese, but I believe the problem of protecting the integrity of [college admission tests] is bigger than that,” U.S. Attorney David Hickton said.

In recent years, fraud on college-entrance exams has also been uncovered in students from South Korea, as well as from several states in the U.S. More students from a greater number of countries are seeking admissions to American campuses, bringing recruiters into more rural areas where academic standards and test-taking security can be less stringent, said Michael Reilly, executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers.

“What we hear from schools is that when students arrive at college campuses from China, you see once they begin their studies an incongruity between their performance and what their portfolio suggested they should be able to do,” Mr. Reilly said.

In the 2013-14 academic year, the number of international students studying at U.S. colleges and universities rose 8% from a year earlier to nearly 900,000, according to the Institute of International Education. Leading that surge were 274,439 Chinese students, an increase of nearly 17% from the year before.

While earlier students from China were largely the cream of the crop, more of these recent arrivals are struggling with academics, Mr. Reilly said.

China’s colleges rely almost exclusively on results from the national college entrance exam, known as the gaokao, in their admission decisions. As a result of that singular focus on test scores at domestic institutions, Chinese students put extra emphasis on their exam performances when applying to U.S. schools, said Marc Zawel, co-founder and chief executive of AcceptU, a Boston-based admission-consulting firm that works extensively with international students.

“They see the gaokao as essentially deciding where they’re going to go, and they see the SAT or ACT doing the same,” he said. Mr. Zawel said some U.S. schools struggle to validate high-school transcripts from overseas students, and so rely on standardized scores with the assumption that they are more authentic or reflective of a student’s abilities.

Schools have begun to shift their international admissions strategies in an acknowledgment that the tests can be gamed. Mr. Zawel said some of his clients now must participate in interviews with schools to prove their mastery of the English language, even if they scored well on the Educational Testing Service-administered Test of English as a Foreign Language, or Toefl. A high score could indicate comprehensive test preparation rather than actual fluency.

Mr. Zawel said most applicants want to follow the rules, though his team sometimes loses prospective clients after explaining that they won’t write essays or forge recommendation letters on applicants’ behalf—both of which he said are common services among Chinese admission consultants.

“China is the wild west of admission counseling,” he said. “Many agencies advise students in ways that cross a line.”

More.

The Meaning of Their Service

From U.S. Marine Corps General (four star, retired) James Mattis, at the Wall Street Journal, "A retired four-star Marine Corps general on the clarifying effect of combat experience, the poison of cynicism and how veterans can help revive American optimism."

Civics Education Making a Comeback

Well, it's about time.

As it is, we're teaching America's dumbest generation.

At the Wall Street Journal, "Civics Instruction Moves Up in Class: More States Mandate Tests on the Subject Amid a Movement for Use of Citizenship Exam":

After years on the back burner of the nation’s educational agenda, civics is making a comeback, with a number of states mandating new classes or assessments and a burgeoning national push for high-school seniors to pass the exam required of new citizens.

For the first time this past school year, a civics exam in Florida counted toward students’ grades, following a mandated class and exam instated the year before, while students in Tennessee started facing a required test two years ago. The Massachusetts Board of Higher Education mandated that the subject be a key component for learning at the state’s colleges and universities starting this school year. Both California and Illinois have statewide task forces and local projects aimed at embedding civics in schools.

“We’re seeing more rumblings of states and local districts recognizing the need for civic engagement, especially for youth,” said Paul Baumann, director of the National Center for Learning and Civic Engagement at the Education Commission of the States, a nonprofit.

Recent national reports show students could use a lesson in civics, which generally studies the role of citizens in public issues and covers such topics as how to dissect current events or apply the Constitution to modern issues. About two-thirds of students tested below proficient on the civics portion of the National Assessment of Educational Progress in both 2006 and 2010. Only 10 states require a social-studies test to graduate from high school, according to the Education Commission of the States.

Recent federal policies, such as No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top, linked money to tests on math and reading, and concerns about a shortcoming in job skills has pressured leaders to focus more on science, technology, engineering and math.

A Center on Education Policy study found in 2007 that about 45% of elementary schools reported cutting time for other subjects to focus on math and reading. And only about one in three elementary teachers reported covering civics subjects on a regular basis, according to federal survey data taken in 2006 and 2010.

Proponents say enhancing civics instruction could help reverse low voter turnout—about one in five adults ages 18 to 29 voted in the 2014 midterms, according to researchers at Tufts University’s Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service—and address mounting frustration with dysfunction in Washington. They also say it can help increase engagement by minorities and the poor, who typically receive less civics education than more affluent and white students.

“There’s a stronger sense from people now that we must do something in order to be functional as a nation and at the community level,” said Meira Levinson, an associate professor of education at Harvard University who has studied civic-empowerment issues.

Meanwhile, coalitions in seven states have launched a growing movement to require students to pass the U.S. citizenship exam before they can graduate. By the end of next year, proponents aim to introduce and pass legislation in 12 to 15 states.

“So little has been done over so many years now, let’s make sure we take that one solid first step,” said Sam Stone, political director for the Civics Education Initiative, an affiliate of the Joe Foss Institute, a nonpartisan nonprofit based in Scottsdale, Ariz.

But some backers of more civics study doubt the value of the 100-question citizenship exam, arguing it is more about rote memorization than learning how to be a better citizen...

Keep reading.

House GOP Sets New Push to Overhaul Immigration

The smell of desperation.

At WSJ, "Leadership's Broad Principles Will Include a Call to Grant Legal Status to Millions" (via Google):

.@Memeorandum Have a bad feeling about this. Won't help GOP while legalizing those who don't deserve legalizing. @MichelleMalkin @RSMcCain

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) January 24, 2014

WASHINGTON—An effort by House lawmakers to overhaul immigration policy, which seemed all but dead for much of last year, is about to be revived and take center stage in Congress, with a new push by House Republican leaders and a fresh pitch by President Barack Obama in his State of the Union address Tuesday.

House GOP leaders are expected to release broad principles to guide the chamber's immigration debate as soon as the coming week. They will include a call to grant legal status to millions of people now in the country illegally, people familiar with the plans say, a step that many in the GOP oppose as a reward for people who broke U.S. law.

Behind the scenes, Republican lawmakers already are writing detailed legislation, with the encouragement of House GOP leaders, that would also offer the chance at citizenship for many here illegally, as Republicans work to find a mix of proposals that can pass the chamber.

Mr. Obama, in his address Tuesday to a joint session of Congress and the nation, is expected to again call on lawmakers to pass an overhaul of immigration laws, building on the comprehensive bill that won bipartisan approval last year in the Senate.

Many Republicans have warned that the GOP faces political peril if it doesn't overcome the resistance of many in the party to new immigration laws. If the legislative effort fails, Democrats and their allies are prepared to use the issue to attack GOP candidates in this fall's elections and the 2016 presidential race.

In the House, the immigration principles—expected to be a one-page sheet—likely will be released in time for debate at a House Republican retreat late in the week in Cambridge, Md., to discuss the year's agenda. That will help House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) figure out if there is enough support among his members to move forward.

The GOP principles will embrace legal status for many of the nation's 11.5 million illegal immigrants, people close to the process said, knowing that Democrats likely will insist on such a plan in return for support needed to pass legislation. They will also offer citizenship for people brought to the U.S. as children, new enforcement provisions and fixes to the legal immigration system, these people said.

Still, the legislation faces a long road. It will be challenging for House leaders to win over enough Democrats without losing a substantial number of Republicans. Even if the House manages to pass a series of immigration bills, they still would need to be reconciled with the Senate's broad legislation, and Mr. Boehner has said he won't work off the sweeping bill that passed that chamber.

In a sign that the debate is imminent, opponents of an immigration overhaul have begun to organize. Staff members from about 15 House offices met Thursday with the staff of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Ala.), a leading opponent of the Senate overhaul bill, to discuss their best arguments, an aide to Mr. Sessions said.

House leaders hope to bring legislation to the floor as early as April, the people close to the process said, after the deadline has passed in many states for challengers to file paperwork needed to run for Congress. Republican leaders hope that would diminish chances that a lawmaker's support for immigration bills winds up sparking a primary-election fight.

Supporters of new immigration laws said Friday that they were stepping up their activism. On Friday, the Partnership for a New American Economy, a group backed by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, announced a campaign to urge entrepreneurs, farmers and students to press for the overhaul. That campaign was alongside the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Republican Gov. Rick Snyder of Michigan.

Legislation being drafted would reject a "special path" to citizenship for illegal immigrants, which was included in the Senate bill, the people familiar with the process said. But it would grant legal status for all illegal immigrants who meet qualifications, allowing them to work and travel without fear of deportation.

I doubt this will help the Republicans. It's basically a Democrat voter registration effort.

What is 'Natural Born'?

I'm not sure why it's important, but William Jacobson feels he must respond to attacks from "birther" conspiracy-mongers. I guess these are not infrequent, as William explains, "This will be dealt with."

Read it all at the link above. The email William posts in pretty fascinating:

JACOBSON: First you display your inexcusable contempt for the law by keeping the fact of Obama’s ineligibility from your readers, for whatever discreditable reasons. Now you double down and defend and promote the candidacies of two more ineligibles, Rubio and Jindal. (The reason the Democrats have to paint Rubio and Jindal as crazies is because they know that thanks to people like you, the Republicans would actually put up an ineligible candidate.) What is wrong with you? Don’t you have any respect for the Constitution? Or for a government of laws? You enable, aid and abet lawbreakers. You are a Professor of Law and your conduct is so egregious you are an indelible stain on the profession.

Debate me, defend your conduct in any public setting. Or defend in writing your enablement of Obama and promotion of other ineligible candidates. You can’t, can you? There is no honorable defense, is there? No. You and your ilk are largely responsible for Obama’s tremendously destructive foreign and domestic policies of the past four years. Had you and your colleagues in the Conservative MSM spoken up four years ago, the Federal Courts would have removed Obama and avoided so much damage done and so much damage yet to be done.

Such lawlessness. Such dishonesty. Such cowardice.

I can't comment on Jindal et al.'s eligibility just yet, but if folks are making a natural born case against Obama then they're accepting as fact that he was born in Hawaii (which would confer automatic eligibility under the 14th Amendment) but that it takes two American parents for a child to be considered natural born (and that's apparently regardless of the same birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment). I always thought the question of Obama's birth certification by the State of Hawaii a bit fishy, and Obama hasn't helped matters by refusing to release his full authenticated birth certificate (with vital medical information, witnesses, etc.) rather than the cheap-ass computer print-out claiming "certification of live birth." (Obama is all about hiding who is he, on his academic transcripts, as another example; the left fears the truth, while the right has obsessed over it.) No matter. The courts ruled against challenges to Obama's eligibility and after awhile it gets to be a bit like Captain Ahab. In any case, William must be facing a lot of hostility because he's researching it and will post his findings for the record. A quick search turned up some information, which is interesting, no matter how you view the issues: "Birther Claims Debunked: Two Citizen Parents." What's also interesting is that this president has engendered so much hatred, so much conspiracy theorizing, that no matter how deranged it is, there's some kind of weird legitimacy to the movement in the sense that Obama really is "post-American" in his ideological outlook and Marxist orientation to the state and political culture. It's definitely a unique manifestation. It's what drives most of our polarization. The question is centrally about the meaning of being an American and living under the law and according to a traditional set of values that are exceptional. The left has abandoned that exceptionalism. The president is the standard bearer for the destruction of that decency and history. All of this was inevitable when the Democrat Party ended up nominating Obama and when the American people bought the lies and elected him. We'll be digging out from this monstrosity for decades, if we ever fully recover.

As for the citizenship thing, at this point it's moot, in any case. Barack Hussein ain't going anywhere. So I'll be interested to see what happens with Jindal and the others. Stay tuned as far as that goes.

Crowd Boos Gay Soldier's Question on 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell'?

Actually, Sarah Rumpf on Twitter says, "Only a few booed." But see GOProud, "Rick Santorum Owes Gay Soldier an Apology."

Towleroad has the transcipt: "GOP Debate Crowd Boos Gay Soldier Serving in Iraq: VIDEO":

And at Memeorandum.

Santorum doesn't owe anyone an apology. That said, I'd be surprised if restoring DADT became a plank in the GOP platform. We're at war and gays are serving honorably. Let's see how things go for a while.

Besides, I have much more respect for a guy like Stephen Hill than I do for folks like Dan Savage. The former's willing to lay his life on the line for his country. Dan Savage just makes freaked out butt-lube slurs against conservatives. ASFL.