Senator Lindsey Graham Wants To Eliminate “Birthright Citizenship”

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham wants to amend the Constitution so that the children of immigrants would no longer be considered American citizens. The 14th Amendment grants citizenship to any child born in the United States.

“People come here to have babies,” he said. “They come here to drop a child. It’s called “drop and leave.” To have a child in America, they cross the border, they go to the emergency room, have a child, and that child’s automatically an American citizen. That shouldn’t be the case. That attracts people here for all the wrong reasons.”

Graham insisted that he …

Obama Has Deported More Immigrants Than Bush

In spite of the claim by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer and others that the federal government doesn’t enforce the law, more illegal immigrants are being deported each year during the Obama administration than was the case under President Bush.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency expects to deport about 400,000 people this fiscal year, nearly 10 percent above the Bush administration’s 2008 total and 25 percent more than were deported in 2007. The pace of company audits has roughly quadrupled since President George W. Bush’s final year in office.

The effort is part of President Obama’s larger project “to make …

Nicholas Kristoff: War On Terror “Gross Miscalculation Of Resources”

With a h/t to Greg Mitchell, Nicholas Kristoff points toward what we really should be focused on if we want to clean up the economy. Except for World War II, the so-called “war on terror” is the costliest war in our history.

Those historical comparisons should be a wake-up call to President Obama, underscoring how our military strategy is not only a mess — as the recent leaked documents from Afghanistan suggested — but also more broadly reflects a gross misallocation of resources. One legacy of the 9/11 attacks was a distortion of American policy: By the standards of …

Iowa GOP Looking To Replace 13th Amendment To Remove Obama’s Citizenship

The 13th Amendment to the Constitution prohibits slavery, but an earlier, unratified version of that Amendment had a much different intent. As Think Progress reports, the Iowa GOP’s platform calls for “the reintroduction and ratification of the original 13th Amendment” because of this clause:

“if any citizen of the United States shall accept, claim, receive or retain any title of nobility or honor” from a “foreign power, such person shall cease to be a citizen” and “shall be incapable of holding any office of trust.”

This wording was never adopted, but what’s really going in here is that the …

Kindergarten Makes A Difference

by Stuart Shapiro

David Leonhardt reports today on a new study that debunks current common wisdom on the value of kindergarten.

How much do your kindergarten teacher and classmates affect the rest of your life?

Economists have generally thought that the answer was not much. Great teachers and early childhood programs can have a big short-term effect. But the impact tends to fade. By junior high and high school, children who had excellent early schooling do little better on tests than similar children who did not —

Yet when Mr. Chetty and his colleagues took another look at the students …

You Have The Right To Remain Silent.

by Gabe Berman
Gabe is a freelance writer for the Miami Herald and author of Live Like a Fruit Fly

I’ve changed my mind.

I no longer support the separation of church and state.

From this day forth, I want to see the legal enforcement of the Ten Commandments.

But only for elected officials who prance around saying this country was founded on Judeo-Christian principles.

The hypocrisy will end.

YOU SHALL NOT MURDER

War will never be voted for again (or politicians will have to come clean about their supposed religion).

This will invariably start a semantic debate between the …

Judge Who Stayed Arizona Immigraton Law Was Recommended By GOP Senator Kyl

Before the right wing starts yelling, “Liberal judge!”, it would be wise to note that Arizona’s Jon Kyl recommended to Bill Clinton that Judge Susan Bolton be nominated to the District Court for the District of Arizona. Kyl, an ardent proponent of SB1070,  cited Bolton’s “expertise and fairness.”

Prior to the announcement of her decision, Kyl speculated that “she will parse the law, that is to say she will perhaps extract certain portions of it that she think might be problematic and might enjoin those portions calling additional briefings from the parties.” Before learning of Bolton’s decision, Gov. Jan …

On Wednesday’s Radio Show…

• Judge Andrew Napolitano analyzes the federal court ruling blocking key aspects of Arizona’s immigration law.

• Heroism or treason? Alan ponders what punishment the source of the WikiLeaks documents should face.

• Psychic Jeffrey Wands, whose new book is Knock and the Door Will Open, explains how you can use your own untapped powers to master the art of living.…

DoJ, Homeland Security Praise Court Ruling on AZ Law

Via Politico:

Hannah August, of the Justice Department’s public affairs office, released this statement after a judge blocked key provisions of Arizona’s immigration law:

“We believe the court ruled correctly when it prevented key provisions of SB1070 from taking effect. While we understand the frustration of Arizonans with the broken immigration system, a patchwork of state and local policies would seriously disrupt federal immigration enforcement and would ultimately be counterproductive. States can and do play a role in cooperating with the federal government in its enforcement of the immigration laws, but they must do so within our constitutional …

Tea Party Continues To Splinter Republicans

By Yashwanth Manjunath

With the 2010 elections coming up, the Democrats face the prospect of possibly losing control of the Senate due to tremendous voter dissatisfaction with their policies and a deflated base. Fortunately for the Democrats, with enemies like the Republicans and the Tea Party continuing to shoot each other in the foot, they may not need many friends to hang on to their majority.

The Republicans and the Tea Party have already clashed on several key Senate races. While the Tea Party candidates are more in line with the rabidly conservative base of the Republican Party, their extremist …

Judge Blocks Key Parts Of Arizona Immigration Law

The New York Times reports:

A federal judge, ruling on a clash between the federal government and a state over immigration policy, has blocked the most controversial parts of Arizona’s immigration enforcement law from going into effect.

In a ruling on a law that has rocked politics coast to coast and thrown a spotlight on the border state’s fierce debate over immigration, United States District Court Judge Susan Bolton in Phoenix said some aspects of the law can go into effect as scheduled on Thursday.

The parts of the law that the judge blocked included the sections that called …