The 14th can go the way of the Other 10

I should mention it's gotten easier to write these posts since I settled into this new relaxed style. Maybe, as B.B. King would have it, the thrill is gone, but so is the feverish tension of all that Hope & Change that had me and a lot of other people so fired up for a while. As the original resident of the Pond had it, a single truth is enough for the Seeker, and the single truth apparent now, to my way of thinking, is that the political system doesn't work anymore. How it got into this deplorable state is a complicated question, even for me, and don't forget: I have a degree in political science. That's right, I'm a scientist, I hold a Bachelor of Science from what was once a publicly funded university (prior to Prop 13), although admittedly now it's a wholly owned subsidiary of British Petroleum, which owns the science department, and the Haas Family, which owns the business school.

So in this Zen-like state of Acceptance, it is easier to admit the truth of what's going on these days on the Fruited Plain, specifically, not too much good. The whole country is sort of up for grabs, the final devolutionary step, perhaps, in the collapse of citizenship that I think underlies the decadence of public governance in the USA.

Take, for example, the "debate" over the 14th Amendment. Should it be "repealed?" Those are the terms in which the discussion happens in this stupid country of ours. Alberto Gonzales, legal hack who once headed up the Justice Department, says don't repeal the 14th Amendment, but he's Hispanic, so what did you expect. Sarah Palin is okay with repealing the 14th Amendment. Yet who even knows what the 14th Amendment is? Most experienced lawyers would never even think about the "birthright" clause when thinking about the 14th. The 14th Amendment was the landmark amendment of the Reconstruction Era (1868) which made certain that the Due Process Clause of the 5th Amendment, as well as the new Equal Protection Clause of the 14th, was fully applicable to state and local governments. Without the 14th such epochal decisions as Brown vs Board of Education would not have worked. Jim Crow would still be in effect, perhaps. Rand Paul's wet dream of sending a black family to the next, blacks-only motel would be okay with the feds, so long as Kentucky law allowed it.

So most lawyers don't want to see the "14th Amendment" repealed. What the politicos/ talk shows are yelling about is the "birthright" clause, which grants citizenship to anyone who manages to be born within U.S. borders and become "subject to its jurisdiction."

"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.^[3]"

To be fair, this is a reasonable question to ask: the original purpose of the Birthright Clause was to make certain that certain members of the American public who were literally here from the beginning, African-American slaves, would not be denied citizenship after the Emancipation Proclamation because of the awful (dreadful, you could say) Dred Scott decision, which denied not only citizenship but essentially humanity to freed slaves. The slaves were not "illegal immigrants." They did not sneak into the USA to drop an "anchor baby." They were originally brought here on slave ships, those who survived the voyages. So, as with many generalized provisions in the Constitution, the Birthright Clause of the 14th found a new and not-really-intended use in the case of illegal immigrants. A series of Supreme Court decisions, however, have made it clear that birthright citizenship is available to anyone born here, no matter how that birth happened to happen.

Settled law, right? An amendment (really, what Sarah is talking about, even though she doesn't know it, is an amendment to an amendment) takes forever under the Constitution, so let's move along to the next thing. And I guarantee you, practically, that that is not going to happen. There's another way in America these days. It began with Bush and has come to be settled policy with Obama: if you don't like a civil liberty or Constitutional provision, if it's inconvenient, you simply ignore it. Few things are more dangerous than such lawlessness, of course, it's the gateway to tyranny and mob rule, but...Here We Are! The 4th Amendment and FISA law got in the way of Bush's illegal spying program. No problem, no one is going to do anything about it. Military commissions violated the 5th (and 14th!) amendments regarding due process. So what? Waterboarding and other forms of torture violate the 8th Amendment. Who cares? The use of "faith-based" delivery systems within the federal government violate the First Amendment's Establishment Clause. Wake me when you've got something important to say. Habeas corpus?- the aforementioned Alberto said it's not even in the Constitution; the Constitution just says you can't repeal it. Hey, if sophistry like that works (and Obama is using it in Bagram prison in Afghanistan), tell me something that won't. How 'bout the right to assassinate American citizens anywhere in the world if they're a "security risk?" Sounds like an end run around the 5th and 14th Amendments' Due Process Clause, doesn't it? Do they care in Saudi Arabia? Then why should we?

Saudi Arabia, by the way, is one of those countries which denies birthright citizenship. In so many ways (capital punishment, use of torture), countries such as Kuwait, Iran and Saudi Arabia are our political cousins. Anyway, the future is pretty clear. As things fall apart, what's going to happen is that we will move from a system of presumption of citizenship to one where citizenship is a matter of affirmative proof. The Arizona law is a big step in this direction, and overwhelmingly Americans favor this approach. Then too the Supreme Court could get a new case and simply reverse the Wong case of 1898 (and others following) and say that the 14th Amendment was never meant to apply to illegal immigrants, which might not be a bad argument, after all.

One way or another, through Constitutional nullification, mob rule, ad hoc decisions, the days of birthright citizenship are numbered, if I know my fellow yahoos, and I think I do. It's a fine mess you've made here, Oliver.

The Immigration Reform Speech

But before getting to that, an answer to John's question about Dmitry Orlov's onboard toilet facilities: my understanding is that the yacht is equipped with a composting toilet. My own very limited experience with such facilities suggests that a composting toilet aboard a a fairly small boat (32 feet) could present some olfactory challenges for the average American, who tends to be somewhat squeamish or sensitive about such matters, more so than (I'm guessing) a native of Orlov's homeland, the Soviet Union. Americans do not like body smells of any kind, actually, which is one of the reasons we have trouble with international travel. As for the rest of Orlov's carrying charges, I doubt he generates much trash or garbage, living as he does. The cost of berthing a boat in a metropolitan area probably varies by season, but I agree that's a major consideration. I took a tour around the berths of Orange County's Balboa Island recently, and the guide made it a point to impress us with the outrageous cost of berths, which often exceeded the rent on a good-sized apartment. Then again, if you're handy with oars you can moor the boat instead of berthing it. I suspect overall, however, that being freed up from mortgages and real property taxes (and paying much less for insurance) results in a far lower shelter cost, and Orlov, who's an engineer by training and very rigorous in his approach to, well, everything, no doubt has thought it all through. By the way, the picture is of the house of the infomercial king who came up with not just the Veg-o-matic, but Spray-On Hair, a monument to American entrepreneurship in one of its last bastions, the RepublicanLand of Orange County.

But what of the President's speech today on Immigration Reform? How can we let such a milestone pass without remarking on this singular event, and asking what one hopes are salient questions. Such as:

1. Why the hell is the President giving a speech on Immigration Reform?

That's all I can come up with right now.

By the time they get to Phoenix...

...they'll be citizens.

I've been traveling around this paved, malled (a pun, I guess) and tracted land of ours a little over the last week. From sea to shining sea, America is pretty much all of a piece these days & years. Walking into a Walgreen's on the East Coast, I had a Twilight Zone moment when I realized I knew exactly where to go to find what I wanted, because the aisles are laid out exactly as they are on the West Coast. Is this reassuring, confidence-inspiring, or just freaky? Makes no difference. It's how it is in the "Geography of Nowhere," as Kunstler wrote.

Plane travel remains an expensive and unmitigated horror of hunger, thirst, discomfort and petty insults to the person. It is almost as if the airlines are daring their passengers to revolt openly, to swear off travel forever. How, they must wonder in board meetings, can we raise the level of discomfort to the point where our customers just freaking give up? How much can they take? We starve them, we charge for literally everything except the virus-filled air they breathe, no matter how trivial the amenity, we don't even allow the seats to recline -- do we have to crash a plane every day to break them? What will it take? More cancellations, more overbooking, more announcements that the plane is "very full today?" I have confidence they'll explore every avenue until their customers capitulate. They've taken it so far already.

Only three stories seem to matter these days, however: Greece's imminent bankruptcy, the Gulf oil spill, Senate Bill 1070 in Arizona. The East Coast news, naturally, is the same as the West Coast news, all of it conveyed by CNN, MSNBC & Fox. I was surprised to see a national poll affirming that about 60% of the nation's citizens are in favor of the legislation. The anti-Arizona parades and demonstrations are more telegenic, of course, so one can get the impression that the entire nation is in an uproar about all the "racial profiling." The most vociferous attacks on Arizona's race-consciousness seemed to come from the Hispanic advocacy group La Raza. Sometimes irony just writes itself.

Neither side in the debate can afford to tell the truth, of course, because the fight for the national soul is not won that way. La Raza and other Hispanic advocates extol the need for "reform," as in "we need immigration reform now." This is, of course, simply another way of arguing that another round of amnesty is needed to consolidate the position of illegals already present in the country. Hell, it worked in 1986 under Reagan; why not now? The main reason why not now is the junior senator from Alabama, Jeff Sessions, who looks remarkably like a ceramic lawn jockey. Immigration "reform" will die in committee, which doesn't matter that much to Obama so long as he can be viewed as fighting for the "civil liberties" of hassled Hispanics and illegals longing to breathe free among the malls, tracts and paving. O Man wants those electoral votes in New Mexico, Colorado and Florida in 2012, and he won't get them if he gives up on this "civil liberties" issue which is suddenly so important to him, although this is somewhat contradicted by his recent, remarkable criticisms of the Supreme Court "activisim" of the Earl Warren years. (Say what, Brother Barry?) Yep, that's what he did.

It's hard to tell exactly how many illegal aliens were naturalized as a result of the 1986 act, but one informed guess is around 3 million. The system, if you're old enough to recall, was based on the principle that the longer the illegal had violated U.S. immigration law, the greater the reward. If one could prove in 1986 that one had been bobbing and weaving under the nose of the Feds since at least January 1, 1982, one was good to go. The other major part of the 1986 law concerned penalties for hiring illegals and the introduction of the I-9 form, honored, of course, always more in the breach than the observance. It seems likely that another round of amnesty, if Obama can lead Congress to contrive it, would at least triple the 1986 effect.

As far as I can tell, the only real difference between the provisions of the 1986 law and the Arizona bill is this: private citizens are given the right to sue the police or enforcement authorities for not enforcing the immigration laws. This is a hammer to force enforcement, since this is what is always missing, and since Janet Napolitano (who, as governor of Arizona, vetoed a similar, earlier piece of state legislation) cannot figure out how to keep known terrorist risks on No Fly lists off American commercial airlines, it's a sure bet the Homeland "Security" chief is not going to get this one under control. Anyway, Obama feels the bill is "misguided" in the sense that America gave up enforcing laws in general many years ago, as enhanced under his Eternal Now Statute of Limitations for (a) all high government officials or (b) necessary voting blocs or campaign donors.

Anyway, it's a thoroughly dishonest debate "raging" within the United States, and no "reform" bill will accomplish a damn thing. It would be interesting if Eric Holder is brought up out of his cryogenically frozen state to challenge the Arizona law in federal court, since ultimately such an issue would be heard by the definitely conservative Supreme Court, who, after all, should not be "activist" in overturning the sovereign will of an individual state, since that's the kind of disreputable thing the Warren Court was famous for. Ain't it fun being President, O?