The FBI's on-the-spot revision of federal law; Or, do you know the difference betwen Hillary Clinton and Richard Nixon?

Laws are just words on a page to be rewritten by and for powerful people

notes Benny Huang acidly.

The rule of law died a little last Tuesday when FBI director James Comey announced the Bureau’s findings concerning Hillary Clinton and her illegal email server. After a short speech in which he detailed the findings of the investigation, he recommended against charging her with anything.

You didn’t think it would happen any other way, did you? I certainly didn’t. As blatant as her lawbreaking was—some of which was not even discussed in Comey’s speech—it seemed fanciful to believe that Hillary Clinton, the ultimate insider, would actually do the perp walk. As a former First Lady, former senator, and former Secretary of State, she is for all practical purposes above the law. Her consciousness of this fact enables her bad behavior.

Comey’s rationale for not referring the Clinton case for prosecution defied all logic and, according to former assistant US Attorney Andy McCarthy, represented an on-the-spot revision of federal law. McCarthy wrote:

“There is no way of getting around this: According to Director James Comey (disclosure: a former colleague and longtime friend of mine), Hillary Clinton checked every box required for a felony violation of Section 793(f) of the federal penal code (Title 18): With lawful access to highly classified information she acted with gross negligence in removing and causing it to be removed it from its proper place of custody, and she transmitted it and caused it to be transmitted to others not authorized to have it, in patent violation of her trust. Director Comey even conceded that former Secretary Clinton was ‘extremely careless’ and strongly suggested that her recklessness very likely led to communications (her own and those she corresponded with) being intercepted by foreign intelligence services.”

Yes, she did all of things and more. According to Director Comey, Hillary’s saving grace was her supposed lack of intent to break the law. She didn’t mean to do what she did, you see. There are two responses to this.

First, yes there was her intention. Hillary Clinton didn’t set up her illegal email server by accident. She didn’t use it for all of her correspondence by chance. She didn’t wipe the server by bumbling error, an issue I noticed Comey did not even address.

But the second response is even more important: intent is not the legal standard; negligence is. Even his whitewash investigation found that she and her staff were “extremely careless” with classified information. Carelessness is a synonym for negligence.

So Hillary will skate. Director Comey dished out the only punishment she will likely ever face—a stern talking-to. Start printing invitations for the Inaugural Ball—Hillary’s going to be our next president!

 … It should be noted here that at least Nixon paid some price: the not insignificant loss of his elected office. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, is on the fast track to becoming the next president. That’s the difference.

 … She can store top secret and special access program materials on a secret email server that is vulnerable to hackers. She can wipe that server when it is subpoenaed. When caught, she can lie under oath to Congress about the whole affair. She can stonewall investigators and throw a fit in hearings. “What difference does it make” if it’s illegal?

The rule of law is crumbling in this country. Like most nefarious phenomena, it’s difficult to pinpoint a starting point. Powerful people have been getting away with illegal behavior for quite a long time—but was it always this blatant? I don’t think so.

These days it’s all right out in the open. We’re starting to look like some kind of banana republic where this week’s junta leader rules by fiat. We’ve got a coterie of junta leaders, I suppose—the president, Supreme Court justices, a few powerful secretaries. But it’s the same crap.

Once you understand that laws are just a lot of useless paper, all of our endless squabbling seems pretty silly. What’s the point of learned men standing around in a courtroom arguing the finer points of the law when in the end it means whatever the judge decides it means?

 … Who cares what the law actually says? Let’s determine what Congress meant, rather than what was debated and voted on. In an odd turn of events, the Court handed down another opinion that same day concerning marriage. In Obergefell v. Hodges, the Court found that the Fourteenth Amendment, which was ratified in 1868, guarantees a right to same-sex marriage. Am I supposed to believe that the men who labored over, passed, and ratified that amendment intended to radically redefine marriage? It seems that intent is only important when it helps judges get where they want to go.

These people are just making it up as they go along. They decide the hot button issues of the day according to their preferences then go in search of a justification. No justification is too lame because they’re the supremes and we’re not.

This is the way we do things in America these days. The law isn’t really the law. Powerful people do whatever the heck they feel like doing and if the law gets in their way it is magically rewritten on the spot. Sometimes it’s the FBI director who decides to change the plain meaning of a statute. Sometimes it’s a judge. It can be the president, or even on occasion, a backroom bureaucrat. Beneath the tissue-thin pretense of an orderly, principled system, it’s actually just a naked power struggle—and we’re losing.

How Boris Johnson was brought to his knees by the 'cuckoo nest plot'

All of a sudden, the leaking of the Sarah Vine email did not seem so accidental after all. Was it deliberately given to Sky News to undermine Mr Johnson and pave the way for a Gove challenge?

As Theresa May (not to be confused with Teresa May) becomes head of the UK's Tories and enters 10 Downing Street, the Daily Telegraph's Gordon Rayner has a longish story on how Boris Johnson was brought down as front runner for both posts (cheers to Ed Driscoll for the Instalanche).

Incidentally: did you know that Boris is a dual citizen, or, rather, that the then-mayor of London was a dual citizen, until he renounced his U.S. citizenship last year? Can you guess who he had been hounded by into returning his U.S. passport in 2015?
Update: something to think about, when you learn that Theresa May has just made Boris the country's foreign secretary in her new cabinet.

With two hours to go until the launch of Mr Johnson’s leadership bid, [Michael Gove (Sarah Vine's husband)], the man who was supposed to be making up the “dream ticket” with him, had not so much stabbed him in the back as run him through with a pikestaff.

The Telegraph understands that Sir Lynton [Crosby, Mr Johnson’s campaign manager] asked Mr Gove whether he had told Mr Johnson. He had not, but said he intended to. The call, however, was never made.

By noon, Mr Johnson, the front-runner for the Tory leadership, was no longer a runner at all, ousted by what was being called a “cuckoo nest plot”. Having been comprehensively stitched up by his running mate and several other “supporters”, he threw in the towel, his ambitions in ruins. …/…

'Gove is a ----!'

Perhaps Mr Johnson should have seen it coming. The history of the Conservative Party is, after all, littered with the shattered careers of leadership front-runners who were knifed by their colleagues: Maudling, Heath, Heseltine, Clarke, Portillo, Davis. …/…

A 'creepy operation'

“Boris was cavalier with assurances he made,” he said. “We're picking a Prime Minister to lead the country, not a school prefect.” With Mr Boles also gone, one Johnson supporter said: “He hasn’t been double crossed, he has been triple crossed. This seems to have been a pretty well developed, quite creepy operation.”

Sources have told The Telegraph that Mr Gove had told Theresa May about his intention to run even before he told Sir Lynton Crosby, such was the cold-bloodedness of the ambush. …/…

'It makes House of Cards look like Teletubbies'

Her performance was masterful: if anyone doubted Mrs May had the ruthlessness required to be Prime Minister, they would soon have their answer.

She talked about people in Westminster who did not understand what it was like to struggle for money and who needed reminding that politics “isn’t a game”. She was not, she said, a “showy” politician enamoured of “gimmicks” (instantly conjuring an image of Mr Johnson dangling from a zip wire), she did not go drinking in the Commons bars or tour the TV studios, “I just get on with the job in front of me”. No-one needed subtitles to explain who she was referring to.

Mrs May also knows that the most devastating thing you can do to an opponent is to turn them into a laughing stock.  …/…

Johnson-backer Nigel Evans MP was asked whether Mrs May had stabbed Mr Johnson in the front after Mr Gove had stabbed him in the back.

“That’s about it,” he said. “It makes House of Cards look like Teletubbies.”

Over at camp Boris, MPs were withdrawing their support by the minute. The 97 backing him were now down to 47, and Mr Johnson’s team realised they had been undone by what they referred to as a “cuckoo nest plot”. For months Mr Johnson had nurtured Mr Gove’s grand plan for Brexit, only to be kicked out when it finally hatched.

Mr Johnson, feeling “sad, disappointed and betrayed”, according to one source, decided he could not go on.

Related: Boris Johnson's heart not in Brexit, ex-aide Guto Harri says (BBC)

The Stories About the NRA and Blacks That the National News Media Does Not Tell Usl

Colion Noir makes some points regarding the national Rifle Association.

2:22:

If any organization acts in a racist manner towards [blacks'] gun rights, it's you — the national news media! You call the NRA racist — while in the same breath telling blacks like me that we shouldn't own guns. Because we can't be trusted to not just kill each other.

2:40:

The Democratic Party invented gun control after slavery — to keep guns out of the hands of black people. And they haven't stopped since. But you don't tell that story either.

In related matters: Fox News:

Only days after watching five of his officers gunned down by an anti-white anti-cop shooter, Dallas Police Chief David Brown on Monday offered some advice to protesters who remain upset about recent police shootings: Join us.

Even as sometimes violent demonstrations against police continued Sunday night throughout the nation, in cities from Baton Rouge to Los Angeles, Brown made his argument for disaffected civilians to put down cardboard signs and pick up a badge.

“Become a part of the solution,” Brown said during a Monday news conference. “We’re hiring. Get off that protest line and put an application in. And we’ll put you in your neighborhood, and we’ll help you resolve some of the problems you’re protesting about.”

Brown knows something about becoming part of the solution. Dallas’ top cop since 2010, Brown joined the department in 1983 after, he said, watching his friends swallowed up by the crack cocaine epidemic.

“It broke my heart and it changed what I wanted to do,” he said.

Today Is George Bush's Birthday (George Turns 13)

Today George Bush will be celebrating his birthday. Some will protest and say, that's not true, the president's birthday was July 6. But we're not talking about the same person, apparently. Nor his father. Because this George Bush turns only 13 today.

The George Bush I have in mind is not the one whose full name is George Walker Bush, nor the one whose full name is George Herbert Walker Bush, but the one whose full name is George Bush Abdul Kader Faris Abed El-Hussein (no relation to Saddam). And this George Bush was born in Baghdad on July 11, 2003.

From a post of exactly 10 years ago:

As far as can be ascertained, George Bush’s parents named him in honor of some Western leader one of whose recent feats they found to be not only impressive and admirable, obviously, but worthy enough to name their new-born son after. They must have been plenty impressed, in view of the fact that they gave their child the name of someone not of their faith, with linguistic roots not of their culture. (Sort of like a Westerner — say, someone from the Bush clan — giving a newborn son a name such as Mohammed Ahmed Yusuf Bush.)

Now, here is what I suggest. I suggest that the West should send a number of representatives to Baghdad. The type of people that David Brooks calls “the members of the sneering brigade”, “the think-tank johnnies and the rest of the commentariate” in “their usual sky-is-falling mode” — people like José Bové, François Hollande, Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schröder, José Luis Zapatero, Jean-Marie Colombani, Plantu, Willem (to name only the Europeans), etc… They should choose a couple of high-visibility VIPs, “arm” them with all the usual arguments, and send them to Baghdad.

And there, they should seek out the parents of George Bush. Once the couple has been found, they should patiently explain the “truth” to them and seek thereby to install some common sense in them. That would include telling them…

• that the war was unnecessary and a sham, conducted for bogus reasons;
• that Iraq, and the world, were far better off before the conflict;
• that the presence of foreign soldiers is “humiliating” for George Bush and his fellow countrymen;
• that they must resent America (or at least, the Bush administration) for the current situation in which thousands have been killed over a period of more than three years and hark back to the previous situation in which the secret police killed several thousands per month with total impunity;
• that, in contrast to the administration of George Bush’s namesake, they, the holier-than-thou members of the peace camp, had (and have) nothing but the best interests of his parents in mind;
• oh, and, of course, that George Bush’s namesake is nothing but a nincompoop and a despicable liar.

Once the parents of George Bush have been converted to the sky-is-falling truth, the “the members of the sneering brigade” could go to work convincing more of Iraq’s population.

The members of “the commentariate” could start with Mohammed, Ali, and Omar, the brothers from Iraq the Model and expand outwards, to include the Iraqis who lost hands and tongues to Saddam’s thugs, had their faced scarred by acid, had their sisters, mothers, and daughters raped, and had their parents, brothers, and children shot down and their bodies thrown into unnamed graves. With luck, “the think-tank johnnies” would eventually reach that vast majority of people who in polls believe life has never been better since the war toppled Saddam and who say they feel more optimistic than they ever had in the past.

Let us join together and wish them “good luck and godspeed with your sacred mission”.

Oh, and by the way, Georgie: Happy birthday!

Related: There's a new George Bush in Baghdad,
six weeks old and screaming in a crib
• Nadia Jergis Mohammed, 34, … told Associated Press Television News:

"I tell you all Iraqis hated Saddam's regime. It was only George Bush who liberated us, without him it wouldn't have happened. If he hadn't done it the sons of Saddam would have ruled us for years. He saved us from Saddam and that's why we named our son after him"

The statistics behind gun violence: Mass shootings in the U.S. have fallen so much in the past century that the political left has had to redefine what a mass shooting is

The BBC brings us the statistics related to gun violence. Check them out, and as you will see below, I and Erick Erickson will put these into perspective:

Guns in the US: 

The statistics behind the violence

The statistics

Mass shootings: There were 372 mass shootings in the US in 2015, killing 475 people and wounding 1,870, according to the Mass Shooting Tracker, which catalogues such incidents. A mass shooting is defined as a single shooting incident which kills or injures four or more people, including the assailant.

Source: Mass Shooting Tracker

School shootings: There were 64 school shootings in 2015, according to a dedicated campaign group set up in the wake of the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre in Connecticut in 2012. Those figures include occasions when a gun was fired but no-one was hurt.

Source: Everytown for Gun SafetyResearch

All shootings: Some 13,286 people were killed in the US by firearms in 2015, according to the Gun Violence Archive, and 26,819 people were injured [those figures exclude suicide]. Those figures are likely to rise by several hundred, once incidents in the final week of the year are counted.

Source: Gun Violence Archive

How the US compares: The number of gun murders per capita in the US in 2012 - the most recent year for comparable statistics - was nearly 30 times that in the UK, at 2.9 per 100,000 compared with just 0.1.

Of all the murders in the US in 2012, 60% were by firearm compared with 31% in Canada, 18.2% in Australia, and just 10% in the UK.

Source: UNODC.

The home front: So many people die annually from gunfire in the US that the death toll between 1968 and 2011 eclipses all wars ever fought by the country. According to research by Politifact, there were about 1.4 million firearm deaths in that period, compared with 1.2 million US deaths in every conflict from the War of Independence to Iraq.

Source: Politifact.

Total number of guns: No official figure exists but there are thought to be about 300 million in the US, held by about a third of the population. That is nearly enough guns for every man, woman and child in the country.

The NRA: The right to own guns is regarded by many as enshrined in the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, and fiercely defended by lobby groups such as the National Rifle Association, which boasted that its membership surged to around five million in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook school shooting.

Gun violence and terrorism: The US spends more than a trillion dollars per year defending itself against terrorism, which kills a tiny fraction of the number of people killed by ordinary gun crime.
According to figures from the US Department of Justice and the Council on Foreign Affairs, 11,385 people died on average annually in firearm incidents in the US between 2001 and 2011.

In the same period, an average of 517 people were killed annually in terror-related incidents. Removing 2001, when 9/11 occurred, from the calculation produces an annual average of just 31.

As I have written, in The Misleading Statistics of Gun Control,

most of these mass shootings occur between criminal gangs. To learn that a gangster has been, or a group of gangsters have been, shot dead will simply not touch the average citizen — American or foreign — as much as the innocent dead of Orlando or Utøya. And rightly so, since violence is part of their calling, of their chosen profession, if you will. (Which is why — even left-leaning — journalists don't mention those killings in the first place; except, of course, as part of the respective city edition's metro section.)

Thus, "bare" figures of 11,000 killed by guns compared to 17 (or to 31 or to 517) killed by terrorism is misleading because the statisticians, deliberately or otherwise, fail to take into account everyday average beta people who are gunned down with hardly any warning as contrasted with thugs who are in an "occupation" in which shooting by firearm is, shall we say, an accepted risk.

A similar remark concerns "the death toll between 1968 and 2011 [eclipsing] all wars ever fought by the country"; the statisticians would have you believe the dead, like the citizen soldiers on the battlefield, all amount to be the same average all-American red-blooded Joe.

Finally, while the people using weapons in Canada, Australia, and the UK are almost certainly (of necessity, due to their respective gun control laws) outlaws killing people, whether a fellow outlaw or a law-abiding citizen, the shootings in the U.S. might very well be a law-abiding citizen (successfully) defending him- or herself against an criminal, whose "career" he or she helped bring to a close.

From the numbers above, moreover, it is not immediately apparent that, in fact (as Erick Erickson puts it),

mass shootings in the United States have fallen so much in the past century that the political left has insisted we redefine what a mass shooting is. 

Indeed, when we think of a mass shooting, don't we think of a dozen people dead, minimum, or certainly at the very least half a dozen. Check out the BBC's numbers:

372 mass shootings in the US in 2015, killing 475 people and wounding 1,870. 

You hardly need a calculator to figure out that 371/475 is less than 1.5 (!) people killed on average per mass shooting (along with four wounded or more). In other words, the average number of dead bodies per "mass" shooting — as redefined downwards — turns out to be between… one and two! And closer to one, at that! (And with the assailant being included nowadays, wouldn't that mean that a "mass" shooting might include one in which the only dead person turns out to be the criminal himself?!)

It takes an Erick Erickson to take an even deeper perspective on these "factual" statistics.

There are more than 300 million guns in private hands in the United States and more than 2 trillion rounds of ammunition in private hands. What we are seeing is not an out of control gun problem. In fact, mass shootings in the United States have fallen so much in the past century that the political left has insisted we redefine what a mass shooting is. It is all in the name of gun control.

The left will not talk about mental illness. The left will not talk about radical jihadism. The left only wants to talk about gun control. There is a very easy to understand explanation for this phenomenon

 … Conservatives look on these acts, whether it be Baton Rouge or Ferguson or Orlando or Dallas and they see a world in moral collapse and struggles between good and evil. Black families have crumbled. Black fathers are in jail while the mothers struggle to keep the family together. Unemployment among black youth is high and people of faith understand that there is something soul nourishing about work. Even in the Garden of Eden there was work.

But we cannot even talk about the Garden of Eden because the left laughs it off. Morality, faith, prayer, and concepts of good and evil are all rejected by the left. So they grasp for something on which they can make a principled stand and it is gun control and the erosion of a right the left refuses to recognize in the second amendment.

Secular reporters lament that there are too many guns in America, but they will not admit there is too much moral decay. In fact, they not only revel in the moral decay and defining deviancy as normal and normal as deviant, but they expect the rest of us to do the same. If you uphold natural law or moral law, you are a bigot.

Because they cannot talk about a morality they no longer recognize or the need for a God they long ago rejected, they are forced to insist more laws will solve problems. It is the metaphysical equivalent of the religious believing more prayer will solve problems. When God is traded in for government, prayer gets traded in for law. The more laws there are, the better off we will be because government is our god now.

See also: What Is to Blame for Mass Shootings?
Does the Blame Lie with the Right to Bear Arms Or Can It Be Found Elsewhere?

Update: Meet the Moral Equivalence on 'Meet the Press' After Dallas Attack on Police by Jack Dunphy (thanks to Ed Driscoll)

 … on Sunday’s Meet the Press, crime was scarcely mentioned. Only Charles Ramsey, former commissioner of the Philadelphia Police Department, mentioned the 13,000 murders that occur every year in the United States, yet he couldn’t go so far as to note that about 6,000 of those murders are committed by blacks against other blacks.

Perhaps most galling about the discussion was the way in which some of the guests seemed to draw a moral equivalence between the atrocity in Dallas and the police shootings that engendered the Black Lives Matter protest that preceded it. Asked by Chuck Todd if he was concerned about the state of race relations in America, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson struck a politically cautious but morally obtuse note. “Well, I am concerned, Chuck,” he said. “And I think at a time like this when tensions are high, in the wake of events in Dallas and Baton Rouge and Minnesota and elsewhere, it's important to remember that just as the shooter on Thursday night is not reflective of the broader movement to bring about change in police practices, that any police officer who engages in excessive force is not representative of the larger law enforcement community, which with increasing frequency, reflects the community at large.”

Note what Johnson did there. Tensions are high, he says, because of “events” in Dallas, Baton Rouge, and Minnesota, all of which were, in his apparent opinion, equally objectionable. What rubbish.

 … it’s so discouraging to see these incidents lumped together with the Dallas shooting as though they were two sides of the same coin. Micah Johnson, the killer in Dallas, did not overreact in performance of a lawful duty. Motivated by his self-confessed hatred for white people in general and white police officers most especially, he set out to kill as many of them as he could. Yet the Wise Ones on Meet the Press couldn’t bring themselves to make that distinction lest they appear racially insensitive.

The Story of Five Men Gunned Down Becomes Perturbing When It Goes Against the Narrative

My God isn't this horrible? Doesn't Fox News show its racism by showing the faces of the victim and of the killer in a case where the tragedy does NOT show white-on-black racism?!

Fox News isn't following the narrative!

As Kevin D. Williamson puts it (thanks to Instapundit), the

same people who literally blamed the NRA for the Orlando shooting while the blood was still being mopped up are today demanding that Black Lives Matter not be smeared by association with the violence in Dallas.

The people who blamed Sarah Palin’s use of crosshairs as a graphic-design element on a poster (“targeting” certain Democrats for electoral challenges) for the shooting of Gabby Giffords suddenly have nothing to say about violent and irresponsible rhetoric.

 I myself hold to the view that we hold criminals responsible for their actions and that speeches given by third parties are generally, at most, tangential questions. Maybe your view is different, and that’s fine: But pick one.

Leftists are not only not demanding that Black Lives Matter not be smeared by association with the violence in Dallas, they are also steadfast in their insisting that the entire left, including their post-racial healer-in-chief aka the activist-in-chief in the White House, have no ties to the Dallas killings…

Stephen Miller:

America finds itself rocked once again by post racial violence in the era of “Hope and Change,” stoked by a president content to fan the flames before facts or motivations are known in ongoing investigations.

Back-to-back shootings of young African-American men, this time in Baton Rouge and St. Paul, captivated social media. The shootings certainly looked bad, but judging what is on a Facebook Live video is something for social media pundits, not sitting presidents.

The nation then sat by and watched as police officers in Dallas were gunned down by a group of suspects, with one perpetrator reportedly inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement and angry at the shootings that led up to this.

Read the whole thing, i.e., read Stephen Miller's short history of Obama’s habit of jumping to conclusions when it comes to the police coupled with "the media’s love affair with race riots"…
John Ziegler has a question:

As the news media refuses, as it seems to have done so far, to even address the black online support for these soul-crushing murders, it will further prove this point. Can you imagine the outrage in the news media if the Charleston murderer Dylann Roof had been widely supported online by whites and no one in the white community, or conservative media, had immediately condemned that response? It would obviously be a huge part of the story’s entire narrative. In this situation that’s not allowed because, under the media’s absurd rules of political correctness, it would somehow be “racist” to criticize black people. 

Ben Shapiro weighs in by asking, point blank, what sort of responsibility does President Obama bear for the massacre: Is Barack Obama Responsible For The Dallas Anti-Cop Terror Attack?

First off, let’s point out the obvious double standard from the left: when a white racist, Dylann Storm Roof, shot up a Charleston black church, the left immediately blamed a widespread culture of racism, and insisted that states across the country tear down Confederate war memorials and stop sponsoring the Confederate flag at state capitols. When non-black cops shoot black suspects, the left insists – without a shred of evidence – that such killings are endemic among police officers, and that the entire system is racist. When anti-Donald Trump protesters riot against Trump supporters, the left blame Trump’s rhetoric. When a nutcase shoots up an area near a Planned Parenthood, the left blames the pro-life movement. When another nutcase shoots Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, the left blames Sarah Palin’s Congressional targets map.

But when obvious anti-white racists murder white cops, the left suggests that gun control is the issue; when obvious Islamic terrorists murder gay people in a nightclub in Orlando, the problem is white Christians who don’t support same-sex marriage and Republicans who defend gun rights.

In other words, for the left, rhetoric can only connect with murder when it’s rhetoric they don’t like. If they do like the rhetoric -- or at least if they want to defend the people responsible for the rhetoric -- then the actual motivation for murder will be [omitted].

But now let’s tackle the real question: when is rhetoric responsible for violence? Rhetoric is responsible for violence when it calls for violence. Radical Islam calls for jihad. Protesters chanting “pigs in a blanket, fry ‘em like bacon” calls for violence against cops. Barack Obama didn’t call for violence against cops.

That said, he did do three things that are particularly despicable:

1. He denied that murder charges require evidence;
2. He denied that charges of racism require evidence;
3. He ignored the actual cause of anti-cop violence.

Obama didn’t cause the Orlando shooting attack, but his failure to label it Islamic jihadism surely stopped America from fighting it properly. Obama didn’t cause the Dallas shootings, but his attempts to turn the conversation toward gun control or police brutality are just another way to avoid a real conversation about anti-white racism.

As usual, Jonah Goldberg presents some good commentary:

 … here is something particularly vile and disgusting in the way many of the leading masters of sanctimony keep changing their standards. When a registered Democrat and Muslim murdered people in Orlando in the name of ISIS, it was outrageous to suggest that maybe we shouldn’t point fingers at Christian conservatives or the NRA. When Gabby Giffords was shot by an utterly apolitical schizophrenic, Paul Krugman blamed it on Michele Bachmann’s “eliminationist rhetoric.” The Democratic party almost en masse blamed it on some crosshairs on Sarah Palin’s Facebook page. The Orwellians leapt out of their bunkers and started memory-holing martial metaphors.

But now, I gather, any suggestion that rhetoric from Black Lives Matter influenced these murderers is beyond the pale.

I keep repeating the old line: Behind every apparent double standard is an un-confessed single standard. The single standard here is that only the right people may politicize tragedy. Only the right people get to determine what sort of speech incites violence. Only the right people know when it’s a time for prayer and unity and when it’s time to take up action. Only the right people know when the blame falls solely on the murderers and when the murderers are simply a symptom of a larger problem. And when anyone disagrees with the right people, they reveal themselves to be the wrong people. Because you can only be right if you agree with the right people.

See also: What Is to Blame for Mass Shootings?
Does the Blame Lie with the Right to Bear Arms Or Can It Be Found Elsewhere?

The Misleading Statistics of Gun Control

To an Instapundit reader who, on the subject of gun control, takes issue with my (longish) list of mass gun crimes in Western Europe over the past 20 years or so — "Maybe you don't realize but if you add all those victims up and that's a month in Chicago or Baltimore" writes J. Daniels; "Those examples are rarities in those countries but not here" — I reply as follows:

You are making the mistake of using statistics
to conflate victims (American as well as foreign)
and make all of them (as well as all shooters) alike.
Like the cattle herd that statists and statisticians
alike think we members of the dirty masses are.

Typically, leftists will say that there are something
like 400 mass shootings every year in the U.S.
(I forget the exact number, it keeps changing, both
up and down). Why, then, do we not read about
every one of these shootings — in America proper
as well as abroad — and why aren't they given as
prominent news coverage as Newton or Orlando?

Because most of these mass shootings occur
between criminal gangs. To learn that a gangster
has been, or a group of gangsters have been,
shot dead will simply not touch the average
citizen — American or foreign — as much as
the innocent dead of Orlando or Utøya. And
rightly so, since violence is part of their calling,
of their chosen profession, if you will. (Which
is why — even left-leaning — journalists don't
mention those killings in the first place; except,
of course, as part of the respective city edition's
metro section.)

Here is where leftists, American as well as foreign,
start using their misleading Chicken Little statistics
coupled with Drama Queen melodramatics. They
come, like you do, saying there have been hundreds
more of "mass killings" in the USA than abroad, that
13,000 "Americans" (or whatever the number is) are
shot every year compared to the much lower foreign
numbers.

Yes. Well, call me a hater all you like,
express as much indignation at my lack of humanity
as you will, I would say that it is easy to argue that
500 or 700 thugs ("Americans") killed by other thugs
in America (or in Europe, for that matter), in the
context of their "business" dealings, are not to be
compared to the 50 revelers shot in Florida or to the
70 teenagers gunned down over the space of an hour
or so on a Norway island…

Edited and updated to reflect the following post:
The statistics behind gun violence: Mass shootings
in the U.S. have fallen so much in the past century that
the political left has had to redefine what a mass shooting is

Related:
The Story of Five Men Gunned Down Becomes Perturbing When It Goes Against the Narrative

Hunting for Heretics: Nondiscrimination laws are a statist monstrosity, selectively enforced against disfavored groups, often to shake them down for money

In case more proof was needed that the homosexual movement does not want to “live and let live,”

notes Benny Huang,

Aaron Werner and Richard Wright will gladly provide it. The two “gay” men sued Christianmingle in 2013, claiming that the website violated their rights under California law because it offers only opposite-sex matchmaking. Last week, they won their case. Christianmingle must now accommodate homosexuals. Oh yeah–and it has to pay Werner and Wright $468,000 in damages and attorney’s fees.

The two men sued under the Unruh Civil Rights Act, a state law that prohibits discrimination based on a number of protected categories including “sexual orientation”–an amorphous and troublesome social construct that is almost always interpreted to mean sexual conduct. The operative portion of the law is short and sweet:

“All persons within the jurisdiction of this state are free and equal, and no matter what their sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, or sexual orientation are entitled to the full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities, privileges, or services in all business establishments of every kind whatsoever.”

To a lot of people that sounds like an eminently reasonable law that offers equal protection to everyone. Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s a statist monstrosity, selectively enforced against disfavored groups, often to shake them down for money. Forcing everybody to do business with everybody does not make us “free and equal.” True freedom and equality arise when people are free to choose to engage in economic transactions of their volition. Unruh should be repealed  

Dating services illustrate in vivid color the stupidity of private sector nondiscrimination laws. Many dating sites cater to niche markets and must therefore discriminate by necessity. In other words, dating sites discriminate because they want to meet the discriminating tastes of their customers. Not all dating sites specialize of course, and that’s fine if they don’t. Customers have the option of using all-purpose dating sites such as Match.com or Okcupid, but if they want a more tailored experience they have a smorgasbord of options to choose from. Nondiscrimination laws mandate that all sites cater to (nearly) all tastes. Sure, you can still have your niche dating site, as long as it serves everybody.

There are niche dating sites for every imaginable group—farmers, military members, smokers, fat people, liberals, conservatives, and libertarians. Those sites might still be free to operate under their current business models because they do not bump up against legally protected categories. Or do they? According to an official pamphlet published by the State of California, the power of Unruh is expansive to the point of theoretical limitlessness. According to the pamphlet:

“…the California Supreme Court has held that protections under the Unruh Act are not necessarily restricted to these characteristics. The Act is meant to cover all arbitrary and intentional discrimination by a business establishment on the basis of personal characteristics similar to those listed above.” 

Whether the aforementioned websites are illegal in California is an open question but dating sites that cater to different races, ethnicities, and religions are all certainly illegal in California even if the state has not yet enforced the law against them.

With such a wide array of sites for every possible taste, one is left to wonder why people can’t simply seek out the right one for them. There are even sites for “gay” Christians such as Dateagaychristian.com. The two crybaby homofascists who sued Christianmingle could have found mates on that site but of course they weren’t looking for love; they were hunting heretics. The very thought that there’s someone somewhere who won’t fix them up with a sodomy partner is enough to drive them into fits of rage.

But wait a second—don’t “gay” Christian sites discriminate as well? Yes, they do. They exclude heteros and non-Christians. They are in fact more discriminatory than Christianmingle! Some homosexual dating sites cater exclusively to men or women, which is also illegal in California. Why isn’t anyone suing them? I think we know the answer to that.

If Christianmingle is violating the Unruh statute, then there are plenty of other dating websites in violation as well. Any website that excludes anyone is by definition discriminating, and in a great many cases that discrimination is illegal. All of them should be forced to cough up half a million dollars, just the same way Christianmingle was. Fair’s fair.

Some of the protected categories found in Unruh are absolutely ludicrous, such as “medical condition.” Shouldn’t dating websites have the prerogative, for example, to decline to do business with someone who is spreading contagious diseases? That’s not as far-fetched as you might think. A cursory search of the internet revealed a number of episodes in which people have intentionally spread HIV. All of those I found were men, and most were homosexual. Here’s one from California, no less–Thomas Miguel Guerra of San Diego … seemed to take perverse joy in spreading the virus. If a sociopath like that were using a dating website to meet men, shouldn’t the website have the right to dump him as a customer? California law says no.
 
What about Muslim dating sites? … Should[n't] Singlemuslim.com be sued as well? I won’t hold my breath waiting for that to happen. The crybaby homofascists are terrified of Muslims. Like most bullies, they avoid picking fights with people who might fight back.

Singlemuslim.com runs afoul of California law in another regard—as the name implies, it’s only for single Muslims. What if a married Muslim wants to play? Marital status is a protected category under California law and so all businesses, even dating services, must offer their services to married people. If you aren’t willing to facilitate adultery, you can’t go into the matchmaking business in California.

 … But let’s return to Singlemuslim.com, which may be the most discriminatory dating site on the internet. First, it discriminates on the basis of religion, second on “sexual orientation,” and third on marital status. Someone ought to sue the pants off these “bigots.” No, I’m serious. Demand to be paired with a married Jewish homosexual then scream bloody murder when they won’t do it. I wouldn’t have standing in a California court but someone else really ought to sue them, if only to demonstrate the intrusive absurdity of private sector nondiscrimination laws.

 … The reason we have these insane laws is because we allow the word “discrimination” to have entirely too much power over us. Nothing shuts off brains quite like the “D” word. Oh no, not discrimination! Gasp! All that word means is treating different people differently. Some forms of discrimination may be malicious, but none should be illegal in the private sector. We all discriminate every day, and nowhere more than in romance and dating.

Related: • Diversity isn’t really a compelling need in most sectors of society
(Liberals just tell us that because they hate merit-based hiring)
• Diversity compels society give up its traditions, its sacred rights, and even its basic decency
• That’s what nondiscrimination laws are—involuntary servitude laws
• The story of Matthew Shepard's life and death bears no resemblance to what actually happened
• Stealth is the Left’s watchword (Oh, those stubborn conservatives, when will they ever learn the value of compromise?!)
• "No One Is!" Leftists and Their Calculated Lies Intended to Pacify the Bitter Clingers

Former Prime Minister Michel Rocard, 3-Time Candidate for the Presidency, Is Dead

A former French prime minister who thrice tried to run for the presidency has died, reports Le Monde (No Pasarán's Michel Rocard posts).

Michel Rocard avait le « parler-vrai », la dent dure et le jugement acéré. Nul doute qu’il se serait gaussé de l’avalanche d’hommages qui lui ont été rendus, au lendemain de sa mort le 2 juillet.

A gauche, bien sûr, François Hollande a salué ce socialiste capable de « concilier utopie et modernité », Manuel Valls a évoqué avec émotion ce « visionnaire » qui fut son « père en politique », Lionel Jospin cette « référence », Emmanuel Macron cet « exemple », Jean-Pierre Chevènement ce « militant sincère qui croyait à la force des idées », ou Jean-Luc Mélenchon cet « éclaireur » dont « la vie est une leçon ».

A droite, tout autant, où Jacques Chirac et Nicolas Sarkozy, Alain Juppé ou François Fillon ont dit leur respect pour l’homme d’Etat. A l’extrême droite même, puisque Marine Le Pen a adressé ses condoléances aux proches de cet « homme de conviction ». Sans oublier Nicolas Hulot et Brigitte Bardot.

 … L’homme de gauche Rocard mérite ces hommages, évidemment. … Pour son pragmatisme tenace, sa capacité d’innovation autant que de conciliation, le premier ministre Rocard (1988-1991) ne mérite pas moins l’éloge.

 … La frustration de constater que les qualités reconnues à Michel Rocard – une exigence de morale en politique, un inlassable engagement pour ses idées, une inépuisable ouverture d’esprit – paraissent si peu et si mal répandues aujourd’hui.

Lire aussi :   Michel Rocard en héritage

Le regret est de voir disparaître un homme, et une voix, qui incarnait une conception noble de l’action publique : celle qui fonde l’ambition et l’exercice du pouvoir sur la force et la justesse des idées, du savoir et de la culture. Et non celle qui instrumentalise les idées au service de la seule stratégie qui vaille, la conquête du pouvoir. C’est ce qui a fait sa singularité et lui confère aujourd’hui une aura particulière. C’est aussi, et il le reconnaissait lucidement, ce qui a fait sa faiblesse pendant quarante ans.

Washington Post Shows How Badly Racist White Americans Treat Minorities In Order to Remain at the Top of the — Hold on a Minute!

Doesn't this poll reflect an outrage? Doesn't this report prove what a racist society America is? How the whites keep all the benefits of society for themselves? To keep minorities down? While remaining at the very helm?

 … the Pew Research Center released a new report on how Americans are paid by race and gender 

reports the Washington Post's Danielle Paquette.

— and boy, are there some bombshells for those interested in our nation’s wage disparities.

 … Pew found women typically still take home smaller paychecks than men.

 … But here are five other, less-discussed angles in the pay conversation:

1. America's top earners are Asian men

Racial and gender wage gaps persist in the United States, though they’ve narrowed for some groups in recent years. (Pew used white men as the comparison group, since they comprise the largest chunk of the work force at 33 percent.)

All groups trail white men in earnings — except Asian men. They made 117 percent of what white men earned in 2015:

Last year, average hourly wages for black and Hispanic men were $15 and $14, while white men pocketed $21 and Asian men made $24. …

Some Thoughts on American Patriotism…

Some thoughts on American patriotism…

In France and around the world, July Fourth is a day like any other, i.e., one to complain, worry, moan, wail, and lament, not least over Uncle Sam's misdeeds as well as the distressing state of patriotism among Americans. …

Related —
by Matthew Spalding:
What the Founders ask of us
for the Fourth of July 2016:

 … Lincoln spoke about another set of Americans, the ones whose families came here after the great Revolution was over. In a word, immigrants. Of these, Lincoln said:

 “If they look back through this history and trace their connection with those days by blood, they find they have none. They cannot carry themselves back into that glorious epoch and make themselves feel that they are part of us, but when they look through that old Declaration of Independence, they find that those old men say that, ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,’ and then they feel that the moral sentiment taught in that day evidences their relation to those men, that it is the father of all moral principle in them, and that they have a right to claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh, of the men who wrote that Declaration, and so they are.”

And so we are. None of us fought at Bunker Hill or Lexington or Concord. None of us endured famine, cold, or the impact of a musket ball. None of us signed our names to a document that made us traitors, fit to be hung.

Yet, despite all that, we are still Americans, and the Fourth is still our celebration, because we hold dear the “moral sentiment” for which those iron men fought and died —

“That all men are created equal.”

Lincoln would fight and die for it, too.

Lincoln reassures us that this alone is enough to form that “historical connection” with men who in all other things bear no relation to us. Or, as he puts it:

“That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.”

… yet we find our present culture riven by a hypersensitive strain of identity politics. We are told, even by some who belong to Lincoln’s party, that we should provide this group of Americans with one kind of government handout and that group with another.

We are told that we must “speak to” a certain group of Americans in a certain way or else lose their vote. We are told that skin color or sex  determines whether a group is more or less deserving of government perks. If one disagrees, one is shouted down as a racist, bigot, or chauvinist.

Yet Lincoln would disagree. The Founders would disagree as well. And so must all whose connection with that great and glorious generation of “iron men” consists of embracing an ideal that was meant to be taken literally; namely, that all men are created equal.

Mad Magazine: Overheard at the House Democrats' Sit-In

From Mad Magazine: Overheard at the House Democrats' Sit-In

Europe's Free Colleges? In France, the system is "a huge hypocrisy coupled with a profound injustice for the students" that "ends up excluding the weakest among us"

At the Paris Assas university years ago, I used to teach introduction to British and American Constitutional Law (no, not as a professor, as a teaching assistant);

when giving the (first-year) students their final grade, I was instructed to do as follows: give the top half students of the class a passing grade (above 50%), and give the bottom half of the students a failing grade (below). Those were the instructions, whether (say) 85% were outstanding (or at least passing) students or, conversely, whether 85% were terrible students…

In other words, the idea was that exactly half the "freshmen" at the university of law were to be expelled, so to speak, after that first year, no matter how good they might have been.

For those "progressives", both in Europe and in the United States, who are constantly looking to Europe for "free college" (as well as "health care for all"), the reality on the Old Continent can seem slightly different at times.

But do not take my word for it.

In Le Monde, in a period of only four months, we have seen articles on debates about the best policies (and whether colleges had the authority to choose among them), the intervention of politicians in the choice of how to prioritize among students, and, last but (definitely) not least, a report on the extent to which studies are at all effective in integrating the world of work…

In one recent article, Jean-Loup Salzmann, président de la Conférence des présidents d’université (CPU), and Gilles Roussel, président de l’université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée, denounce the conditions high school students encounter in certain high-profile majors.

The idealism of the Republic cultivates its myths, not least that, ingrained in our society, which is to believe that every high school graduate, whatever his skills, he can access all university courses and succeed.

The reality is quite different!

Should we continue to accept this social mess by hiding behind a pseudo-myth of equality, which in the final analysis ends up excluding the weakest among us?

 … To those majors called "high voltage" (en tension) because they are the most popular with students, selection takes the form of a draw!

A Heresy

Who can understand that access to "high-voltage" majors is aawarded without taking into account the skills of the graduates, their grades, and their baccalaureate? No one.

That admission to a university major is done randomly and not on the qualifications of the candidates is a heresy and can only tarnish the image of the university and the quality of its degrees. Besides, the Ministry of eduction, in one unprecedented episode of frankness, recognized this when it congratulated itself for avoiding the draw in the areas of medicine and law.

A Right to Hear the Truth

It is irresponsible to suggest that a high school student can enroll in the sector of their choice without any prerequisites and without regard to employability at the end of the studies! Who can believe that a young person can succeed in languages ​​without a substantial baggage acquired during his high school years? This is not because the subject of law is not (yet) taught in high school that this material is accessible without a solid foundation of general knowledge, French language, or methodology!

You do not start from scratch when entering the university, you consolidate your previous gains to acquire new skills. Students and their families have the right to transparency and to the language of truth.

Let's put an end to this once and for all. The draw system is a huge hypocrisy coupled with a profound injustice for the students. The government must provide universities with the financial resources to increase the capacities of high potential insertion channels and allow them to guide the graduates according to their skills and to their professional projects.

En français : Jean-Loup Salzmann, président de la Conférence des présidents d’université (CPU) et Gilles Roussel, président de l’université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée, dénoncent les conditions d’accès des futurs bacheliers dans les filières « sous tension ».

L’idéalisme républicain cultive ses mythes dont celui, bien ancré dans notre société, qui consiste à faire croire à chaque bachelier que, quelles que soient ses compétences, il pourra accéder à toutes les filières universitaires et y réussir. 

La réalité est toute autre !

Doit-on continuer à accepter ce gâchis social en se cachant derrière un pseudo-mythe de l’égalité, qui au bout du compte produit l’exclusion des plus fragiles ?

Ces jours-ci en effet, les futurs bacheliers prennent connaissance, via l’opaque système Admission post-bac (APB), des résultats d’affectation aux formations. Pour celles dites « en tension », parce qu’elles sont très prisées par les étudiants, la sélection prend la forme d’un tirage au sort !

A l’université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée, par exemple, la moitié des 130 places disponibles en Sciences et techniques des activités physiques et sportives (Staps) vient d’être affectée en une journée seulement, alors que près de 2 000 futurs étudiants ont demandé, dans cet établissement, cette formation en premier choix.

Une hérésie

Qui peut comprendre que l’accès à des filières « en tension » se fasse sans prendre en compte les compétences des bacheliers, leurs résultats scolaires et/au baccalauréat ? Personne.

Qu’une admission dans une filière universitaire se fasse au hasard et non pas sur les qualités des candidats est une hérésie et ne peut que ternir l’image de l’université et de la qualité de ses diplômes. D’ailleurs le ministère, dans un accès de franchise inédit, le reconnaît en se félicitant d’avoir pu éviter le tirage au sort en médecine et en droit.

Face, d’une part, à l’augmentation du nombre de bacheliers choisissant l’université (100 000 de plus en trois ans) qui va continuer, et d’autre part, à la baisse des dépenses publiques par étudiant, il est temps que l’Etat prenne ses responsabilités.

Il est illusoire de croire que l’augmentation du nombre de places dans les filières « en tension » pourra à lui seul résoudre le problème : ce qui doit guider la programmation des capacités d’accueil ce sont les débouchés et les capacités d’insertion professionnelle des étudiants.

Droit au langage de vérité

Il est irresponsable de laisser croire à un lycéen qu’il peut s’inscrire dans la filière de son choix sans aucun prérequis et sans se soucier de son insertion professionnelle à terme ! Qui peut croire qu’un jeune peut réussir en langues sans avoir un bagage conséquent acquis durant ses années de lycée ? Ce n’est pas parce que le droit n’est pas (encore) enseigné au lycée que cette matière est accessible sans de solides bases de culture générale, en français ou en méthodologie !

On ne repart pas de zéro en accédant à l’université, on y consolide ses acquis pour acquérir de nouvelles compétences. Les lycéens et leurs familles ont droit à la transparence et au langage de vérité.

Finissons-en une fois pour toutes. Le tirage au sort est une vaste hypocrisie doublée d’une profonde injustice à l’égard des étudiants. Le gouvernement doit donner les moyens financiers aux universités d’augmenter les capacités d’accueil des filières à haut potentiel d’insertion et leur permettre d’orienter les bacheliers en fonction de leurs compétences et de leurs projets professionnels.

Cette orientation et les moyens qui l’accompagnent doivent mener une part de plus en plus importante de jeunes vers des études supérieures et permettre leur insertion professionnelle, aux bons niveaux de responsabilité et de rémunération.

A preview of Donald Trump's first 100 days in office

The BBC explains what

Republican Donald Trump has set out [as his priorities] in office [should he beat] Democrat Hillary Clinton in November's election.

U.S. History has not been, as Obama implies, 200 years of sustained mass migration—and it certainly hasn’t been 200 years of lawless open borders, which is his actual goal

The Supreme Court momentarily impeded President Obama’s attempt to “fundamentally transform America” last week with its 4-4 vote on his executive amnesty action plan 

reports Benny Huang.

When the court is deadlocked, previous decisions by lower courts are allowed to stand. In this case, Obama lost because the lower court found that his plan exceeded his executive authority, which is actually what Obama himself said before he decided to do it.

The evenly divided court apparently couldn’t make up its mind as to whether the president is permitted to act like a dictator and suspend laws he doesn’t like. That’s a tough question, you see, with half of our best legal minds leaning toward dictatorship. Scary.

After the ruling, President Obama held a press conference to assure the public that “comprehensive immigration reform” is still inevitable, if only delayed. He’s probably right about that. Like water on a rock, the Left just keeps wearing us down.

He began the press conference with a lot of feel-good pap about the glories of immigration—while lumping legal migrants together with illegal aliens, as the Left always does. “…[O]ne of the reasons why America is such a diverse and inclusive nation is because we’re a nation of immigrants,” said the president. “Our Founders conceived of this country as a refuge for the world. And for more than two centuries, welcoming wave after wave of immigrants has kept us youthful and dynamic and entrepreneurial.”

That’s the fifth grade version of history that I was taught in school too. My well-meaning teacher taught us that immigration is part of our national ethos. We learned about Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty and looked at a lot of pictures of young women wearing babushkas, staring out from the decks of ocean liners. It was all nice and corny.

Obama has seized on that familiar history lesson for his own advantage, clearly implying that unfettered immigration is all-American—which renders opposition to it un-American. Make no mistake about it, the president’s appeal to the Founders (whom he hates, by the way) and our supposed tradition of immigration is an attack on his opponents’ patriotism.

Usually when people talk about the Founders’ intentions they are referring to the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, or its offspring, the Bill of Rights. Nothing in any of those documents even hints that the Founders “conceived of this country as a refuge for the world.”

Thomas Jefferson’s philosophical brief to King George doesn’t mention it. The Bill of Rights enshrines in law many freedoms, most of which are under siege in Obama’s America, but it does not include a “right” to immigrate. The Constitution even empowers Congress (not the Executive!) to establish a “uniform Rule of Naturalization.” (Article I, Section 8) Congress did their duty and established an immigration code, which happens to be very liberal, but the president has nonetheless sought to nullify it via executive order because some people still can’t come in the right way.

By empowering Congress to regulate immigration, the Constitution necessarily implies that we have the prerogative to set limits. We Americans are the gatekeepers because American immigration policy is supposed to benefit us. It doesn’t matter a lick if immigrants come here “looking for a better life.” If their addition to our society doesn’t make our lives better then we have no obligation to take them.

This idea is exactly the opposite of the Obama philosophy on immigration which says that anyone who can get here has a right to come in—except apparently devout Christians from Germany who want to homeschool their children.

Under Obama’s plan, newcomers don’t even have to go through a screening process to make sure that they don’t carry contagious diseases or terrorist sympathies. All they have to do is run across the border and Obama will be waiting there for them with a welfare check in one hand and a voter registration card in the other. If you oppose him, your patriotism is suspect.

Obama compounded his historical error with his reference to “wave after wave” of immigrants to our shores “for more than two centuries.” The truth is more complicated. Over the course of our history, Congress has used its rightful authority to adjust immigration levels as it saw fit. Sometimes immigration was a mighty river and sometimes a trickle. It has not been, as Obama implied, two hundred years of sustained mass migration—and it certainly hasn’t been two hundred years of lawless open borders, which is his actual goal.

There have really been two great “waves” of immigration to this country, and we’re living in one of them. The most recent began in 1965 with Ted Kennedy’s Immigration and Nationality Act. The United States opened its doors very wide indeed, accepting about 59 million immigrants over the course of fifty years. That’s more people than live in California, our most populous state, by the way, and it doesn’t include illegal aliens. Yet despite this very liberal policy, some people still can’t be bothered to come in the right way. Obama considers these people to be victims, probably because he views them and their children as potential voters. They are not victims, you are — the law-abiding, tax-paying citizen.

The other “wave” occurred between the years 1880 and 1921. This is the much romanticized “Ellis Island” era of immigration. Though not without its problems, America managed this period of rapid change reasonably well because it subscribed to the melting pot model. These days, just saying that America is a melting pot is a “microaggression” on some college campuses.

An argument could be made that America needed the Ellis Island wave of immigrants because we were in the midst of westward expansion and rapid industrialization. In 1901, the United States became the world’s largest manufacturer, which was both the cause and effect of mass migration. There was certainly work in those days for anyone who wanted it—bridges and tunnels to be built, coal and ore to be extracted from the earth, and goods of every imaginable variety to be manufactured. New railroads were being laid across the continent, often by Irish and Chinese immigrants.
 
But that was then and this is now. America is becoming one big rust belt and yet we’re bringing in more immigrants than we did when we were a budding industrial power. It’s madness.

An alternative argument could also be made that we brought in those immigrants not because we needed them but because employers wanted them. The elite’s desires are not the same as the country’s needs, though the two are easily confused when the elite get to tell the story.

Employers have traditionally welcomed immigrants because immigration makes the workers fight each other for coveted jobs. In times of high immigration, wages tend to remain stagnant or even decline. Whenever the workers start getting uppity, employers seek labor in ever more exotic locales—first Ireland and Germany, then China and Italy, now Laos and Guatemala. The best way to make workers toil longer for less is to keep them in constant fear for their livelihood.

This idea that we are a nation of immigrants was advanced in no small part by exactly those employers. Call it corporate propaganda, if you will. I would compare it the diamond industry’s not-so-subtle suggestion to young men that spending two months salary on a diamond ring before proposing to a lady is some kind of obligatory right of passage. Though this practice may seem like an age old tradition it was actually conceived of in a DeBeers boardroom.

It’s the same with the American immigration ethos. Though we have been led to believe that America has always been open to absolutely anyone who wants to come here for a better life, that just isn’t the case. Our immigration policy has sometimes been liberal and sometimes conservative, but it has never been boundless. Our current president and his party don’t want any limits, nor do they want an orderly screening system. They want a free-for-all—and they’ll probably get it.

Immigration is certainly part of our history, though not because it had to be that way. The number of immigrants admitted was determined by a tug-of-war between employers and the working public. When the employers had their way, the flood gates were thrown open, whether we needed them or not. When workers had their way, the flood gates were closed.

Congress’s constitutional authority to regulate immigration was narrowly upheld but the fight is not over. The Left hasn’t given up and neither should we.