Minnesota pumps up the illegals

Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, er, get free, American taxpayer-provided penis pumps. From Fox News Radio:

A Minnesota town is outraged over reports that an illegal immigrant was implanted with a penis pump – paid for by taxpayers.

Shakopee Police Chief Jeff Tate said the expense to taxpayers was more than $50,000.

“It’s shocking,” he told FOX News Radio. “It’s certainly disturbing as well. You know it’s not going to set well with the public at large.”

Scott County Attorney Pat Ciliberto wants to know how an illegal immigrant was able to obtain tens of thousands of dollars in medical assistance.

“There’s no logical argument for why that should have been approved,” Ciliberto told the Shakopee News. “I don’t know how many illegal aliens are getting emergency medical assistance for such a procedure.”

Ciliberto told county commissioners the cost of taking care of illegal immigrants in their community is skyrocketing.

“It should be obvious when Scott County goes from seven bookings in 2006 to 90 bookings in 2009 – that Arizona’s problem is Minnesota’s problem, too,” he told the newspaper. ...

Fifty grand for a penis pump, paid for by the American taxpayer. Your money is apparently now literally hard at work. In some illegal alien's dick. I suppose it's a fitting metaphor for the screwing we've been getting by the ruling class and their media lapdogs as they push their Marxist agenda.

Perhaps the bleeding heart liberals in Minnesota have been watching too much Austin Powers:

Congressman says borders are secure

Today's video, of California Democrat congressman Pete Stark, on illegal immigration:




Note the dripping condescension of the congressman towards those he purports to represent.

Truths we dare not speak

Victor Davis Hanson takes on the politically taboo topics of illegal immigration, affirmative action, and the like:

Affirmative Action

The concept was noble, but now antiquated and mostly absurd. It requires the logic of the Old Confederacy to determine racial purity among the intermarried citizenry. Jet-black Punjabis get no preferences. Light-skinned Mexican-Americans of the fourth-generation claim privilege. Poor whites from Tulare don’t rank. The children of black dentists do. I see very little logic here.

Asians? We both claim them as minorities, and yet we discriminate against them at the University of California admissions process on the basis of their own superior achievement. (Apparently, the deplorable record of discrimination against Asians is now deemed irrelevant due to the community’s own success. Ponder the ramifications of that for a bit: should Asians have been struggling at UC, they would be considered suffering from the legacy of oppression; since they are excelling, they need to be quietly discriminated against).

As far as I can tell, here is the logic of this Byzantine system: Affirmative action in the 21st century has no logical basis in skin color, actual discrimination, poverty, class, or need. It is predicated on two archaic thoughts: previously discriminated against American minorities shall be defined as only Hispanic, Blacks, and Asians, and thus their children shall receive privilege for decades. BUT that new discrimination will not apply if such minorities on their own have prospered and are successful. (Why that would be so in some cases is again a taboo question.)

So, Japanese-Americans, whose parents were put in camps, don’t quite qualify any more for compensation seemingly because they are successful and are thus “over-represented” in the racial spoils system. But Chilean immigrants do—if they can fraudulently piggy-back upon the Mexican-American experience by virtue of a shared language and last names.

If one is of mixed race, nomenclature trumps all. Bob Wilson, the son of a Mexican-American mother, is liable to get nothing, Roberto Martinez will get quite a lot, if the son of a Mexican-American (or any Spanish-speaking) father. A Barry Soetoro is of mere pedestrian mixed ancestry; Barack Obama is not merely black, but exotically so.

In short, the system is corrupt. In our society of intermarriage, immigration and mixed ancestry, we cannot any longer determine who is and who is not a certified “minority” (cf. the con of mostly white candidates claiming some sort of Native American ancestry). ...

Read it here. I disagree with Prof. Hanson that affirmative action was ever "noble", although it is indeed absurd. What's noble about discriminating against people based on the color of their skin? Because that's what affirmative action is: legalized racism. Not only is affirmative action not noble, it's not even a good idea, because affirmative action engenders hostility against its beneficiaries from those who did not benefit, e.g., whites. In addition, affirmative action stigmatizes its beneficiaries with the nagging notion that their achievements and success were not based solely on their own merit. With affirmative action, everyone loses in the end.

Your healthcare dollars hard at work

Today's healthcare reform testimony:

Legal aliens and the Second Amendment

The previous post discussed the issue of Second Amendment rights and illegal aliens. but what about non-citizens who are legally in the country? Here's a post on Volokh discussing this issue:

The Second Amendment / illegal alien decision discussed in the post below reminds me of a broader question — do noncitizens who are legally present in the U.S. have Second Amendment rights?

1. Federal law generally bars gun possession by noncitizens who are here under a nonimmigrant visa. Some state laws go further and ban all possession by noncitizens, including by permanent residents. The law of Guam likewise bans all possession by noncitizens, and because federal statutes extend the Bill of Rights to Guam, the Guam law could be challenged even without reaching the question whether the Second Amendment is incorporated against the states.

Generally speaking most constitutional rights have been extended (at least where criminal punishment, as opposed to the threat of deportation, is involved) to legal aliens. Should this apply to the Second Amendment? The reasoning in the illegal alien opinion seems to potentially apply to legal aliens as well, though that's not clear.
...

Read the rest here.

Court says Second Amendment doesn't apply to illegal aliens

A federal magistrate judge in Florida has ruled that the Second Amendment doesn't apply to illegal aliens:

That common law right [to keep and bear arms, secured by the Second Amendment,] was held only by citizens and those who swore allegiance to the Government; it did not include everyone present on American soil.... For instance, Samuel Adams and other delegates urged the Massachusetts ratifying convention to recommend barring Congress from “prevent[ing] the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms.” The New Hampshire convention proposed that “Congress shall never disarm any Citizen unless such as are or have been in Actual Rebellion.” In these proposals, the pre-existing right clearly inured only to “peaceable” or lawful “Citizens.” See also David Yassky, The Second Amendment: Structure, History, and Constitutional Change, 99 Mich. L. Rev. 588, 626–27 (2000) (“The average citizen whom the Founders wish to see armed was a man of republican virtue -– a man shaped by his myriad ties to his community, the most important for this purpose being the militia.”).
...

The alien, to whom the United States has been traditionally hospitable, has been accorded a generous and ascending scale of rights as he increases his identity with our society. Mere lawful presence in the country creates an implied assurance of safe conduct and gives him certain rights; they become more extensive and secure when he makes preliminary declaration of intention to become a citizen, and they expand to those of full citizenship upon naturalization.

Johnson v. Eisentrager, 339 U.S. 763, 770-71 (1950) (emphasis added). As a result, lawful resident aliens who are present within the constitution’s jurisdiction and have “developed substantial connections with this country” are entitled to minimal constitutional protections. The recognition of certain rights to resident aliens, however, does not mean that “all aliens are entitled to enjoy all the advantages of citizenship or, indeed, to the conclusion that all aliens must be placed in a single homogenous legal classification. For a host of constitutional and statutory provisions rest on the premise that a legitimate distinction between citizens and aliens may justify attributes and benefits for one class not accorded to the other; ....”

Neither foreign nationals who have not yet reached our shores, nor illegal aliens who have done so unlawfully and without the Attorney General’s permission, are entitled to the full panoply of rights available to citizens or even resident aliens. To the contrary, that status by definition places such individuals outside the traditional protections of the Constitution ....

Read the opinion here.

Via Volokh. I think this is the right result.

PETA to Mexicans: Don't cross border

So, PETA, the anti-meat lobbying group, wants to buy ad space on the new border fence, to warn all would-be illegal immigrants of the grave dangers facing them if they cross into America. You know, like eating meat.

(Obligatory eye-candy. Credit: PETA)

While many view the contentious border fence as a government fiasco, an animal rights group sees a rare opportunity.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals plans today to announce an unusual marketing pitch to the U.S. government: Rent us space on the fence for billboards warning illegal border crossers there is more to fear than the Border Patrol.

The billboards, in English and Spanish, would offer the caution: "If the Border Patrol Doesn't Get You, the Chicken and Burgers Will — Go Vegan."

"We think that Mexicans and other immigrants should be warned if they cross into the U.S. they are putting their health at risk by leaving behind a healthier, staple diet of corn tortillas, beans, rice, fruits and vegetables," said Lindsay Rajt, assistant manager of PETA's vegan campaigns. ...

Article here. As an omnivore, I don't have any problem with vegans or vegetarians. I figure they reduce demand for USDA Prime, thus helping to lower prices (lower demand = lower prices). Thus, I happily encourage more people to abstain from meat, because the net result will be more big, juicy steaks, at lower cost, for the rest of us. Yum. :)