The Editorial Board of The New York Times declares that it is Time to Strengthen Family Immigration:
It might be hard to imagine that America’s long tradition of allowing immigrants to sponsor spouses, children and siblings for visas would be threatened. But anti-immigration groups and lawmakers have long attacked the practice, using the slanderous and misleading term “chain migration,” which summons images of a relentless flow of undesirables, usually from south of the border. Even as some of the staunchest resistance to reform is crumbling—legalizing 11 million immigrants was unthinkable for leading Republicans a few months ago, and now even rock-ribbed Tea Partiers like Representative Rand Paul favor it—right-wing resistance to family migration persists.
The Los Angeles Times Editorial Board asks
Why detain nonviolent immigrants?:
In recent weeks, Republican lawmakers have slammed the Department of Homeland Security for releasing 2,228 immigrants from detention centers around the country, questioning, among other things, whether murderers, rapists and drug traffickers were among those set free.
[The weren't.]
Frankly, instead of trying to score political points by exaggerating the dangers, lawmakers ought to have asked why these nonviolent immigrants were being held in the first place, when cheaper and equally effective alternatives to detention exist.
Greg Mitchell at
The Nation explores a few of the we-got-it-wrong apologies on Iraq we've been seeing recently in his commentary titled
Reviewing This Week's Mea Culpas on Iraq: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. It's an exploration of the "mini-culpa" for the most part:
Jonathan Chait at New York offered regrets for backing the war but defended believing in Saddam’s WMD and recalled that “supporting the war was cool and a sign of seriousness.” And: “The people demanding apologies today will find themselves being asked to supply apologies of their own tomorrow.”
Gideon Levy at Haaretz writes Obama never stood a chance with Israel's analysts:
Barely did [Barack Obama] finish his resounding speech before it was engulfed in waves of sour, skeptical, judgmental negativity from our studio analysts. If anyone tries to talk about hope, peace and justice, they’ll tell you how “naive” and “childish” it is. After all, these carefully selected studio pundits—experienced journalists, university professors, retired army generals—know their stuff. They always say what is expected of them. (Otherwise they won’t be invited back.) They generally know everything, and they did not disappoint.
They know things that we simple listeners, who thrilled to Obama’s words, do not. They are graduates of the Israeli education system, which taught them that in 1948 we were the few against the many (a lie) and that all the refugees fled from their villages (another lie). To them, the nakba is no more than a Palestinian PR stunt. So is the occupation.
As adults these pundits cozied up to the politicians, from whom they learned that former Prime Minister Ehud Barak left no stone unturned in his desire to make peace (a lie) and that former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas the moon (another lie); that there is no Palestinian partner for peace and that Israel is a peace-loving nation (lie, lie).
S.E. Cupp at the
New York Daily News says Marco Rubio and Rand Paul are
The men who can save the GOP.
Steve Chapmanat the Chicago Tribune writes Our fruitless quest for missile defense:
[T]he Pentagon announced last week it would spend $1 billion to add more interceptors. Never mind that the ones it has are of doubtful utility. In controlled tests against sitting ducks, these weapons miss their targets as often as they hit them.
It's tempting to think that we must have mastered missile defense, if only because we've been working on it for so long. This episode comes shortly before the 30th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" speech, in which he envisioned making "nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete."
Rachel Alexander at
The Guardian argues
Contrary to popular belief, gun control is not gaining momentum in America and makes the astonishing assertion that, contrary to every poll taken in the past three months, the reason federal efforts are not progressing is because "public support isn't there."
Dan Kevick at New Economic Perspectives writes The Miracle Product That Cures Degenerative Entitlement Syndrome!:
Moochers might appear normal, but don’t be fooled by appearances! While these bloodsuckers are seemingly busy changing bedpans, waxing the floor at your office, serving up stacks of pancakes at Denny’s and standing in long lines to beg abjectly for “jobs’, they are all the while draining our hard-won and well-merited wealth. A tell-tale symptom of [Degenerative Entitlement Syndrome] is that while moochers pay all kinds of sales taxes, payroll taxes and government fees just like the rest of us, they don’t pay any income taxes. Imagine! No income taxes! The DES sufferer will tell you that the absence of income tax obligations is somehow related to the moocher’s extreme deficiency in actual income. A likely story!
Moochery is the new leprosy. Its victims cannot be cured, but only isolated from the rest of us by being cut off from access to lobbyists, fund-raising dinners, Justice Department cronies, voting booths, think tank idea moguls, astroturfing consultants, and all the other instruments by means of which normal, healthy people influence the direction of government and society.
E.J. Dionne at the
Washington Post writes
Julián Castro, San Antonio’s ‘relay’ star:
What makes Mayor Castro especially interesting is the interaction of his pragmatism with the early radicalism of his mother Rosie, his first political mentor. She was a founder of La Raza Unida Party — she eventually returned to the Democratic fold — and a poster from his mom’s unsuccessful 1971 city council race hangs proudly in the mayor’s office.
Between his mother’s past and his own present, Castro embodies the full range of progressive impulses, from the most activist and visionary to the most practical and middle-of-the-road. Castro says it’s not surprising that his approach is different from his mom’s.
Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA case officer writes in an Op-Ed at the
Washington Post—
The CIA’s interrogation program deserves a public airing—arguing that a declassified version of the 6,000-page report on the agency's enhanced interrogation that has only been seen by a select few in Congress should be released so Americans can "assess whether Langley engaged in torture in its war against al-Qaeda."
Cough-cough. Why Mr. Gerecht dares to suggest this matter is still in dispute is perhaps a function of his one-time role with the CIA. But, please, yes, let's see a declassified version.
Leo Gerard at In These Times concludes Paul Ryan Disses ‘The Help’ Again:
Rep. Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin, exposed his condescension toward the masses when he described 60 percent of Americans as “takers.” Mitt Romney illustrated his when he referred to 47 percent of Americans as slackers too lazy to take responsibility for their lives, a moment captured on video by a member of “The Help,” Scott Prouty, who was working as a bartender at the $50,000-a-plate fundraiser where Romney said it.
Last week, Ryan revealed the election loss left him unchastened. He remains intent on telling “The Help” what to do. The princeling of the royal Republican team reprised his prosperity-for-the-rich-austerity-for-the-rest budget. Although the public rejected that path in November, Ryan continues to insist he’s correct and the majority is wrong. He doesn’t care what they want. Like any pampered princeling, he doesn’t tolerate challenges from “The Help.”
Andrew Cohen in
The Atlantic declares
Enough Is Enough—Time for the Feds to Investigate Prison Abuse:
"How is it possible that a human-rights crisis of this magnitude can carry on year after year with impunity?" asked James Ridgeway, a veteran journalist and co-founder of Solitary Watch, in a recent piece in the Columbia Journalism Review. The answer, sadly, is simple: Congress doesn't care. The Obama Administration won't spend political capital to protect prisoners. The federal courts have contorted the Eighth Amendment to avoid the topic. And the Office of the Inspector General, that self-described "guardian" of justice and integrity, has refused to shine a light on the darkness.