151 search results for ""14th amendment""

Sovereign Hotheads

by digby

Alternet is doing great work on the various strands of the right wing these days and it’s essential reading every day if you are interested in following this riveting, unfolding story. Today Justine Sharrock takes a look at the “Sovereign Citizen” movement which I last heard of back in the 90s. These are a very American brand of wingnuts, a far right form of anarchism rooted in the “gold standard” conspiracy theories. And, as with all the far right groups, it appears to be growing smartly in the Obama era:

The sovereign citizens movement has seen a recent resurgence similar to its heyday in the 1990s — no surprise, given the recession, increase in federal laws, and the right-wing rhetoric of shock jocks and Tea Party politicians. Since it’s not an organized movement, there are no reliable statistics. But sovereign citizens themselves say there is an increase of people visiting their Web sites, attending their lectures, and listening to their radio shows. Mark Pitcavage from the Anti-defamation League, who has been studying the movement for over 15 years, says he’s received more and more calls from law enforcement and others asking for advice on how to deal with sovereign citizens.

Their basic premise is, like so many things these days, based on an unorthodox interpretation of the 14th Amendment. They claim that when the nation was founded, citizens had prime authority and the government was set up to protect our God given “unalienable rights.” But the 14th Amendment created a new hierarchy: God, citizens, government, and then former slaves. Over time, through specific wording used in laws, forms and court rulings, the government has managed to trick all citizens into subservience. Now, every time you sign or register with the federal government, be it a driver’s license, Social Security number, tax form, or even something as simple a construction permit, you are entering a contractual and legal relationship with the government, according to the sovereign citizen philosophy.

Another example of citizen subservience: they argue that FDA drug laws use the phrase “man or other animals” which demotes people to the status of animals without inalienable rights. This, they argue, goes against the Bible, which differentiates man from beast, and thus, according to sovereign citizens, all drug laws represent a violation of religious freedom. There are endless examples, and sovereign citizens continually discover new ones.

Read the whole thing. It’s a mind-blower. I hadn’t known the religious aspect before, thinking this was a sort of fanatical libertarianism. But these folks are all swimming in the same philosophical stew at some level, so it makes sense that they would start to merge.

By the way, these are among the most likely members of the far right fringe to resort to violence.

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The Official Stance Is Reinterpret Not Repeal

by digby

FYI: just because a bunch of Republicans in the southwest are now saying that they don’t support repealing and just want to “have hearing” doesn’t mean they have abandoned the idea of denying citizenship to the children of illegal aliens.

“Repeal” is a red herring. Despite the fact that the plain language has always had the logical interpretation that anyone born in the US gets citizenship, they’re going to have the radical Roberts court “interpret” the amendment for the first time, (much as they finally got their preferred interpretation of the second.) Here’s the official argument:

The current and quite-valid debate is limited to whether the amendment should be interpreted to guarantee birthright U.S. citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants. That’s it – and it’s a proper question, because the language explicitly limits birthright citizenship, in a clause often glossed over or omitted. The provision reads, “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.”

The limitation “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” has never been decreed by the Supreme Court to confer automatic citizenship on the children of illegal immigrants. The term excludes the children born to foreign diplomats in America, for example, since they obviously maintain allegiance to their home nation, not the United States. The same question arises regarding the allegiance of those who arrive illegally and retain their foreign citizenship.

In the 1898 case of U.S. vs. Wong Kim Ark, the Supreme Court decided that when non-diplomatic foreign nationals are here legally, their children become citizens. But it has not decided the issue regarding illegal aliens. This may well give Congress room to determine the issue and to legislate by statute, rather than waiting on some future court decision.

With the major problems and expenses we experience due to illegal immigration, it’s a legitimate and necessary debate.

See they aren’t being unreasonable and seeking repeal of the 14th Amendment at all. They just think it’s been wrongly interpreted all these years and a teensy little correction needs to be made. That way it won’t be so unpleasant (for us) to send American kids who have spent their entire lives here back to a poor country they’ve never even visited. They’ll just be going “home.” Everybody likes home. That makes us good guys.

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It’s Always Something

by digby

I’m beginning to miss George W. Bush. No, not because I think he was better than Obama, but because he was able to keep his lunatic fringe somewhat in line when it came to Muslim bashing.

Permits should not be granted to build even one more mosque in the United States of America, let alone the monstrosity planned for Ground Zero. This is for one simple reason: each Islamic mosque is dedicated to the overthrow of the American government.

[…]

Because of this subversive ideology, Muslims cannot claim religious freedom protections under the First Amendment

There you go. That makes me yearn for the day when they were only saying that people with a different skin color than “ours” want to govern themselves too.

Turns out that a big majority of Americans agree with them, at least as it pertains to the Manhattan cultural center. I wouldn’t be surprised if they could muster a majority to say that Islam shouldn’t be allowed in America before long. This country is just itching to have a fight.

Half of Americans think we should repeal the 14th amendment too, although once they find out that it’s open to reinterpretation, then I suppose they’ll be fine with keeping it just as long as we don’t let the pregnant animals “swim across the river” and “drop” their young on our pristine shores.

So we have 60+ percent of Americans thinking that it’s a good idea to ban a Muslim center near ground Zero and nearly half thinking we should deny babies born in the US an automatic right to citizensship. It would seem that our exceptionalism isn’t all that exceptional. These are the same policies that have gotten “old Europe” into trouble — not to mention civilizations going all the way to the beginning of civilizations — so we’re following a well worn path. But it’s a shame. America is fucked up for a million reasons, but the idea that citizenship had nothing to do with your parentage was always one of the nicer ideals, however erratically it was practiced.

Normally I would think we could ride out this latest wave of nativism and racism, but there are two factors that make it more dangerous than usual. The first, of course, is the economy which looks like it’s not going to recover smartly thus giving this impulse more oxygen than it might otherwise have. The second is that the right wing demagogues have an entire industry now devoted to creating and nurturing these wedge issues for political and financial gain. The culture warriors have just shifted their strategy away from “family values” to their other stand-by, “stop the boogeyman.” It’s all part of the same throwback tapestry, but different times require difference emphasis. We’re officially in the “the foreigners and blacks are ruining everything” portion of the show.

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Ginning Up The Next Big Thing

by digby

Chuck Todd, subbing for Matthews today, had John Harris on to discuss his comments from This Week (which I wrote about here.)

Todd: John you talked about this over the week-end. I saw some of your comments. And this feels like cynical base politics that some Republicans are playing. You heard former senator Istook there giving a very reasoned policy defense of this. What you don’t hear a lot of these elected Republicans doing… Is this a total cynical ploy?

Harris: Uh, it’s a strange one and even your conversation there Chuck, which was a good one, but kind of an abstract one, for three months out from an election going back to the history of the 14th Amendment passed a hundred and forty some years ago. I think members in the most competitive districts are not going to want to get into an abstract debate, which is what the 14th amendment is, even if you think illegal immigration is a huge problem, it doesn’t do anything to address the problem in the here and now. The best argument that Republicans have is that “look, we’ve had to act in Arizona because Washington hasn’t acted.” So this to my mind undercuts this argument because it makes them look like they’re engaged in an ideological argument or a base charging argument or even and abstract constitutional argument rather than address tangible problem in the here and now.

Let’s review what Harris’ comments were this week-end before we go any further. Former bush speechwriter Michael Gerson, hardly a bleeding heart liberal, was aghast at this 14th amendment move, on moral, legal and strategic grounds, and made an impassioned argument against it. Here’s Harris:

In fairness to the … I mean one argument you could make Michael is that uh, immigration reform is never going to happen unless this issue is at a boil. Perhaps that’s what Lindsay Graham is doing. Ok, let’s turn this up to a boil and only in that environment …

To which Gerson replied:

Gerson: That is a deeply cynical approach. To take an issue this sensitive and this symbolic to use that to leverage other political reform, I think that would be very cynical.

As I mentioned in the earlier post, Harris also went on about how the “problem” of illegal immigration is so important that politicians need to address it, which is, of course, nonsense. Illegal immigration has eased recently and there is no uptick in crime or public expenditures. There is no “reason” other than rank xenophobia for all this angst over border issues, something which Harris doesn’t seem to even be interested in knowing, much less reporting. If he were, then this 14th Amendment strategy wouldn’t seem so darned “abstract” would it? Indeed, he would realize that the whole thing is partisan demagoguery.

The guest just prior to Harris, former senator Ernest Istook simply said that the 14th amendment was never meant to cover people who are in the country illegally, full stop. You can call that abstract if you want, but it sounded like something those who want to deny citizenship to “anchor babies” will accept very readily. And those who are agitated over bogus tales of Mexicans terrorizing little old ladies are hardly likely to see this as an abstract concept.

As Allison Kilkenny points out here, this is mostly a move to appease the base and to move the goalposts on immigration to give the Democrats room to find “common ground” on conservative terms, hence her title “let’s just agree that Mexicans shouldn’t be publicly executed.” It’s how they roll. But after listening to Istook, I was carried back to a time when I was younger and I used to hear conservative kooks out there parsing the Second Amendment to create an inalienable right to bear arms out of an archaic phrase obviously intended to make it possible to muster a militia. We know where that went. Istook’s argument didn’t seem to be ridiculous on its face and once people hear it enough times many of them will see it as good old common sense.

It’s never a good idea to underestimate people’s willingness to deprive others of things they take for granted themselves. I think this is dangerous for both the reasons Kilkenny stated and on the merits of the amendment itself. If they can’t pass it now, I could easily see this becoming a long term cause that could find its way through the now thoroughly conservative federal legal system over the next couple of decades.

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Cultured Tea Party

by digby

Wolf Blitzer just interviewed Lindsay Graham about his absurd 14th amendment position. He explained that when he talks about “them coming over the border to drop babies” he’s really referring to wealthy Chinese industrialists who come over to birthing resorts. He danced around it quite nicely saying that he just wants make sure we don’t ever have this problem again. (I’m fairly well convinced that the only way to truly solve this problem once and for all is that instead of full body scans, all women must be required to take a gynecological exam and pregnancy test as part of TSA screening. Look for it in the 2012 GOP platform.)

I don’t know why Huckleberry thinks that delivering a big, slurpy wet kiss to the Teabaggers with his “baby dropping” rhetoric is going to do him any good, but he’s deluded if he thinks so:

In recent months, Graham has been censured by GOP party committees in Lexington and Charleston counties. On Monday, the Greenville GOP Executive Committee passed a censure resolution by a vote of 61-2.

“THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, the Greenville County Republican Party hereby issues this formal rebuke of Senator Graham for his cooperation and support of President Obama and the Democratic Party’s liberal agenda for the United States,” the resolution reads.

The resolution says Graham will no longer be invited to participate in meetings or other events sponsored by the Greenville County Republican Party, and alleges Graham has “abandoned the Republican platform.”

He seems to think he can turn this back with some down home racist rhetoric implying that immigrants are farm animals. But there’s no guarantee. After all, his alleged abandonment of the Republican platform is likely less political than it is “cultural” if you know what I mean.

Meanwhile over on Hardball, Matthews had both David Gregory and Chuck Todd shaking their heads over why the Republicans would be doing this sort of thing. After all, they agreed, the Tea Party doesn’t care about issues like gay rights or race or any of these unpleasant culture war issues — they care about economics. So why on earth would the GOP think it’s a good idea to talk about these divisive culture war issues at a time like this?

They really are clueless aren’t they?

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Too Far Even For Keyes

by digby

When Alan Keyes sounds like their voice of reason you know the GOP has gone over the cliff:

KEYES: The 14th Amendment is not something that one should play with lightly. I noticed, finally, that Lindsey Graham, used the term — as people have carelessly done over the years — referring to the 14th Amendment as something that has to do with birthright citizenship, and that we should get rid of birthright citizenship. Now let me see, if birthright citizenship is not a birthright, then it must be a grant of the government. And if it is a grant of the government, then it could be curtailed in all the ways that fascists and totalitarians always want to. I think we ought to be real careful before we adopt a view we want to say that citizenship is not a reflection of our unalienable rights. It is not a grant of government, but arises from a set of actual conditions, starting with the rule of God, that constrain government to respect the rights of the people, and therefore the rights that involve the claim of citizenship. Those are really deep, serious issues, and when the amendment was written, and when it was first referred to in the Slaughterhouse cases, the Supreme Court declared that they knew they were touching on something that was absolutely fundamental. And I think before we play games with it in any way, we need to remember that ourselves.

And when “the rule of God” starts sounding like the reasonable alternative you know we’ve all gone over the cliff.

What’s going to be the “bipartisan compromise” on this one, do you suppose? All babies “dropped” by immigrants must pass a citizenship test? Only good European and Canadian anchor babies are allowed automatic citizenship because they will be born of “producers” rather than “parasites”? I don’t know where they can go with this one.

I knew they were going to eventually get to this nativist crapola. It’s an All American response to economic stress, after all, and always a fond fallback of Know Nothings under any circumstances. I guess we have made progress because I thought they’d get to it much earlier.

After all, the major thinkers of the right have been talking about this for quite a while. This was from 2007:

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Oxymorons For Congress

by digby

Can someone please explain to me how it is that liberals are going to find common ground with all these so-called libertarian tea partiers when they espouse views like this?

QUESTION: How do you feel about abortion? Are you for abortion, against abortion, are you for it? In what instances would you allow for abortion?

BUCK: I am pro-life, and I’ll answer the next question. I don’t believe in the exceptions of rape or incest. I believe that the only exception, I guess, is life of the mother. And that is only if it’s truly life of the mother.

To me, you can’t say you’re pro-life and say — if there is, and it’s a very rare situation where one life would have to cease for the other life to exist. But in that very rare situation, we may have to take the life of the child to save the life of the mother.

In that rare situation, I am in favor of that exception. But other than that I have no exceptions in my position.

You can’t really blame him. As any Blue Dog will tell you, when right wingers are giving you grief the best way to deal with it is to punch hippies and slap around women. But I have to give him credit. He manages to show some real contempt while he’s doing it, making it sound as if he finds it downright distasteful that he has to be so politically correct as to say that the useless vessel should be saved before the fetus.

You hear this stuff from teabaggers everywhere, including the Paul Family Circus, and yet I keep hearing that these people are all good libertarians who aren’t interested in culture war issues and just want to protect civil liberties and rein in corruption. Can you really be a libertarian but agree that the state has dominion over women’s reproductive organs? Apparently so. But let’s just say it makes me a wee bit suspicious that these “libertarian tea partiers” will manage to find whatever loopholes they need to justify their right wing impulses.

Update: Oh Good God. Here’s Ron Christie, official GOP villager, going full Teabag lunacy on The Ed Show just now when Joan Walsh mentioned that the congress was going to waste time debating the 14th amendment:

Christie: I think it’s good for parties on both sides of this issue to have a hearing. Those folks like me who believe that the constitution is very clear that if you’re under the jurisdiction of another power that that you’re not automatically conferred citizenship. I think we have a good case there, and I think folks like Joan who say, oh my goodness, we should automatically give illegals the right to have citizenship, both sides should have their say…this should not be a political issue, this should not be something where it’s Republicans and Democrats

Walsh: I thought you guys cared about the constitution

Christie: Excuse me, I did not insult you. The issue here is that we’re American citizens! We should understand what it means to be a citizen of this country.

Yes, the revolutionary teabagging defenders of the constitution are basically saying that the clear meaning of the 14th amendment is not the clear meaning of the 14th amendment. You think they won’t be able to fudge anything they want?

Section. 1. 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. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

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Dropping Babies

by digby

Good God. I had missed Huckleberry Graham’s specific language in his comments about repealing the 14th amendment. He said “they come here to drop a baby” as if they’re farm animals. And he delivered it with his patented dead-eyed reptilian stare and sneering drawl.

What an asshole. I doubt it will make up for his apostasy on the Tea Party, but it might appease the mainstream Republicans in South Carolina for whom white supremacy is their greatest tribal identifier.

A reader sent in this BBC report about global warming causing more Mexican migration with the wry observation that it might make the right believe in climate change. It would be pretty to think so, but considering the kind of rhetoric we are now hearing from political leaders I think it would be far more likely that we would simply declare war on Mexico — and the weather.

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The Constitutional Heretics Challenge The Teabag Priesthood

by digby

I’m sure you will be stunned to hear this, but it seem the Tea Party doesn’t actually know what’s in the constitution. So the Constitution Accountability Center has very helpfully gone to the trouble of writing a series of papers to explain it to them:

Our Strange Brew series is being launched today with the release of a new CAC Issue Brief entitled “Setting the Record Straight: The Tea Party and the Constitutional Powers of the Federal Government.” This Issue Brief, written by CAC’s Chief Counsel Elizabeth Wydra and CAC’s Human and Civil Rights Director David Gans, takes on the Tea Partiers’ central claim: that our country’s Founders established a sharply limited, weak national government, incapable of addressing national problems like the health care crisis in America. ..
Here are some of the topics we will cover in the Strange Brew series:

• The persistent and heated claims in the courts, Congress, and the media that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional, and the suggestion by Senate Republicans that General Kagan should not be confirmed as a Supreme Court Justice because she might uphold the Act.
• Kentucky Senate candidate and Tea Party darling Rand Paul’s assertion that the federal government does not have the power to root out “private” discrimination under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, one of the most important pieces of legislation passed pursuant to Congress’s constitutional authority to enforce the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equality.
• The call by Rand Paul, Rep. Duncan Hunter and others for repeal of the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of citizenship at birth for all children born in the United States, and the efforts in states such as Arizona to interfere with the Amendment’s guarantee of equal citizenship.
• Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle’s suggestion that Americans should repeal the 16th Amendment, which allows for a federal income tax.
• Utah Senate candidate Mike Lee’s argument that his state can use the Constitution’s “Enclave Clause” to take land from the federal government in Utah.
• The call by Tea Party activists for repeal of the 17th Amendment, in order to take the power to elect U.S. Senators away from individual voters and give it back to state legislators.
• Disturbing Tea party rhetoric suggesting that perceived unconstitutional actions by the federal government are cause for armed rebellion—and the claim that the Founders would cheer such violence.
• The argument by Senator Tom Coburn and others that Kagan should not be confirmed because she, in their view, would not commit during her Judiciary Committee testimony to enforcing “God-given” natural or inalienable rights mentioned in the Declaration of Independence.

I’m sure it will all be well refudiated by the Teabag priesthood. Only they are competent to read the sacred texts. But still, the heretics should be heard.

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Sins of The Fathers

by digby

So 89 year old Helen Thomas is excoriated for her comments that the Israeli Jews should go back where their parents came from — “Poland, Germany, the United States” but the governor of Arizona blithely says that American children should go back where their parents came from and that’s considered perfectly normal political discourse, not even worthy of discussion:

“It is illegal to trespass in our country. It has always been illegal. And people have determined that they want to take that chance, that responsibility. It’s not going to tear them apart. They can take their children back with them.”

What a lovely piece of work this woman is. Arizonans must all be so proud.

So, it’s ok to say that American born Hispanics should be forced to “go back where they came from” but saying it about Israeli Jews is worthy of a witch burning. Why is that?

I honestly can’t get over the fact that people are so unable to see the direct correlation here between Thomas’s ramblings and what Brewer and the rest of the “Repeal the 14th amendment” people are saying. The uber-patriots of the wingnut freakshow who fetishize American exceptionalism have once again taken it upon themselves to decide which American babies are worthy of growing up in their own country. And everybody thinks this is just fine.

And by the way, it has not “always” been illegal to cross the Mexican border to work, not by a long shot. The border has been open and closed to varying degrees since there was a border. The history of Mexico and the United States is closely interwoven, both having been colonized by Europeans, native peoples shoved all over the place and a series of wars creating the borders that exist today. There are many, many Americans of Hispanic descent whose ancestors were here long before Jan Brewer’s. The definition of who is a truly American is no more her prerogative than it is anyone else. So the only possible way to do this is to say that “American” means someone who was born in the United States or who became a naturalized citizen, period. Anything else is just nasty nativist nonsense, no matter who says it.

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