A rather bizarre column by Jeff Jacoby is drawing some blogospheric attention.

YOU’RE A sensible, principled conservative. You want America to be a land of boundless opportunity and freedom, where people are treated as individuals and judged on their merits. You reject the divisive identity politics of the left – what matters most about any of us, you would insist, is not race or class or ethnic origins: it is personal character and achievement. There are few things about contemporary politics you deplore more than the demonizing or scapegoating of entire groups (“white males,’’ “the rich,’’ “the Christian right,’’ “gun owners’’), as though every member of the group is interchangeable and indistinguishable, wholly defined by a single disparaging label.

True.

But let someone mention “illegal immigrants,’’ and your principles fly out the window.

No, not me.

So when Governor Deval Patrick recommends allowing young illegal immigrants – residents of Massachusetts who have graduated from high school – to attend a public college and pay in-state tuition, you flip out. This is outrageous, you protest. It rewards people who broke the rules. It’s unfair to the taxpayers who subsidize public higher education. Why should an illegal immigrant get a valuable tuition break that Massachusetts wouldn’t give to a kid from Maine or New Hampshire?

You vigorously agree with Charlie Baker, a Republican candidate for governor. “If you’re illegally here, you’re illegally here,’’ Baker said last week. “The notion that we should treat illegal immigrants with the same benefits and opportunities that legal immigrants and legal citizens have doesn’t make any sense to me.’’

It is dispiriting to see Baker, a man of considerable intellectual heft, stoop to such shallow sloganeering. It is even more dispiriting to see conservatives assail immigrants instead of the insane immigration system that gave most of them no legal way to enter the United States.  On the whole, illegal immigrants are just the sort of newcomers Americans should embrace: self-motivated risk-takers, strivers determined to improve themselves, hard-working men and women willing to take the meanest jobs if it will give them a shot at building their own American dream. Why would we want to punish them? Why would we want to punish their kids?

But these aren’t mutually exclusive.  I simultaneously agree with Jacoby that our immigration system is broken, that accepting and assimilating more of them is on the whole a good thing, and that it makes sense to educate assimilated immigrants and yet believe that we ought to enforce our laws.  The fact that we can’t or won’t enforce our immigration policy is a good reason to change it — not a reason to pretend the laws don’t exist.

Jacoby cherry picks a particularly hard case:

A couple from Brazil, seeking a better life for themselves and their 2-month-old daughter, enter the United States unlawfully. They settle in Massachusetts, where 18 years later the girl graduates from a public high school, as assimilated and acculturated an American as her classmates in every respect – except that they are US citizens, and she, by virtue of a decision made when she was a baby, is not. Her classmates can attend the University of Massachusetts, paying $9,704 a year in tuition, the price tag for Massachusetts residents. She can attend only if she pays the out-of-state rate of $22,157; if that’s more than she can afford, she’s out of luck.

This has to be unrepresentative.  What percentage of illegal immigrant children of college age have been residents of the state for eighteen years?

On the other hand, Jacoby has a point about irrationality among conservatives on the issue.

An unsigned piece at Stop the ACLU retorts, “what Jeff is missing is that the people looking for a better life entered the country illegally. Why should we excuse that behavior? We shouldn’t embrace that behavior just so they can build the American dream.” Jacoby doesn’t “miss” that; he argues that the system essentially doesn’t allow these people a legal means of immigration and that millions of them are already here.

Still, the reaction is understandable: These people are here illegally. Granted, in most cases, it was their parents who broke our laws, merely bringing their kids along for the ride. And some percentage of the kids are for all intents and purposes Americans, having grown up here and having no memories of “home.”

But it does seem perverse to reward their parents for flouting the law. Those who are trying to get in legally are waiting years and foregoing this opportunity for their children, after all.  Openly declaring a policy that “once here, you’re here” both makes those who play by the rules suckers and ensures fewer will play by the rules.

Clifton B of Another Black Conservative argues that we can’t afford it. “What Jeff Jacoby (like so many in Washington) has forgotten is that America is $12 trillion dollars in the hole. Half of every dollar we spend is borrowed money. Money that must be paid back by a generation that is too young to vote their objections or accept the responsibility. Sure it would be nice not to punish the children of illegal immigrants for the parents’ lawbreaking. However the stark reality is that for us to be generous the way Jacoby suggests, requires us to be cruel to our very own children by robbing their futures to pay for our current mistakes.”  A similar argument is made at 24Ahead.

That just doesn’t make sense. Either the in-state rate is a worthwhile investment in the future of Massachusetts residents or it isn’t. Adding in a relative handful of students isn’t going to break the bank.

The latter goes on to make a more compelling argument:

[C]ollege resources and discounts are a finite resource: just like in a game of musical chairs, there are only so many to go around. Any illegal alien who gets a “chair” (education slot or discount) means that a U.S. citizen will have to “stand” (not be able to go to college or not be able to afford it). If any of “400-600 additional students” that Mass can admit are illegal aliens, that means that U.S. citizens could have gotten those slots/discounts but lost out. Mass voters are in effect valuing foreign citizens higher than their fellow U.S. citizens, turning their back on U.S. citizens in order to help foreign citizens.

The problem with that, though, is that there’s no such thing as “citizenship” at the state level — only residency.  It’s arguable than an 18-year Massachusetts resident with illegal immigrant parents are more entitled to in-state resident tuition rates than her cohorts who are American citizens whose parents moved to Massachusetts two years ago and have hardly paid anything into the state treasury.

But, surely, it makes no sense to declare a policy that those who are here in violation of our laws should be able to bring that fact to the attention of the government and thereby be rewarded.

Correction:  I originally misread Jacoby’s example as saying the parents in question had subsequently attained US citizenship.  I’ve rewritten two paragraphs that referenced that erroneous fact, as they confuse the issue needlessly.

Via Eric Kleefeld, I see Public Policy Polling has surveyed Americans on various conspiracy theories and wild ideas and found substantial adherence to all of them, leading their Tom Jensen to ask “Is extremism becoming mainstream in 21st century American politics?”

Our latest national poll would seem to say yes- 35% voters in the country either think that Barack Obama was not born in the United States or that George W. Bush intentionally allowed the 9/11 attacks to occur so that we could go to war in the Middle East. A very troubled 2% of the population buys into both of those conspiracy theories.

[...]

Only 59% of Americans say confidently that they think Barack Obama was born in the country while 23% think he was not, and 18% are unsure. Among Republicans there are more voters- 42%- who think he was born somewhere else than there are- 37%- who will say for sure that he was born here.

The far out sentiments aren’t limited to the right though. 14% of Americans, including 25% of Democrats, think that George W. Bush let 9/11 happen to justify war, and 8% aren’t sure.

[...]

10% of voters say they think Obama is the Anti-Christ with 11% unsure and 8% say the same of Bush with an equal 11% unsure.

Without seeing the poll itself, it’s hard to know what to make of this.  The blog post above — oddly on the free and crappy Blogspot service — does not link the survey and, while Jensen has an email address at publicpolicypolling.com, that’s currently pulling up a “Bad Request (Invalid Hostname)” error.  So, I have no idea what their sampling methodology — or even the precise question wording — was.

Still, it’s not terribly surprising that a large number of people think things which are demonstrably untrue, let alone things which are unfalsifiable.

Most Americans are aware that questions have been raised about Obama’s American citizenship. And it’s a subject that’s potentially confusing to those who haven’t seriously looked into it.  (Yes, Obama was a Kenyan citizen, by virtue of his father’s being one, but automatically lost it upon attaining majority.  It’s a technically interesting question as to whether his mother could have transmitted citizenship given her residency status under the law as it stood in 1962.  But there’s simply no serious question that he was born in Hawaii, one of the 50 states, which renders all other questions moot.)  So, for those who follow the news only by osmosis, it’s not surprising that a few would think he’s not a citizen and more still would have some doubts.

The Truther conspiracy is more pernicious but easier to believe, since it’s impossible to disprove.  There’s no doubt that there was a memo titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” or that Bush received it five weeks ahead of the 9/11 attacks. Nor is there any question that there were bits and pieces of evidence in the possession of various federal agencies that, in hindsight, could be assembled to show that the government “knew” a lot. For that matter, Bush clearly thought Saddam was an evil dude who needed to be taken out (a belief shared by the Clinton administration.) So, all it takes to turn all of this into evidence that Bush let the attacks go on so as to justify his war is belief that he specifically or the federal government generally is evil.

As to the Anti-Christ responses, I tend to take most of them as “he’s a really bad guy” than expression that he’s a specific figure predicted in Revelations. Else, how does one explain the people who thought both Obama and Bush are the Anti-Christ? But, alas, there are always people who believe a given president is that figure. I recall it being pointed out nearly three decades ago that Ronald Wilson Reagan was comprised of 6-6-6 letters. (For what it’s worth, Snopes helpfully explains that Obama does not much resemble the Anti-Christ described in Revelations.)

Jonathan Last has somehow obtained a memorandum [PDF], dated yesterday, written by U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert B. Collings in the matter of Andrew  Sullivan, who was caught in a federal park with small amounts of a controlled substance but whom the U.S. Attorney declined to prosecute in the “interests of justice.” To wit: Paying the $125 fine would make it harder to conceal from immigration officials that he had been charged with said crime.

Says Collings:

In the Court’s view, in seeking leave to dismiss the charge against Mr. Sullivan, the United States Attorney is not being faithful to a cardinal principle of our legal system, i.e., that all persons stand equal before the law and are to be treated equally in a court of justice once judicial processes are invoked. It is quite apparent that Mr. Sullivan is being treated differently from others who have been charged with the same crime in similar circumstances.

He says much more but that’s the gist. Last adds:

Sullivan and his attorney claim that paying the $125 fine would create a record of his being charged with possession of a controlled substance. Collings notes that whether or not Sullivan ever paid the fine, “if asked by immigration authorities, [he] would have to answer truthfully that he had been charged with a crime involving controlled substances.” So why would it matter whether or not Sullivan just pays the $125? Because if he doesn’t pay it, it makes it easier for him to answer untruthfully.

In other words, the State decided that it was in the interest of justice to help Andrew Sullivan lie to another agency of the State.

Look, if Sullivan’s able to beat a minor charge, good for him. (Though can you imagine what he would say if the defendant was a guy named “Bush”?) There’s no reason he shouldn’t defend himself as zealously as possible. As always, the problem is the shame and dishonor he brings on a larger institution, in this case, the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

Commenter “Z” piles on:

(1) Given that there is strong evidence that Sullivan violated federal law, doesn’t the rule of law require that he be prosecuted? That is (as he proudly quoted only a few days ago), “if you genuinely believe in the rule of law, you can’t invoke political expediency as a guide to whether possible crimes should be investigated and prosecuted.” Right?

(2) Given that the U.S. Department of Justice has provided Sullivan with a substantial benefit, shouldn’t he recuse himself from any and all commentary on the Department of Justice? Or do those sorts of rules apply only to journalists with allegedly pro-Palin conflicts of interest?

Ouch! Touché! Zing!

As to the issue of Sully’s hypocrisy, it’s rather slight.  That he argues that the Bush administration should be held accountable for abiding by international treaty, federal statute, and executive orders on torture does not obligate him to demand the enforcement of the letter of every other law.  Further, he has been forthright — indeed, to the point of zealously beating his readers around the head with a dead horse — about his disdain for our drug laws and, especially, the benefits of using marijuana.  And asking Greta van Susteren to disclose that her husband is on Sarah Palin’s payroll is not exactly unreasonable, let alone applicable to his own commentary on the DoJ.

As to the disposition of the matter, I generally agree with Collings:  Either we prosecute people for possessing small amounts of marijuana in federal parks or we don’t.  It’s odd, indeed, to have an exception to the rule that we arrest citizens for such infractions but not non-citizens applying for citizenship.   But, on occasion, the law is an ass.  In this particular case, the penalty for an infraction so slight that we ordinarily punish it with less vigor than going 12 miles over the posted limit on the interstate would effectively be deportation.  It’s not unreasonable for a U.S. Attorney to weigh the likely result of prosecution and decide that, in this highly unusual instance, the impact would be unjust.

Via Jayvie Canono, who I gather disagrees.

UPDATE: This story has gone viral in the blogosphere, which isn’t surprising given that arguably the most famous blogger is at the center of the story.

Stacy McCain jokes, “Forget about the Mexican drug cartels — save us from the AIDS-Infected British Dope Menace!”  He adds, “As a former teenage hoodlum who used to deal dope in felony weights, allow me to offer my Darwinian/draconian case for strict enforcement: Anybody stupid enough to get busted for dope is a danger to himself and others and should be locked up for the good of society.”

Ace works a “wee weed up” reference into the title and implies that Sullivan’s having “had a personal meeting with Obama, with other leftist bloggers” figured into this dismissal, despite noting that it was a careerist in the U.S. Attorney’s office, not an Obama appointee, who made the call.

Dan Collins questions the timing.

JammieWearingFool snarks, “Sounds like grounds for deportation to me. Otherwise people may get the impression there are two Americas. One for us regular folk and another for whacked-out conspiratorial bloggers.”

Damien Penny suggests “The past 18 months or so illustrate why one shouldn’t toke and blog, man.”

Jacob Sullum agrees with me on the hypocrisy angle but laments the degree to which the rich and connected can get special treatment in drug cases.

Glenn Reynolds supports legalization but guesses “Andrew would no doubt make a big deal out of any special treatment afforded to a member of the Palin family under similar circumstances.”

Stephen Green is just generally amused.

The big news surrounding President Obama’s latest heathcare speech is that South Carolina Republican Rep. Joe Wilson shouted “You lie!” in response to the claim that illegal immigrants would not be covered under universal coverage:

AP (”Obama heckled by GOP during speech to Congress“):

The nastiness of August reached from the nation’s town halls into the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday as President Barack Obama tried to move his health care plan forward.

South Carolina Republican Rep. Joe Wilson shouted “You lie!” after Obama had talked about illegal immigrants. It wasn’t the only interruption during Obama’s speech to a joint session of Congress in the House of Representatives. Earlier, Republicans laughed when Obama acknowledged that there are still significant details to be worked out before a health overhaul can be passed.

Wilson’s outburst caused Obama to pause briefly before he went on with his speech. Overhead in the visitors’ gallery, first Lady Michelle Obama shook her head from side to side.

Carl Hulse, NYT (”In Lawmaker’s Outburst, a Rare Breach of Protocol“):

In an angry and very audible outburst, Representative Joe Wilson, Republican of South Carolina, interrupted President Obama’s speech Wednesday night with a shout of “You lie!”

His eruption — in response to Mr. Obama’s statement that Democratic health proposals would not cover illegal immigrants — stunned members of both parties in the House chamber.

Democrats said it showed lack of respect for the office of the presidency and was reminiscent of Republican disruptions at recent public forums on health care. “It is outrageous,” said Representative Joseph Crowley, Democrat of New York, who said it reminded him of the “antics that are being used to disrupt and fog what is going on.” After the speech, Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff who sat a few rows in front of Mr. Wilson, said he immediately approached senior Republican lawmakers to encourage them to identify the heckler and urge him to issue an apology quickly. “No president has ever been treated like that. Ever,” Mr. Emanuel said. Other Democrats said they did not want to dwell on the outburst or allow it to overshadow what they saw as an effective address by the president. But they also said it bolstered their contention that some Republicans were not interested in constructive dialogue, and they noted that Democratic plans specifically barred coverage for illegal immigrants.

Republicans also said the heckling was out of line. “I think we ought to treat the president with respect,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, “and anything other than that is not appropriate.”

Mr. Wilson seemed rattled in the wake of his comment, and quickly left the chamber at the end of the speech. His office later issued an apology, saying: “This evening I let my emotions get the best of me when listening to the president’s remarks regarding the coverage of illegal immigrants in the health care bill. While I disagree with the president’s statement, my comments were inappropriate and regrettable. I extend sincere apologies to the president for this lack of civility.” Mr. Wilson also phoned the White House and reached Mr. Emanuel, who accepted an apology on behalf of the president.

Critical body language and murmurs of disapproval are typical at presidential addresses and part of the political theater. But members of both parties were trying to recollect such a pointed attack from an individual lawmaker at a presidential address and noted that a similar remark could draw a formal reprimand if delivered at a routine session of the House.

The apology was appropriate and, I’m guessing*, sincere.  Such outbursts are inappropriate in civil debate, let alone when directed at the only elected representative of the nation as a whole.  Bill Clinton was treated with more respect while under formal impeachment charges.

While Wilson’s frustrated cry was inexcusable, however, it’s at least understandable.   After all, Obama was indirectly calling him a liar.  And being untruthful.  From the speech:

Some of people’s concerns have grown out of bogus claims spread by those whose only agenda is to kill reform at any cost. The best example is the claim, made not just by radio and cable talk show hosts, but prominent politicians, that we plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens. Such a charge would be laughable if it weren’t so cynical and irresponsible. It is a lie, plain and simple.

There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false – the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally. And one more misunderstanding I want to clear up – under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place.  [emphasis added]

This, incidentally, was the from the prepared remarks, not off-the-cuff flourish.  The president was deliberately poisoning the well, claiming that his opponents are dishonorable and ill-intentioned.  And, as AllahPundit and Mark Tapscott point out, the bill will of course cover illegal aliens.   Even the Congressional Research Service says so.

“Under H.R. 3200, a ‘Health Insurance Exchange’ would begin operation in 2013 and would offer private plans alongside a public option…H.R. 3200 does not contain any restrictions on noncitzens—whether legally or illegally present, or in the United States temporarily or permanently—participating in the Exchange.” CRS also notes that the bill has no provision for requiring those seeking coverage or services to provided proof of citizenship.

Indeed, as an Obama official interviewed on NPR this morning admits, the administration has moved the ball in the other direction, removing existing restrictions requiring people to provide proof of citizenship to get various federal benefits on the grounds that they were too onerous and causing those legitimately eligible to give up or be denied.  That may well be the right thing to do (I don’t know the specifics well enough to render definitive judgment) but it nonetheless vitiates the claim that there’s some magic wall to prevent the twelve million-odd illegal aliens from gaining access.

Beyond that, simple logic tells you that illegal aliens will be covered under any system of universal coverage.  Aside from the plain meaning of the word universal,  we have laws in this country requiring unquestioned treatment at emergency rooms for anyone who shows up.  The Supreme Court ruled more than a quarter century ago in Pyler v. Doe that the Equal Protection Clause requires that children of known illegal aliens be given free elementary and secondary education in public schools.  It’s hard to justify a rationale that requires paying to educate children while denying them health care.

UPDATE: Phillip Klein points to a 2005 Media Matters piece noting that Congressmen expressing displeasure with presidents by booing has been going on for some time.  I suppose yelling, “You lie!” is worse than booing but it’s worth noting that the idea of Congress as a bastion of civility is being  oversold.

UPDATE 2: Via Taegan Goddard, I see that PolitiFact has a longish piece arguing that “Obama can make a pretty thorough case that reform doesn’t apply to those here illegally. We don’t find the public option argument enough to make the case that Obama ‘lied.’ We rate Wilson’s statement False.”  I invite you to read it for yourself but I find it unpersuasive.

Politifact misapprehends how our system works, operating from the premise that laws only do what they specifically say.  And since the law doesn’t say illegal aliens are covered, QED, they aren’t.  In reality, new entitlements operate in a very complex existing ecosystem.  Unless the law not only excludes illegal aliens but provides very strong provisions for actually doing so — and it does not — the reality is that illegal aliens will be covered.

______________
*Before this morning, the only “Joe Wilson” I knew was married to Valerie Plame.  I gather from the news accounts, though, that he was surprised and flustered by the outburst and embarrassed at the spectacle he’d created.

Will Wilkinson became a Canadian at midnight.  Canadian Press’ Bruce Cheadle reports:

Wilkinson, to use the breezy term used by Citizenship and Immigration Canada, will be “waking up Canadian” on Friday morning as new and controversial changes to the Citizenship Act become law.

“It’s a strange thing to all-of-a-sudden one day gain a citizenship to a new country,” the 36-year-old journalist from Iowa said Thursday as he rode the train to Ottawa.  “It’s exciting to me. I like the idea of just having a bigger community.”

Wilkinson is gaining citizenship by virtue of his Saskatchewan-born father, who moved to the United States in the 1960s and became an American, losing his Canadian passport in the process.   When Bill C-37, an amendment to the Citizenship Act, takes the full force of law Friday, the elder Wilkinson will join thousands of so-called “lost Canadians” who automatically have their citizenship restored.

[...]

A new two-generation rule – which ends the line of citizenship for children born outside Canada to Canadian parents who were also born abroad – was inserted as a sort of quid pro quo in Bill C-37. But critics say that while correctly fixing administrative problems that disenfranchised an untold number of Canadians in the past, the government has elected to “fundamentally change” Canadian citizenship law and disenfranchise an untold number of Canadians of the future.

[...]

Rudyard Griffiths, founder of the Dominion Institute, describes a “growing diaspora of disengaged citizens who live permanently abroad, who aren’t assuming any of the responsibilities and obligations, but enjoy almost all of its rights and privileges.”

Apparently, the rule change was set in motion after some Lebanese-Canadians were given asylum in 2006.

While it may seem odd at first blush that an American-born child of a naturalized American citizen could have dual citizenship in Canada, the United States allows dual citizenship, too.  Plenty of Americans move abroad and take citizenship in other countries without losing their American citizenship for themselves or their children.

Of course, the real question is why the United States and Canada still pretend to be separate countries.  We speak the same language (minus, officially, Quebec), are each other’s largest trading partners, members of NATO, and travel more-or-less freely across the largest international border in the world.

The bizarre idea that Barack Obama is not a natural born citizen and therefore not eligible to hold the office of president continues to thrive, with an active duty Army officer now joining the fray.  The soldier in question, 40-year-old contractor-turned 2LT Scott Easterling asserts that his oath to defend the Constitution require that, “Until Mr. Obama releases a ‘vault copy’ of his original birth certificate for public review, I will consider him neither my Commander in Chief nor my President, but rather, a usurper to the Office – an impostor.”

Neptunus Lex‘ one-line summary of this captures my thoughts: “A 40-year old second lieutenant stationed in Iraq is apparently getting way out of his swim lane.”

Even if I had doubts about Obama’s citizenship — and I don’t — I’m quite clear that military officers are not called upon to interpret the Constitution; they merely pledge to protect it against all enemies, foreign and domestic, at the risk of lives if necessary.  Interpreting it is a job the Supreme Court claimed for itself in 1803 and has subsequently become theirs by tradition.

via memeorandum

The Army is beginning a pilot program to allow skilled green card holders to enlist and get a fast-track to citizenship, Julia Preston reports on the front page of today’s NYT.

Stretched thin in Afghanistan and Iraq, the American military will begin recruiting skilled immigrants who are living in this country with temporary visas, offering them the chance to become United States citizens in as little as six months.

Immigrants who are permanent residents, with documents commonly known as green cards, have long been eligible to enlist. But the new effort, for the first time since the Vietnam War, will open the armed forces to temporary immigrants if they have lived in the United States for a minimum of two years, according to military officials familiar with the plan.

Recruiters expect that the temporary immigrants will have more education, foreign language skills and professional expertise than many Americans who enlist, helping the military to fill shortages in medical care, language interpretation and field intelligence analysis.

[...]

The program will begin small — limited to 1,000 enlistees nationwide in its first year, most for the Army and some for other branches. If the pilot program succeeds as Pentagon officials anticipate, it will expand for all branches of the military. For the Army, it could eventually provide as many as 14,000 volunteers a year, or about one in six recruits.

This makes sense on a lot of levels.  It provides skilled labor to the military services and rewards those who have served their new country with citizenship, which seems perfectly just.

I worry somewhat, though, about turning the United States military into a foreign legion with mercenary characteristics.  We’re already managed to divorce citizenship and service and war and pain for most Americans; furthering those trends is not something I look forward to.

One wonders whether the military will take the place the schools once did of providing the heat to the melting pot, naturally assimilating new immigrants.  It may be that the end result is that we’ll create a large class of soldier-citizens through this process.  Of course that, too, comes with the risk of further alienating the military from the society on a values level.

United States Supreme Court Building

As widely anticipated, the Supreme Court today declined to hear a frivolous case about Barack Obama’s citizenship status.

The Supreme Court has turned down an emergency appeal from a New Jersey man who says President-elect Barack Obama is ineligible to be president because he was a British subject at birth.  The court did not comment on its order Monday rejecting the call by Leo Donofrio of East Brunswick, N.J., to intervene in the presidential election.

Donofrio says that since Obama had dual nationality at birth — his mother was American and his Kenyan father at the time was a British subject — he cannot possibly be a “natural born citizen,” one of the requirements the Constitution lists for eligibility to be president.  Donofrio also contends that two other candidates, Republican John McCain and Socialist Workers candidate Roger Calero, also are not natural-born citizens and thus ineligible to be president.

At least one other appeal over Obama’s citizenship remains at the court. Philip J. Berg of Lafayette Hill, Pa., argues that Obama was born in Kenya, not Hawaii as Obama says and the Hawaii secretary of state has confirmed. Berg says Obama also may be a citizen of Indonesia, where he lived as a boy. Federal courts in Pennsylvania have dismissed Berg’s lawsuit. Federal courts in Ohio and Washington state have rejected similar lawsuits.

There’s no serious question that Barack Obama was a citizen of the United States at the time of his birth. He was born in Hawaii well after it became a state, which makes it automatic according to both the plain meaning of the 14th Amendment and long established law. Further, as far as the United State government is concerned, there’s no such thing as “dual citizenship” is a non-issue: You’re either an American or you aren’t; if other states choose to recognize an American as one of their citizens, we don’t care so long as the person doesn’t take active means to renounce his American citizenship.

PREVIOUS POSTS:

• Supreme Court to Decide on Obama Citizenship
• Obama: Citizen of the World
• On Being a Citizen of the World
• John McCain’s Presidential Eligibility Redux
• Is John McCain a ‘Natural-Born Citizen’?

Photo by Flickr user dbking under Creative Commons license.

A group challenging Barack Obama’s citizenship will finally get its day in court.  Or, more likely, be among the thousands of cases rejected each year by the Supreme Court.

The U.S. Supreme Court will consider Friday whether to take up a lawsuit challenging President-elect Barack Obama’s U.S. citizenship, a continuation of a New Jersey case embraced by some opponents of Obama’s election.

The meeting of justices will coincide with a vigil by the filer’s supporters in Washington on the steps of the nation’s highest court. The suit originally sought to stay the election, and was filed on behalf of Leo Donofrio against New Jersey Secretary of State Nina Mitchell Wells.

Legal experts say the appeal has little chance of succeeding, despite appearing on the court’s schedule. Legal records show it is only the tip of an iceberg of nationwide efforts seeking to derail Obama’s election over accusations that he either wasn’t born a U.S. citizen or that he later renounced his citizenship in Indonesia.

Given that no serious person questions Obama’s citizenship and that the Court has a longstanding doctrine denying ordinary citizens standing to sue over such matters, I can’t imagine four Justices will decide to grant cert.

At the Al Smith dinner last night, Democratic candidate for President Barack Obama admitted that, as some critics contend, he was not born in Hawaii:

In fact, not only does this news indicate that he’s not an American citizen, I’m pretty sure it means that he’s an illegal immigrant, too.

Shocking.

Thomas Lifson believes the “game changer” desperate Republicans are looking for could have arrived with this video from — and, sadly, I’m not making this up — someone calling themselves “Molotov Mitchell” at something called ” Illuminati Productions.”

The video is just shy of 11 minutes but, as Lifson describes it,

It makes accessible to the general public some of the serious questions about Obama’s citizenship status that have been vetted almost exclusively in the conservative web world.

[...]

But you can get people to watch 11 minutes of interesting video raising a slew of questions for Obama, in fact cornering him, on the question of his birth, citizenship, and eligibility for office as POTUS under the Constitution. Especially if people start talking about the video. It’s called viral distribution.

As I’ve noted in previous posts, it’s rather clear that both Obama and McCain are natural born citizens under the Constitution and thus eligible for the presidency. Let’s stipulate, for the sake of argument, though, that Mitchell is not only right but that this commercial goes viral like nothing in the history of the Internet has ever done before, not only getting seen — twice — by every man, woman, and child but spawns catch-phrases, t-shirts, and a line of action figures.

Why would it matter?

Let’s go further and posit that Barack Obama was genetically engineered in a laboratory in a galaxy far, far away from the genetic material of Adolf Hitler, Idi Amin, Osama bin Laden, and Roseanne Barr and found in a rocketship just outside of Honolulu by Barack Obama, Sr. and Ann Dunham and raised as their own. If his life then proceeded exactly as it otherwise did and he turned out to be exactly the person that he is today, why would it cause someone who now prefers him to John McCain to change their mind?

Sure, as a technical matter, he would be ineligible under the Constitution. If elected, however, I can’t imagine that 1) the Supreme Court would intervene in a political matter of that magnitude and deny him the presidency and/of 2) we wouldn’t swiftly amend the Constitution to do away with the “natural born” requirement.

Greg Ransom:

BARACK OBAMA IS A CITIZEN OF KENYA as well as a citizen of the United States, according the Rocky Mountain News and other sources.  There’s reason to believe that Obama is also a citizen of Indonesia.  He calls himself a “citizen of the world”, and in some sense, he is.

That’s a good line.  Whether Obama is actually a citizen of Kenya and/or Indonesia is interesting but ultimately irrelevant. There’s no reason to doubt his loyalty to the United States and, if he has citizenship elsewhere, it’s simply an artifact of their laws and not any choice he’s made.

If he had obtained passports from another country, it could have implications for his obtaining a security clearance, but there’s no reason to think this is the case.  (And, indeed, one presumes any such restrictions would be inapplicable to him in any case were he elected president.)

The larger subject of dual nationality comes up in other contexts on occasion, though, and it’s one that continues to intrigue me.  Here’s some background from the State Department:

Dual Nationality

The concept of dual nationality means that a person is a citizen of two countries at the same time. Each country has its own citizenship laws based on its own policy. Persons may have dual nationality by automatic operation of different laws rather than by choice. For example, a child born in a foreign country to U.S. citizen parents may be both a U.S. citizen and a citizen of the country of birth.

A U.S. citizen may acquire foreign citizenship by marriage, or a person naturalized as a U.S. citizen may not lose the citizenship of the country of birth. U.S. law does not mention dual nationality or require a person to choose one citizenship or another. Also, a person who is automatically granted another citizenship does not risk losing U.S. citizenship. However, a person who acquires a foreign citizenship by applying for it may lose U.S. citizenship. In order to lose U.S. citizenship, the law requires that the person must apply for the foreign citizenship voluntarily, by free choice, and with the intention to give up U.S. citizenship.

Intent can be shown by the person’s statements or conduct.The U.S. Government recognizes that dual nationality exists but does not encourage it as a matter of policy because of the problems it may cause. Claims of other countries on dual national U.S. citizens may conflict with U.S. law, and dual nationality may limit U.S. Government efforts to assist citizens abroad. The country where a dual national is located generally has a stronger claim to that person’s allegiance.

However, dual nationals owe allegiance to both the United States and the foreign country. They are required to obey the laws of both countries. Either country has the right to enforce its laws, particularly if the person later travels there. Most U.S. citizens, including dual nationals, must use a U.S. passport to enter and leave the United States. Dual nationals may also be required by the foreign country to use its passport to enter and leave that country. Use of the foreign passport does not endanger U.S. citizenship. Most countries permit a person to renounce or otherwise lose citizenship.

Does the U.S. Recognize Dual Citizenship?

It strikes me as bizarre that someone can have loyalty to two countries and pick and choose among them.  There’s a longstanding and widespread misconception that Americans are forbidden to hold dual nationality and must renounce any foreign allegiance.  As the above excerpt makes clear, though, the United States recognize duals citizenship as a fact of life and we only actively discourage it in rare instances.

In cases like Obama’s, for example, it’s a non-issue.  His father was a Kenyan citizen and that automatically conveys to his U.S.-born son.  He grew up in Indonesia and, apparently, that conveyed their citizenship on him, too.  But he’s not carrying their passports, serving in their military, or otherwise acting as a citizen of those countries.

Jack Kelly of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette noted in the wake of the John Walker Lindh case that dual citizenship is rising fast and that,

Voting in a foreign election, serving in a foreign army, or swearing allegiance to a foreign government used to be automatic grounds for losing U.S. citizenship. But a 5-4 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967 made it all but impossible for someone to lose U.S. citizenship unless he or she wants to give it up.

That’s still the law today.

Image credit:  Flickr user tsevis. (And, yes, those are U.S. State flags, not international flags.)

The Army is looking at paying incredibly large bonuses to people fluent in Arabic and other strategically important languages.

The Army may begin paying a retention bonus of as much as $150,000 to Arabic speaking soldiers in reflection of how critical it has become for the US military to retain native language and cultural know-how in its ranks.

Only one other job in the Army, Special Forces, rates such a super-sized retention bonus. Now, as the military makes a fundamental shift toward rewarding the linguistic expertise it needs the most, it is expanding a program to train and retain native Arabic and other speakers from the same regions in which it is fighting.

[..]

After the invasion of Iraq and the insurgency that followed, the US military recognized its dearth of linguistic competence in the country it had just toppled, and it scrambled to identify Arabic and other linguists. The military’s conventional language training program, the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, Calif., could not churn out enough American soldiers proficient in Arabic, Kurdish, Dari, Pashtu, and Farsi, and the military quickly turned to private contractors to fill the gap. Numerous programs have sprouted up, including one at Fort Lewis, Wash., where soldiers are given a 10-month immersion program in language and culture.

But the Army has also been quietly growing its own capability to recruit and train Arab-Americans and others as American soldiers to do high-level work overseas. The Army now has more than 600 such linguists, known by their military job designation as “09 Limas.” They come from places like Morocco, Egypt, and Sudan, but are recruited by the Army wherever there are large Arab-American populations, including Dearborn, Mich.; Miami; Dallas; Los Angeles; and Washington, D.C. The Defense Department is now authorized to put green-card holders on a fast track to US citizenship. The 09 Lima linguists are in so much demand that the Army is raising the number it will recruit next year, from 250 to 275.

But as the US government recognizes the long-term commitment it is making to Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, the competition for these native speakers is fierce among other government agencies such as the FBI and CIA, as well as other military services and private contractors.

This was inevitable if largely a problem of the Defense Department’s own making. Many of us recognized this need in the early 1990s, when it was obvious that we had far too few linguists and that Southwest and Central Asian languages would be in high demand. The fact that DoD will hire private contractors at princely wages, thereby essentially bidding against itself on this front, isn’t helping.

The obvious downside of the bonus approach, aside from it being expensive, is that it could radically skew the pay structure of the force. Depending on how many years the bonus is spread out over, you could have private E-1s making more money than bird colonels.

Story via YahooNews. Photo: Jacob Silberberg/AP (FILE).

Said an American politician, speaking to an international audience:

“I speak today as both a citizen of the United States and of the world. I come with the heartfelt wishes of my people for peace, bearing honest proposals and looking for genuine progress.”

I mean can you imagine? Didn’t this politician know that he was an American? What kind of internationalist claptrap was he peddling?

Thankfully there are a number of folks issuing correctives to such odd ways of thinking.

As Victor Davis Hanson noted

I would not speak to anyone as “a fellow citizen of the world,” but only as an ordinary American who wishes to do his best for the world, but with a much-appreciated American identity, and rather less with a commonality indistinguishable from those poor souls trapped in the Sudan, North Korea, Cuba, or Iran. Take away all particular national identity and we are empty shells mouthing mere platitudes, who believe in little and commit to even less.

And James Lileks:

Novel sentiments aside, “World citizen” is used as a badge of empathy that carries no responsibilities. The more it’s used, though, the more it dilutes actual national citizenship, which naturally takes second place to World Citizenship…To say you’re a citizen of the world and a citizen of America places the latter in the primary slot, no?

Or as J.D. Longstreet of the Conservative Voice said this week:

I have a lot of difficulty relating to anyone who claims citizenship in the world. Frankly, that person is frightening. Saying one is a citizen of the world negates one’s actual citizenship as’ well, a native of the country within which he/she was born and, to which, he/she owes allegiance. Saying you are a citizen of the world is too’well’ vague.

I mean really what was Ronald Reagan thinking?!?

The horror of the phrase is just about too much for me to bear.

Update: I mistakenly left off the links to the quotes last night, and that problem has been fixed.

I will also step back from glibness for the moment and point out that there is, no doubt plenty of things in the Obama speech that can be criticized, especially from a Republican/conservative point of view. However, my point with this post is that to attack the phrase “citizen of the world’ (which has been jumped on by many in the conservative commentariat) is a bit silly, as it is an empty phrase that is frequently used, and not just by persons of a particular ideological persuasion.

If anything, there is not world “citizenship” as there is no global legal entity. And regardless of what one may think about Obama, he isn’t going to be working towards One World Government.

In short, I find the fixation on the phrase to be interesting. Partially because it reflects, I think, an enhanced nationalism in some portions of the right post-9/11 and partially because it strikes me in terms of pure politics to be a pretty poor line of attack. On the last point I think that if one of the best attacks that pro-McCain folks can make about Obama’s trip was that he used the phrase “citizen of the world” then it must have been one heckuva successful trip.

When I saw the headline “Hunter: This conservative activist is backing Obama” on memeorandum yesterday, I was intrigued.  Duncan Hunter, arguably the most conservative of the 2008 Republican presidential aspirants was endorsing a liberal Democrat?! When it turned out the “Hunter” in question was Larry Hunter, a fellow of whom I’d never previously heard, my interest waned.  After all, party activists switch parties on occasion, for all manner of reasons.

My interest was renewed, however, when my old friend Steven Taylor quoted the piece favorably, concentrating especially on “Unjustified war and unconstitutional abridgment of individual rights vs. ill-conceived tax and economic policies – this is the difference between venial and mortal sins.”  Taylor observes,

The main positive reason I can conjure for voting for McCain is divided government. However, since the current divided government situation has not generated much in terms of addressing these keys issues about executive power, one wonders about that argument as well. At a minimum I find myself for the first time in my life in a position where I could see myself voting Democratic, Republican or Libertarian. And, I suspect that I am not alone.

Steve Bainbridge helpfully replies, “Judges, judges, judges.”  Taylor notes, though, that the worst Obama is likely to do is maintain the status quo on the Supreme Court, since it’s the more liberal Justices who are most likely to retire.

That this conversation is happening at all is remarkable.  With few exceptions, John McCain is a rather mainstream conservative, period, and is considerably more conservative than Barack Obama.  Further, on those issues where McCain diverges from conservative orthodoxy, such as campaign finance reform, immigration, and global warming,  Obama agrees with him.

Presuming the reluctance to vote for McCain — let alone the willingness to consider voting for Obama — is something beyond visceral and personal, then, it’s about foreign policy.   Hunter states:

John McCain would continue the Bush administration’s commitment to interventionism and constitutional overreach. Obama promises a humbler engagement with our allies, while promising retaliation against any enemy who dares attack us. That’s what conservatism used to mean – and it’s what George W. Bush promised as a candidate.

Taylor agrees as, I believe, does Bainbridge.   My OTB colleagues, Alex Knapp (a libertarian) and Dave Schuler (a Scoop Jackson-Sam Nunn Democrat) have more than once expressed their fears that McCain is too “bellicose.”   I can’t disagree.   While I agree more with McCain than Obama on foreign affairs, I find both of them flawed for different reasons and prefer Obama’s tone.

The trouble, though, is that I see no reason to think that Obama would be less prone to interventionism than McCain.  My strong sense is that he’d model himself after Bill Clinton and be eager to use military force for humanitarian and do-gooder reasons, whereas McCain would be more likely to use force aggressively in pursuit of security goals.

Nor do I have any reason to believe Obama would be less prone than McCain to overreach in his use of executive power to advance what he believes to be legitimate and necessary goals.  Indeed, Obama’s seeming lack of sense of humor and condemnation of any and all criticism as beyond the pale worries me greatly on that front.

Ultimately, though, both Taylor and Bainbridge have the luxury of living in states (Alabama and California, respectively) that are highly unlikley to be in play come November.  As a resident of increasingly purple Virginia, however, a protest vote would be an abdication of the duties of citizenship.