Hans Von Spakovsky opines regarding a March 2011 report by the Government Accountability Office on illegal immigration — the numbers are eye-poppingly serious.

GAO found that one of every four inmates in federal prisons is an illegal immigrant. And that number is rising. Since 2005, the number of criminal aliens in federal prison has increased by 7 percent.

Two thirds (68 percent) of those incarcerated aliens came from Mexico. Just think of how much less crime we would have if we put in the manpower and resources required to stop the flow of illegal immigrants across our Southern border.

Of course, not all illegal immigrants convicted of criminal activity are housed in federal prisons. Washington provides partial reimbursement (about 23 percent) to states that incarcerate criminal aliens through the Justice Department’s State Criminal Alien Assistance Program (SCAAP). GAO estimates nearly 300,000 SCAAP aliens are confined in state and local prisons — a 35 percent increase from 2003.

Two-thirds (66 percent) of SCAAP prisoners are locked up in just six states — California, Texas, Arizona, Florida, New York and Illinois. California alone holds more than 100,000 — at huge cost to state taxpayers — while Texas incarcerates 37,000. As with federal inmates, the vast majority (66 percent) of aliens in state prisons are from Mexico.

… GAO found “criminal aliens were arrested about 1.7 million times, averaging about 7 arrests per criminal alien.” Their offense records were even worse: “A total of 2.9 million offenses, averaging about 12 offenses per criminal alien.”

And what were those offenses? GAO’s random sample of 1,000 criminal aliens found that half were arrested at least once for assault, homicide, robbery, a sex offense (such as rape) or kidnapping. About 50 percent were arrested at least once on drug charges. In New York, the primary offense for which aliens were convicted in 2008 was homicide. From 2005 through 2008, drugs, sex crimes and assault were the top three offenses for illegal immigrants imprisoned by states seeking reimbursement under the SCAAP program.

But many of these aliens had multiple arrests in their record (which raises the question of why they were in a position to commit a second offense):

• More than a quarter (28 percent) had six to 10 arrests.
• Another 11 percent had 11 to 15 arrests.
• 3 percent had rap sheets revealing 21 or more arrests.

Had those criminals been detained and deported when first arrested, hundreds of thousands of Americans would not have been victimized by their subsequent crimes.

Liberals like to espouse the virtues of supporting illegal immigration under the guise of “caring” — but if they really cared about people they’d demand action be taken to prevent the crimes against the victims whom so many illegal immigrants target. This would include border security and a total reformation of our immigration policy.

Instead, those people demanding action are made fun of. “Maybe they’ll demand a moat,” said President Obama earlier this week, “Maybe they’ll want alligators in the moat.” Nice, eh? Well, Mr. President, how bout we deport illegals who have, oh, gee, I don’t know, maybe more than two or three arrests? What about after 6? 10? It’s gets less funny as the recidivist arrest count gets higher.

You see, it’s real easy for the president and other ivory-tower liberals to sit afar and call the people living in these border states “racists,” but when it’s you and your family attacked, beaten, robbed or raped it’s a little bit different.

You may have heard about the head of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), John Morton, basically state that his taxpayer-funded  department, which is sworn to uphold and protect the Constitution of the United States, will not actually uphold and protect the Constitution of the United States, in this case by refusing to detain or deport illegal immigrants brought to it by Arizona authorities based on the intellectually- and morally-bankrupt argument said law is controversial.

Amazing. With that logic authorities all over the country could transform criminal negligence into government policy by refusing to enforce laws that are deemed “controversial.”

Tell that to the people of Phoenix, AZ, whose city is now ranked second in the world in kidnappings for ransom (behind, naturally, Mexico City). All the while Mexican-American protesters, such as this California educator and member of La Raza (the Race, and talk about a racist name for an organization) are taking a page out of the Palestinian playbook and announcing Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and California as “occupied territory.”

Mr. Morton apparently confuses his unelected appointment with that of free Arizonians freely electing their representatives who freely passed this state law!

Charles Krauthammer elaborated on this pathetic Obama stance over the weekend:

On Immigration and Customs Enforcement head John Morton telling the Chicago Tribune that his agency will not necessarily process illegal immigrants picked up under the new Arizona law:

I think it’s a perfect example of the arrogance and the near lawlessness of this administration. Look: The Constitution requires the federal government ensure that every state have a republican form of government. Last time I checked, Arizona does.

There is no allegation that the immigration law in Arizona was passed in any way other than legally. There were no procedural problems with it.

If the president doesn’t like it, well, he’s got an option. He can instruct the Department of Justice to go and have a judge strike it down. And if he likes, he can get an injunction in the meantime that will suspend it until the constitutionality is ruled upon.

In the meantime, it’s as legal a law as any other law in the land. And for the executive but to say we’re going to ignore it, or we’re going to un-enforce immigration essentially in this state on account of this, is – it’s lawless. We had a Civil War and a civil- rights movement over the claim of Southern states that they could ignore the federal laws on slavery and on civil rights, and that was struck down. Everybody from Abraham Lincoln on opposes that.

And now what we have is the reverse. The federal government, this guy [ICE director John Morton] says, well, you know, he doesn’t think the Arizona law is a good way to go about it. That’s not his business, it’s not his jurisdiction. Arizona decides on what it’s to do [about illegal immigration]. And his job is to enforce the federal law, which he is openly saying he wouldn’t do, simply because a referral comes out of the state whose laws he doesn’t like.

On the argument that ICE wants to focus on criminal elements among illegal immigrants:

Look, if immigration [service] has a set of priorities, as it should, looking into criminality, dangerousness, compassion, humanitarian concerns — all of those are relevant. But whether a person comes out of a state [i.e., Arizona] who’s got a law you don’t like — [that] is an irrelevant criterion, a high-handed one, an arrogant one, and I think probably an illegal one.

Here’s William Bennett in a must-read commentary regarding the Arizona anti-illegal immigration law:

[Mexican President] Felipe Calderón has simply no business lecturing us, lecturing America, about our immigration policies. How does Mexico treat illegal immigrants? See Article 67 of Mexico’s General Population Law: “Authorities, whether federal, state or municipal . . . are required to demand that foreigners prove their legal presence in the country, before attending to any issues.” Now, the Arizona law, which we’ll get to in a moment, doesn’t even say this; there is no such language as “demand,” in Arizona.

But, first, here’s an Amnesty International press release from last month: “The Mexican authorities must act to halt the continuing abuse of migrants who are preyed on by criminal gangs while public officials turn a blind eye or even play an active part in kidnappings, rapes and murders.” Public officials — the government of Mexico — turns a blind eye. The AI report continues: “Migrants in Mexico are facing a major human rights crisis leaving them with virtually no access to justice, fearing reprisals and deportation if they complain of abuses. . . . Persistent failure by the authorities to tackle abuses carried out against irregular migrants has made their journey through Mexico one of the most dangerous in the world.”

So, illegal immigrants in Mexico face some of the most dangerous abuses in the world and they face reprisal and deportation if they complain. Further, there is “persistent failure” by the government of Mexico in stopping this. Felipe Calderón should be schooled on this, and until he is schooled on this, he should simply shut up about Arizona, about the United States — one of the safest places in the world for illegal immigrants and one of the most welcoming places in the world for legal immigrants.

Now, on to Arizona’s law. It cannot and will not operate the way President Obama has said; one will not be stopped because he may be calmly eating ice cream while looking different than the rest of America. Here’s what the law says:

FOR ANY LAWFUL STOP, DETENTION OR ARREST MADE BY A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL OR A LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY OF THIS STATE OR A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL OR A LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY OF A COUNTY, CITY, TOWN OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE WHERE REASONABLE SUSPICION EXISTS THAT THE PERSON IS AN ALIEN WHO IS UNLAWFULLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES, A REASONABLE ATTEMPT SHALL BE MADE, WHEN PRACTICABLE, TO DETERMINE THE IMMIGRATION STATUS OF THE PERSON.

What this means is that one simply cannot be stopped or inquired of, regarding their immigration status, based on any kind of suspicion whatsoever, not without a condition precedent, not without being stopped for an illegal act antecedent. For example, one will not be inquired of unless first stopped for violating some other law, like speeding or running a red light. Status and looks are not in play. And then, if inquired about, all inquiry stops if proof such as a driver’s license or green card is shown.

Second, the law continues:

A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL OR AGENCY OF THIS STATE OR A COUNTY, CITY, TOWN OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE MAY NOT CONSIDER RACE, COLOR OR NATIONAL ORIGIN IN IMPLEMENTING THE REQUIREMENTS OF THIS SUBSECTION.

It is written into the law: race, color, and national origin cannot be the basis for reasonable suspicion to inquire of someone’s status. It is against the law.

Now, let’s look at the federal law that has been on the books for over 50 years: Not only is it a federal offense to be in this country illegally, but the federal law states, “Every alien, eighteen years of age and over, shall at all times carry with him and have in his personal possession any certificate of alien registration or alien registration receipt card issued to him.”

And the federal law adopts no standard for such enforcement, not even the standard of reasonable suspicion. And it requires no lawful stop precedent to such inquiry. Furthermore, Department of Justice guidelines state: “State police officers have ‘inherent power’ to arrest undocumented immigrants for violating federal law.”

So just what exactly has Arizona done to bring down the wrath of city councils, the president, the attorney general, the secretary of Homeland Security, and the president of Mexico? What exactly has Arizona done that could serve as the basis for an assistant secretary of state to tell the Chinese that we, too, have our human-rights problems, citing Arizona’s new law? The answer is nothing.

Now, a new argument came up yesterday from the president. He said: “I think a fair reading of the language of the statute indicates that it gives the possibility of individuals who are deemed suspicious of being illegal immigrants from being harassed or arrested.”

We first ask if he’s read the law, because the AG and the Secretary of HLS have said they have not read it. But what of the “possibility of being harassed or arrested” unfairly? Sure, it’s there, but the state law is more protective on this score than the federal law. And, moreover: All laws are potentially discriminatory or have the potential to be abused. As Andy McCarthy put it, not just laws, but policing:

All policing is potentially discriminatory. Police make arrests without judicial arrest-warrants all the time if they believe they have witnessed a violation of law. They conduct searches all the time without judicial search-warrants if, in their judgment, the facts they observe amount to one of the recognized exceptions to the warrant requirement. And, as we’ve pointed out repeated, they do not have to have any reason at all to ask questions — including to ask a person for identification or immigration status.

It makes no sense, except as an exercise in pandering, to criticize a law because it can potentially be abused. Should we, for example, shut down the legislative process because Congress could potentially abuse its power by, say, hiding the occasional hundred billion or two in spending?

Final point, why did Arizona pass this law? Last year, as Abby Wisse Schachter put it, “the Border Patrol apprehended 241,453 people and confiscated a record 1.3 million pounds of marijuana — in the Tucson, Ariz., sector alone. Nearly a fifth of all those apprehended already had a U.S. criminal record.”

There are nearly half a million illegal immigrants in Arizona. According to the Center for Immigration Studies, while illegal immigrants make up 9 percent of the Arizona population, they are responsible for 22 percent of the felonies in Arizona and they constitute 11 percent of the state prison population. Arizona is now the kidnapping capital of the United States, and Phoenix has the second-largest kidnapping problem in the world (second to Mexico City).

According to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, kidnapping in Arizona increased 402 percent between 2004 and 2008, with almost 70 percent of the kidnapping cases submitted for prosecution involving illegal immigrants. Illegal immigrants account for 16.5 percent of those sentenced for violent crimes; 18.5 percent of those sentenced for property crimes; 33.5 percent of those sentenced for the manufacture, sale, or transport of drugs; and 44.4 percent of those sentenced or forgery and fraud in the Phoenix area. And, according to DOJ statistics, three Border Patrol agents are assaulted on the average day at or near the U.S. border. Someone is kidnapped every 35 hours in Phoenix, Ariz. — mostly by agents of alien-smuggling organizations. And one in five American teenagers last year used some type of illegal drug, many of which were imported across the unsecured U.S.-Mexico border. For example, most of the cocaine and meth consumed in America comes in from Mexico, and in some states, over 90 percent of the marijuana consumed is from Mexico.

Was there a compelling interest for this law? Yes. Was there a rational basis for this law? Yes. Is there any rationality in beating up on Arizona, or in the president’s allowing — even welcoming — leaders of foreign countries to do so? None, and it is a moral shame that he persists in this ugly business.

Here’s a great commentary on Arizona’s Illegal Immigration law by Heather MacDonald via the Washington Examiner:

Heather MacDonald: Arizona law is hated because it could be effective
By: Heather MacDonald
Manhattan Moment contributor
May 5, 2010

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Manhattan-Moment/Arizona-law-is-hated-because-it-could-be-effective-92851479.html#ixzz0nfDsfk5m

To understand the hysterical reaction to Arizona’s new immigration initiative, consider the numbers. There are 6,000 federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents tasked with restoring the rule of law in a country that already contains between 12 and 20 million immigration law-breakers.

Any intending illegal immigrant knows that if he can get across the border undetected, he faces a minute risk of being apprehended on U.S. soil. (By comparison, the New York Police Department, with a current headcount of 35,000, feels itself greatly understaffed in a compact city of eight million residents, only a portion of whom are law-breakers.)

The Arizona law, were it to be widely emulated, threatens to disrupt the calculus of illegal immigration. There are 650,000 state and local police officers in the U.S. If a significant portion of those officers received the mandate of the Arizona law—to inquire where practicable into the immigration status of an individual they have legitimately stopped, if they have a valid reason to believe he is in the country illegally—the balance between law enforcement and law-breaking would be changed enough to likely deter illegal border crossings and to persuade many illegal immigrants already in the U.S. to return to their home countries rather than face arrest and deportation.

The opponents of Arizona’s law — SB 1070 — detest it not because it will lead to racial profiling (it will not), nor because it is unconstitutional (it is not), but because it just might work. Texas is reportedly already considering a similar law. The illegal immigrant lobby knows that it has to stop SB 1070 if it wants to maintain its monopoly over border matters, a monopoly that has led to the chaos that is now engulfing Arizona.

The people screaming the loudest against Arizona’s law do not believe in immigration enforcement, period. No matter where an illegal immigrant is arrested—whether on the street, at home, or at a work site—the illegal immigrant lobby will declare that place to be an illegitimate locus for arrest.

So opposed are illegal immigrant advocates to immigration enforcement that they want to dismantle programs targeting the most dangerous illegal immigrants for deportation.

The New York Times recently called for the abolition of the so-called 287(g) and Secure Communities initiatives, a call echoed by illegal immigrant advocates in Arizona and elsewhere. Those programs now focus almost exclusively on screening jail and prison inmates to identify illegal immigrants with particularly serious criminal histories for deportation.

A typical recent catch was a Mexican gang member arrested for aggravated assault in Mesa, Arizona, who had already served seven years in state prison for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Remarkably, the New York Times charges that the 287(g) and Secure Communities initiatives “undermine” public safety, not enhance it, because they use local sheriff’s deputies to identify illegal immigrant inmates. Those deputies, the Times warns, are likely racial profilers.

The racial profiling charge is as specious leveled against jail deputies as it is against police officers. The overwhelming majority of the nation’s law enforcement personnel base their actions on suspicious behavior, not on race. Opponents of SB 1070 and the 287(g) program have never explained why cops are more likely to abuse their authority than federal ICE agents, a distinction they need to maintain in order to justify their desired cordon sanitaire between local police resources and federal immigration enforcement.

Such explanations will never be forthcoming. Arizona’s effort to enlist its police officers and sheriff’s deputies in the fight against illegal immigration is a legitimate use of police power, intended to restore public order and the rule of law. It would also be an effective use of police power, which is why it is so feared.

Via the WSJ:

Regarding Pima County Sheriff Clarence W. Dupnik’s “Arizona’s Immigration Mistake” (op-ed, May 5): What country on earth allows foreign nationals to roam around without passports, visas and IDs? Who disagrees that boarder sovereignty is a legitimate function of government? Why is requiring everyone to carry identification a problem?

David Klemm

Phoenix

Sherrif Dupnik paints a scenario of police officers having to divine a person’s citizenship status from his or her appearance, a practice he decries as un-American. I agree. However, that’s not how the officers’ task will play out.

An officer may, upon a valid traffic stop for an infraction, request a driver’s license or other identification. If the detainee doesn’t possess a license or Social Security card, or the ones he produces are forged, then those facts, together with the inability to speak English, could form a perfectly legal basis for the further inquiry Arizona requires.

This technique is used everyday in Illinois leading to arrests for false or forged IDs. In court the defendants admit they have no Social Security number and are here illegally. But, of course, they are never deported (in my experience), but allowed to pay a fine and go on their way. It is the professor who holds a temporary card who is ordered back home on pain of deportation, whom the INS handles with aplomb.

Arizona is trying to put rational teeth into an absurdly administered system that national leaders are afraid to touch lest they lose the Latino vote.

Mike Carroll

Tuscola, Ill.

When was the last time Mr. Dupnik got on a plane? I sent my 14-year-old daughter with her 18-year-old brother to her grandfather’s home in St. Louis. I anticipated that there would be ID issues, so I sent her passport with her brother. She was asked to produce an ID a few times. The passport solved all ID issues and smoothed boarding significantly. Legal or not, we’re in a new world already. If Mr. Dupnik has a problem, he should have spoken up when the Patriot Act was passed years ago. The attacks of 9/11 were game changers, and he clearly is still playing by the old rules.

Stephen Restaino

Chesapeake, Va.

Plenty of people are pointing the finger of shame at Arizona for its new immigration law. Why is no one pointing that finger at Mexico and the rest of Latin America for making such a law necessary?

Illegal aliens are people fleeing miserable economic conditions, lack of opportunity, repressive regulations and boundless government corruption. They send billions of dollars back home to help alleviate their families’ poverty. Do the governments of Latin America care about their plight? No. Lazy and corrupt politicians south of America’s border are happy to export their most desperate citizens and receive mountains of cash in return. They have no incentive to change this.

Instead of railing against Arizona for trying to protect its own borders, enraged protestors should be venting their fury at Mexico and other Latin nations for shamefully exploiting their citizens, doing nothing to improve their economies, and causing the whole illegal immigration problem in the first place.

Jim Riedmann

Glendale, Ariz.

Clarence Dupnik is an elected official who runs as a Democrat in Arizona’s Democratic stronghold, the Tucson area. Seven of our 10 largest employers are a state university, our public school system, the city and county governments, two military bases and an Indian nation. Only two of the 10 are business firms.

Like most elective officials, Mr. Dupnik surely has an eye on the ballot box. In a county that gave Barack Obama 24,000 more votes than its own Senator John McCain, Mr. Dupnik got 66% of the vote in his race. The good sheriff did almost as well as Democratic Congressman Raul Grijalva, who has called for a national boycott of his own state.

Not surprisingly, the Tucson City Council has voted five-to-one to sue our state to try to overturn the new law cracking down on illegal immigrants.

Dick Jacobs

Tucson, Ariz.

It’s an old idea, and one to date only halfheartedly implemented: A 300-mile or so border fence. One of the lackluster criticisms regarding such a fence has been cost. It’s laughable when compared to how much money the Congress wastes on unnecessary things (not to mention things not explicitly empowered to it via the Constitution). Here’s Byron York:

There is little doubt such moves would work. In one part of the Arizona-Mexico border where authorities installed double-layered fencing and implemented Operation Streamline, the yearly number of illegal crossers went from 118,000 to 8,000.

Total cost? It’s hard to say, but it seems fair to guess that for a relatively low price — perhaps $5 billion? — the nation could radically increase the security of the Southwest border. The columnist George Will recently called the cost of securing the border “a rounding error on the ($50 billion) GM bailout.” He’s right.

Here’s George Will on Arizona’s new immigration law:

It is passing strange for federal officials, including the president, to accuse Arizona of irresponsibility while the federal government is refusing to fulfill its responsibility to control the nation’s borders. Such control is an essential attribute of national sovereignty. America is the only developed nation that has a 2,000-mile border with a developing nation, and the government’s refusal to control that border is why there are an estimated 460,000 illegal immigrants in Arizona and why the nation, sensibly insisting on first things first, resists “comprehensive” immigration reform.

Arizona’s law makes what is already a federal offense — being in the country illegally — a state offense. Some critics seem not to understand Arizona’s right to assert concurrent jurisdiction. The Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund attacks Gov. Jan Brewer’s character and motives, saying she “caved to the radical fringe.” This poses a semantic puzzle: Can the large majority of Arizonans who support the law be a “fringe” of their state?

Popularity makes no law invulnerable to invalidation. Americans accept judicial supervision of their democracy — judicial review of popular but possibly unconstitutional statutes — because they know that if the Constitution is truly to constitute the nation, it must trump some majority preferences. The Constitution, the Supreme Court has said, puts certain things “beyond the reach of majorities.”

But Arizona’s statute is not presumptively unconstitutional merely because it says that police officers are required to try to make “a reasonable attempt” to determine the status of a person “where reasonable suspicion exists” that the person is here illegally. The fact that the meaning of “reasonable” will not be obvious in many contexts does not make the law obviously too vague to stand. The Bill of Rights — the Fourth Amendment — proscribes “unreasonable searches and seizures.” What “reasonable” means in practice is still being refined by case law — as is that amendment’s stipulation that no warrants shall be issued “but upon probable cause.” There has also been careful case-by-case refinement of the familiar and indispensable concept of “reasonable suspicion.”

Brewer says, “We must enforce the law evenly, and without regard to skin color, accent or social status.” Because the nation thinks as Brewer does, airport passenger screeners wand Norwegian grandmothers. This is an acceptable, even admirable, homage to the virtue of “evenness” as we seek to deter violence by a few, mostly Middle Eastern, young men.

Some critics say Arizona’s law is unconstitutional because the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of “equal protection of the laws” prevents the government from taking action on the basis of race. Liberals, however, cannot comfortably make this argument because they support racial set-asides in government contracting, racial preferences in college admissions, racial gerrymandering of legislative districts and other aspects of a racial spoils system. Although liberals are appalled by racial profiling, some seem to think vocational profiling (police officers are insensitive incompetents) is merely intellectual efficiency, as is state profiling (Arizonans are xenophobic).

Probably 30 percent of Arizona’s residents are Hispanic. Arizona police officers, like officers everywhere, have enough to do without being required to seek arrests by violating settled law with random stops of people who speak Spanish. In the practice of the complex and demanding craft of policing, good officers — the vast majority — routinely make nuanced judgments about when there is probable cause for acting on reasonable suspicions of illegality.

Arizona’s law might give the nation information about whether judicious enforcement discourages illegality. If so, it is a worthwhile experiment in federalism.

It is said that President Barack Obama is fond of using problematic events as “teachable moments.” Well here’s a teachable moment for Republicans in the wake of Harry Reid’s pre-2008 election comments that Obama was “light skinned… with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one”: In matters of racial politics Republicans should consider fighting back and sticking up for themselves instead of apologizing, genuflecting, and committing self-flagellation.

The utter hypocrisy shown in the reaction from the vast majority of liberals to Reid’s nonsensical and bigoted comments proves that they care nothing about race or stereotypes except as how they can wield it as a bludgeoning weapon against Republicans. Were a Republican to have said these things the 24-hour cable media, activist groups and Democratic politicians would be demanding their resignation and painting every Republican as an ignorant Klansman.

Instead we have the race-baiter in chief, Al Sharpton, deflecting criticism of Reid by saying he was far more offended (and if there’s ever someone who’s made a living by being offended it’s Al Sharpton) by the comments of Bill Clinton. In the same new book by Mark Halprin quoting Reid, Clinton is quoted as saying of Obama, “A few years ago, this guy would have been getting us coffee.”

Really, Al? He’s more offended by what was clearly a reference to inexperience (i.e., interns get you coffee or more if you’re Clinton, I suppose) than he was to “light-skinned, negro dialect”?

It’s preposterous. How does one expect to find any reasonable debate or common ground on race when the liberal masses champion idiocracy? Answer: Don’t bother.

Unless the remark is beyond the pale, and most of us have the common sense to judge that, do not apologize and pander to this foolishness. The next time a Republican is caught with their foot in their mouth, I’d hope they fight back just a little bit.

[The Hill] The Rev. Jesse Jackson on Wednesday night criticized Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.) for voting against the Democrats’ signature healthcare bill.

“We even have blacks voting against the healthcare bill,” Jackson said at a reception Wednesday night. “You can’t vote against healthcare and call yourself a black man.”

I never realized you can determine one’s economic philosophy or political ideology by the color of their skin…

Had a Republican said thus (whether black or white) no doubt they’d call it what it is: bigotry.

Gore Vidal is so washed up and irrelevant it’s kind of a waste of time to further comment on his angry contradictory ramblings. But I’m posting this because to me it’s a typical attitude of the Sixties hard-core leftist to project their shortcomings onto others — in this case, that America will decline into a “military dictatorship” even as Vidal recommends President Obama rely on just that to pass his health care agenda because the American public is too stupid to know what educated Leftists know: that socialist medicine is what’s best for you dumb lemmings.

[Vidal:] Another notable Obama mis-step has been on healthcare reform. “He f***ed it up. I don’t know how because the country wanted it. We’ll never see it happen.” As for his wider vision: “Maybe he doesn’t have one, not to imply he is a fraud. He loves quoting Lincoln and there’s a great Lincoln quote from a letter he wrote to one of his generals in the South after the Civil War. ‘I am President of the United States. I have full overall power and never forget it, because I will exercise it’. That’s what Obama needs — a bit of Lincoln’s chill.”

You got that? “The country wanted it.” Just ignore those latest polls showing by 56% to 41% Americans oppose Obama’s federal option. Those 56% are just the Republicans, I suppose, or what Vidal terms “Hitler Youth, based on hatred — religious hatred, racial hatred.” Continue reading the article. The only one professing hatred is Vidal himself. In this case, Vidal seems to be suggesting that the way to solve healthcare is for Obama to use the same brute force that Abraham Lincoln found necessary to exercise during the American Civil War. Because, you know, Americans who oppose state-run health care is the same thing as 11 states seceding from the Union.

Vidal continues:

Instead, America has “no intellectual class” and is “rotting away at a funereal pace. We’ll have a military dictatorship fairly soon, on the basis that nobody else can hold everything together. Obama would have been better off focusing on educating the American people. His problem is being over-educated. He doesn’t realise how dim-witted and ignorant his audience is. Benjamin Franklin said that the system would fail because of the corruption of the people and that happened under Bush.

Is that what Franklin said? Really? And was this a country founded on “holding things together”? Funny, but I thought it was a country founded on the notion of individual liberty — the right to choose a health care plan on the open market, for example. Oh, never you mind. Don’t attempt to understand the ramblings of the enlightened Sixties radical.

Here’s a little more projection from Vidal, and it sure is a educating paragraph:

Vidal became a supportive correspondent of Timothy McVeigh, who blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City in 1995 killing 168 people. The huge loss of life, indeed McVeigh’s act of mass murder, goes unmentioned by Vidal. “He was a true patriot, a Constitution man,” Vidal claims.

Yeah, what was it Obama’s buddy Bill Ayers said: ”I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.”

Birds of a feather, all.