Fort Sumtinorother

The reaction by the nation's liberal pundits to Arizona's new anti-illegal immigration law made me think of their very different reaction to San Francisco's proud proclamation of itself as a "Sanctuary City".

Consider this irony: San Francisco's city council deliberately thwarts the federal immigration laws and not only pays no price for it, but is actually applauded by the liberal elite for doing so. Arizona's state legislature passes a law that enables it to enforce the national law and it is called effectively secessionist, not to mention racist and all the other usual liberal epithets. It's all a very confusing 21st-century Fort Sumter, but this time it seems it's the Feds who shoot first.

Anyway, I can't do better than National Review's Jonah Goldberg who makes a similar connection and more.

Huh?

With respect to the new Arizona anti-illegal immigration law, I can't tell by this piece whether reporter Amanda Lee Myers is praising or damning the legislation for its apparent immediate effectiveness. You tell me.

By the Time I Get to Phoenix

I suspect some of you were wondering when I'd get around to commenting on Arizona's new law enforcing illegal immigration. Frankly, I was curious about something. Despite all the over-the-top punditry (I always did think Linda Greenhouse was just this side of nuts), have you noticed that other than President Obama, most Democrat politicians have left the issue alone. Why?

Rush Limbaugh today (Yep, I listen to him. Love him, in fact) corrected the premise of a very worried conservative caller. The caller was nervous that with the passage of the Arizona law, we were handing the Democrats an issue. Rush would have none of it. Instead, he insisted that "we own this issue."

I think he may well be correct. The relative silence of elected Democrats, compared to all the noise from the liberal chattering class, is deafening. We'll see, won't we?

Eat Up!

The road to hunger and poverty, if not hell, is, as they say, paved with good intentions. (Although in this case "paved" would be frowned upon. Too modern, too bourgeois.) With respect to food production and consumption, the Left's mantra for some time now has been "organic, local, and slow." But, as Robert Paarlberg demonstrates in the pages of Foreign Policy this is precisely the wrong way to solve world hunger, not to mention eat well yourself.

But then you suspected this anyway, didn't you? You knew all along that this, like most other celebrity causes, was just another case of moral and political exhibitionism. Admit it and start trusting your common sense. Geez!

Crist Crossed

Win or lose, we owe upstart Florida Republican Senatorial candidate Marco Rubio a huge debt of gratitude. If it achieves nothing else, his candidacy will have served to reveal what Florida voters always suspected: Governor Charlie Crist is no conservative, in fact, he's no Republican either. Had not the pressures of the campaign made this apparent now, the klieg lights of Washington most certainly would have later.

However, one very troubling aspect of this campaign remains, that is, the early and sustained support for Crist by far too many in the national Republican leadership. How could they have been so blind to that which to the average Sunshine State voter was so obvious? This does not bode well for the GOP.

Pressing Problems

It seems the Administration's relationship with a previously adoring national press corps has soured. While the complaints on the Main Stream Media's part are apparently real, they have remained for the most part private.

Here's a prediction that takes neither much imagination nor guts: Media mumbling will remain no more than mumbling. It will not make it in any meaningful or sustained way into print or onto the screen. Whatever their differences, this White House and the Main Stream Media share an overriding ideological bond that neither personal nor professional differences can ever be allowed to challenge seriously. The vow of this marriage, let no man put asunder, is that the country is fundamentally flawed and must be radically transformed. Ah, the ties that bind.

Family Ties

Presently down and out, perhaps Bill Clinton's niece could use a few tips on getting by from Barack Obama's half-brother.