Once Again, Democrats Throw the LGBT Community Under The Bus

Usually I write about Israel and the Middle East, but there is so much that is wrong with the Immigration Bill that is about to be voted on in the Senate, I just had to say a few words about it.  

I am not sure which aggravates me more, the fact that our Senate appears to be too dumb to understand that rewarding illegal behavior encourages further illegal behavior, or that once again Democrats have ignored the needs of a constituency that they know has no recourse.  

The Democratic party, that is, the supposedly liberal party that is supposed to be the friend to lesbian, gay, and bisexual Americans, has omitted any provision that would allow for citizenship for same-sex spouses of American citizens.  I am not sure why this should be a surprise to me, as it was after all, a Democratic president who signed DOMA into law in 1996.  But yet, I continue to be amazed at the willingness of the Democratic party to throw under the bus a constituency that it knows has no viable political alternative.  True, if the Supreme Court holds that the federal definition of marriage in DOMA is unconstitutional, this will prove to be moot, but as of today, what the Court will do is still anyone's guess, and this does not seem to be of concern to the Democratic party.  

On the other hand, an amnesty program for people who are currently here illegally will only incentivise  more people to come here illegally in the future.  The height or number of patrol personnel on a border fence does not change this.  Rewarding illegal behavior encourages illegal behavior -- this is a fact of human nature.  

One final point.  The inability of the national discourse on immigration to acknowledge the distinction between legal and illegal immigration is confounding and frustrating.  I am not anti-immigrant -- I am anti-illegal immigrant.  Increasing the number of individuals we allow to come here legally is a totally separate issue from rewarding people who come here and break our laws by working without authorization to do so, and commit fraud by using phony social security numbers (yes, even if they are paying into the system, they are still committing fraud).  If people who have come here without authorization to do so are now given amnesty, this will come at the expense of law abiding, would-be immigrants, who have waited their turn to come here lawfully.  There is no justice in that.  

Would You Think I Was Crazy if I Said the U.S. Should Invade Canada?

It is no secret that our neighbor to the north has had some disagreement with its First Nation population (people who, in the U.S., would be known as "Native Americans").  Earlier this year, the Chief of Attawapiskat went on a hunger strike to call attention to "unfinished business in terms of relationships, Aboriginal rights, and in terms of our relationship with the land.” See http://bit.ly/WQD2I3.  And this week, Huffington Post Canada reports, the Hupacasath Nation is in court with the Canadian government, trying to stop a trade deal with China which it claims will negatively affect its rights in natural resources.  See http://huff.to/1925ksB.  

Would you think I was certifiable if I said that the U.S. should invade Canada to militarily impose a solution that we deem fit on Canada and its First Nation people?  Well, yes, of course you would!  And if, eleven years from now, I tried to disown or explain away those comments, would you still think that I was, at best, pretty nutty, that I made outlandish statements about a country and a situation about which I obviously was quite ignorant, and that I was unfit to hold a high diplomatic position?  Probably.  

That is how Samantha Power sounds to people who are knowledgeable about Israeli history and society.  In the 2002 interview in which she advocated a U.S. military imposition on Israel of a solution that the U.S. would deem fit to the Palestinian issues, she displays complete ignorance of the events at Camp David in 2000 and at Taba in 2001.  She also sounds certifiably insane.  This is not a woman who should be named the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.  

And as far as today's column in the Washington Post by Max Fisher trying to somehow explain those comments away, well, we all can, and all should, watch the video ourselves and hear for ourselves what she said.