Things You Hear on NPR: Yeah, Amnesty Did Lead to More Illegal Immigration; Let’s Do It Again Anyway
April 2, 2017
NPR reviews some of the history of American immigration law, and reaches some admirably honest conclusions:
The Simpson-Mazzoli Act was introduced as a way to end illegal border crossings once and for all. It had three parts: Give amnesty to those who had been in the country for at least five years, crack down on employers who hire people who can’t legally work here, and pump up border security to prevent future illegal crossings.
President Reagan supported the bill and signed it into law in 1986. Three million people were granted amnesty under the Simpson-Mazzoli Act, but by 1990 the number of unauthorized immigrants was back up to 3.5 million.
England Uses Modern Technology to Recreate Ancient Monument Destroyed by Throwback Barbarians
April 19, 2016
This is beautiful. Daesh/ISIS thugs destroyed another priceless ancient monument; so London has erected a new one.
‘God is not dead, nor doth He sleep’
December 25, 2015
Happy 153rd birthday of teacher, journalist, civil-rights activist, Republican, and gun advocate Ida B. Wells!
Google has a “Doodle” today (see below) in honor of this remarkable and courageous woman. You may know she was born a slave before the Civil War and helped found the NAACP in 1909, but here are five interesting things you may not have heard:
1. Ida Wells was the original Rosa Parks.
She refused to move to the back of the train, “71 years before the activist Rosa Parks showed similar resistance on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus.”
For Caution in Seeking to Restrict the Choices of Others
June 24, 2015
Current events provide a reminder that however ugly our disagreements, there’s a lot of value in preserving a pluralistic, (classically) liberal society, where we leave each other free to make our own choices and live our own lives, to the extent possible.
If Germany makes it illegal to buy or sell Mein Kampf, how do they know people weren’t going to buy it in order to study history and make sure it isn’t repeated?
If we pressure Walmart etc. to stop selling Confederate battle flags, how do we know people weren’t going to buy them in order to burn them?
‘Continuing Resolutions’ in Larger Global and Historical Context
October 2, 2013
India’s lower house in session
Mark Steyn has some interesting thoughts on recent parliamentary maneuverings in Congress.
Andrew C. McCarthy, after discussing the relevant history forcefully and at length, concludes,
The American people do not want Obamacare, and the representatives closest to them have voted not to spend the people’s money on it. According to the Constitution, that should be the end of the matter.
Nineteenth-century Americans Knew the Fetus Was a Person
January 2, 2013
National Review Online has an interesting piece about the legal history of abortion in America. Apparently there’s a certain liberal narrative that “the true purpose of 19th-century abortion laws was to protect women, not unborn children,” and that there was a “right” to abortion in Anglo-American common law “from 1607 to 1830.”
Apparently this narrative is far from historically accurate, and the liberal lawyers who crafted it were sometimes surprisingly explicit (among themselves) about what they were doing:
