The Glade 4.0

So Obama went ahead with the executive order. I'm not against what was in it, per se (based on a somewhat cursory review), but I'm strongly opposed to continued assumption of executive power. (Note, I'm not convinced that's what this is. It seems more of a explanation of how to enforce existing law based on limited resources. Spend resources on these, not these, etc.)

I continue to be disappointed at Obama's lack of leadership - it seems clear to me that this is an attempt to distract from the dismal election and try to make up for it by trying to show democrats care about latinos, and goad republicans into responding in a way that will be viewed negatively by latinos. Rather than try to work with the new congress, he's more interested in positioning democrats for the next election.

I listened to his speech yesterday. .. I don't think he even believes that bullshit.

He's not to trying to distract from the election. It's more like he's being spiteful.

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Well, if you want to "fundamentally transform America," a good place to start is with the population make-up.

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The Dude abides.

That, and the balance of power.

This is a somewhat cursory review, but it seems like he was trying to skirt REALLY close to the line of executive power.

There's 2 major aspects to what he did - first, he gave a 3-year stay of deportation to certain classes of illegal immigrants, mostly involving those having relatives who are citizens or LAPRs (and in reality meaning those with anchor babies) who have been here for at least 5 years.

In legal theory, this is really just exercising prosecutorial discretion. It is not physically possible to apprehend and deport the 11+ million illegal immigrants in this country any more than it's possible to apprehend every other type of criminal, and of the hundreds of thousands that ARE apprehended there are different priorities. Violent felons are a higher priority than drunk drivers who are a higher priority than children. Legally speaking he's on pretty firm ground here since all he is doing is giving these people a legal status temporarily while higher priority cases are handled. Essentially it's a form of releasing people on their own recognizance, which is already pretty common practice for certain classes of illegals such as unaccompanied children and people in various states of visa overstay or otherwise being out-of-status such as long-term temporary (nonimmigrant) visas who have violated their status somehow and the case is in dispute.

In practice, this may as well be amnesty. The 5-year residency requirement for this is a sham; all that's going to do is expand the market for fraudulent documents such as rent receipts, utility bills and such "proving" that people have been here 5 years, and "proving" that a kid is a US citizen so that mom or dad can qualify. It also further commoditizes (if that's a word) the children themselves since a USC kid is now a valuable anchor - and already, the practice of simply giving your kid to someone else to cross the border with and claim to be a "family unit" so as to get a Notice to Appear and a release on recognizance is common. Finally it's going to induce a HUGE new wave of illegals coming to take advantage of it because when this news gets to people in Honduras it's not going to get there as "if you were already there 5 years and have a kid you can stay" it's going to be "AMNESTY YAYYY!!!" and to the degree it's not, it's going to be "ok, how can I get there and then prove I was there 5 years?".

This idea is technically probably legal but easily gamed, and by design. The approach of liberal politicians to immigration is unbelievably cynical. "They do the jobs Americans don't want" is code for "they'll be a permanent ethnic underclass to do cheap labor, which provides a pool of children who will grow up to vote Democrat because we're the ones who will keep promising them 'reform' for their family and social benefits they need because they do low paying jobs." Because these workers are heavily agricultural, or do work that's needed everywhere like construction, part of the idea is to seed more conservative and rural states with these people and eventually take over the vote by, essentially, having imported new voters. Much like the victim/oppressor labelling strategy of making everyone that disagrees a misogenyst or racist or homophobe this is basically a strategy to win permanent power by gaming the fundamental vulnerabilities of a republic. It's taken 200 years, but our problem is essentially that everyone knows how the system works too well, like an MMO or RPG that's been around a long time and there's "one right way" to do things.

The second part is the 3-year work permit. As far as I can tell, that's basically blatantly illegal. Congress has the power to establish the rule of immigration, and that includes who is legally permitted to work. Period. There's no in-depth analysis needed here; Obama simply does not have the power to do that.

This isn't merely an expansion of executive power; it's a sudden explosion of it. The real danger isn't in the immigration action - it wouldn't matter what issue it was on. The real danger is in this new idea that the President can decide (for no apparent reason other than his own promises) Congress has "taken to long" to act. This is an entirely novel idea and has no basis of support anywhere in the Constitution. The only area the President can do this sort of thing in is in national defense as Commander in Chief, and while one could argue that illegal border crossings are a national defense matter, work permits and immigration status clearly are not.

Finally there's something to be said for the cynicism of the people themselves being helped and their advocacy groups. You constantly see them on TV waving signs about "not separating families" and wailing about how unfair the system is. These people separate their own families. That's how they get here. Adults come first, and children come later unaccompanied and get sent to live with whatever adults made it all the way to their destination. Small children are exposed to extreme danger traveling here from Central America, but then when they're apprehended it's "don't separate us!" Really? It wasn't a problem when YOU did it but it's a problem if the government does? This is on top of the fundamental problem of immigration reform advocates of basically arguing that our immigration system should revolve around the wants of people that are from other countries.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I don't see how Obama saying, "I won't prosecute certain classes of illegal immigrants in immigration court in order to try and get a deportation order if I catch them here illegally" is materially any different from him saying, "I won't prosecute certain classes of illegal immigrants or their employers in criminal court if I catch them working here illegally." He's not granting them a work permit, he's just saying he's not going to prosecute them if they're caught working without one.

The rationale being used here is exactly the same one that Obama used to delay the mandate, again by essentially promising not to prosecute companies violating the law for another year.

None of this is new to Obama. Obama is just choosing bigger targets than most Presidents do. I've used the example several times now, but I'll do it again because it's a good one: The porn industry in the US only exists because the DoJ uses its prosecutorial discretion and refuses to prosecute them for conduct that is blatantly illegal. It's the same effect as giving them a "license" to operate, even though no law has been passed that does so. It's illegal to transport obscene material across state lines, and the test used to determine if material is obscene uses the community standards in the area the material is distributed. If you put up a pay porn website and someone from rural Kansas subscribes, you're breaking the law. Bush used the fact that basically the entire industry is illegal to target the pornographers he didn't like when he went on his morality crusade, he selectively prosecuted those people and continued looking the other way for all the rest that fell in line.

This is also why the Republican lawsuit against Obama is bullshit, they're suing him for doing what the last ten Presidents have also been doing. The fact that Obama is targeting trillion dollar industries instead of billion dollar ones doesn't really make much difference as far as Constitutional law is concerned.

Porn is not fundamentally illegal because most of it does not violate obscenity law. In fact, there are regulatory requirements for making it which wouldn't exist if it were illegal to produce.

Also he is not just not prosecuting work violations; this progam according to the associated press fact check makes them eligable for work permits.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_test



The vast majority of the US population (something like 70%) considers pornography to be immoral. Given that, don't you think it's relatively easy for the FBI to find somewhere in the whole US where the "community standard" considers porn to be obscene? That's all you need to put the distributor in prison, since the Internet means you can purchase from them from anywhere and now they're guilty of transporting obscene material across state lines.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Extreme_Associates

Here's the guy that dared Bush to come down on him. He ended up in prison on obscenity charges for his porn.

What is defined as obscene is not related to what 70% of people in an ambiguous poll think is immoral.

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"It's real, grew up in trife life, the times of white lines
The hype vice, murderous nighttimes and knife fights invite crimes" - Nasir Jones

See the underlined portion. It's got to do so in a PATENTLY offensive way, as in that it isn't merely offensive to some groups of people or even to the average person or a simple majority but offensive to practically everyone. Most porn doesn't meet that standard, as the degree to which it's offensive is a subjective matter based primarily on whether the viewer is offended by sexually explicit material in the first place, rather than the manner in which it's presented. "Immoral" is not a synonym for "obscene" or "offensive", nor is the result of a poll the applicable legal standard.

In the case you're talking about, most of his material involved rape scenes, and rape is patently offensive - i.e. almost everyone finds rape objectionable. If someone says "well, I don't see what's so shocking about rape" almost anyone would look at him askance at a minimum. Of the rest, some of it involved blatant display of bodily fluids that are generally considered pretty disgusting to deal with and which aren't normally part of sexual activity - namely, vomit. That might be a little less patently offensive, but considered in conjunction with rape it crosses the line.

This was not some "Bush morality crusade" against porn in general, so don't try to paint it that way. While it might be a matter of some debate whether it was necessary or useful to prosecute this case it certainly did not render basically all porn a criminal enterprise.

Trying to apply obscenity laws to more pedestrian forms of porn runs into First Amendment issues as well - those issues are precisely why the standard for obscenity is "patently offensive". The DOJ may very well be exercising prosecutorial discretion in these cases, but it's a matter of them saying "Based on the applicable law and the Constitution, we doubt we can win these cases". This is completely unlike the immigration situation where it's a mix of "we can't possibly prosecute them all" with "and we don't want to anyhow."

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."