Downtown Berkeley. The Oakland – San Francisco Bay Bridge and the San Francisco downtown can be seen in the background. PowerBar headquarters are visible in Downtown Berkeley. Looking from the Berkeley Hills westward. California, US

Update: Dan Sanchez wonders: Is it good for liberty? 

Apparently, the revolution will be televised. And tweeted. One of the more interesting comments in response to this article compares the idleness of Berkeley cops to a South American soccer riot that overwhelmed local police officers. Coming nearly 2 months after more destructive riots in the same city-initiated by antifa in order to prevent Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking-it’s not a hyperbolic analogy. Concerns about overly aggressive policing aside, it makes you wonder what the purpose of a police force is if it cannot prevent citizens from being assaulted in the middle of the day.

Of European cities which have been irrevocably transformed by mass migration from the Muslim world, Paris does not rank at the top of the list. A quarter of its population isn’t Muslim, like the gang-infested, crime-ridden former port city of Marseille, nor a fifth, like the jihadist hotbed of Roubaix. However, the outraged reaction of Francois Hollande, the lame duck prime minister of France, to President Trump’s remarks at CPAC is laughable when you consider the fact that officials in Paris have had to erect an 8 ft. wall of reinforced glass in order to protect that city’s most recognizable symbol. Leaving aside the fact that Parisiens have to endure a police state that has no parallels in post-war France, a situation prompted by the threat posed by the 6 million Muslims who reside in that country-as well as the millions more who live in neighboring nations like Belgium and Germany-there is the inescapable difference between the Paris of today and the Paris of only a few decades ago.

Why would an ordinary American want to visit a city, however beautiful certain parts may be, where hundreds of Muslims are able to shut down entire blocks of pedestrian traffic-as well as local businesses-while they publicly pray? As gauche as this may be to say in the current year, people visit European capitals to discover the roots of Western civilization, not witness inter-tribal warfare or the Islamic conquest of a once great civilization. The fact that over three-quarters of the victims of terrorist attacks in France have fallen in the 21st century should give astute observers a clue as to the trajectory of that country’s future. Whatever you may think of President Trump, or the reliability of unsourced anecdotes, the notion that the Paris of today is the jewel of Europe, that the decades of unstinting Muslim migration from the third world haven’t permanently transformed France from the nation it once was, beggars belief. Perhaps undiluted multiculturalism, open borders in perpetuity, and the gradual erosion of natural rights in the name of accommodating the world’s “fastest-growing religion” is something that you favor, but don’t try to pretend that this is not what we’re witnessing.

Update: Brilliant pre-debate analysis by James Taranto. 

Josh Marshall makes a salient point, re: Trump’s greatest handicap entering tonight’s debate. Personally, I tend to agree with Derb. Most voters will overlook an ignorance of policy details-see Aleppogate-if they have confidence in a candidate’s leadership abilities. That said, Trump does have to exhibit some minimal command of the issues, if only to dispel pre-existing negative impressions. 

After months of anticipation, later tonight we’ll finally be able to watch the two presidential frontrunners square off on national television. Despite portraying their candidate as an intellectual juggernaut-and her opponent as nothing short of a gibbering dolt-Clinton surrogates are intent upon working the refs, and the refs seem more than happy to oblige. Whether or not this influences the course of the debate remains to be seen. Expecting professional journalists to fulfill their duties is a bit of an ask, admittedly.

Personally, I think Trump supporters expecting Hillary to publicly humiliate herself are somewhat delusional. Although she’s an historically bad candidate-and arguably the worst Democratic nominee in recent memory-she has spent nearly 2 decades questing after the Oval Office. The idea that she’ll embarrass herself in a one-on-one format as she stands on the precipice of that goal borders on the absurd. On the other hand, Trump has one ace in the hole, which is the insatiable lust for power which animates his rival.

Mrs. Clinton will do or say anything in order to secure more votes, i.e. inch closer to her ultimate goal, even if doing so reveals her deep mendacity or makes herself appear preposterous. Trump needs to take a page from the playbook of Chris Dodd and expose this proclivity in real-time. Per Pat Buchanan, the aim of Donald Trump shouldn’t be to win this debate. Even if he ran rings around Hillary, and bowled over both the TV audience and those watching the candidates in person, the media-driven narrative wouldn’t reflect the outcome. Trump should simply do what he does best, i.e. use his opponent’s greatness weakness against her. Exploit her vulnerabilities and ensure that his audience is aware, even if only on a subconscious level, of precisely what he is doing.

Whether or not he’ll accomplish this-or even attempt it-is something we’ll discover later tonight. Those of you who’d like to follow my reaction(s) to the debate as it’s happening can check out my Twitter account, from which I’ll be posting my thoughts intermittently-at least, until my cell phone battery dies.

Update: Trump inches closer to the magic number with a romp in Nebraska. 

Well, that was quick. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Hillary is not the most likable public figure. 

The exit polls paint an interesting portrait of the electorate, which is concerned about the anemic economy. It will be fascinating to see whether the object of Hillary’s antipathy reward Senator Sanders tonight. It’s funny to think that only a generation ago coalminers were the object of socialist admiration.

How times have changed.

As most of you probably already know, the unsatisfying Speakership of Congressman John Boehner is drawing to a close. After helping to rubber-stamp some of President Obama’s worst legislative ambitions, while enabling his administration’s flagrant disregard for the Constitution, and punishing dissident House members who are actual conservatives, Mr. Boehner has decided to call it a career.

Kudos to the small yet brave group of Republicans who opposed him before this current session of Congress, as well as to Congressman Mark Meadows, who got this ball rolling. Although it’s too soon to speculate as to what Boehner’s future career plans hold, I wouldn’t be surprised if he follows the path of his protege, Eric Cantor, onto K Street. After all, if you’re going to do the bidding of corporate lobbyists, you might as well make it official.

Update: TPP is dead…for now. Roll Call 362. 

Even as Republican leaders of the House of Representatives whip votes for President Obama, the fate of the Trans-Pacific Partnership remains in doubt. Assuming any Republican congressmen exist who actually value the opinions of their constituents, they’d be wise to read the coverage of Breitbart News  regarding the TPP. Particularly the galling insertion of clauses explicitly designed to grant this administration yet more unwarranted authority over immigration policy. Powers that, despite the subterfuge of Paul Ryan and his colleagues, will pose a genuine threat in the future, should this trade deal be enacted.

As a surprisingly astute analysis of this pact published by Reason 2 years ago noted, this debate is about neither freedom nor trade. It is about enriching the political and economic fortunes of a few at the expense of almost everyone who doesn’t have access to a K Street lobbying firm or a direct line to the White House. It empowers a President who has used his dwindling time in office to abuse and exploit his Constitutional role, and  it adds more layers of coercion and bureaucracy to a system already designed to thwart the interests of ordinary citizens.

In short, it sucks.

This past week saw the first American victim of the best and brightest Barack Obama has welcomed into the warm embrace of the United States. We now have confirmed reports that a Border Patrol officer has contracted scabies from the unaccompanied minors he was tending to, rather than performing his job, i.e. protecting the American public. If a contagious skin disease isn’t enough to sour you on the stream of Central Americans being distributed throughout the United States, how do you feel about a potential tuberculosis outbreak? Not deterred by the wasting disease? How about a nice influenza epidemic?

Yes, that’s right. There are now recorded cases of the H1N1 virus among our newest batch of undocumented citizens, much to the consternation of open borders demagogues like Ruben Navarette, who have been reassuring a skeptical public for the past month that fears of disease were merely the hyperbolic bogeymen of xenophobic, right wing racists. After all, who would have suspected that severely dehydrated, malnourished children traveling in large groups from third world countries which host a bevy of tropical illnesses, and which have poor public health systems, could be a vector for disease?! You would need to be a virtual Nostradamus to have predicted that this sort of untrammeled mass immigration from developing nations would have negative repercussions for the American public.

Rest assured though, there’s absolutely no chance that these isolated incidents will turn into a deadly pandemic. After all, when was the last time that a grand social experiment had catastrophically negative consequences?

One of the most frustrating aspects of the immigration monologue that’s unfolded over the past few years is the inability of one side-representing those who are committed to open borders and an uninterrupted stream of mass immigration-to acknowledge the legitimacy of the concerns expressed by their opponents, despite the fact that they constitute a significant majority of the American public. Perhaps the lack of a powerful, eloquent advocate for American interests who is a minority-yet is also liberal and has access to influential media and political circles within Washington D.C.-is responsible for this disconnect between reality as experienced by most Americans and the straitjacket of elite consensus on this topic. 

However, I think there are larger forces at work which serve to prevent open borders enthusiasts and beneficiaries from accepting the concept that there is a very large segment of the population that fundamentally disagrees with their political philosophy-and who do so not out of any ignoble or reactionary impulse. The cleavage between how these forces view themselves and their ideology and how the rest of America views them was nowhere more evident than at the screening of Two Americans, an anti-enforcement documentary critical of Joe Arpaio which was screened at New York Law School last month.

While we focused extensively on the film itself in my last post on this subject, we didn’t sufficiently address the post-film question and answer session, which included a panel filled with ACLU and AILA spokesmen that spent most of the allotted time advocating some form of legislative amnesty along the lines of what the Gang of Eight proposes. While I don’t object to the imbalanced nature of the discussion-the event was hosted by the ACLU-I was disappointed by the disingenuous-and at times, inaccurate-way in which the issues under discussion were framed.

Notwithstanding the meandering statement/jeremiad by the Puerto Rican gentleman seen in the photo above, there were several very incisive questions asked by audience members which were not addressed, or answered in a circumlocutory-if not misleading-manner. The evasive and/or misleading responses ranged from the answer of a representative of Bronx  Defenders who implied that illegal aliens living outside of New York City limits were being routinely detained and/or deported-neglecting to mention Governor Cuomo’s vitiation of Secure Communities-to the accusation by the filmmakers that Joe Arpaio was some sort of crypto-white supremacist-a slander that comes with the territory, unfortunately-because of a chapter in his latest book. Perhaps even more alarming  was the implication that the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform & Immigrant Responsibility Act and the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of the same year were calamitous laws, even though the former vested immigration enforcement powers in the same local and state authorities that open borders advocates claim are not legally allowed to execute enforcement and detention procedures. 

The most irritating part of the immigration panel though was the way the participants constructed a meta-narrative that studiously ignored any facts that might have weakened the argument for the elimination of immigration enforcement. The most prominent example of this tendency was the intense focus on how much money the private prison industry has spent lobbying Congress, a meme that has been given prominent play throughout the media since discussion of the latest amnesty plan began in earnest. The not so subtle implication being that avaricious contractors for the prison industrial complex are attempting to increase punitive sanctions against future, non-amnestied illegal aliens. The fact that over a billion dollars has been spent lobbying Congress on immigration reform-almost all of it by actors intent upon enacting amnesty or carving out large subsidies for their industry in the form of cheap, imported labor, was completely overlooked by all members of the panel.

What’s more, when confronted with a relatively simple question, i.e. “do you favor abolishing any restrictions upon immigration into the United States,” they were completely unable to formulate a definitive response. Andre Segura-an ACLU attorney charged with monitoring domestic immigration laws-spent nearly five minutes filibustering this seemingly binary question. Of course, we’re under no illusions as to what the answer to that question is. However, we also know that responding forthrightly would not be politically advantageous to the supporters of mass immigration and amnesty, which is why they feel compelled to engage in immigration kabuki. After all, arranging summits featuring Potemkin conservatives and sacrificial lambs, demonizing a heretofore obscure scholar, and bankrolling a multimillion dollar advertising campaign confusing private profits with public good is much easier than engaging in an honest, substantive debate over this nation’s immigration policies.

One of the more admirable qualities of open borders libertarians is honesty about their intentions and  beliefs. They come right out and enunciate the principles they adhere to, sometimes in editorials published in national newspapers which are read by scores of Americans. Occasionally, they’ll write entire books expostulating their theory of why abolishing immigration controls is a swell idea. Regardless of the medium they use to disseminate their views-and however incompatible their solutions are with certain libertarian principles-they do not contour their message in order to deceive a public that vehemently disagrees with their perspective. The same can’t be said for open borders leftists-and their allies in the corporatist blob-who refuse to be held accountable for their actual  beliefs, just as the architect of the bill that irreparably altered the United States of America refused to be held accountable for the deception he and his allies in the press corps employed in order to enact it into law.

In the end, that is the most bewildering aspect of this “debate.” Instead of actually engaging in an honest intellectual exercise involving what the United States wants and needs out of an immigration system-and allowing each side’s arguments to stand or fall on their relative merits-we are forced into Chinese finger traps of race which are not only based upon false premises-like most of the left’s racial narratives-but are wholly irrelevant to the subject under discussion. The issue isn’t that Americans who support political leaders like Russell Pearce and laws like SB 1070 are hard-hearted xenophobes or crass political opportunities-as films like Two Americans would lead you to believe-but that illegal aliens-such as the ones profiled in this film-present unique problems that open borders enthusiast do not wish to address.

It turns out that it’s much easier to create cinematic bogeymen and craft sympathetic human interest stories involving undocumented migrants than it is to tackle a complex area of public policy that has been left to fester for decades. There are two sides to every story, even if only one enjoys the favor of our social betters. That’s the true lesson to be gleaned from the tale of Two Americans.

Update: The brothers’ legal status has been corrected from an earlier post.  Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev is in police custody! More details, courtesy of the Boston Globe. 

Video footage from the initial shootout between the two terrorists and police officers. Live Wire from WCVB. Atlantic Wire coverage, including a link to what’s been verified as his Twitter account. 

Metro Boston SOPS scanner. Police have withdrawn from the part of Watertown where they suspected the bomber might have fled to. Military helicopters are circling the town. 

More details from Mother Jones and Deadspin. The Lid also has some updated news about what we know about this Chechen terrorist. According to Buzzfeed Politics, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was an American citizen, while his older brother was a legally permanent resident. Despite being arrested for domestic assault, he was not deported. The father of the deceased terrorist describes him as a true angel. 

 Here’s a photo of deceased MIT officer Sean Collier. Suspect’s father calls on him to surrender to police.

One image taken from the pro-Hamas rally held by Al-Awda NY, among other anti-Israel organizations, in Times Square this weekend. I wish I could say that it was anomalous in some way, but the inexorable truth is that the physically and intellectually etiolated creature you see above was probably as representative of the spirit of this demonstration as any of the participants. That a decrepit red diaper baby extolled the Marxist, Latin American despot Hugo Chavez  is not surprising, although neither should be his admiration for Chavez’s staunch ally Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. A man who shares with his equally anti-Semitic friend a history of manipulating election results.

The domestic alliance between socialist and communist true believers and obscurantist, apocalyptic Islam is mirrored to a large degree in the Gaza Strip itself, where rejectionist strands of the PLO, such as the Marxist-Leninist PFLP, join forces with the Al-Qassam Brigades in shelling Israeli civilians. I’m not sure what end game the Trotskyites in the Spartacist League have in mind, but I have the nagging suspicion it doesn’t quite sync with the ultimate goals of Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or the Al Qaeda-inspired salafists currently vying for control of the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

While useful idiots are pivotal to the success of any totalitarian revolution, once the despised tyrant is dethroned, they are more often than not treated to a dose of revolutionary justice. Perhaps some of these reactionary leftists should have a conversation with MEK exiles in order to learn about the pitfalls of yoking your cause to an ideology which relentlessly persecutes atheists, at its best.

Granted, it’s possible that militant Stalinists and those who want to eradicate any remnant of Judaism from the Jewish State might be able to co-exist, but it seems like those who would want to kill for the Al Aqsa Mosque might be of a different hue than those who would kill for dialectical materialism.

Although I doubt such discussions would prove fruitful, as the inclination for affinity groups and Marxist ideologues to view Arab-Muslims, particularly those living on the outskirts of Israel, as perpetually downtrodden and oppressed-the eternal underdog-is impenetrable to reason and empirical evidence. A sign of this enduring myth is the Puerto Rican flag seen above, probably held aloft by an independentista, who’ll no doubt have more time to demonize Israel in a few years, once that island’s ambiguous political status is permanently resolved.

One of the incongruities of this particular anti-Israel demonstration-although it must be said, leftists and their allies have never been known for their philosophical integrity or ideological coherency-was the strange, ritualistic incantations against “hate” followed immediately thereafter by the most noxious expressions of hatred and contempt.  For example, the repeated chant “Stop the violence, stop the hate,” which was quickly followed on the down beat by “Israel is a terrorist state!”

Pardon my impertinence, but isn’t categorizing a nation of nearly eight million distinct individuals as racist a bit hateful, not to mention insinuating that this country is perpetrating genocide? The latter charge is especially curious, considering the fact that casualties from Israeli weaponry-including the deaths of confirmed terrorists-during this conflict number fewer than the toll of Palestinians Hamas murdered during the 2007 putsch which resulted in its seizure of power from Fatah.

What’s more, the Palestinians killed during this conflict number less than a tenth of those “collaborators” murdered without trial during the first intifada.

Unfortunately, as you can see, this unique interpretation of justice is still avidly practiced by those in charge of the Gaza Strip.

If the concern trolls who detest Israel so much really want to see a state that perpetrates genocide, perhaps they should cast their eyes north.

It’s reassuring to imagine that a certain cognitive dissonance is at play when the most demagogic critics of Israel regurgitate their talking points and deploy some of their more eye-catching imagery-such as that seen on the placard above. Unfortunately, I don’t think they recognize the inherent disconnect between accusing Israel of slaughtering children while simultaneously standing behind a group which indoctrinates Palestinian children from the time they can walk into a culture of jihadist, exterminatory violence. To say nothing of the cynical exploitation of Palestinian women and children as human shields for terrorist leaders.

The sincerity of their denunciations of Israeli “hate” were called into question again when the mixed Palestinian fanatic/desiccated Marxist crowd began to shout “Yassin, Yassin, do not cry; Palestine will never die!” While it’s possible that they were referring to a controversial military engagement that occurred during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, the fact that this was a pro-Hamas rally leads one to the ineluctable conclusion that they were celebrating the life of a man responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Israelis and Palestinians, including those who have died as a result of the current bloodshed.

As odd as it might seem, the most ideologically coherent contingent, aside from the keffiyeh and hijab-clad Palestinians echoing the historical demand that Israelis be pushed into the sea, was the cultish faction of Neturei Karta seen in the photograph above. Whether meeting with Holocaust enthusiast Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, or breaking bread with Yasser Arafat, a protege of Adolf Hitler’s Middle Eastern Reichsführer, NK has made it abundantly clear that it despises the state of Israel as it currently exists.

Of course, this is a free country. You’re entitled to express your opinion, however loathsome, so long as it doesn’t trespass against the life and safety of another individual or group of citizens. That said, I have to say the pretense that most of the people gathered in Times Square care about the lives of ordinary Muslim women and children living in the Gaza Strip is hard to digest.

It’s especially difficult to conceive of a scenario where they would bemoan the fate of these particular Muslims if their suffering bore no relation to Israel. You need look no further than a perpetrator of actual genocide, the Baathist Assad dynasty, in order to apprehend this concept. More than three times as many Palestinians have been killed in Syria during its civil war than have perished in the current conflict, yet you see no comparable sense of outrage among these indignant, alleged supporters of the Palestinian cause.

Apparently, their lives are not worth as much as the ones inserted into a meta-narrative designed by Hamas to manipulate international news media. In our next post, we’ll look at the other side of the coin.