Update: I’m not saying it’s an inside job, but…

Erdogan reaches out. 

The assassin was a member of the riot police, according to Turkey’s interior minister. 

Syrian opposition celebrates the assassination. 

The assailant-now deceased-appears to have been a Turkish policeman. Heckuva job, Erdogan! 

Footage of what appears to be the assassination. 

As if we needed another reason to halt our country’s disastrous involvement in Syria, the Russian ambassador to Turkey was just shot and killed in that nation’s capital. Syria, like Lebanon from 1975-1990, is an irresolvable tinderbox with too many warring factions to enumerate, all of whom-even the Kurds-are committing atrocities. Instead of sending more troops to this charnel house, we should be withdrawing every soldier on the ground and cutting off all military supplies to the jihadist rebels. Instead of following this sensible policy, the lunatics serving in Congress have decided that it would be a swell idea to arm these same Sunni terrorists with weaponry capable of downing civilian aircraft.

Just like in Star Wars, there are no good guys in this conflict. Whether it’s the Russian air force indiscriminately bombing Syrian cities and towns, Iranian proxy Hezbollah attempting to ethnically cleanse Sunni villages, American-backed moderate rebels beheading children, or Syrian Christians facing complete extinction at the hands of emboldened Sunnis, there are no parties to this conflict with clean hands. This country has no strategic interests in Syria, other than thwarting the spread of ISIS-which humanitarian, liberal interventionists have facilitated-and preventing jihadist sleeper cells from establishing roots in American soil through refugee resettlement.

Just to give you a rough summary of what I thought of the first debate, here are a few rather lengthy observations:

Donald Trump dominated the first 20 minutes to half hour of the encounter. Focusing primarily upon trade, the one public policy he’s immersed himself in-and has a mastery of-played to his strong suit. It also highlighted the stunning hypocrisy at the core of Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Trumpeting her opposition to CAFTA merely served to emphasize her political opportunism, as this stance was crafted expressly with the purpose of securing her left flank in any future Democratic contest. Supporting one of President Bush’s signature foreign policies would have made her path to victory in 2008 that much more difficult. We should recall that Barack Obama was not on her political radar at the time.

Likewise, her opposition to TTP-a pact she enthusiastically promoted as Secretary of State-was born of political opportunism, not genuine conviction. Even without the surprisingly successful Sanders campaign, endorsing a plan which was almost universally opposed by organized labor-the backbone of the Democratic Party even in its current corporatized, Clintonian shell-could have proved fatal to her presidential ambitions. Her labored attempt at triangulation, combined with Trump’s implicit appeal to disenchanted supporters of her primary opponent, was unquestionably the highlight of the debate from his perspective.

Unfortunately, the discipline and preparation Trump exhibited during the beginning of this debate was squandered over the course of the next hour. We needn’t rehash the explicitly stacked nature of this event, which might as well have been hosted by a Democratic partisan and has been explored in detail throughout the conservative blogosphere over the past 2 days. We all knew beforehand-as Trump should have known-that Lester Holt is not an impartial referee so much as an active participant in the media’s universal quest to install Hillary Clinton in the Oval Office-even as they attempt to delegitimize this self-evident fact.

Even so, Trump seemed at a loss as to how to combat this two-headed attack during the actual debate. Lester Holt’s contrived attempt at connecting the irrelevant Birther issue to the parlous state of American race relations is a perfect example of how Trump failed to seize the initiative. The correct response to this tendentious line of attack was to refuse to play a hand with the stacked deck given to him by the moderator. He should have pointed out this is simply a Democratic talking point crafted with the purpose of arresting his growing popularity among black voters, which has absolutely no relevance to any domestic policy even tangentially connected to race.

While Trump deserves credit for highlighting the grim body count piling up in the city where President Obama made his political bones, as well as the threat posed to African-Americans by our government’s lax immigration policies, he gave more substance to this inane discussion than was necessary, reliving his own involvement in a completely irrelevant issue which has no purpose other than its use as a cudgel against the 1 candidate despised by the fourth estate. Trump could have used this opportunity to simultaneously highlight the bleak prospects of African-American males-who have been shortchanged by our first black President-and the insularity of our wretched journalistic establishment.

By contrast, Hillary Clinton had very few unforced errors. While she didn’t do anything to change her public image, i.e. that of a viscerally unlikable, overly scripted, opportunistic career politician, she didn’t step on any land mines either. She came across as a technocratic, seemingly competent liberal Democrat. She managed to persuasively advance the argument that Donald Trump, the anti-thesis of Bushism and country club Republican virtues, was simply a reincarnation of George W. Bush on tax policy. And that she, a woman desperately trying to attach herself to the Bush family, is somehow an agent of change. Trump rightly pointed out the economic stagnation of the past 8 years, which has nothing to do with the Bush clan, but dropped the ball by not explicitly pointing out that the Bush and Clinton families are part of the same circle of elites which have run this country into the ground over the past 3 decades.

More importantly from Clinton’s perspective, she avoided casting herself as the the candidate of social justice fanatics, despite pandering to them relentlessly throughout this campaign-going so far as to write an open letter to Ella Dawson, otherwise known as herpes girl. The only departures from this appeal to normality were an aside where she accused our country of engaging in systemic racism and her Jezebelesque complaint that Donald Trump likes attractive women. While I’m sure the latter played well with her base of feminist, baby boomer female voters, it also highlighted the fact that she’s alienated from the concerns of anyone who doesn’t belong to the coalition of the fringes, particularly working class white men.

The Alicia Machado exchange is illuminating for other reasons, including its almost perfect distillation of the central flaw in the reasoning of open borders propagandists. Namely, that we need the millions of people who have been imported from the third world over the past half-century. We are told repeatedly that these immigrants or illegal aliens are essential to our functioning as a republic, yet the men and women who serve as poster children for this policy are without exception terrible people. Or, at the very least, not vital cogs in the machinery of American democracy.

Although Machado might not have been involved in an assassination plot, she is a confirmed philanderess and egregious hypocrite. However, because she intends on casting a ballot for the Democratic presidential candidate, like millions of other immigrants from Latin America, she is by definition an asset to this country. While I can understand why leftists and Democrats would believe that importing men and women who’ll increase the size of the state is good for this country, I fail to see how this is a good thing from an objective, patriotic standpoint. Trump could have challenged the assumption that what’s good for Democrats is good for the country, but conspicuously failed to do so. He could have also pointed out that the woman across the stage had spent decades slandering the reputation of women who had been victims of sexual assault at the hands of her husband.

The cumulative impact of these lost opportunities is hard to quantify, but it can’t be dismissed out of hand. For those of you looking for positives to take away from this debate, Donald Trump’s closing remarks emphasized a key point which could become part of a winning message if articulated in a coherent manner to the American people. The United States should not be the policeman of the world. Even if we were to concede the good intentions of those advocating continuous intervention in countries across the globe, the fact remains that this posture is counterproductive to America’s strategic interests. Our government’s sclerotic invade the world, invite the world foreign policy has been a catastrophic failure and needs to be abandoned.

That should be Donald Trump’s message going forward. Ignore media-generated talking points about personal tax returns and obese former beauty queens. Focus on the central issues of our time and communicate your ideas to the American public. We need to be debating the future of our country, not the trivialities that dominated the Hofstra debate.

Addendum: In order to grasp just how destructive mass immigration, in concert with state-enforced multiculturalism, is to social capital take a look at this British poll. As you’ll notice, people living in Northern Ireland-the part of the UK which has been riven by sectarian conflict for over a century-trust their neighbors more than those living in a post-English London. Food for thought. 

One of the chief misconceptions about my immigration views is that they’re born of willful intransigence. The conceit that my political philosophy was shaped years ago-true, to a large degree-and has been unyielding in the face of overwhelming evidence which logically refutes it-completely baseless-is surprisingly widespread among my critics. The truth is that I’m actually desperate to be persuaded, to be convinced that open borders is somehow a desirable-or even workable-state of affairs.

Admitting that you’re wrong, especially about sincerely, long-held convictions, can be psychically devastating for some individuals. One need only read David Horowitz’s disturbing memoir Radical Son to get a sense of how traumatic reevaluating your core ideological beliefs can be to a human being. That said, I am not by nature an ideologue. My identity and my sense of self worth are not wrapped up in the outcome of a particular domestic or international debate. Although not a consequentialist, I do accept reality as it is, which is why I find the intellectual defense of mass, 3rd world immigration to the West so utterly unconvincing.

I want to be persuaded that I’m wrong,  but over the past 2 decades I’ve yet to encounter an even minimally persuasive argument explaining why I am. The most compelling defense of open borders I’ve heard was offered by Julian Castro, the son of a ’60s Chicana militant whose children have been able to profit from the political cachet of faux multiculturalism and our country’s drastically altered demographics. Empty suit though he is, at least he had a rudimentary understanding of the issue being discussed, unlike almost every open borders libertarian I’ve tried to engage on this subject. To cite just one example of the fundamental ignorance they’re operating from, the writer David Marcus routinely extols the beauty of Ellis Island immigration in cliched essays, despite being blissfully unaware of the fact that almost all non-white immigration was prohibited during this halcyon period of American history.

Yevgeniy Feyman is a much more informed interlocutor, yet I came away from his discussion at The Irish Exit this past week with my beliefs, vis-a-vis immigration, fundamentally unchanged. Although an expert in health care policy, Mr. Feyman has a keen interest in the subject of immigration, which he believes should be unfettered. Echoing many of the same arguments used by open borders advocate Bryan Caplan-whose work he referenced-he asserted that there is an ethical and utilitarian case for unrestricted immigration to the West, neither of which I found terribly convincing.

One of my main problems with the latter argument was his insistence upon using gross domestic product as a proxy for economic growth and wealth creation, something that is genuinely perplexing coming from an ostensible proponent of free markets. According to Feyman, economists have postulated a 60% growth in GDP if Western nations completely opened their borders, while a 140% increase would result from global immigration restrictions being completely removed. Even if we were to accept these fantastic claims, it’s far from certain that this would be a good thing for our economy. Even the thousands of largely illiterate, unskilled Somalis imported to the interior of this country collectively boost our GDP. However, I’m sure that serves as scant comfort to the taxpayers forced to support their intergenerational welfare.

Contrary to Feyman’s assertions, immigrants use welfare programs at a greater rate than natives, as well as previous generations of immigrants. This was true in 1996 and it’s true today, despite the meteoric rise in American natives’ exploitation of the social safety net. The only reason the disparity between the 2 groups isn’t greater is because there are a host of programs to which illegal aliens are debarred, a distinction which would be erased were amnesty to be enacted as it’s currently envisioned. The idea that you can’t simultaneously take advantage of welfare programs while working is another myth promulgated by open borders advocates.

What’s more, even though most immigrants come to the United States at the peak of their earning power, one-eighth of the immigrants to this country are over the age of 55! In other words, less than a decade from retirement. Although most of these immigrants will never collect Social Security checks, as the speaker pointed out during his talk, they will still be eligible to take advantage of SSI, a program that is hemorrhaging money, shows no signs of being reformed, and whose costs will continue to soar well into the future.

Feyman seemingly praised the mid-90s efforts to “fence in” welfare use by legal immigrants, efforts now categorically rejected by the presumptive Democratic nominee it should be noted, even as he acknowledged that these attempts at reducing the social and economic costs of immigration had largely failed. Even so, he insisted that these barriers would need to be reintroduced under his proposed scheme of open borders. Why welfare restrictions would be more viable in an electorate with tens of millions more unskilled, welfare-dependent, enfranchised immigrants than it was during the Clinton administration was a question that remained unanswered.

The subject of crime proved similarly elusive, as the crime rate of 1st generation immigrants was touted as definitive proof that open borders would be a panacea, even as Feyman conceded that 2nd generation immigrants had a crime rate identical to, and in some instances exceeding, that of Americans. In a remarkable feat of rhetorical jujitsu, this unpleasant fact was used as a data point IN FAVOR of unfettered immigration, proving as it does that immigrants are assimilating to American culture. Why we should be comforted that foreign gangs which were heretofore unknown in the United States are proliferating, and targeting Americans for extermination, is another question that begs to be answered.

Furthermore, the astronomical crime rate among illegal aliens was only briefly alluded to-and dismissed-during this lecture. Even if you ignore the incalculable human cost of our government’s sanction of criminal aliens, the fiscal cost is staggering. While 2 billion dollars might seem like chump change to a federal government that burns taxpayer wealth at a clip which would make a Saudi prince blush, it’s an oppressive burden to the states and municipalities which have to bear nearly the entire bill. This doesn’t even touch upon the fact that nearly 37% of federal prison sentences in Fiscal Year 2014 involved criminal aliens, let alone the impact of criminal immigrants overseas.

Interestingly, the health care cost of having such a large immigrant population was never broached, despite it being-along with the education-the largest economic burden this group imposes upon state and local governments. A burden which will only increase as the population of immigrants-both illegal and legal-expands, as the rapidly collapsing state of California illustrates.

But even if all of these economic and social metrics supported Yevgeniy’s assertions-and, as I’ve tried to illustrate, they do not-he would still be wrong from a philosophical standpoint. For his proposals are not consonant with liberty as its commonly understood, and they’re certainly not pragmatic, by his own definition. They would eliminate the ability to freely associate and to discriminate, despite these being inherent features of both libertarianism and our republic as it was traditionally conceived.

It’s not surprising then that the only political philosopher he invoked during his lecture was not a libertarian in any sense of the word, but John Rawls, a man whose ideas are the antithesis of those espoused by the Founders. His emphasis on the difference principle and the egalitarian case for opening our borders to the developing world demonstrates the utopian nature of this cause. The idea that inhabitants of third world nations are entitled to the West’s wealth-and that Western societies have no right to deny them-is a popular notion among open borders libertarians, and finds its most ardent advocate in the form of Bryan Caplan, a person who, a la Kevin Williamson, would rather see Americans die than deny the wishes of hundreds of millions of foreign nationals. Call it the Make-A-Wish Foundation for the global village.

The hermetic nature of the discussion among open borders advocates can be seen in the comparisons made between immigration restrictions and government-imposed segregation during the Jim Crow Era. This was another trope invoked by Mr. Famin in order to defend the idea of open borders, one which has its roots in the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, which was enacted on a wave of specious comparisons between the struggle of black Americans for civil rights and the desires of foreigners in the third world to relocate to the United States. While correctly citing Robert Putnam’s study demonstrating the negative impact multiculturalism and open borders have on social cohesion, civic trust, and private, communal associations, from that he extrapolated that opponents of open borders must also support segregation along color lines.

There are so many flaws in this analogy that it would be difficult to enumerate them all, so I’ll highlight one of the most glaring. Namely, while Americans have Constitutional, civil rights to equal protection under the law, there is no comparable right for non-Americans to immigrate, settle and exploit the benefits extended to American citizens. It bears repeating that the men who created the framework for our system of government were deeply skeptical of the sorts of free immigration schemes proposed by the likes of Caplan et. al.

Another fundamental problem with this chain of reasoning is the arrogant assumption that the cultures of North America, Europe, and Australia somehow need moral improvement-provided, of course, by an unceasing stream of migrants from the third world. Beyond the obvious paradox at work in this formulation, there is the ahistorical nature of this assertion. It presumes that we don’t already have ample evidence from numerous countries that third world immigration to the West is destructive, not simply eroding the public’s trust in its leaders-which is a good thing-but erasing the very capacity for self-governance.

But even if there were no empirical evidence to support our position, the burden of proof would still be on individuals like Yeveniy Famin to prove that their stance is correct. When someone makes extraordinary claims on behalf of an untested idea that will dramatically alter the status quo, it’s not incumbent upon his opponents to prove a negative. It’s up to him to demonstrate that his idea will result in a positive improvement for individuals and our society. When I brought up the case of A.Q. Khan, a Pakistani Muslim immigrant who gave us the world’s first Islamic bomb, it wasn’t merely a gotcha question intended to embarrass the speaker or a misguided invocation of the precautionary principle.

There is actually ample evidence that the experiment with Muslim integration in The Netherlands has been a complete failure, and that the cumulative impact of this monumental social change has been decidedly negative for that country and its inhabitants. My point was simply that the adherents to open borders dogmatism couldn’t present a narrative that emphasized a corresponding good that’s resulted from widespread Middle Eastern and North African immigration to Holland. The retort that there are native-born citizens who’ve helped appalling regimes acquire nuclear weapons isn’t quite the devastating rebuttal that its opponents believe it to be. Just like the “there are American scumbags” aphorism, it presumes that just because evil exists we must do nothing within our power to limit our exposure to its most baleful consequences.

This line of reasoning would dictate that a landlord who currently has tenants that are scofflaws and destroy his property allow prospective renters who pose the same threat to live in his building, based upon a rigid devotion to equality. The logical extension of this can be found in Germany, where paying tenants are being evicted in order to make way for refugees, i.e. invaders from the Global South that Angela Merkel, the socialists, and Greens are cultivating as Germany’s new polity.

Open borders is a terrible idea, from both a consequentalist and natural rights perspective. When and if all societies are based upon mutual consent and non-coercion, then by all means, invite whomever you want to live, work, and possibly exploit, your self-contained civilization. I have no problem with Bryan Caplan et. al. inviting downtrodden Haitians or Yemenis to live at his expense, but I vociferously object to them externalizing the costs of their philanthropy to those, like me, who do not share their utopian ideals.

The right is blessed in its opponents, who have never truly appreciated how deeply unappealing their platform is, at least to non-millennials, i.e. individuals who aren’t complete ignoramuses. A perfect illustration of this political tone deafness can be found in the mass demonstrations held in front of the Grand Hyatt Hotel during the pre-primary GOP Gala. Our good friend Pamela Hall has a fantastic photo essay which chronicles the concerns expressed by the assorted dregs of humanity, which can be boiled down to “give us free shit” and “stop being mean to criminals.” She also snapped a few photos of the counter-demonstrators, from both the non-partisan NY ICE contingent and the pro-Trump faction.  It’s worth reading in its entirety, if only to gaze into our dark, dystopian future.

I had the dubious honor of being invited to participate in Good Morning America’s first presidential town hall Monday morning, featuring Senator Cruz and his wife Heidi. Although I did not learn anything new, the experience did reaffirm some preexisting beliefs about both the news media-particularly, the way it frames narratives-as well as Ted Cruz, almost none of them flattering. I suppose you shouldn’t expect much from a segment billed as Coffee with the Candidates, yet I still entered the studio with relatively high expectations, most of which would be dashed over the course of the next hour.

The trouble began with the first audience question, which was asked by an extraordinarily tall, dapper African-American gentleman, who prefaced it with the caveat that he was a former drug dealer/gang member who had, presumably, turned his life around by becoming a youth pastor. I later spotted some copies of his self-published memoir, which he had brought to what was undoubtedly an advantageous marketing opportunity for his business/church. He wanted to know what Senator Cruz would do about those dastardly southern gun dealers who were flooding his community with illegal firearms, relying upon talking points derived from the thoroughly discredited Bloombergian campaign ascribing violent crimes in this city to legal, constitutionally protected businesses.

Lest you think this an aberration, the next question, asked by a gay pizzeria owner, pertained to the recently enacted North Carolina law forbidding the use of certain restrooms by transgendered individuals. A law that, even using the loosest definition of that term, might impact a tenth of one percent of the population of that state-and very few registered Republicans. Granted, there are probably lingering pockets of Rockefeller/Lindsay Republicanism in this city-most likely in neighborhoods like the Silk Stocking District and the tonier parts of Brooklyn Heights, prime Kasich territory based upon last night’s primary results-but the opening sequence of this town hall would give you the impression that they formed the majority-or at the very least, a decisive plurality-of New York State Republicans.

You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to believe that this message-broadcast to the rest of the country-was deliberate. Much like the Jeb Bush plant of Internet acclaim, these individuals were carefully vetted by Good Morning America’s producers before being selected to appear on national television. Just as I was vetted before my question-dealing with the negative impact H-1B visas have upon American workers-was rejected. Regardless of whether you are in favor of open borders or support constructive immigration enforcement, the idea that this issue is inconsequential-especially to Republican primary voters-is hard to countenance. However, if you’re a member of the mainstream media, the boutique concerns of leftist members of the press corps must always take precedence over those of conservative Republican voters-even if you are hosting an ostensibly Republican campaign forum.

The natural counter-argument to this is, what do you expect from Bill Clinton hatchet man and Hillary Clinton sycophant George Stephanopoulos and liberal reporter Robin Roberts? That is precisely the point! We have become so desensitized and inured to the media manipulating how we discuss issues of public import, which issues we discuss, and what weight we give to those issues, that we have forgotten how divorced these “gatekeepers” are from the reality of most Americans’ lives. While the triviality of a question about ‘New York values’ and a lightning round consisting exclusively of non-political ephemera is to be expected from a show like GMA, we should demand that at least a few questions have some bearing on the concerns of ordinary, conservative Republican voters.

The 15-20 million illegal aliens who are lobbying for political representation in Washington, to say nothing of the tens of millions of legal immigrants who already wield a decisive influence over our electoral process, and the priorities of America’s chief news organs are not wholly unrelated. The media narratives that we blithely accept have disastrous, if largely unacknowledged, consequences for our country, problems which Senator Cruz purportedly hopes to address. However, it’s hard to see how that will happen if we don’t confront the root of the problem. The pervasive political correctness and distortion of the meaning of words, the veil of dissimulation, which obscures what’s wrong with our government. We can’t make any progress until we first deal with this massive impediment to honest discussion.

Tomorrow, I’ll discuss my thoughts on Ted and Heidi Cruz.

Update: Post-caucus analysis by the BBC. As predicted, Jeb is out. Epic failure. Trump wins. 

The returns are starting to roll in.

Whether or not it’s simply a matter of wishful thinking on the part of Rubio supporters, the rumors of a Bush withdrawal continue to percolate. The fact that he’s been forced to rely upon his brother-former President George W. Bush-in order to inject life into his flagging campaign is an indication of the desperation plaguing Jeb’s presidential effort, to say nothing of the astronomical burn rate his heretofore unsuccessful bid has achieved. It remains to be seen whether South Carolina will mark a turning point in this race, but my suspicion is that neither Barbara nor Dubya will be able to salvage an essentially doomed campaign.

You can follow live coverage of both the South Carolina primary and the Nevada Caucuses here. This website, naturally, will provide post-election analysis in the days ahead.

Aside from Germany, there is no nation in Europe which has had to cope with a larger share of refugees than Sweden. Apparently, the socialist government-whose popularity has hit a record low due to its inept handling of this crisis-has finally decided to admit that this constitutes a serious problem. To that end, Interior Minister Anders Ygeman has proposed deporting up to 80,000 refugees who have arrived within the past year but whose applications for asylum have been rejected.

Whether or not these slightly more punitive measures are modeled after the approach taken by its former nemesis Denmark is an open question. However, what can’t be disputed is that the politically imposed silence on this subject in that country is gradually eroding. Swedes are beginning to recognize that turning their county into a hostel for those who’ve fled collapsed, third world states was a terrible idea with far-reaching (negative) consequences, and that the only way to avoid becoming a failed state itself is for Sweden to close the curtain on this failed experiment.

It would appear that the federal government is close to charging the senior Senator from the Soprano State with corruption charges stemming from his relationship to Democratic Party ATM Salomon Melgen. Unlike the arrest of a criminal alien sex offender which Mr. Menendez once employed, this decision doesn’t seem to be directly tied to the political calendar. Although at least one of his colleagues is suggesting that it might be politically inspired, considering the Senator’s vocal opposition to President Obama’s recent foreign policy choices.

Questionable optics aside, it’s worth noting that this will be the second major Democratic officeholder of national consequence within the past month to be brought low by his lax approach to ethics. If only the fourth estate spent as much time and effort chronicling the damage inflicted upon ordinary citizens by our government’s approach to immigration enforcement as it did reporting the pedestrian news of yet another corrupt public official.

One of the more galling aspects of an otherwise unremarkable speech delivered by the President commemorating the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, was the attempt to link the struggle of the Civil Rights Movement during the 20th century with the attempts by open borders demagogues to further erode the value of American citizenship. Although to most reasonable Americans the linkage between these two social-political movements would seem puzzling-if not patently offensive-it is one repeatedly made by the treason lobby, perhaps most bizarrely by the permanently deranged Frank Sharry, who compared the current plight of illegal aliens to the suffering of antebellum slaves in the United States.

Oddly enough, it wasn’t too long ago that seemingly principled liberals opposed legislation which would retard the economic progress of the poorest Americans while at the same time reinforcing entrenched stratification. And while some still oppose a bill that would handicap the most disadvantaged American workers-in spite of overwhelming pressure to capitulate to the prevailing  kultursmog-most have succumbed to the open borders ideology which animates most elite institutions.

That’s why the letter penned by Coretta Scott King-the widow of the man whose name is synonymous with the march President Obama honored a few days ago-and issued by the Black Leadership Forum in opposition to a law that also expanded the opportunities for immigrants while introducing the dreadful Diversity Lottery at the expense of working class Americans, is required reading. The fact that there was a point in the not so distant past where liberal Democrats opposed the machinations of the cheap labor lobby-rather than bragged about their alliance with the Chamber of Commerce-is information that needs to be impressed upon those who have not been paying attention to this momentous debate, which-like the March on Washington before it-will have an inalterable impact upon the future of this nation.

The sputtering “recovery” claimed by the White House is inexorably grinding to a halt, an inescapable fact that even the most deft manipulation of employment numbers can’t conceal. Yet the mass unemployment and underemployment of American job-seekers hasn’t deflated the enthusiasm for anti-growth policies from either this administration or Congress. Complicating matters is the enthusiasm both have displayed for sustained mass immigration, even in the face of steep declines in American household income. Cybercast News Service explains why Capitol Hill remains infatuated with bad immigration policy in spite of its negative impact on ordinary Americans.

The current dismal economy presents enough obstacles to ambitious Americans without our elected officials actively seeking our disemployment from the work force.