California: Here We Come!

“Immigration policy should be forged with one consideration in mind: America’s economic self-interest. Immigration is not a service we provide to the rest of the world. Yes, we are a nation of immigrants and will continue to be one. No other country welcomes as many newcomers. But rewarding illegal immigration does an injustice to the many legal immigrants who played by the rules to get here. We owe it to them and to ourselves to adhere to the law.” Heather MacDonald

Practical Thoughts on Immigration

Heather MacDonald, Imprimis, February 2015, p. 4, 5

The following is adapted from a speech delivered on February 18, 2015, at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar in Naples, Florida.

The lesson from the last 20 years of immigration policy is that lawlessness breeds more lawlessness. Once a people or a government decides to normalize one form of lawbreaking, other forms of lawlessness will follow until finally the rule of law itself is in profound jeopardy. Today, we have a constitutional crisis on our hands. President Obama has decided that because Congress has not granted amnesty to millions of illegal aliens living in the U.S., he will do so himself. Let us ponder for a moment just how shameless this assertion of power is.

Article 2, Section 3, of the Constitution mandates that the president “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” This provision assumes that there is a law for the president to execute. But in this case, the “problem” that Obama is purporting to fix is the absence of a law granting amnesty to millions of illegal aliens. Rather than executing a law, Obama is making one up—arrogating to himself a function that the Constitution explicitly allocates to Congress. Should this unconstitutional power grab stand, we will have moved very far in the direction of rule by dictator. Pace Obama, the absence of a congressional law granting amnesty is not evidence of political failure that must somehow be corrected by unilateral executive action; it is evidence of the lack of popular consensus regarding amnesty. There has been no amnesty statute to date because the political will for such an amnesty is lacking.

On February 16, U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen halted President Obama’s illegal amnesty with a temporary injunction. The proposed amnesty program, Judge Hanen found, went far beyond mere prosecutorial discretion not to enforce the law against individuals. Instead, the Department of Homeland Security proposed to confer on illegal aliens a new legal status known as “legal presence.” But Congress has not granted DHS the power to create and bestow legal status. The amnesty program represented a “complete abdication” of DHS’s responsibility to enforce the law, Judge Hanen declared. Indeed, DHS was actively thwarting the express will of Congress.

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Queering Agriculture

“The University of California, Berkeley, recently hosted a lecture called ‘Queering Agriculture,’ and it was a fine example of the stream-of-social-consciousness school of academic writing.” National Review

National Review, March 9, 2015, p. 13

The University of California, Berkeley, recently hosted a lecture called “Queering Agriculture,” and it was a fine example of the stream-of-social-consciousness school of academic writing. From the website description: “Queering and trans-ing ideas and practices of agriculture are necessary for more sustainable, sovereign, and equitable food systems for the creatures and systems involved in systemic reproductions that feed humans and other creatures. Since agriculture is literally [i.e., not literally] the backbone of economics, politics, and ‘civilized’ life as we know it, and the manipulation of reproduction and sexuality are a foundation of agriculture, it is absolutely crucial queer and transgender studies begin to deal more seriously with the subject of agriculture.” Translation: No one has written about this topic before because sexual preference has nothing to do with agriculture. But that’s no obstacle to a hard-core academic, and soon we can presumably expect “Queering Dentistry,” “Queering Transmission Repair,” and perhaps “Straighting Interior Design.”

UC Berkeley Lecture: It Is ‘Necessary’ to Apply Transgender Studies to Agriculture

Searching high and low for the “queer” angle.

By KATHERINE TIMPF, National Review, February 9, 2015, p. 13

The University of California–Berkeley is hosting a lecture about how it is “necessary” to apply gay and transgender studies to agriculture because agriculture is all about reproduction and our food systems will suffer if we don’t.

“So why queer agriculture? This seems like an odd question . . .” says the description, prompting an “uh, yeah” in my head, before continuing with “. . .but it becomes more obvious with research and analysis.”

That second part I’m not so sure about, however, considering how many times I felt like my brain was going to explode as I continued reading.

“Since agriculture is literally the backbone of economics, politics, and ‘civilized” life as we know it, and the manipulation of reproduction and sexuality are a foundation of agriculture, it is absolutely crucial queer and transgender studies begin to deal more seriously with the subject of agriculture,” it states.

Global Warming Fraud

“Billions of dollars have been poured into studies supporting climate alarm, and trillions of dollars have been involved in overthrowing the energy economy. So it is unsurprising that great efforts have been made to ramp up hysteria, even as the case for climate alarm is disintegrating.” Richard S. Lindzen

“Earth’s climate is amazingly complex. It’s driven by gravitational forces of our solar system, radiation from the sun, and cosmic rays from stars in deep space…Energy from the sun drives all weather on Earth.” Steve Goreham, The Mad World of Climatism, p. 72

“Earth’s atmosphere is composed of 78 percent nitrogen gas, 21 percent oxygen, and 1 percent of other trace gases. Carbon dioxide is one of the trace gases, comprising much less that 1 percent. Only four of every ten thousand air molecules are carbon dioxide. In all of human history, man-made emissions are responsible for adding only a fraction of one of these four molecules.” Ibid

The Political Assault on Climate Skeptics

Members of Congress send inquisitorial letters to universities, energy companies, even think tanks.

Rep. Raul Grijalva (D., Ariz.) at a Capitol Hill news conference, Nov. 12, 2014. PHOTO: CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES

Richard S. Lindzen, The Wall Street Journal, March 5, 2015, p, A 13

Research in recent years has encouraged those of us who question the popular alarm over allegedly man-made global warming. Actually, the move from “global warming” to “climate change” indicated the silliness of this issue. The climate has been changing since the Earth was formed. This normal course is now taken to be evidence of doom.

Individuals and organizations highly vested in disaster scenarios have relentlessly attacked scientists and others who do not share their beliefs. The attacks have taken a threatening turn.

As to the science itself, it’s worth noting that all predictions of warming since the onset of the last warming episode of 1978-98—which is the only period that the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) attempts to attribute to carbon-dioxide emissions—have greatly exceeded what has been observed. These observations support a much reduced and essentially harmless climate response to increased atmospheric carbon dioxide.