Law School Conservative

Here are two articles from today’s Economist about the dollar slump…

I would really prefer to be listed under “Anonymous,” but apparently that’s now a faux pas on this forum haha…

Tab- interesting post. My big question, however, is this: is his illegal status really incidental to the crime, meaning, did he commit this horrible crime because he was illegal or because he was a bad guy/gang member and a waste on society under any claim of citizenship? It seems pretty clear that the fact that he was here illegal did not cause him to commit the crime, or rather did not alter his DNA to make him more or less likely to commit violent crime. The serious issue seems to be the gang membership and criminal past. Even so, he could have shot this cop in the head if he was a legal resident with no criminal past. I know its not the point of the post, but it seems to get at the heart of the immigration issue in a way, and so I enter it as my own stab at this issue. Obviously, if he was deported after his first offense, he probably wouldn’t have shot the cop, but its equally likely that he would have still shot the cop in the scenario above (where he is a legal resident with no priors).

So, deportation of illegals after their first (or second or third) offense certainly won’t prevent acts like this from ever happening again. It’s also not a practical solution (though the present-day incarnation of my poor, bastardized GOP has infinite more faith than I in government’s ability to solve these problems, and certainly more willingness to print and waste untold billions of dollars in the process, thus denying our generation of our deserved usufructuary power over national wealth). It seems to me that the only sensible way to approach this immigration issue is to examine the incentive structure that drives these individual actors to enter the country illegally. A fence skips this important step, and will just create a police v. drivers with radar detectors sort of problem. The immigrants, driven by incentives that would not be impacted by a fence in any substantial way, would innovate around the fence and find their way into the US (any plausible fool-proof fence would necessitate an Orwellian police state that, I hope, is unequivocally unappealing to each of our readers).

So, what are the incentives and how can we work around them? That will have to be dealt with tomorrow…

In Minnesota, the media's getting it all wrong in their coverage of a Right-to-Carry case.  WCCO-TV reports that a couple of churches are trying to exempt themselves from Minnesota's Right-to-Carry law. 

But that's not really what's going on here.  These churches can already nullify Right-to-Carry on church property if they want, just by posting the legally required signage. 

But that appears to be too much for these houses of worship.  Church leaders want to post their own signs prohibiting Right-to-Carry, or to post no signs at all.

One church has posted a sign that says, "Blessed are the peacemakers.  Firearms are prohibited in this place of sanctuary."  I'd suggest that church read David Kopel's excellent article for America's First Freedom, "Is the Best Defense a Good Book?"  They could also read Kopel's "The Torah and Self-Defense" as well.  These church leaders might realize that there's no religious reason to be defenseless.

In Phoenix today, city officials are finally admitting that Erik Martinez, an illegal immigrant and known gang member who shot a cop in the head twice after a jaywalking stop, has been arrested twice before. The police originally admitted only one prior arrest. The first arrest stemmed from a probation violation due to a car theft charge, and the second arrest was for domestic violence. Police claim that in 2006 and 2005, when Erik Martinez was originally arrested, there was no reasonable way for the police department to check his immigration status and even if they could, ICE wouldn’t have come. Although the article does not specify why ICE wouldn’t have come, I have one guess: lack of funding. ICE is extremely under funded and its effects are being seen around the country- especially in border states that are often the first and final stop for border crossers. It is these kinds of incidents that caused the governors of Arizona and New Mexico to declare a state of emergency in order to get proper funding to try and contain the border.
As a Phoenix native, I have seen first-hand the problems that illegal immigrants create. Phoenix vehicle drivers are stuck with heavy premiums due to the large amount of hit and run cases by illegal immigrants without insurance, Phoenix hospitals are in severe financial crunches due to providing emergency care (and many times not-so-emergency care) to illegal immigrants, and public schools in Phoenix are some of the worse in the nation due to funds being diverted to ESL (English as a Second Language) programs and not the students that are here legally. Don’t get me wrong- I am not anti-immigrant. Members of my family were immigrants and there are many, many jobs available for immigrants in this country that Americans do not care to do. However, I do have a problem with people, not only committing a crime by coming here illegally, but by continuing to commit crimes while staying here.
Unfortunately, in this instance, an innocent police officer paid for Congress’ negligence in failing to implement proper immigration reform. I understand that this is not an easy problem to fix. There are many questions and not many solutions. But it is one that needs to be addressed, and SOON.

Think British-style gun control can't happen here?  It's hard to believe, but just a century ago England's gun laws looked a lot like those in the United States.  But as the BBC reports, England has gone from licensing firearms to outright bans on most guns. 

What the BBC doesn't say, of course, is that none of these bans have done anything to reduce violent crime, or even gun-related crime.  Those crimes continue to increase in England, despite the bans they've put in place. 

Now England is trying to spread its gun bans.  The country is pushing the European Union to call for more gun control laws in member countries.  And Great Britain is leading the way in pushing for an arms trade treaty at the United Nations. 

All you have to do is look at the timeline of England's gun control laws to realize the slippery slope does exist, and anything that happened there can happen here.  It's why we must be forever vigilant here at home, to protect our rights and freedoms.

I couldn’t resist.

From CNN: Ron Paul endorsed by a pimp.

In Boston, they're once again blaming the inanimate object. 

Michael Graham reports that officials in Beantown are blaming the gun for the death of a pizza store owner, not the murderous thug who actually did the killing. 

Graham says the "desire to condemn inanimate objects is a bit, well, weird."  He's right, but I'd go one step further.  By placing blame on the inanimate object, rather than focusing on the killer, politicians further erode our nation's moral code.  Giving the impression that it's not your fault you killed, robbed, or raped someone... you can always blame the gun.

And the Boston politicians wonder why crime is on the rise.  It's not that hard to figure out.  With attitudes like this, it's amazing the city's not suffering from even more violent crimes.  The sooner they figure out that people are responsible for their actions, the safer the residents of Boston will be.

CNN is up to its old tricks again.  They're repeating the claims of "CBS Evening News" that bad guys in the Miami area are arming themselves with fully automatic machine guns.  And because of that, the story goes, the cops are upgrading to semi-automatic rifles. 

The story is full of things to scare non-gun owners:  claims about AK-47s that can "spray 600 rounds a minute" and statements about "urban street warfare" and a “proliferation of cheap automatic weapons.” 

I'm skeptical about these claims, to say the least.  Back in 2003, CNN did a hit piece on gun owners in their attempt to help renew the Clinton Gun Ban.  They talked about semi-automatic firearms while showing video of fully automatic machine guns.  And they claimed that these guns would be "back on the streets" if the gun ban expired. 

Guess what they're saying is responsible for the rise in automatic firearms on the streets of south Florida?  The expiration of the Clinton Gun Ban. 

Let me speak simply here, in hopes that the journalists at CNN will understand.  I doubt that fully automatic machine guns are appearing on the streets of Florida, but if they are, it's not because of the expiration of the Clinton Gun Ban.  That ban dealt only with semi-automatic firearms. 

If police are confiscating more semi-automatic rifles, it still doesn't make any sense to blame the expiration of the Clinton Gun Ban.  Rather than talking to the Brady Campaign, CNN should've talked to gun owners.  They would have learned that there were plenty of semi-automatic rifles sold during the Clinton Gun Ban, because that ban only prohibited certain firearms based on cosmetic features. 

Either way, CNN's reporting is false and seems designed to scare, not to educate and inform.  I called them out in 2003 when they did this, and I'm calling them out now.