(Originally posted at 10:34 but moved up.)
U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona was shot outside a grocery store in Tucson while holding a public event, Arizona Public Media reported Saturday.
The Democrat, who was re-elected to her third term in November, was hosting her first “Congress on Your Corner” event at the Safeway in northwest Tucson when a gunman ran up and started shooting, according to Peter Michaels, news director of Arizona Public Media.
At least five other people were injured, and the gunman was reportedly tackled by a bystander and is in custody.
UPDATE: Giffords was one of the crosshairs in Sarah Palin’s infamous map of targeted politicians.
UPDATE: NPR is reporting that Giffords and six others were killed by the gunman, and that nine others were injured.
UPDATE: According to the Huffington Post, a hospital spokeswoman told MSNBC that Giffords is still alive, and is currently in surgery.
UPDATE: Daily Kos is reporting that Giffords’s Republican opponent in the last election had a “Get on Target for Victory” fundraising party at a shooting range. Also, people on Twitter are reporting that Sarah Palin’s website has just been scrubbed of all mentions of Giffords. The “Take Back the 20” website that featured the map is down. Slog commenter Mdurango points out that Sarah Palin’s target map on the Take Back the 20 site is still, intermittently, up, and still features Giffords. Sorry, folks: I’m trying to separate the bullshit from the real, but it’s all flying hot and heavy today.
UPDATE 12:13 pm: Aaaand it just occurred to me to start time-stamping these. Huffington Post says that a federal judge may have been shot at the scene, too. When asked if his daughter had any enemies, Giffords’s father replied, “The whole tea party.” In addition, we have comments from Sarah Palin:
My sincere condolences are offered to the family of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the other victims of today’s tragic shooting in Arizona.
On behalf of Todd and my family, we all pray for the victims and their families, and for peace and justice.
And President Obama:
This morning, in an unspeakable tragedy, a number of Americans were shot in Tuscon, Arizona, at a constituent meeting with Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. And while we are continuing to receive information, we know that some have passed away, and that Representative Giffords is gravely wounded.
We do not yet have all the answers. What we do know is that such a senseless and terrible act of violence has no place in a free society. I ask all Americans to join me and Michelle in keeping Representative Giffords, the victims of this tragedy, and their families in our prayers.
UPDATE: 12:47 pm: Here’s the New York Times report:
Dr. Steven Rayle, a former emergency room doctor who now works in a hospice, said that he had witnessed the shootings. He said the congresswoman was standing behind a table outside the Safeway greeting passersby when the gunman approached her from behind, held a gun about a foot from her head and began firing.
“He must have got off 20 rounds,” he said. Ms. Giffords slumped to the ground and staff members immediately rushed to her aid, Dr. Rayle said.
Dr. Rayle said he performed CPR on some of the victims. He said one of the victims was a young child and appeared to be in critical condition with a gunshot wound.
He said that one of the staffers tackled the gunman and that he and others helped detain the suspect. The doctor described the gunman as a white male in his mid-20s with short hair and “dressed in a shabby manner.”
There’s a press conference streaming live right here in audio and right here in video.
12:56: The gunman has been identified as “Jared Laughner of Arizona, born September 1988.” UPDATE: It’s spelled “Loughner”.
1:02: Keith Olbermann is reporting on Twitter that “Rep. Giffords is out of surgery and alive.” Huffington Post and others are saying doctors are “optimistic,” but she is still in critical condition. The judge who was injured was identified as John Roll.
@145: Nice revisionism in terms of what this country did to the Native Americans.
@146: “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any state to the contrary notwithstanding.” (Article VI, Clause 2 of the Constitution of the United States of America)
What’s that about the states being intended to throw off what they might perceive as a tyrannical Federal government? Remember, the last time some states tried that, it split the country in half, and a lot of good men died.
VL
I didn’t advocate for revolution and wouldn’t. I was stating a historical fact, well supported by things the men who wrote our Constitution wrote and said. The Civil War was the test case, if you will, where states rights died. Until then, the issue was far from settled. What I wrote regarding the purpose of the 2nd Amendment was in specific response to something written about what the founders would have thought about the 2nd amendment now by our Australian friend. It was not intended as a comment on current events.
No revisionism. That’s a trick of the left. We conservatives like facts. They can be less convenient at first, but in the long run it’s easier to deal with them then deny them. You guys on the left might take some notes on that, by the way. The United States or Brittain or France or Spain were going to expand into what is now the American West. It was historically entirely inevitable. The local tribal cultures did not have the organization or firepower to stop the European powers, even had they not been decimated by infectious disease. Had it been any of the other 3 powers they’d have adopted less seemingly humane, but wiser policies of total subjugation of conquered peoples. We tried to be nice, tried to compromise, and have paid for it ever since. It would have been more humane in the long run to treat them as the conquered people they were instead of fighting ridiculous legal battles for the last century and a half. We attempted to help the native cultures ignore an unpleasant reality, that their way of life was over. This never works.
@152: “In defeating the native people of this continent we allowed them to retain reserved land and citizenship in their tribes, where any sane policy would have treated them as the conquered nations they were and forced them to become a part of the conquering culture.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherokee_re…
“No revisionism. That’s a trick of the left. We conservatives like facts.”
Then from whence comes the Southern revisionism pertaining to the American Civil War, painting it as a “War of Northern Aggression”, and minimizing the issue of slavery? From whence is derived the myth of the “Obama Recession”? And from whence hails the immaterial specter of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction? If all conservatives loved facts as much as you say they do, we wouldn’t have our young men and women dying in Iraq right now. Also, with regard to the atrocities inflicted upon the Native Americans by the USA, I’m glad to see that you follow the policy of “if not us, someone else would have”. How very principled and moralistic you are!
@Seattleblues, you wear rose-tinted glasses. Simply stating something is “historical fact” does not make it “fact”. The history you present is more truthy than it is truthful. Your history glorifies Manifest Destiny, American Exceptionalism, and Jingoism. Your history is sanitized and tribal. Perhaps Venomlash or another Slogger has the time or energy to once more explain American expansionism and colonialism, but I don’t.
Regarding the politics of denialist historical revisionism, the school boards of blue states aren’t the ones redacting, distorting, and inserting lies into our children’s textbooks. See @153.
@152: “We conservatives like facts.” Dude, have you ever watched FOX News?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wounded_Kne…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trail_of_te…
That’s kindness?
“We attempted to help the native cultures ignore an unpleasant reality, that their way of life was over.” Yes, it was over because they were slaughtered by invading armies. Colonialism or industrialism or even sedentary agriculture are not inevitable, they’re simply some forms of human societies. There are extant pastoral societies. The paternalistic “for their own good” attitude you’re expressing concerning colonialism is nothing short of disgusting.
As for state militias: the intent was to allow states to maintain armed forces to put down counter-revolutionary forces in a time when long-distance travel was difficult and time-consuming, and when population densities were much lower, and communities and cities much smaller, such that people within a given area had personal connections to one another that would discourage the sort of stranger-violence/collateral damage we see now.
From #145: “But we have been generally a force for good in the world.” Good for whom? The indigenous peoples of this continent and numerous Pacific islands? Not so much. Good for African and Asian nations caught in the struggle between USA and USSR? No. Good for the Africans captured and sold as slaves to work plantations here? Certainly not. Good for Latin America, mandating policies that bankrupt their states and fueling a drug war that’s escalating into anarchy in some parts of Mexico right now? Hardly. Good for the citizens or Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Hoo boy. Good for all of the slave-laborers “employed” by USA-born multinational corporations, driven by our ravenous consumerism? Fuck you.
Good for middle-class to wealthy people of European descent? You betcha!
We haven’t “generally” been anything; we have specifically been very good and very bad for different groups of people. The very good is mostly for people in positions of privilege here and elsewhere.
@132: Ala Derecha; El Español requiere acuerdo con el género de los sustantivos y adjetivos.
@152:
I didn’t advocate for revolution and wouldn’t. I was stating a historical fact, well supported by things the men who wrote our Constitution wrote and said. The Civil War was the test case, if you will, where states rights died. Until then, the issue was far from settled. What I wrote regarding the purpose of the 2nd Amendment was in specific response to something written about what the founders would have thought about the 2nd amendment now by our Australian friend. It was not intended as a comment on current events.
No revisionism. That’s a trick of the left. We conservatives like facts. They can be less convenient at first, but in the long run it’s easier to deal with them then deny them.
That’s total revisionist bullshit.
1). The second amendment has little to do with States rights against the Federal government as the Federal government HAD NO ARMY with which to oppress anyone. There was to be NO standing army, only organized militias, which would be called up by the Federal government only upon a declaration of war or actual invasion or rebellion.
2).The Civil War was NOT the first test case. It was the second. The first test case was called the Constitutional Convention, and the US Constitution came out of that. Perhaps you completely forgot the Articles of Confederation which posited a very weak federal government, and it was unmanageable, hence the Constitution. The entire PURPOSE of the Constitution ENDED the states-rights argument. And when it became convenient again during the civil war, and again during Jim Crow, over and over again the US Constitution stands supreme, and thank God for that.
@128:
Based on what I found here, Naturalizations in the US 2008, that’s a very curious assertion. In 2008, the percentage of Mexicans who were naturalized was 0.22%. The total number of Europeans naturalized divided by just the number of people in Germany and France was 0.08%. If you included the population of the UK, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the Benelux countries, Switzerland and the Scandinanvian counties in the denominator, that percentage would be much lower. A person from Mexico would have a much greater chance of becoming a legal immigrant that someone from Norway, or any other European country. In 2006, the percentage of Mexicans naturalized was much lower, 0.08%, but it was still higher than the 0.07% of Europeans based, again, solely on the populations of France & Germany.
That’s a statistically fallacious argument because many fewer people are trying to immigrate to the US from these countries. The denominator is not the population of the countries, but the number of people trying to immigrate to the US. And that makes it effectively impossible to immigrate legally from a country like Mexico.
I know nothing about the particulars of any English-as-an-official language proposals in the U.S., but I have a hard time believing that any of them attempt to “regulate what language you speak.” Americans in France are free to speak English but that doesn’t mean they can go to the local Post Office and demand that the clerks communicate with them in English.
First, it’s important to understand that the US as functionally usually operated in English, but many cases it did not. All of our street signage for instance, is designed to be identifiable by people who can’t read, from a time when most people were illiterate. Government always has a need to be able to communicated with its constituents, and sometimes that costs money.
I’m not sure where you’re coming from, but in places all over the US languages are used for all kinds of reasons, some kind of important. In transit systems or at airports for instances, maps, signs, and guides are often printed in multiple languages so people can figure them out as they’re traveling. In hospitals, interpreters are often provided for so that doctors can communicate with their patients and figure out what’s wrong with them (life and death). In emergencies, government announcements or literature often includes multiple languages. Ballots, ballot instructions, and voters guides are available in many languages allowing those who cannot read english, and those who don’t speak english but are US Citizens, the ability to vote as is their Constitutional right should they so choose.
For another example just in the last several years here in Seattle, there was an ongoing problem of African immigrants accustomed to cooking stoves and burning fires in open huts using charcoal grilles and stoves inside their homes when it got really cold completely unaware of the dangers of carbon-monoxide poisoning. This may seem obvious to you and I, but to someone who has never encountered this in their life before, it isn’t. Quite a few actually died because of this, and a big push was made by public health into these communities to pass out literature in various languages warning them of the dangers of burning fires inside.
English-only laws would dramatically restrict these government actions. And aside from certain public-health or emergency exceptions, most of these kinds of normal communications between government and people would be eliminated. The result would be direct harm on all of those people and those communities who either can’t read/write in English (including some native-born American citizens), and others who simply don’t speak English.
Be that as it may, I have no problem with my tax dollars being used to make it easier for new immigrants who don’t speak English to communicate with government.
Some people do, and they want to make life miserable for any foreigners who are living here by making it impossible for them to figure out anything unless they are fluent in English.
@153 and 154
My history doesn’t glorify anything. It states simple facts. European expansion into North and South America spelled the end for the local cultures. A combination of infectious disease, lack of cultural homogeneity, and superior technology on the part of the Europeans together with the prevalent notion at the time that areas not occupied by Europeans were open to colonization meant the end for indigenous cultures as they existed prior to 1492.
I made no value statement about this, except to say that the local tribes were treated far better under American expansion than they would have been under British or French or Spanish. If you don’t believe this, look at the fate of the Inca or Aztec people under the Conquistadors. We weren’t angels. We behaved poorly at times. But our biggest mistake was to sign a single treaty with a single native tribe. Once clear victory was attained over a tribe the pretense of indidgenous sovereignty was and remains an unhumorous joke. Your link to the grotesque effects that policy had simply illustrates that fact. Treaties were stupid. Had the Cherokee been treated as a vanquished people they would have assimilated or died, like any other conquered people in history. (Assuming Wikipedia to be factually correct, which is a fairly large leap. I love the premise of that site. Get a lot of ignorant people to share their ignorance and somehow you’ll get better facts. Twain would have had a lot of fun with that notion.)
Indigenous cultures were quite simply surprisingly short on luck. Genetically, they were uniquely susceptible to European disease, with surprisingly little variation across the North and South American continents. Not through malice but through pure ill luck the local populations were decimated, with mortality rates as high as 90% continent wide. Some estimate even higher. Put into perspective, the plague in Europe is usually estimated to have had about a 30 to 40 percent mortality rate. Overstating the cultural effect of this would be nearly impossible. At the least, resistance to an incoming military force bent on colonization would have been beyond indigenous peoples. Add the presence of firearms, horses, wheeled vehicles and so on and the impetus to colonization becomes unstoppable. The local people never stood a chance.
It might be interesting to consider what this continent would look like had the Iriquois or Meso American or Inca people been able to retain their land. But it isn’t historical. It’s like wondering what would have happened had Chamberlain stopped Hitler at Poland, or had Alexander lived to 50. It makes for interesting conversations over coffee, but has nothing to do with the real world.
@128:
What am I missing here? How do you reconcile your assertion with this document from the Migration Policy Institue (“an independent, nonpartisan, and nonprofit think tank dedicated to the study of the movement of people worldwide”) which says…
I’m not understanding what you’re getting at here. There are many millions who wish to immigrate to the US from Mexico, the line is absurdly long, and many people have been waiting for many many years. Many more simply give up on the wait and come here illegally.
It’s my understanding that there is an alternative. Not an easy one, but one nevertheless. Again, if it’s really true that it’s virtually impossible to Mexicans to immigrate to the U.S. legally, as you are claiming, then show me something that supports that. I’m willing to be educated, but I’m not willing to believe what you say is true simply because you say it.
What alternative is that?
The Green Card lottery provides only 55,000 total Green Cards per year to randomly selected applicants from various countries with a limit of I think 25K per any one country. If you are in Mexico, the wait list is nearly a decade, and you may not get in at all.
To have any realistic chances, you need to be an immediate relative of a citizen, or have very high skills or training in a preferred worker field, etc.
Otherwise, you have to wait for years and years.
@130 It really doesn’t make sense to me to allow citizenship rights to someone who broke the laws coming here: no illegal immigrant is a “law-abiding citizen”.
Okay, let’s be equally absolutist. Have you ever had a parking ticket? Or gotten a ticket for speeding? Or fudged your taxes a little bit?
It makes no sense to allow someone who broke the law to maintain their citizenship rights. I think anybody who has ever broken any law should have their citizenship revoked and be deported to some random country, lets say Syria just for shits and giggles.
Why the objection to the “anchor baby” term? Doesn’t it seem unfair to grant citizenship to a baby whose mother illegally crossed the border just to give birth?
Two reasons:
1) IT IS IN THE FUCKING CONSTITUTION.
2) “Anchor baby” goes much further, because of the word ANCHOR. The whole conception of this is that if you come here illegally and have a child, then you have some TOOL that allows you to somehow gain citizenship for yourself and thus game the system just by the fact that you had a kid here, who per the Constitution is a US citizen.
And that’s a load of bullshit, because it isn’t true at all. The child’s citizenship doesn’t affect you at all. The child has to be an adult (21yo) before they can even APPLY for citizenship for the parents.
So as far as using the term in a derogatory way, it’s completely nonsensical bullshit.
Because if that is ACTUALLY happening, I can see NOTHING more dedicated, sacrificial, and patriotic than somebody trying to make a living for their family for TWENTY ONE YEARS, simply for the CHANCE to live legally in the United States.
If that isn’t evidence of sacrifice and dedication to the US, I fucking don’t know what is.
The federal government had no armed forces. Gee, why do you think that might have been? The states had armies of their own. Interesting. Have you read the Federalist Papers? The letters between Jefferson and Adams, or Adams and his wife, or Jefferson and the many people with whom he corresponded on the subject of the Constitution.
Yes, the second Convention produced a stronger government in 1789 than the Articles of Confederation had done. But these men were very wary of federal power, and very conscious that many of their friends had died in the recent war for independence. Yet people like you continue to believe that these men, these men for God’s sake who had risked their lives and property and families for independence, supported the kind of benign tryanny you espouse? Good lord, what fools these leftists be.
You really are an idiot that has apparently not read one single reputable history of this nation. (Howard Zens anti American bigotry is propaganda, not history. And it appears to be the only thing you’ve read.) States rights is still an issue in the federal courts, and the exact limit of federal power is an ongoing point of contention.
On one occasion (after the second Constitutional convention) a state army beseiged Congress. They demanded pay before they would leave the Capitol. And they won.
You are the revisionist. In your hatred for this country you seek any twising of fact to make it look poorly. You cry racism when we attempt to control who enters our country, or who holds citizenship here. This despite clear evidence shown to you by Roma that white or black, mexican or Norwegian, the numbers clearly say the ‘brown’ folks are the ones immigrating here in any real numbers.
You want with everything in you to believe us to be a bad people and a bad place. Well, move the hell out then. No-one is forcing you to stay here. I hear Germany is nice to live in, and I know Italy is. Canada does everything right, according to the anti-patriots of the left. For my money, I like what liberties we retain here, but I actually love my country and think it a pretty good place to live, unlike you.
Captain Wig-out
Remove ideology from the immigration question, and view it from a viewpoint of economics and national soveriegnty, and you might actually start making sense.
You make the assumption that everyone has an innate right to United States citizenship, regardless of what citizenship they currently hold, what they offer this country, or whether they broke our laws to come here illegally. There is not one nation in history that has accepted that notion. Every single nation that had a concept of legal citizenship has also believed that they had the right to determine who holds it.
And there are good reasons for this. In skilled industries, wages have fallen due to competetion from those who will work for less just to have a job. With all the chatter from the left about wage stagnation, this isn’t a legitimate area of government interest? We simply don’t have enough jobs even for those now living here, never mind for anyone who wishes to come. The effect of the unrestrained migration you advocate would be the continuation of lowering wages for American workers.
We have a right to our borders, like every other nation on earth. Who comes here is our business, not predicated on the need of the immigrant. We have a right to say that those who can care for themselves or have relatives who will do so take precedence over the indigent with no means to do so. We have a right to say that only those with necessary skills to offer our economy can come.
That’s the way it’s been done and will continue to be done, irrational calls from folks like you notwithstanding.
@161:
Yes, the second Convention produced a stronger government in 1789 than the Articles of Confederation had done. But these men were very wary of federal power, and very conscious that many of their friends had died in the recent war for independence. Yet people like you continue to believe that these men, these men for God’s sake who had risked their lives and property and families for independence, supported the kind of benign tryanny you espouse? Good lord, what fools these leftists be.
I’m sorry, when did Federalism become “benign tyranny?”
Maybe we could deduce something from the FIRST SENTENCE of Federalist #1:
After a full experience of the insufficiency of the existing federal government, you are invited to deliberate upon a new Constitution for the United States of America.
Gee, I dunno, do you think maybe the entire purpose of the Constitution was to strengthen a weak and ineffectual Federal government that under the Articles of Confederation was unable to properly manage the relationships among the various states?
In Federalist 9, Hamilton takes great pains to explain that while they are clearly increasing the power of the Federal government over an explicitly subordinate confederation of states, that state governments are nonetheless not abolished, but an integral part of a federal government.
In Federalist 15, he describes the weakness and ineffectual nature of the federal government victims to the whims of the various states and their disagreements, and describes: “… the frail and tottering edifice seems ready to fall upon our heads, and to crush us beneath its ruins.
So why don’t you calm the fuck down and stop straw-manning me with a bunch of rambling bullshit that flies in the face of middle-school history.
You want with everything in you to believe us to be a bad people and a bad place. Well, move the hell out then. No-one is forcing you to stay here. I hear Germany is nice to live in, and I know Italy is. Canada does everything right, according to the anti-patriots of the left. For my money, I like what liberties we retain here, but I actually love my country and think it a pretty good place to live, unlike you.
Classic. This is my favorite refuge of fools without any argument.
Ad hominem attacks, accusations of ignorance, and then accusals that people who disagree hate America and should simply go somewhere else.
Well fuck you, I my well-worn copy of The Federalist sits on my desk, mainly because I’m sick of clueless windbags like yourself screaming and bitching about things they’ve never understood and don’t know anything about.
So you morons who are screaming and bitching about endless states rights can have your stupid state coins and state flowers and fuck off. 1865 is OVER. And until you successfully abolish the national standing army first, and take that as the #1 over-reach of federal power, then fuck off. It’s the same uneducated rambling bullshit excuse to allow the good-ol-boys their lynching fun-times.
@162: You make the assumption that everyone has an innate right to United States citizenship, regardless of what citizenship they currently hold, what they offer this country, or whether they broke our laws to come here illegally.
No, I most certainly do not. You can’t point to any example of me stating that because I didn’t say that and I don’t think that.
Nice try.
And there are good reasons for this. In skilled industries, wages have fallen due to competetion from those who will work for less just to have a job. With all the chatter from the left about wage stagnation, this isn’t a legitimate area of government interest?
That sounds like socialist control of a free economy to me, and the restriction of unfettered markets and the freedom to compete in the marketplace, doesn’t it?
We have a right to our borders, like every other nation on earth. Who comes here is our business, not predicated on the need of the immigrant.
Of what native tribe are you a 100% pure-blooded member?
@160: I’m missing something here. You seem to think we should have the same standards for letting someone become a citizen as for the people who are already here. We’re not going to kick out a US citizen for a traffic ticket, or even a serious crime, but that doesn’t mean we should take in a non-citizen with similar problems. And violating immigration laws is a lot more serious than just a traffic ticket. More to the point, it’s not just any law that illegal immigrants broke, it’s the immigration rules: why should breaking the immigration rules give you an immigration advantage? Given that we can only allow a limited number of new citizens, shouldn’t we prioritize the ones who followed the immigration rules?
As far as the term “anchor baby” goes, I hadn’t even thought of it as referring to the parents of the newly born citizen, but you are correct that it is misleading to think of the baby as an anchor used to sneak the parents in. I’m more concerned with allowing the baby to be a citizen when the parents weren’t in the country legally. As far as it being in the Constitution, the 14th Amendment was intended specifically to overrule Dred Scott and make sure that former slaves were citizens, not to apply to immigration. Its language doesn’t clearly apply to people illegally in the country. In fact, it specifically limits its granting of citizenship to those “born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” It’s not clear that illegal immigrants are subject to the US’s jurisdiction for purposes of the 14th Amendment.
@165 Regarding your comment “I’m more concerned with allowing the baby to be a citizen when the parents weren’t in the country legally.”: the 14th Amendment is VERY clear. Any person born in the US is a citizen. Period. The baby’s parents’ legal status has no bearing on the baby’s citizenship. Period.
The 14th Amendment’s language may not have had immigrant citizenship in mind, but who the fuck cares? The 1st Amendment wasn’t originally designed to protect crush videos but the Supreme Court has decided that it does. We have long since extrapolated beyond the original intent of our key legal documents because situations exist today that didn’t when they were written yet these documents still offer philosophical guidance.
@158: “I made no value statement about this, except to say that the local tribes were treated far better under American expansion than they would have been under British or French or Spanish.”
SB, for someone who enjoys belittling the shortcomings of “liberal education” you yourself seem very misinformed on a number of key points.
While I don’t dispute your characterization of the Spanish conquest, you are completely wrong in your assertion that “the local tribes were treated far better under American expansion than they would have been under British or French.” While there were certainly clashes between native North Americans and the French, there was also a great deal of co-operation. Economics demanded it – the French (and later British) colonial economy in Canada was based on the fur trade, and co-operation with the local tribes was essential. (This led to the creation of an entirely new indiginous group, the Metis). The French and Indian War was so called because those two groups co-operated in fighting the British (soon to be American) colonists. (Similarly, native groups fought beside the British against the Americans during the War of 1812).
During the expansion into the West from the mid-19th century, there was far more conflict south of the 49th parallel than north. Canada’s expansion was not blameless, as the histories of the Red River and Northwest Rebellions show, but there is nothing in our history to match the Trail of Tears or Wounded Knee.
All that to say that if you honestly believe that “the local tribes were treated far better under American expansion than they would have been under British or French” then you are clearly ignorant of history – both Canada’s and your own.
@165: You were missing that I covered that in #121. It’s a long thread, understandable. I think its a noncontroversial position that people already in line and following the rules not already here illegally should have priority over those already here, not just for granting visas, but probably for permanent citizenship as well.
I agree that it would not be just to allow those who came here illegally the right to remain legally before all those who chose to await the byzantine visa process.
AS far as: It’s not clear that illegal immigrants are subject to the US’s jurisdiction for purposes of the 14th Amendment.
I don’t know how it can be any more clear. Everyone born in the United States is a citizen of the United States. The sentence has no caveats or exceptions:
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
This amendment has been tested in court several times, and it has been unambiguously interpreted to mean exactly what it says in plain english. Everyone who happens to be born in the United States, slave, immigrant, or otherwise, is a United States citizen (with very few exceptions for diplomats functioning in official capacity for a foreign gov, etc.):
“…the American citizenship which Wong Kim Ark acquired by birth within the United States has not been lost or taken away by anything happening since his birth.”
United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898)
If one wanted to change the plain language of that sentence, it would require a Constitutional Amendment. That’s fine, but it’s an uphill battle that’s for sure.
1/3 of the pop in our federal prisons are illegal immigrants, why aren’t libs concerned about that crime?
@169: Nice try.
Most crimes committed are against the states. A crime is only a federal offense if it directly involves the federal government or one of its on-duty employees, or if it crosses state lines in some way. As such, federal prisons only make up about 1/8 of the total prison population of the country. Since immigration is solely the responsibility of the federal government, the various states cannot and do not imprison persons convicted of immigration-related offenses.
Stop mindlessly spewing whatever sound bites you hear on the TV or your favorite news site, and try actually thinking for yourself.