Thursday, September 18, 2008

Obama calls upon his supporters to "get in [the] face[s]" of those who are skeptical about him:

"I need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors. I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in their face," he said.

"And if they tell you that, 'Well, we're not sure where he stands on guns.' I want you to say, 'He believes in the Second Amendment.' If they tell you, 'Well, he's going to raise your taxes,' you say, 'No, he's not, he's going lower them.' You are my ambassadors. You guys are the ones who can make the case."

But what does Obama's belief in the Second Amendment mean?

The Chicago Tribune has a story about the way Obama's campaign is using the internet to get in the faces of radio and TV stations that air the views (either on television shows or through advertisements) of certain critics of Obama.

Meanwhile, the campaign gets in the face of McCain in a Spanish-language ad that combines some (misleadingly out-of-context) quotations from Rush Limbaugh with attacks upon John McCain for having "two faces" on the immigration issue. Limbaugh accuses Obama of "stoking racism."

George Will urges McCain to argue that voters should support him for the sake of divided government. Interestingly, Will also believes that an Obama presidency with a Democratic Congress would lead to the reinstatement of the "fairness doctrine":
The 22nd Amendment will banish the president in January, but Congress will then be even more Democratic than it is now. Does the country really want there to be no check on it? Consider two things that will quickly become law unless McCain is there to veto them or unless -- this is a thin reed on which to depend -- Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has 40 reliable senators to filibuster them to deserved deaths.

The exquisitely misnamed Employee Free Choice Act would strip from workers their right to secret ballots in unionization elections. Instead, unions could use the "card check" system: Once a majority of a company's employees -- each person confronted one on one by a union organizer in an inherently coercive setting -- sign cards expressing consent, the union would be certified as the bargaining agent for all workers. Proving that the law's purpose is less to improve workers' conditions than to capture dues payers for the unions, the law would forbid employers from discouraging unionization by giving "unilateral" -- not negotiated -- improvements in compensation and working conditions.

Unless McCain is president, the government will reinstate the equally misnamed "fairness doctrine." Until Ronald Reagan eliminated it in 1987, that regulation discouraged freewheeling political programming by the threat of litigation over inherently vague standards of "fairness" in presenting "balanced" political views. In 1980 there were fewer than 100 radio talk shows nationwide. Today there are more than 1,400 stations entirely devoted to talk formats. Liberals, not satisfied with their domination of academia, Hollywood and most of the mainstream media, want to kill talk radio, where liberals have been unable to dent conservatives' dominance.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Mickey Kaus draws attention to a pro-"comprehensive" law blog post about the likelihood of "comprehensive reform" during a McCain presidency:
While there are a few areas of agreement between Mr. McCain and Democrats, immigration is the largest issue on which Democrats and McCain agree. While the current Republican Party platform is the most anti-immigrant one in memory, there were news reports that Mr. McCain, who has a long track record of being pro-immigration, tried to make it more immigration-friendly and failed. This is the issue on which he is most likely to stab his party's anti-immigrationist wing in the back both in his political interests and due to his own convictions (Mr. McCain had to fight his party's anti-immigrationists tooth and nail during the Republican primaries). We expect to see almost all of the original McCain-Kennedy bill become law during the first six months of a McCain Presidency. [E.A.]
Mark Krikorian also comments on this analysis.

UPDATE: (via Hot Air) In an interview with Univision, McCain seems to deny voting for any fencing along the southern border and continues to assert his belief in the value of a virtual fence. The interviewer brings up Obama's pledge to immediately introduce "comprehensive immigration reform" if he becomes president (italics added):
-Senator Barack Obama told us in an interview that he would present a comprehensive immigration reform to congress during the first year. Could you match that?

-Sure, I would do it in the first day, but I was the one who led, I was the one who led with Senator (Ted) Kennedy, a great political risk to myself. Senator Obama tried to kill it, because he was doing what the unions wanted. The unions in America do not want a temporary worker program, so Senator Obama came to the floor and had an amendment that would have basically killed immigration reform, because it was a fragile coalition between republicans and democrats. So, don't let Senator Obama get away with saying that he supports comprehensive reform, when he tried to kill it.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Though Obama has pressed the Justice Department to investigate his political opponents, DOJ doesn't sound too supportive of the idea. Malkin posts a report on the matter:

The Justice Department does not pursue criminal investigations of contributors to independent political groups, even when they give $1 million or more and even when their money is solicited based on an appeal to support or oppose a candidate, according to DOJ’s top election crimes official.

“You don’t see a whole lot of cases” where DOJ is looking at independent groups, said Craig Donsanto, the veteran director of the Election Crimes Branch in DOJ’s Public Integrity Section.

Donsanto made his comments Sept. 12 at a conference on corporate political activities in Washington, sponsored by the Practising Law Institute.

Asked directly during a panel discussion at the PLI conference whether he would approve of a case against a hypothetical contributor to a Section 527 group who gave a seven-figure donation based on a request to help or harm the prospects of a particular presidential candidate, Donsanto said, “No.

California's 3rd District Court of Appeal has ruled that the California law giving in-state tuition to "illegal aliens" conflicts with federal law. Eugene Volokh excerpts the key section of the ruling:

[T]he most significant issue [in this case] is whether California’s authorization of in-state tuition to illegal aliens violates a federal law, title 8 of the United States Code (U.S.C.) section 1623, which provides as pertinent:

“Notwithstanding any other provision of law, an alien who is not lawfully present in the United States shall not be eligible on the basis of residence within a State (or a political subdivision) for any postsecondary education benefit unless a citizen or national of the United States is eligible for such a benefit (in no less an amount, duration, and scope) without regard to whether the citizen or national is such a resident.”

The respondents argue the federal statute is not violated for two reasons:

1. Respondents say in-state tuition is not a “benefit” within the meaning of the federal law. For reasons we shall explain, we conclude in-state tuition, which is some $17,000 per year cheaper than out-of-state tuition at UC, is a “benefit” conferred on illegal aliens within the meaning of the federal law.

2. Respondents argue in-state tuition is not granted “on the basis of residence within a state” as required by federal law. Respondents point to the fact that in-state tuition for illegal aliens is based on a student’s having attended a California high school for three or more years and on the student’s having graduated from a California high school or having attained “the equivalent thereof.” As we shall explain, the three-year attendance requirement at a California high school is a surrogate residence requirement. The vast majority of students who attend a California high school for three years are residents of the state of California. Section 68130.5 thwarts the will of Congress manifest in title 8 U.S.C. section 1623.

This ruling revives a class-action lawsuit brought by out-of-state-residents attending state colleges and universities in California. This ruling can be appealed to the California Supreme Court. More on the lawsuit here.