From the fine folks in California who want to crucify illegal immigrants and also set up a Bear Patrol comes this:

The plan: a California ballot initiative that would end public benefits for illegal immigrants, cut off welfare payments for their children and impose new rules for birth certificates.

The 14th Amendment states that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the State wherein they reside.” Backers of the initiative argue that illegal residents are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and that, as a result, their U.S.-born children should not be citizens.

Key paragraph is the last one, because unsurprisingly, the idiots backing this have no idea what they’re talking about. “Subject to the jurisdiction thereof” means that the laws of the United States are applicable to them. Last I checked, if an illegal immigrant committed a crime, he was still criminally liable for the punishment.

(For the sake of comparison, when the amendment was being discussed after the Civil War, the chief area of concern was how this would apply to members of Indian nations who were not American citizens; those living within Indian territory would not be subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and therefore not citizens. It was actually written specifically to avoid naturalizing Indians who didn’t have citizenship and didn’t want it. This is the rare moment where a coincidence people would call “ironic” is actually ironic!)

The Quitbull in her brand new Wall Street Journal Washington Post op-ed that she totally wroted herself:

There is no denying that as the world becomes more industrialized, we need to reform our energy policy and become less dependent on foreign energy sources. But the answer doesn’t lie in making energy scarcer and more expensive! Those who understand the issue know we can meet our energy needs and environmental challenges without destroying America’s economy.

Well, here’s the thing. Those who understand the energy issue – hell, those who look at it for more than five minutes – know that the central problem is that energy is getting scarcer and more expensive all by itself.

There just isn’t enough oil to go around. “Drill, baby, drill” aside, there’s no realistic way to keep oil production stable in even the short term, let alone increase it. We’re losing the equivalent of 400 wells every day; that’s how much oil production is dropping. New conventional sources like offshore deposits in Brazil are ridiculously hard – and expensive – to drill, and unconventional deposits like tar sands or shale basically need so much energy to make oil it’s a net deficit.

Natural gas? Canada has some of the largest natural gas reserves left in the world, and we estimate we have about 25 years’ worth left. Barring illness or sudden death, everybody reading this will likely live to see the end of large-scale natural gas production on the planet.

Now, the usual rejoinder is “oh yeah well COAL buddy.” But estimates of remaining coal supplies have shrunk every time they’ve been comprehensively studied because it turns out every chance people have gotten they’ve dramatically overestimated the amount of coal that’s actually left; at current levels of production we have 144 years of coal left. In 2000, we thought we had 277 years’ worth. And of course, that figure is only good for the amount of coal we’re digging up right now; if we dramatically increased production worldwide, say to replace all the oil we can’t drill any more, it would be more like 30 years’ worth.

(Ironically, it turns out that we probably have just exactly enough carbon-based fossil fuels left in the ground to completely fuck over our climate.)

Now, we essentially have two options. One is that we can do nothing and get fucked. Sarah Palin is a fan of this method, because there is plenty of evidence that she loves to A) do nothing and B) get fucked, but also because she is a notoriously stupid woman who doesn’t know shit about anything, least of all the actual scarcity upon which her state’s wealth is premised. The second option is increasing the cost of energy use, both because we need to condition people to use less energy (and more wisely), and because we need a lot of funds generated to create the new energy infrastructure we needed to start building twenty years ago. That’s the purpose of cap-and-trade (or a carbon tax, if you prefer).

The rest of the article is the usual Palin bullshit, but one claim in particular is worth mentioning:

The Americans hit hardest will be those already struggling to make ends meet. As the president eloquently puts it, their electricity bills will “necessarily skyrocket.” So much for not raising taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year.

It is worth noting that the Congressional Budget Office estimates that cap and trade will cost the average American household $175 per year – or about 47 cents a day. The CBO released this report less than two months ago; it’s not really something that someone who “understands the issue” should not know about.

I was gonna do a sarcastic thing about Sally Kern blaming economic strife on teh gays, but Karen beat me to it.

Bitch is crazy.

A while back, one of my commenters asked me why I had such a low opinion of Michael Ignatieff, the Liberal party “leader” here in Canada. The events of the last few weeks have demonstrated why my opinion of Ignatieff as “useless limpdick” is precisely correct.

Some background for non-Canadians. Things here right now are not exactly peachy, much like in the rest of the world. (We’re better off to an extent because our banks weren’t allowed under Canadian law to take the Debt-Gambling Plunge of Death ™ that the rest of the world’s banks so eagerly performed. Interestingly, the reason for this is because under Paul Martin, the then-government-leading Liberal party decided it was a bad idea, despite intense lobbying from the banks and the Tories – including Stephen Harper – to remove those restrictive laws. Why nobody mentions this any more is something I do not quite understand.)

Long story short: the Harper government claims that their stimulus spending is very successful. This is despite most of the stimulus spending actually having been used for capital investment or job creation or, you know, actual stimulus type things. That in turn is because the Harper Tories are frankly pretty shit at their jobs. Now, one of the ways government can spend money very efficiently to create immediate economic stimulus is to boost employment insurance benefits.1 Ignatieff wanted the government to boost EI payments, because the unemployed turn right around and spend the money and it makes the economy go wham. Harper did not want to boost EI payments, because then the government would be giving money to jobless people, and that makes Tories cry.

When Harper said this, Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe immediately said they’d vote no-confidence in the government again, because they hate the Tories like poison anyway and this was just another opportunity to make that point. Ignatieff, however, decided to play chicken with Stephen Harper and say “I want W, X, Y and Z or I will topple your government.” This was moronic, because there is absolutely nothing that Harper likes better than getting to have an election and blame other people for it. Ignatieff was essentially promising to give Stephen Harper what he loved best – or else!

Now this in and of itself would be questionable, but the bigger problem is that Ignatieff decided to play chicken without having the balls to go all the way with it. Because what happened? Stephen Harper said “no,” and Ignatieff caved. Caving is what Ignatieff does. He’s been doing it ever since he became the party leader. Partly he’s been doing it because his support within the party comes from the big Bay Street wing of the party that has whatever money the Liberals still have left, and they want things handled a Certain Way. But mostly he’s been doing it because he is, as previously stated, a useless limpdick who wants to be seen as “reasonable.” So he had a Big Secret Meeting with Harper, and came out and said that the Liberals would support the Tories.

Understand: ten days ago, the Liberals were steamrollering the Tories in Ontario and Quebec polls. (Which, for the Liberals, are really the only ones that matter; if they pick up seats it’s going to be in central Canada, not in the East or West.) Now they’re back to dead even when the country really doesn’t like Harper that much. And why is this?

It’s because Michael Ignatieff is a useless limpdick. Nobody wants to vote for a chickenshit, and Michael Ignatieff is the worst kind of political chickenshit. Stephen Harper isn’t, regardless of whatever other faults he may have. That’s why he survives.

Top comment: Looking at the comments, I can’t help but notice that even Canada’s failures will forever be looked upon as cheap imitations of U.S. failures. — Benman

1. Here in Canada, we have “employment insurance” and welfare. The former is essentially something you pay into every month, and then if you lose your job you get some money for a while in place of a paycheque. The latter is classic welfare. What is being discussed here is employment insurance. [↩]

You may not have been aware that there was an election in India yesterday, but there was. And here’s the good news: there is good news! Mostly because the BJP, which stands for something in Hindi that I believe translates to “fuck all Muslims everywhere,” got soundly hammered by the Congress party coalition, representing basically the sober centrist middle of Indian politics (and which is home to the latest iteration of the Gandhi political dynasty, Rahul Gandhi).

So now you may discuss this with your friends over coffee and seem knowledgeable. You are welcome!

Did you follow the whole Michelle Malkin/Antonia Zerbisias drama over the last week? No? Then I have you covered over at Torontoist.

Has announced his retirement from the Supreme Court, and a reader emailed me for reaction. My immediate reactions are twofold:

1.) Although it’s no surprise, because Souter is well-known for not particularly liking the DC culture and it’s been general scuttlebutt that he was tired of the Supreme Court five years ago but wasn’t willing to retire because of a certain president likely replacing him with a nutjob, it’s also a bit of a shame. Souter is a really, really good judge, not just because he has a fantastic legal mind (and he does), but because I’ve always found his decisions and dissents are so effortlessly readable, even for a non-legally minded sort. That’s a skill many lawyers and jurists undervalue.

He was also pretty consistently one of the serious civil libertarians on the Supreme Court, often writing decisions or dissents against the death penalty and consistently one of the most interested in prisoners’ rights. These are important issues that don’t often find champions at the highest level of the judiciary in any country.

2.) I would be very surprised if anybody gets the nod to be his replacement over Sonia Sotomayor of the 2nd Circuit Court. I personally wouldn’t mind seeing Margaret McKeown or especially Kim McLane Wardlaw as the nominee, but both are Ninth Circuit judges and therefore guaranteed to elicit total goddamned psychosis from the right wing. (Granted, that’s going to happen regardless, but there are degrees of this sort of thing.) Sotomayor is moderate and well-respected, nominated to the Appeals Court by George W. Bush, and she’s both a woman and would be the first Hispanic-American nominated to the Supremes. (So would Wardlaw, but them’s the breaks.)

The only other high-profile potential nominees who seem to qualify in most of the areas Sotomayor does are Diane Pamela Wood and Elena Kagan. Wood is from Chicago and would therefore suffer both the “OMG corrupt Chicago” attacks and the “hometown Obama nepotism” attacks. Kagan is terrifyingly smart but hasn’t enough public service under her belt yet, which is probably why she took the job as Solicitor General – she’s being given a seasoning of public service before her nomination. (There is NO WAY Obama doesn’t nominate her before the end of his first term.)

And neither Wood nor Kagan would be particularly “historic,” so – yeah, it’s probably Sotomayor.

Top comment: Predictions:

5: Michael Steele will make no less than three attacks on the nominee using slang that went out of style with Boy George. — plus C

Vermont legislature overrides governor’s veto to legalize gay marriage.

Particularly notable because this didn’t involve a judicial ruling; it’s the first recognition of same-sex marriage rights entirely initiated by the legislature. Well done.

(This should not be considered a rebuke of “judicial activism,” because that would be idiotic.)

George Galloway plans to sue Jason Kenney, Bernie Faber and CTV.

Okay, Glenn Beck is a crazy dumbass, we all knew that. But, notwithstanding the suggestion that G20 protestors and anti-taxation “Tea Partiers” are on the same wavelength despite not having anything in ideological common with one another at all except that they are displeased by something their governments are doing – seriously, each side’s likely solution to the problems they feel government is failing to address would likely enrage the other even further – I have to take issue with something else here.

Glenn Beck claims at about the 2:20 mark that the emblem of a fasces on the Mercury Dime is proof that the United States has been marching towards fascism since 1916 (possibly earlier, since he also blames Teddy Roosevelt, who left office in 1909). However, fascism itself was only invented, essentially, with the party platform of the Italian National Fascist Party in 1921.

So my guess is that he’s arguing that the Obama Administration are not only fascists, but that they are time-traveling fascists! And we all know that time-traveling fascists are the worst kind of fascists, because they give cavemen armbands!

Now, of course, this raises the question of whether Doctor Who has fascist sympathies.

Top comment: I bet Obama used his time travelling secret powers to assassinate JFK. Of course, Obama didn’t use a gun, but instead killed JFK with “bullets” made from pure Anti-American Liberalism. — Andrew W.

Matt Taibbi’s rant about the infamous “DeSantis letter” in the New York Times.

Republicans introduce bill that would require all ISPs and Wifi providers to keep two-year logs of all use.

Comment of the thread: The Republicans said that if the Democrats got elected, the government would take away everyone’s rights, but I had assumed they meant the other party would be responsible. — plus C

Bob Rae to Stephen Harper.