“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.”  — XIV Amendment of the Constitution of the United States

Well that’s a pretty bold statement.  Who am I to say that children of Illegal Aliens are not Citizens upon birth?  I say that because of the part of the Fourteenth Amendment that most people choose to ignore.  It is a two part statement.  The first part concerns being born or naturalized in the United States and the second part states that you must be subject to the jurisdiction thereof.  It’s not either or, the requirement is that both conditions must be met.

We have in the news talk about Lindsey Graham introducing a new Constitutional Amendment to bar children of illegal aliens becoming citizens upon birth.  I don’t think that step is necessary.

Let’s look at the history.  The infamous Dred Scott decision said that no black of African descent could be a citizen of the United States, even if they were freed blacks.  After the Civil War Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 which stated:

“All persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States.”

Prior to the passage of this law, citizenship was conferred on individuals by the states and U.S. citizenship flowed from that.  This law reversed the process.  Why?  Because some southern states could have prevented blacks from becoming U.S. citizens by blocking state citizenship.  By turning it around, they were U.S. citizens first and then citizens of the states in which they lived.  Similar language was included in the Fourteenth Amendment to prevent subsequent Congresses from repealing the 1866 Act.  In the Fourteenth Amendment, the language regarding Indians was dropped.  There were some concerns raised that this would automatically confer citizenship upon Indians, who also had allegiance to their tribes.  Senator Jacob Howard who was the author of the Citizenship clause said this:

“Indians born within the limits of the United States, and who maintain their tribal relations, are not, in the sense of this amendment, born subject to the jurisdiction of the United States.”

Senator Lyman Trumbell, who was Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee agreed, “subject to the jurisdiction thereof {meant} not owing allegiance to anybody else…subject to the complete jurisdiction of the United States.”  Indians were not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States because they owed allegiance, even if only partly, to their tribes.

So if an illegal immigrant comes to the United States and has a child, is that child automatically a United States citizen?  Does this action comply with the Fourteenth Amendment?  To the first part yes, they are born here; but to the second part, no.  The mother is a citizen of her home country and is thus subject to the jurisdiction of that country, not the United States.  Secondly, she is here illegally so she is exempting herself from rather than subjecting herself to, our immigration laws.  As for the child, a newborn can hardly swear allegiance to any country, so in all cases it fails the second part of the Citizenship Clause.  Consider diplomats who may be assigned to the United States.  If the French Ambassodor’s wife has a baby while posted here, is her child not French?

Let’s take another look at the history.  In Elk v Wilkins (1884), the Supreme Court held that a “native Indian who had renounced allegiance to his tribe did not become ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of the United States by virtue of the renunciation.”  It went on to state, “The alien and dependent condition of the members of the Indian Tribes could not be put off at their own will, without the action or assent of the United States.”  So that would mean an illegal alien could not come to the United States and declare in the delivery room, “I renounce my allegiance to [fill in country here],” and then her child would be a citizen.  “Neither the ‘Indian Tribes’ nor ‘individual members of those tribes,’ no more than ‘other foreigners’ can ‘become citizens of their own will.”  In other words there has to be a treaty or other legislation that allows the renunciation.  Congress began extending citizenship to various Indian tribes beginning in 1870.

In a later Supreme Court decision United States v Wong Kim Ark “conferred birthright citizenship to legal residents of the United States.”  It appears that the language of the majority opinion is broad enough to allow interpretation that this also extends to children of illegal aliens, but it should only take a Supreme Court challenge or legislation to clarify the meaning of the Citizenship Clause to do what the authors of that clause originally intended.  There is no need for the arduous process of a Constitutional Amendment.  With the will of the American people as strong as it is for regaining control of the immigration situation, this could be done with a new Congress in January.

Reference: The Heritage Guide to the Constitution, Regnery (Washington, 2005)

Yesterday, at a joint session of Congress, Filipe Calderon the President of Mexico addressed the joint body.  In his address he openly criticized the new immigration law recently passed in Arizona.  This law was passed by a duly elected legislature in Arizona and signed by the governor.  To their great disgrace most, if not all, Democrats as well as President Obama’s cabinet members gave the Mexican president a standing ovation.  These Members of Congress took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic.  Are these Members of Congress going to now claim, well… Mexico is a friend, not an enemy so we can actually help them wipe their feet on the Constitution?

An analysis done by Megyn Kelly, an anchor on Fox News and an attorney, compared federal law and Supreme Court decisions to the new Arizona law. She found that current federal law is tougher than what was recently passed in Arizona.  Under federal law, police can stop anyone for any reason or no reason and ask them for their immigration status.  In Arizona, a police officer can only ask immigration status if, while in the course of stopping the individual for another reason and they suspect the individual may be in the country illegally, for example, if they don’t have a valid driver’s license.  If they can produce a valid driver’s license, the inquiry is over.

So let’s recap.  Existing federal law is tougher than the recently passed Arizona law regarding asking an individual for proof they are here legally.  The federal government is AWOL on enforcing immigration law.  Arizona acted where the federal government failed.  Attorney General Eric Holder calls the Arizona law discriminatory and a potential law suit target, but without actually reading the law.  It is also clear, he does not know the federal laws he has sworn to uphold.  Janet Napolitano also has not read the law and she has a sworn duty to secure the homeland.  She also does not know the federal laws in place that she should be enforcing.  Both of these individuals along with most, if not all, Democrats in Congress give a standing ovation to a foreign head of state who criticizes a properly passed state law.  The whole lot of them are a disgrace to this country and should be booted out of office at the first opportunity.

There comes a time when you have to realize saving face is not worth putting your countrymen at risk.  After the terror attack on Foot Hood, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said:

“The system has worked really very, very smoothly over the course of the past several days,” Janet Napolitano, the Homeland Security secretary said, in an interview on “This Week” on ABC. Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, used nearly the same language on “Face the Nation” on CBS, saying that “in many ways, this system has worked.”

Later, both Napolitano and Gibbs had to “amend” those statements.  After a botched terror attack in New York City, Secretary Napolitano was quick to conclude it was a “one-off”.  No problem folks, it’s all clear.  Later in the day reports were that officials were increasingly seeing international links to the bombing.

What is it with Napolitano and her rush to sound the “all clear”?  Wouldn’t it be prudent to let the investigation lead where it is going to lead?  The last place we need such superficiality is at the Department of Homeland Security.  President Obama should replace her before her next goof leads to serious damage to the country.

The situation down on the Arizona border has reached crisis proportion.  With no help from Washington in defending our borders, the state of Arizona has passed a law that will help it identify illegal immigrants.  This has sparked a controversy because protecting the border is a federal function.  Gee, imagine that, something that is actually in the Constitution that the Obama Administration is supposed to do, they don’t seem to have time for because they are too busy doing what they are prohibited by the Constitution from doing.

This is probably the last thing that Obama wanted.  If he agrees with Arizona he essentially has abdicated his federal responsibility to that state as well as shown he cannot carry out his duties.  If he disagrees with Arizona, he seems to be saying he doesn’t care if Arizona is being overrun by illegals, he wants them here.  So true to form, he punts.  He said he wants the Congress to take up comprehensive immigration reform right away.  What happens in Arizona in the mean time?

Whatever Happened to the Fence?

I have seen a number of estimates on the cost to build the fence along the Mexican border.  Michael Chertoff, former head of the Department of Homeland Security, estimated that a 2,000 mile “state of the art” fence would cost between $4 and $8 billion.  Other estimates range as high as $50 billion.  Didn’t we just squander $787 billion in stimulus money that did nothing?  Why didn’t we take that money and finish the fence?  A real fence like the Israelis put up?  Isn’t there a large amount of the so-called stimulus money unspent?  This is a national security issue.  Why doesn’t this administration get on it?

The other day George Stephanopoulos of ABC News had the temerity to ask President Obama his response to criticism from Sarah Palin on his new nuclear policy.  In his typical haughty way he said:

“Because last I checked,” he added, “Sarah Palin’s not much of an expert on nuclear issues.”

A child on the playground, as Ms. Palin explained, understands nuclear deterrence better than this president.  Tell a child that you can punch me in the nose and I won’t strike back and you’re asking for trouble.  How far along has President Obama’s “let’s all be friends” initiative gotten us?  He is reduced to scolding Iran and saying “this time we really, really mean it,” while Ahmadinejad snickers in his sleeve.

The Turning Tide

Rasmussen has added a feature to go along with their Daily Presidential poll that measures favorability of media reports on President Obama.  What struck me when I looked at them today was that the favorable had dropped below 50%.  Uh-oh, Mr. President, call your office.  If he loses the lame stream media, stick a fork in his presidency, it’s done.

The left is gathering a circular firing squad and first up is Mr. Stephanopoulos himself, as indicated by this account:

“In effect,” wrote Steven Benen of The Washington Monthly, “the ‘GMA’ host was saying, “Some conspicuously unintelligent right-wing media personality said something stupid about a subject she knows nothing about. Mr. President, how do you respond?”

However, Stephanopoulos was having none of it, responding:

“Whatever Steve thinks of Sarah Palin,” he wrote, “she’s a former VP candidate — and potential challenger to President Obama — with a strong following in the GOP. She made a pointed critique of a new Presidential policy. By asking the President for his response, I was doing my job.”

Wow, impertinent questions for President Obama and respect for Sarah Palin, coming from the lame stream media.  This could get very interesting.

When you are waiting for someone an hour can seem like a long time, but when you really want to accomplish something an hour is really not that long.  Here are some things you can’t do in an hour:

1. Run a marathon
2. Watch a feature length movie
3. Read a novel
4. Watch a baseball or football game
5. Make a good batch of chili

However there are some things that you can accomplish in less than an hour, such as:

1. Eat a doughnut
2. Watch a M*A*S*H re-run
3. Walk a mile
4. Take a shower
5. Brush your teeth
6. Take out the garbage
7. Change the oil in your car
8. Order and pick up a pizza
9. Check your e-mail
10. Complete the interrogation of someone named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to blow up a plane using a bomb in his underwear

That’s right #10 was completed in 50 minutes before the FBI decided to read him his Miranda rights and put him into the criminal justice system.  You will probably not be surprised to find out that he soon had a lawyer who advised him to stop speaking to the FBI.  So now if they want him to divulge any information they will have to go the plea bargain route up to and including setting him free.  Aren’t you glad we got rid of Bush and Cheney?  I mean, seriously, don’t you feel safer?

What Did He Know?

Does anyone believe what the Obama administration is telling us that they got everything they could out of this 23 year old novice in 50 minutes.  The kid was definitely talking, so why stop him?  He just got back from Yemen and probably had a wealth of information to give up.  He belongs in Guantanamo.  Are we not, as Obama finally admitted, at war?  Or are we at war, but just not with this guy?  (And by the way, Obama has been in office a year now so why hasn’t he captured Osama bin Laden?  During the campaign he snorted that McCain wouldn’t even follow him to his cave, as if Obama had the address).

Regardless of your position on “enhanced interrogation techniques” and let’s just say you put those aside.  You want to keep this guy where you can interrogate him again and again.  Where you can work to gain his trust, and where you can corroborate other information you find until he has been in your custody so long his information is stale and no longer of use.  Here’s a little secret for the Obama administration… it takes longer than 50 minutes.

An Embarrassment of Incompetence

Close on the heels of Janet Napolitano’s blundering at the helm of the Department of Homeland Security we have this astonishing exchange between Chris Wallace of Fox News Sunday and White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, as reported in the Washington Examiner by Byron York:

On “Fox News Sunday,” host Chris Wallace asked White House spokesman Robert Gibbs whether President Obama was informed of the decision to read Abdulmutallab his Miranda rights before or after it was done. Gibbs avoided the question, saying, “That decision was made by the Justice Department and the FBI, with experienced FBI interrogators.” Gibbs stressed that “Abdulmutallab was interrogated and valuable intelligence was gotten as a result of that interrogation.”

Wallace pressed. “But we now find out he was interrogated for 50 minutes,” he said to Gibbs. “When they came back, he was read his Miranda rights and he clammed up.”

“No,” Gibbs answered. “Again, he was interrogated. Valuable intelligence was gotten based on those interrogations. And I think the Department of Justice and the — made the right decision, as did those FBI agents.”

“Let me just press one last question,” Wallace said. “You really don’t think that if you’d interrogated him longer that you might have gotten more information, since we now know that Al Qaeda in Yemen — ”

“Well, FBI interrogators believe they got valuable intelligence and were able to get all that they could out of him,” Gibbs said.

“All they could?” Wallace asked.

“Yeah,” Gibbs said.”

The Incumbent Protection Act, aka McCain-Feingold, took a big hit yesterday from the Supreme Court.  It is particularly timely with so many incumbents nervously eying the exits.  The McCain-Feingold bill prohibited corporations and unions from “electioneering communications” within in 30 days of a primary, or 60 days of a general election.  Those time limits probably match pretty nicely with when most people start paying close attention to elections.  So if this kind of communication is cut off, who is left with the power of name recognition?  That’s right, the incumbent and that is probably why 90% of incumbents are re-elected.

Outrage on the Left

President Obama immediately came out swinging saying it was a victory for “big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies, and other special interests.”  He somehow overlooked the SEIU union whose president topped the list of visitors to the White House.  Unions will have unfettered communications as well.  Chuck Schumer promises hearings and the Naderite Public Citizen group is proposing a constitutional amendment banning free speech for “for-profit” corporations.  I’ll give you a moment to ponder that; a constitutional amendment to eviscerate the First Amendment.

The Momentum is Building

On April 15 it will be the first anniversary of the Tea Parties that were held across the country.  Let’s raise a cup of tea, that the Ship of Liberty that was foundering on the rocks may at last be turning it’s guns on the enemy and turning the tide of battle.  Virginia, New Jersey, a close loss in NY23, Massachusetts, the First Amendment, the momentum is building.  But let’s not forget the words of Churchill:

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning. — Winston Churchill

Don’t let up until we have our country back.

Has President Obama lost the one skill he has relied upon so heavily?  Has the magic oratory suddenly gone leaden as indicated by his campaign speech for Martha Coakley?

“Here’s my assessment of not just the vote in Massachusetts but the mood around the country — the same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office,” Mr. Obama said. “People are angry and they are frustrated. Not just because of what’s happened in the last year or two years, but what’s happened over the last eight years.” — New York Times, “Obama Trying to Turn Around his Presidency.” – 1/21/2010

Really?  “…what’s happened over the last eight years.”  Is he kidding me?  Does he not remember that Bush was reelected four years ago.  Is this just one more elitist swipe at the “stupid” American people who are so dumb that they don’t even know things are bad for four years such that they reelect their president? When is he going to get off the campaign trail and start governing?  When, with one-fourth of his term over, is he going  to realize this is his gig now, and stop crying about Bush?  The anti-Bush attacks against Scott Brown by Coakley in the closing days of the campaign fell flat.  That doesn’t work anymore.  This isn’t about the last eight years, but about the last twelve months.  The American people are sick of the Democrats trying to spend us into oblivion.

It seems that he may be betting the ranch on the State of the Union address, which runs the risk of Obama fatigue.  President Obama seems to confuse speeches with leadership.  Coming into office with zero executive experience, he let the inmates (Pelosi and Reid) run the asylum.  With the election of Scott Brown, Reid just lost his iron grip and Pelosi may not be far behind.  So what does Obama do?  Give another speech?  He has given more speeches than any president in memory, but there is time for talk and time for action.  But he seems to avoid holding another press conference as the fawning press may be finding its backbone and he doesn’t have an answer for his C-Span promises on the health care debate.

Boxed In

Reid is losing control of the Senate.  He no longer has  a filibuster proof majority and he will probably not get reelected.  He is one very lame duck.  Many of Pelosi’s party in the House see Brown’s stunning victory as a major wake up call.  Any Democrat in the House who is not planning on retiring, will not be eager to sign on to any more far left government takeovers.  So without Reid and Pelosi setting his agenda, and him still stuck in the anti-Bush mode, what can he do?  As charming as he may be, he promised bipartisanship but really wasn’t serious about it, he hasn’t cultivated any  relationships with conservatives.  As Dennis Miller put it on O’Reilly last night, “I hope he’s an ideologue.  If not, it means we have a dolt in the White House.”

President Obama has to realize that the job entails more than him just strutting and fretting his hour upon the stage, and get down to work and that means following Clinton’s lead and working with the Republicans.  There are a lot of ways to improve Health Care without spending  a trillion dollars (e.g., tort reform), stop bashing business when you need business to create jobs, drop cap and trade to fix global warming when oranges are freezing in Florida.

His inexperience continues to glow brightly.  He better figure out what the job entails, quickly, and get busy with it.  The referee just fired the gun signaling the end of the first quarter and Team Obama looks dazed and confused.  Not a good sign, sports fans.

Do you remember the scene in the movie “Saving Private Ryan” where after storming a machine gun nest and losing their medic, the Americans have to deal with how to handle a prisoner they captured?  Some say shoot him on the spot others disagree.  They know they can’t take him with them as he will slow them down.  After much vigorous debate Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) decides to untie him, point him toward the American line and tell him to keep walking, with the hope that he will be captured by the advancing American forces. 

Later in the movie as Miller’s unit is in a pitched battle to the last man, the released German prisoner is among those killing Miller’s men.  After reinforcements arrive to turn the battle in the Americans favor and the remaining Germans surrender, the former prisoner smiles and nods to the soldier in Miller’s unit that acted as translator and argued for sparing him as if to say, “Hey, how’s it goin’ pal?”  The soldier lowers his rifle and kills the German.

I am reminded of this by the current situation with Yemen.  Started under President Bush was the insane idea of releasing enemy combatants where they can find their way back to the battlefield.  This stupid policy was, until recently, going to be accelerated under President Obama.  Either we are at war or we are not.  You can’t fight a war with half measures.  Either you fight it to win or let the enemy have their way.  If we are in a war and we capture the enemy they stay captured until the war is over.  We don’t need a bunch of lawyers standing on the sidelines tapping their foot and their watches and saying, “how much longer are you going to hold these people without charging them?”  Answer: until the war ends or hell freezes over, whichever comes first.

 Is It a War Yet Mr. President?

 Backed into a corner, on his fifth (?) try to explain what his administration is doing on the War on Terror (am I allowed to call it that?), he actually called it a war, at least against Al Qaida.  He has spent the better part of his first year in office giving the back of his hand to the Bush administration.  But after seven years of Bush keeping us safe and two terrorist attacks on our soil this year with Obama at the helm and his poll numbers sinking, he has come to the realization that he owns this now.

The tough Harry Truman talk is nice (“The Buck Stops Here”), but it is just words until you actually do something with the buck that just stopped on your desk.  Why is the spectacularly incompetent Janet Napolitano still drawing a salary?  In Obama’s world it seems to be that what he means when he says the buck stops here is that he is the only one subject to firing and since we can’t fire him, everyone under him keeps on keeping on.  But who appointed these people?  It was Obama.  So he should recognize that he blundered and if the underlings don’t have enough sense to fall on their swords and resign, he should flat out fire them.

 Vacations are Important.  Anti-terrorism, Not So Much

 After the terror attack at Fort Hood, you would think that perhaps President Obama would be a little more responsive to another attempted attack, but hey, he was on an Hawaiian vacation.  Nobel Prize?  Chicago trying to win a bid for the Olympics?  President Obama will travel across the sea for that.  But an attempted attack on America?  Chill, baby, chill.  How about his director of National Counterterrorism, Michael Leiter, taking a ski vacation?  Just because stopping such an attack might be considered counterterrorism and just because that organization just failed miserably at stopping such an attack, and just because we didn’t know why it failed or if another attack might be on the way, why interrupt time with the family over that?  Family time is important, so said his boss. Don’t worry, Mike, we’ll wait.

Behind the Curve

It seems that with each attempt the enemy is one step ahead of us.  So discussions heated up about these new body scanners that can find anything, so it is claimed.  Don’t get me wrong, I am a big advocate of technology, but I guess the real problem is best summed up by one pundit comparing our methods to the Israelis:

“The Israelis look for terrorists, we look for tweezers.”

Instead of reading body scanners, perhaps we should be training the TSA agents in reading body language.  That’s what the Israelis do.  If you are a Palestinian, sorry, but you go in a different line and you get more closely screened and questioned.  You may pass, but you are going to be thoroughly checked out. We should do the same.  Where is your passport from?  What visa stamps do you have in your passport indicating where you have been?  Why don’t you have any luggage Mr. Abdulmutallab?  Why did you buy a one way ticket?  Who are you staying with in Detroit?  I see you paid cash for your ticket, how much cash do you have left for your trip after you land in Detroit?  Do you have a credit card?  No?  Hmmm…maybe you should wait over there, while we check further.

 No technology is foolproof.  Having worked in technology for over thirty years I can say that with some degree of confidence.  It only takes one failure of the technology for a disaster to strike.  But if we spend less time trying to find that box cutter, shampoo bottle, tweezers, jar of honey, etc., and spend more time spotting someone who doesn’t look like they are on a nice business trip or a visit to relatives or who otherwise fit the profile of a terrorist, that’s right I said it: profile, we could probably become a lot safer without having to lock the bathrooms for the last hour of the flight.  If we had pulled the young Abdulmutallab aside and questioned him, he probably would have cracked like an egg.  Does anyone think for a minute that this kid would have given off no body language signals if questioned by a trained professional?  The right combination of skilled human observers and questioners along with technology, is what we need to be safer.   Rather than this:  We”re the TSA and You Can Count on Us!

Intelligence Sprawl

We also need to collapse the intelligence arms of our government back into one and shut the others down.  Roll back Homeland Security into the Department of Defense, put the myriad intelligence gathering arms back into the CIA, make people accountable and lessen the need for a coordinating center to gather intelligence from a dozen agencies correlate it and send it back out to the dozen agencies.  All that does is create more fiefdoms that don’t want to talk to the dummies in that other agency who aren’t as smart as we are.  As the old saying goes, “When everyone’s responsible, no one is responsible.”  Government is neither nimble nor overly cooperative.  The fewer handoffs between agencies necessary to connect the dots, the better off we will all be.

“The Obama administration’s $75 billion program to protect homeowners from foreclosure has been widely pronounced a disappointment, and some economists and real estate experts now contend it has done more harm than good.” – New York Times, January 2, 2010

“The Treasury Department publicly maintains that its program is on track. “The program is meeting its intended goal of providing immediate relief to homeowners across the country,” a department spokeswoman, Meg Reilly, wrote in an e-mail message.” — same article, NYT

Hot on the heels of Janet Napolitano’s performance at the Department of Homeland Security, that things worked just swell and then, er, no it was a catastrophic failure, we have another example of this administration’s ineptitude.  Let’s not let the marketplace work by flushing out the bad loans, have banks face up to the reality of their bad lending decisions, allow housing prices to reach a market level, all in a reasonably short time, no, let’s get another massive, taxpayer funded program in place to gum up the works and drag this out for years. 

A Habit of Ignoring History

In 1929 Hoover mishandled the economy in a similar way bringing in the leaders of major industries and jawboning them to keep up production even in the face of falling demand so that jobs would not be lost.  The businesses went along until that policy hit their financial statements in the form of plunging profitability.  Stock prices fell sharply and more disastrous policies followed, first by Hoover and more by Roosevelt.

In 1920-21 there was a very steep and serious recession.  However, companies cut wages and government didn’t interfere.

“The annual unemployment rate peaked at 11.7 percent in 1921, but it had fallen to 6.7 percent by the following year, and was down to an incredible 2.4 percent by 1923,” Murphy writes. “That is how a market with flexible wages and prices quickly corrects itself after a Fed-induced inflationary boom.”

 

Roosevelt’s policies followed Hoovers’ with more and more government interference.  Throughout the Great Depression the programs didn’t work, government grew tremendously leaving us saddled with that legacy.  On the other hand Reagan in the 1980s pursued a policy of cutting taxes and shrinking government.  Roosevelt needed World War II to end the Great Depression, Reagan ushered in 25 years of unprecedented economic growth.  Which one does Obama choose to follow?  That’s right, Roosevelt.  Brilliant!

Inexperience on Full Display

President Obama rides into town with no executive experience, but with wondrous rhetorical skills and a hard left agenda.  He jams through a stimulus package that doesn’t stimulate.  His security policy is to undo everything that worked under Bush to keep us safe.  One of the first things Janet Napolitano does is  release a report saying that the real threat is from our returning military that might become right wing zealots,  Meanwhile Islamic terrorists, correct that, isolated extremists, continue to plot to kill us.  Now the New York Times points out that the Emperor’s mortgage program, Making Home Affordable, has no clothes.

“Whatever the merits of its plans, the administration has clearly failed to reverse the foreclosure crisis.” — NYT

When asked by a Congressional Oversight Panel what the administration was going to do in the face of this lasting not a year or two but for many years into the future, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said:

“What to do about it,” he said. “That’s a hard thing.” — NYT

Sounds like the seeds of another government program to fix the other government program.  Just like FDR did all through the 1930s.  Trying to stop the market with government programs is like trying to stop the tides.  You may divert it and you may end up with water in places you didn’t want it, but you are not going to stop it.