Happy Fourth: to liberty!

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: This is a repeat of a previous post. It was written in the springtime some years ago, on a visit to New York. I thought it especially relevant today, though, because I see our liberties as increasingly threatened.]

I’ve been visiting New York City, the place where I grew up. I decide to take a walk to the Promenade in Brooklyn Heights, never having been there before.

When you approach the Promenade you can’t really see what’s in store. You walk down a normal-looking street, spot a bit of blue at the end of the block, make a right turn–and, then, suddenly, there is New York:

brookheights2.jpg

And so it is for me. I take a turn, and catch my breath: downtown Manhattan rises to my left, seemingly close enough to touch, across the narrow East River. I see skyscrapers, piers, the orange-gold Staten Island ferry. In front of me, there are the graceful gothic arches of the Brooklyn Bridge. To my right, the back of some brownstones, and a well-tended and charming garden that goes on for a third of a mile.

I walk down the promenade looking first left and then right, not knowing which vista I prefer, but liking them both, especially in combination, because they complement each other so well.

All around me are people, relaxing. Lovers walking hand in hand, mothers pushing babies in strollers, fathers pushing babies in strollers, nannies pushing babies in strollers. People walking their dogs (a preponderance of pugs, for some reason), pigeons strutting and courting, tourists taking photos of themselves with the skyline as background, every other person speaking a foreign language.

The garden is more advanced from what it must be at my house, reminding me that New York is really a southern city compared to New England. Daffodils, the startling blue of grape hyacinths, tulips in a rainbow of soft colors, those light-purple azaleas that are always the first of their kind, flowering pink magnolia and airy white dogwood and other blooming trees I don’t know the names of.

In the view to my left, of course, there’s something missing. Something very large. Two things, actually: the World Trade Center towers. Just the day before, we had driven past that sprawling wound, with its mostly-unfilled acreage where the WTC had once stood, now surrounded by fencing. Driving by it is like passing a war memorial and graveyard combined; the urge is to bow one’s head.

As I look at the skyline from the Promenade, I know that those towers are missing, but I don’t really register the loss visually. I left New York in 1965, never to live there again, returning thereafter only as occasional visitor. The World Trade Center was built in the early seventies, so I never managed to incorporate it into that personal New York skyline of memory that I hold in my mind’s eye, even though I saw the towers on every visit. So, what I now see resembles nothing more than the skyline of my youth, restored, a fact which seems paradoxical to me. But I feel the loss, even though I don’t see it. Viewing the skyline always has a tinge of sadness now, which it never had before 9/11.

I come to the end of the walkway and turn myself around to set off on the return trip. And, suddenly, the view changes. Now, of course, the garden is to my left and the city to my right; and the Brooklyn Bridge, which was ahead of me, is now behind me and out of sight. But now I can see for the first time, ahead of me and to the right, something that was behind me before. In the middle of the harbor, the pale-green Statue of Liberty stands firmly on its concrete foundation, arm raised high, torch in hand.

The sight is intensely familiar to me—I used to see it very often when I was growing up. But I’ve never seen it from this angle before. She seems both small and gigantic at the same time: dwarfed by the skyscrapers near me that threaten to overwhelm her, but towering over the water that surrounds her on all sides. The eye is drawn to her distant, heroic figure. She’s been holding that torch up for so long, she must be tired. But still she stands, resolute, her arm extended.

One more thing—most of those children entering illegally will be staying legally

The New Neo Posted on by

This is the way it works:

Special Immigrant Juvenile Status is something that we attorneys on the border have been getting CLE training in for a while, but largely it has not been well known outside of CPS attorney work.

With the invasion now taking place, it is going to explode. No parents means that any immigrant child under 18 can apply for a Green Card as soon as they are deemed “abandoned” by their parents for 6 months by the court system. There are some other minor rules, but that is the big one”¦.

The bill renewal was the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008. It modified and exempted application of certain rules which would normally result in inadmissibility”¦. Also, it set up an “expedited” review schedule that USCIS is REQUIRED to adjudicate SIJ petitions within 180 days of filing, and that interviews may be WAIVED for SIJ petitioners under 14 years of age or when it is determined that an interview is unnecessary.

Further, per the Violence Against Women Act of 2005, a SIJ petitioner may not be required to contact an individual who allegedly abused, abandoned or neglected the Juvenile.

What nobody is talking about (or maybe nobody has realized yet) is that this is going to flood the child welfare courts FIRST, before they get to the USCIS (certain findings of fact which can only be made by the state are prerequisites to SIJS applications) with a sudden influx of “abandoned” children, and put a strain on the CPS system like nothing that has ever been seen.”

There’s much much more at the link.

But to cut to the chase, my prediction is this: when Obama says he wants to streamline and fast-track the process and will act if Congress doesn’t, he wants people to think he means to make deportation faster and easier. Although his goal is to make you think that, it’s not the way he intends it to work at all.

And afterward, he’ll say he learned about it in the paper, just like the rest of us.

Fun facts about illegal immigrants

The New Neo Posted on by

Want to see how stupendously, destructively, and deliberately messed-up our immigration system is?

And don’t forget that the background to the following information is that for years the federal government, which is in charge of enforcement, has refused to effectively police and/or fence off the border to reduce the numbers of new illegal immigrants we’re dealing with. And then, as the following statistics make clear, it refuses to discourage them from staying or to make any serious effort to track them once they’re here. Au contraire.

First, we have the fact that although some illegal immigrants file tax returns, the feds refuse to do anything to catch them. Apparently the desire to get their taxes (and it’s not at all clear how much tax they pay) trumps the desire to deport them:

…[T]he Social Security Administration estimates [I wonder on what basis or how accurately] that 75% of undocumented immigrants are actually on formal payrolls and are paid by check just like anyone else. They get on the payroll by using fake or fraudulent social security numbers or social security numbers of the deceased, which are easily available from counterfeiters for a couple hundred dollars. A growing number of undocumented immigrants now file their income taxes using Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs). ITINs are issued by the IRS for filing purposes only and do not provide permission to work. According to the most recent estimates, at least 3 million unauthorized immigrants filed income taxes using ITINs in 2009. (NOTE: the IRS does not report undocumented immigrants to the Department of Homeland Security.)

On the topic of how much tax could be extracted from illegal immigrants:

…[T]he incomes of migrants [sic] working in the informal economy are generally so low””less than $13,000 per year, according a recent UCLA study””that most would ultimately be exempt from paying income taxes or have extremely low tax liability even if they did file and claim cash income.

And then there’s Mexico, our friendly and helpful neighbor to the south:

The United States receives constant criticism from the Mexican government for its efforts to curb illegal immigration. And United States officials criticize Mexican officials for passing out handbooks on how to cross the border, saying Mexico is trying to avoid political and governmental reforms at home by encouraging its citizens to leave.

You probably already know that Mexico itself has a Draconian policy for dealing with illegal immigrants. Apparently it’s “Do as we say, not as we do.”

And here’s a ream of factoids for you to ponder (the site where I got them says that these statistics are based on Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security reports, but it doesn’t give exact links, so I can’t account for their veracity. I almost hope they are exaggerations because they reveal such a dreadful picture):

83% of warrants for murder in Phoenix are for illegal aliens.
86% of warrants for murder in Albuquerque are for illegal aliens.
75% of those on the most wanted list in Los Angeles, Phoenix and Albuquerque are illegal aliens…
29% (630,000) convicted illegal alien felons fill our state and Federal prisons at a cost of $1.6 billion annually
53% plus of all investigated burglaries reported in California, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona and Texas are perpetrated by illegal aliens.
50% plus of all gang members in Los Angeles are illegal aliens
71% plus of all apprehended cars stolen in 2005 in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California were stolen by Illegal aliens or “transport coyotes”.
47% of cited/stopped drivers in California have no license, no insurance and no registration for the vehicle. Of that 47%, 92% are illegal aliens.
63% of cited/stopped drivers in Arizona have no license, no insurance and no registration for the vehicle. Of that 63%, 97% are illegal aliens
66% of cited/stopped drivers in New Mexico have no license, no insurance and no registration for the vehicle. Of that 66% 98% are illegal aliens.
380,000 plus “anchor babies” were born in the US to illegal alien parents in just one year, making 380,000 babies automatically US citizens.
97.2% of all costs incurred from those illegal births were paid by the American taxpayers.

Still curious about the accuracy of the above statistics, I went to the current 10 Most Wanted List for Los Angeles, just as an example. Strangely enough, the page only lists seven most wanted, and it doesn’t state their immigration status—except for one man, whom it lists as a citizen with dual US/Guatemalan citizenship believed to have fled to Guatemala. But all seven are indeed Hispanic.

This seems well-sourced (Pew) and very disturbing: as long ago as 2008, 1 in 12 births in this country were to people who were here illegally. Of course, their children born here automatically become citizens. I have no problem with that law for legal immigrants, but for illegals it’s wrong and counter-productive. Illegal immigrants have higher-than-average birthrates, too. You can see how it is that California turned blue so quickly, after having been a red/purple state for many years.

In 2009 it was found that “79%, of the 5.1 million children of illegal immigrants residing in the U.S. in 2009 were born in the country and are therefore citizens.”

Those of you who hate Lindsay Graham, please note this curious fact (the article was written in August of 2010): “Late last month, South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham announced his support for reconsidering automatic U.S. citizenship for babies born to undocumented immigrants. He said the status quo enticed people to enter the country illegally and have children to qualify for U.S. benefits.”

What happened? This:

Legislation to amend birthright citizenship stalled when it was introduced in the past decade in the House. It would require a vote of two-thirds of the House and Senate, and would have to be ratified by three-fourths of state legislatures.

Proponents of amending the 14th Amendment, which was enacted in 1868, say it was intended to guarantee citizenship to freed slaves after the Civil War, not the offspring of illegal immigrants.

Amend that, and you would begin to have truly comprehensive immigration reform. I don’t see that it will ever happen, though, because we’re already past the tipping point. There are too many liberals who are against it, and the longer it’s delayed the more numerous the “against” votes will become.

In fact, “tipping point” is the operative phrase here. We’ve not only reached it, we seem to be long past it. Obama is merely focusing our attention on that fact. It will be “interesting” to see what his promised executive action on “comprehensive immigration” might be.

And although citizen actions such as this one in Murietta, California, are encouraging, right now the only result they have is to persuade the feds to release the illegal immigrants into the populace at some other venue. Unless every single community gets wind of what’s happening and effectively blocks it, isolated protests such as Murietta’s will be an inconsequential speedbump along the road.

Yes, it’s that time again

The New Neo Posted on by

[BUMPED UP—last time for this go-round.]

passhat

Time passes so quickly when we’re enjoying ourselves, doesn’t it?

But it’s been a while since I asked you to donate to a semi-worthy cause: this blog. And so I’m going to ask you again to use the “donate” button on the right sidebar beside the photo of the hat, and give whatever you see fit.

Every single donation— large or small—adds up, and helps me a great deal in continuing the blog. If each and every reader gave even a few dollars, it would be a glorious thing. But whether you decide to donate or not, please keep visiting and keep commenting. I appreciate all of you. Comments and readers are a very big part of what makes this blog work.

I thank you all in advance. I’ll probably repeat this notice every now and then for the next week, the equivalent of jiggling that cup/hat.

Flood the border. Crisis. Opportunity.

The New Neo Posted on by

Taking advantage of the crisis:

House Democrats and other immigration reformers are calling on President Obama to go big when it comes to administrative changes in deportation policy.

For months, liberal reform advocates on and off Capitol Hill have urged Obama to tap his executive powers to stop deporting certain qualified groups of undocumented immigrants while waiting to see if House Republicans would take up reform legislation this year.

But in the wake of Obama’s Monday Rose Garden speech vowing unilateral action, some reformers want the president to go far beyond a limited expansion of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, to essentially legalize the millions of undocumented immigrants who would be eligible for work permits under the bill passed by the Senate last summer.

Their solution—and Obama’s preferred one, whether he will go that far right away or not—is to relax the rules still further to accommodate all these illegal arrivals and more. It’s a version of “the hair of the dog that bit you,” and it won’t cure this hangover, it will just keep you drunk. In other words, it’s fairly certain that the effect would be to encourage more and more and more to come on in, the water’s fine.

A number of House Democrats are also urging Obama to aim high. While the lawmakers are emphasizing that legislation is the preferred solution to the nation’s broken immigration system, they’re also encouraging the president to use “every administrative tool at his disposal to address our immigration challenge,” in the words of Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), the minority whip…

Those recommendations include not only a broad expansion of DACA to include older immigrants, but also efforts to allow illegal immigrants enrolled in DACA to enlist in the military; to bar local governments from enforcing immigration law; and to permit more undocumented relatives of U.S. military members and veterans to remain in the country while they seek green cards.

It’s interesting that historically, Congress has jealously guarded its own power from presidential overreach. Democrats are only too happy to cede that power in this case, because they believe that once Obama does this their ability to be elected can only increase as the electorate becomes more and more liberal because of the influx of immigrants. They are trying to change the demographics and therefore the politics of the country.

Obama keeps railing against Republicans for not passing “comprehensive” immigration reform. That’s code for “the reform I want them to pass.” He would like low information voters to believe that Republicans have done nothing. But bills beefing up border security have been passed by House committee and the Senate has insisted on linking any such bill with what is often called “amnesty,” although it’s actually more complex than that:

If the House bill passes, aides said, Senate Democrats will be willing to negotiate on border security so long as it is part of a package of bills that includes a “pathway to citizenship” or permanent legal status for the nation’s undocumented immigrants.

Obama wants to use the crisis for one of two things (or maybe both, come to think of it): (1) coercing Republicans into passing a “comprehensive” bill and giving him what he wants, on pain of being called obstructionist do-nothings (2) doing it himself and getting exactly what he wants.

In this case, though, I wonder if Obama will not draw a backlash from the American public. A lot of people seem up in arms about this latest influx, and not all of those who are angry are Republicans. Will the Democrats who are angry about it now buy Obama’s solution? Probably; they’ve bought most of the rest of his propaganda.

Ladies, think with your uteri!

The New Neo Posted on by

Ruth Marcus thinks the female SCOTUS justices do. And she thinks that’s a good thing:

How did the Supreme Court manage to agree unanimously that police must obtain a warrant before searching cellphones, yet split on whether employers must offer contraception as part of their health care plans?

My explanation, slightly crude but perhaps compelling: All the justices, presumably, have cellphones. Only three have uteruses, and you know which way they voted.

This is hardly an isolated thought. It was inherent in Sotomayor’s statements about the superior judgment of a “wise Latina“:

And [Sotomayor] often said that she hoped those experiences would help her reach better judicial conclusions than someone without such a varied background might reach.

The line was almost identical every time:

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion.”

That sentence, or a similar one, has appeared in speeches Sotomayor delivered in 1994, 1999, 2002, 2004 and 2001. In that speech, she included the phrase “than a white male who hasn’t lived that life” at the end, which sparked cries of racism from some Republicans.

A similar idea about the superiority and importance of membership in a minority or other group officially designated as oppressed was strongly suggested in an execrable comment by Harry Reid (is there any other kind?) in connection with Hobby Lobby, about which I wrote:

More reaction from the left…My favorite (and I mean that in a sarcastic sense) is from none other than Harry Reid, our illustrious Majority Leader: “It’s time that five men on the Supreme Court stop deciding what happens to women.”

I’ve got a idea! Let’s pack the Court, and have an equal number of men and women on it, and then have the men decide cases that affect men and the women decide cases that affect women. What could go wrong?

I am almost sure that the left would applaud—except they’d probably add that although an all-woman judiciary for cases involving women made sense, cases involving men need the participation of women to make them fair.

And although this case doesn’t seem to be so closely related, nevertheless there is a connection. The young woman involved is, after all, only following the example of her elders, and if she goes them one better in how overt she makes it—well, that’s what young people do. They build on the work of those who have gone before them. If Peterson saw her task as student-body president as representing her own special interest groups to the detriment of others—well, why wouldn’t she see it that way at this point?:

The most expensive prep school in the country, the Lawrenceville School, spent much of its spring semester mired in racial tensions as its first black student-body president was forced to step down for “mocking” white male students on Instagram…

“I understand why I hurt people’s feelings, but I didn’t become president to make sure rich white guys had more representation on campus,” [Maya] Peterson told BuzzFeed, which reported the story on Monday. “Let’s be honest. They’re not the ones that feel uncomfortable here.” Peterson graduated from Lawrenceville, a private school near Princeton, N.J., in June…

…[T]he Lawrenceville School ”” where annual tuition is around $53,000 and the student body is 55 percent white, 21 percent Asian, and 16 percent black/Hispanic ”” would not comment directly…

Peterson…told BuzzFeed that the controversy over her leadership started long before the Instagram photo, with cries from some students suggesting that the election she’d won had been fixed. She also notes that some of her initiatives as president ”” to institute a “diversity representative” on the student council board, and to create gender-neutral bathrooms, for example ”” were not well-received. She caught flak later in the year, she explains, for raising her fist in a “black power” salute along with several other students for a yearbook photo. But Peterson, a lesbian, says it was always her aim to reach out to minorities who often felt overlooked on campus. “The younger kids told me they felt comfortable opening up to me in a way they didn’t with other people,” she tells Buzzfeed…

“I’m not saying what I did was right,” Peterson told BuzzFeed. “But it wasn’t racist. I was just calling those guys exactly what they are. And Lawrenceville is the type of place where those kids are idolized.”

Kudos to Lawrenceville for recognizing this as racism, whether Maya Peterson knows it is or not. And she may not know it, even now, because so many of her elders have modeled this sort of behavior and told her it’s not only acceptable, it’s desirable.

[NOTE: I must say I’d never even been aware of the existence of Lawrenceville before reading that article. But in an odd coincidence, I ran across the name of the school again today. I was looking at a biographical sketch of Thornton Wilder, and found that he was a young French teacher there when he wrote his classic The Bridge of San Luis Rey.]

Hostage-for-terrorist trades make no sense

The New Neo Posted on by

When the news of the killing of the three Israeli teenagers came out, I was very puzzled as to why their abductors would have killed them right away. It made no sense at all.

I had figured they would be used for negotiations to free more terrorists, and perhaps even tortured in some way to obtain extra leverage by making their plight especially horrific—not that it wasn’t already horrific enough. And if this report is right, the plan was indeed to hold them hostage and then negotiate with the aim of getting the Israeli government to release more terrorists.

One of the teenagers even managed to call the police, but tragically and negligently the dispatcher thought it was a prank call and did not notify authorities. I find that failure astounding and disturbing, although it might not have ended up mattering because the three were apparently murdered almost immediately afterward by the panicked kidnappers, who realized a call had been made and thought Israeli security had a bead on them and could find them. So even had the dispatcher been more on the ball, it would probably have been too late.

The only comfort is that perhaps this saved the boys even greater suffering. But that comfort is scant.

I continue to think what I’ve thought for as far back as I can remember, which is that governments should never exchange terrorists for hostages. To refuse to make such deals would mean a government would need to be extremely tough and allow its kidnapped citizens (even children or teenagers) to be murdered. But that hard choice appears to be the only way to discourage further kidnappings. As it is, a government such as Israel’s, which follows a policy of such exchanges, only sets itself up for a different sort of “cycle of violence” than the usual way the term is used—that is, its citizens become the victims of kidnapping after kidnapping by enemies with the aim of coercing the government to free more and more terrorists, who go on to commit more and more kidnappings, as well as other acts of terrorism. Thus, heartfelt compassion enables greater carnage and the empowerment of evil.

Did the Founders foresee this?

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “J.J.” wrote a comment that has much in it with which I agree. But I question this:

The Founders never envisioned that the citizens would elect a man with no ethics. A man who would not follow the law. At one time the media was well enough balanced between left and right to get the word out to people. Now it’s not. They never envisioned a situation where the balance of powers among the arms of government would be so ignored…The Founders could not have envisioned an electorate that was so ignorant of the process of government and their important role in it.

I agree that the Founders could not have envisioned the exact details of what’s happening now. But I think the Founders knew that something of the general sort was a distinct and perhaps even likely possibility. The Founders were not naive, and they were students of both history and human nature. They tried to design a government that protected liberty as best it could, knowing it might not succeed and that there would always be highly-motivated forces working against it.

Note the following quote from Madison’s Federalist Paper #10. I found it when I was researching a piece I wrote years ago for the Weekly Standard, and it made a deep impression on me. Here’s the Madison quote [emphasis mine]:

”¦[M]easures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority”¦By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community”¦

…Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society”¦It is in vain to say that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these clashing interests, and render them all subservient to the public good. Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm”¦

Men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister designs, may, by intrigue, by corruption, or by other means, first obtain the suffrages, and then betray the interests, of the people”¦

That, of course, is why the Founders originally limited voting to property holders. I think you’ll agree that the Founders foresaw, and tried to prevent, the very sort of things we are seeing now. That they did not succeed is through no fault of theirs; it is the fault of the left and of those on the right who failed to understand that teaching children our history and the principles of our founding was of the utmost importance, and that failure to do so could be fatal to the republic.

Another person who fully realized the danger was Ronald Reagan. I’ve posted this clip before, but it’s always deeply meaningful and almost unbearably poignant:

The War on Women: Dick Morris may not be right about much, but clearly…

The New Neo Posted on by

…he was right about this. Remember the Republican debates in early 2012, and George Stephanopoulos’ seemingly out-of-the-blue and off-the-wall question?

Conservative commentator Dick Morris believes that the Democrat party is covertly trying to convince voters that Republicans want to “ban contraception.”

Seem a little far-fetched?

Remember when George Stephanopoulos, former senior political adviser to President Bill Clinton, moderated that ABC News Republican debate last month? Immediately following the debate, he was accused of asking “unfair” and biased questions and of running the debate in a manner that was anything but objective.

And while these charges are debatable, most everyone agrees that the moment where Stephanopoulos suddenly shifted the topic from job creation to hypothetical questions involving whether the states have a right to ban contraception was”¦odd (to say the least).

“Governor Romney, do you believe that states have the right to ban contraception? Or is that trumped by a constitutional right to privacy?” Stephanopoulos asked the slightly bewildered-looking former Massachusetts governor…

Though this be madness, yet there is method in ‘t:

antihobby

Democrats are elated at finding the perfect Republican War on Women campaign issue for 2014 and beyond. And it’s a twofer, because it also manages to be anti-religion at the same time. It shouldn’t work, because the details of the case argue against it if anyone is familiar with them. But Democrats are counting on the fact that few people will familiarize themselves with the actual ruling, and/or wouldn’t be able to reason their way through it if they did.

That’s not to say there isn’t a legal case against the ruling that could be argued without lies and hyperbole and rabble-rousing. That case would be about whether a closely-held corporation should be considered a person for the purposes of the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which is the statute involved here—one that, ironically enough, was introduced by Ted Kennedy and Chuck Schumer and passed unanimously by the House and almost unanimously by the Senate. Those were the days, my friend.

But what difference do facts and logic make, anyway? Demagoguery rules, and it is being swallowed by Democrats around the country and regurgitated on Twitter and other social media in order to stir up fear against Republicans in 2014. The country has sunk so low that it just might work; it worked in 2012 to help give us another term of Obama.

Why is it successful? Birth control is an issue that affects people in their immediate lives in an intimate way. If women become falsely convinced by political manipulators that the right has a plan to ultimately take their birth control away, that can come to dominate an entire election as other issues fade. The IRS, the release of five Taliban for Bergdahl, the VA, the degeneration of Iraq under Obama’s watch, even the economy—all of those things happen to other people and/or very far away and/or are vague in terms of what caused them or even what Obama’s offenses might have been. They recede in importance compared to a perceived threat that’s very close up and personal.

The left knows this, and uses that knowledge to get what it wants. This strategy of telling women the right is out to take away their access to birth control and their sexual freedom itself was hatched several years ago, and the tactics have probably been mapped out well in advance. The Hobby Lobby case looks like a defeat for the left, but don’t misunderstand them. They actually see it as a wonderful opportunity dropped in their laps, and they will be sure to not let this manufactured crisis go to waste.

[NOTE: Megan McArdle’s article on Hobby Lobby and the reaction to it is one of the best I’ve seen on the subject. One criticism I have, though, is that she, like many others who have written about the case, ignores the fact that Hobby Lobby is in fact helping to cover most forms of contraception, including birth control pills, and that it’s only certain methods considered possible abortifacients for which the company is refusing to pay.]