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Well, we already knew that Rand Paul's brand of "libertarian conservatism" was actually a front for the far-right beliefs he gets from his father -- even though he's done his best to scurry away from the consequences of having revealed that extremism inadvertently when Rachel Maddow put it in a context that mattered -- in this case, the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s.

But you know it's going to keep bubbling up, nearly every time he opens his mouth. For instance, in a recent interview with an English-language Russian news station recently, Paul held forth on immigration [via Ian Millhiser at ThinkProgress]:

Paul: I recently have been talking more about satellite observation. They say you can sit in front of the store here and a satellite can read the headline on your newspaper. So I think you could also monitor your border with satellites, and then you just have to have some means of intercepting people who come in illegally. You could have helicopters stations positioned every couple of hundred miles.

I think you just have to have some means of intercepting people who come here illegally. You could have helicopter stations positioned every couple of hundred miles. And I think you could control your borders and control your borders within months if you had the willpower to do it. And I think neither party in our country has had the willpower to control our borders.

Q: Why not?

Paul: I don't know. Some of it may be labor force, things like that. But I'm not opposed to letting people come in and work and labor in our country, but what I think we should do is, we shouldn't provide an easy route to citizenship.

A lot of this is about demographics. If you look at new immigrants from Mexico, they register 3-to-1 Democrat. So the Democrat Party's for easy citizenship and for allowing them to vote. I think we need to readdress that.

We’re the only country I know of that allows people to come in illegally, have a baby, and then that baby becomes a citizen. And I think that should stop also.

It's worth noting that Paul is not only opposed to providing a path to citizenship for the undocumented immigrants already here, but he is apparently also opposed to the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. You know, the one that reads:

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 is a bit odd, don't you think, for someone who not only constantly cites the Constitution and calls himself a "constitutionalist," but also accuses his opponents of "violating the Constitution" at every turn? Indeed, only earlier in the segment he declared that President Obama's health-care reforms were "unconstitutional."

Note the words that people like Rand Paul never want to use when they talk about this, but which are what we're talking about here -- namely, birthright citizenship.

And contrary to Paul's assertion, there is a long list of nations [predominantly in the Americas] that practice jus soli. Moreover, it's not, as the Wikipedia entry explains, a particular innovation of American law, having its origins in British common law:

Birthright citizenship, as with much United States law, has its roots in English common law. Calvin’s Case, 77 Eng. Rep. 377 (1608), was particularly important as it established that under English common law “a person's status was vested at birth, and based upon place of birth--a person born within the king's dominion owed allegiance to the sovereign, and in turn, was entitled to the king's protection." This same principle was adopted by the newly formed United States, as stated by Supreme Court Justice Noah Haynes Swayne: "All persons born in the allegiance of the king are natural- born subjects, and all persons born in the allegiance of the United States are natural-born citizens. Birth and allegiance go together. Such is the rule of the common law, and it is the common law of this country…since as before the Revolution."

That, of course, hasn't stopped the Nativists who want to either overturn or ignore the Constitution. Indeed, Paul is just echoing the latest efforts of Arizona's immigrant-bashing nativists. And as we noted then:

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According to President-in-his-own-mind McCain, Faisal Shahzad should not have been read his Miranda rights, despite his standing as a US citizen.

The Hill:

McCain, the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a longtime leading Republican on national security issues, said he expected the suspect in the case could face charges that might warrant a death sentence if convicted.

"Obviously that would be a serious mistake...at least until we find out as much information we have," McCain said during an appearance on "Imus in the Morning" when asked whether the suspect, 30-year-old Faisal Shahzad, a naturalized American citizen from Pakistan.

"Don't give this guy his miranda rights until we find out what it's all about," McCain added.

It all comes down to this:

Republicans say that suspects like Abdulmutallab and potentially Shahzad should be classified as an "enemy combatant," which gives authorities more leeway in seeking intelligence through interrogation and other methods.

The Arizona Republican, however, said he expected the criminal justice system to play itself out in such a way that Shahzad would face the death penalty, if convicted.

"There's probably about 350 different charges he's guilty off -- attempted acts of terror against the united States, attempted murder," said McCain, cautioning that he's not privy to the charges with which Shahzad might be charged. "I'm sure there's a significant number to warrant the death penalty."

Here's the problem with this twisted logic. This man is a United States citizen. Unless we have declared war on ourselves, it would be a bit difficult to have him classified as an enemy combatant. Even more fundamentally, where does that line fall? Should any US citizen arrested for what appears to be an act of violence against another person be stripped of his or her constitutional rights?

If McCain dreams of a day where this guy is executed because he tried and failed to turn a Nissan Pathfinder into a supercharged Molotov cocktail, he ought to be demanding that his Miranda rights be read to him immediately on videotape in order to survive any and all challenges to his arrest on Constitutional grounds.

McCain and his pals make a lot of noise about returning to constitutional fundamentals, but they don't have the first clue what those fundamentals are. Perhaps he should take a refresher course.

Yesterday on Hardball I heard the most amazing spin/lie I think I have ever heard. While discussing the new law in Arizona that says candidates must show their birth certificate to be on the ballot, Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-CA) decided to totally twist the reason for the new law and declare that it is aimed at John McCain:

This is a very interesting statement, and one that follows politics at all knows to be false. John McCain has been on the ballot in Arizona for over three decades and it was never an issue before. It didn’t become an issue until the crazy birthers came out questioning President Obama’s citizenship – something that has been disproven time and time again.

I’ll hand it to Matthews for handling this idiot rather well. I am also kind of shocked this exchange hasn’t gained more attention in the blogosphere. I doubt Bilbray is just speaking from the crazy corner of his brain. I got a feeling this is the kind of spin we will hear a lot more as people talk about Arizona’s transformation into a police and birther state.

(cross posted from IntoxiNation)

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President Obama ignored warnings not to appear at the National Prayer Breakfast today, since it was organized by fundamentalist religionists whose animus towards not just him but all progressives has been all too obvious for years. But he did anyway -- and, as Sam Stein at HuffPo reports, actually managed to deliver an important message about the critical role of civility in a democratic society.

The main point was that right-wing nutcases, and their frothing about Obama's supposed foreignness and radicalism and hatred of Christianity, make it impossible to even have a rational discussion:

Obama: Civility also requires relearning how to disagree without being disagreeable -- understanding, as President [Kennedy] said, 'Civility is not a sign of weakness.' Now I am the first to confess I am not always right. Michelle will testify to that. But surely, you can question my policies without questioning my faith. Or for that matter, my citizenship.

No doubt, the talkers at Fox will take this as evidence that he hates the "jes' folks" who populate the Tea Parties.

h/t Right Wing Watch.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) is not exactly known as a towering intellect, although he's a panderer to wingnuts par excellence. Just days *after* he assured an FDL crew that he knew that Obama was born in Hawaii, he told a town hall audience that he wanted to file a lawsuit demanding that Obama produce his long-form birth certificate. It would appear Franks has calculated that there are votes in them thar wingnuts, because his statement at the Take Back America conference over the weekend is clearly tapping into that angry, violent undercurrent:

Obama's first act as president of any consequence, in the middle of a financial meltdown, was to send taxpayers' money overseas to pay for the killing of unborn children in other countries...there's almost nothing that you should be surprised at after that. We shouldn't be shocked that he does all these other insane things. A president that has lost his way that badly, that has no ability to see the image of God in these little fellow human beings, if he can't do that right, then he has no place in any station of government and we need to realize that he is an enemy of humanity.

You stay classy there, Trent. Remember when the GOP lost their minds because one of the Dixie Chicks said only that she was ashamed of being from the same state as the president? How in the world can they justify such over-the-top nastiness now? If the majority party wasn't so gutless, I'd think a formal censure in the House would be considered.

John Amato:

Calling Obama an enemy of the people puts a big fat target on his back. These elected officials are acting like militia members who fly to DC in black helicopters and are helping to plan a violent act against him. It's dangerous and disrespectful and he should be called out publicly for his behavior.

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That sound you hear is wingnuts weeping across the country.

AP:

The Supreme Court has turned down an emergency appeal from a New Jersey man who says President-elect Barack Obama is ineligible to be president because he was a British subject at birth.

The court did not comment on its order Monday rejecting the call by Leo Donofrio of East Brunswick, N.J., to intervene in the presidential election. Donofrio says that since Obama had dual nationality at birth _ his mother was American and his Kenyan father at the time was a British subject _ he cannot possibly be a "natural born citizen," one of the requirements the Constitution lists for eligibility to be president.

I'm with Anonymous Liberal: What, exactly, is the endgame here? If someone proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that President-elect Obama wasn't born in Hawaii, where do we go form there? It's pretty clear that the people who are doing the questioning have no clue.

Shirley Preiss was born in Kentucky in 1910 - a full 10 years before American women gained the right to vote. She first voted in a presidential election in 1932, for FDR. She's voted in every presidential election since, but that's all about to change due to Arizona's draconian voter ID law.

As Art Levine reported, Shirley effectively lost her right to vote when she moved to Arizona:

After living in Arizona for two years, she was eagerly looking forward to casting her ballot in the February primary for the first major woman candidate for President, Hillary Clinton. But lacking a birth certificate or even elementary school records to prove she's a native-born American citizen, the state of Arizona's bureaucrats determined that this former school-teacher who taught generations of Americans shouldn't be allowed to vote.

The state's voter ID law, passed in 2004, requires voters to show ID at the polling place and to provide proof of citizenship in order to register. But birth certificates weren't issued in 1910 in Shirley's birthplace of Clinton, KY, and her elementary school no longer exists.

Shirley appeared on the local news Monday night in Phoenix to tell her story:

She's far from the only victim of this law. The Arizona Advocacy Network reports that nearly 40,000 voter registration forms have been rejected due to inadequate proof of citizenship. And it's getting to be a national problem.

The Supreme Court gave Indiana the green light last month on its restrictive voter ID law, and other states have already or are in the process of passing similar laws. Everywhere such laws are enacted, the voting rights of thousands of Americans - especially among the poor, elderly, and minorities - are put at risk. Fortunately many other states have fended off voter ID laws, and I'm proud that People For the American Way's Democracy Campaign played a role in many of those fights. Nothing short of a concerted effort by the progressive movement over the coming years will succeed in safeguarding the right to vote.

Kolbert is president of People For the American Way

Discourse.net:

This gets complicated. According to - City Pages (Minneapolis/St. Paul), Moles Wanted, the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force is recruiting people to infiltrate anti-GOP protest groups in the run-up to the upcoming Republican convention.

The law is clear that police may attend public meetings undercover to see what people are up to. And of course undercover operations in private settings are also legal, although there should be guidelines as to when they are appropriate. And of course it’s good citizenship for private citizens to report crimes when they witness them.

But this story raises a number of serious questions.

First, there’s this: the FBI told the potential informant that he “would be compensated for his efforts, but only if his involvement yielded an arrest. No exact dollar figure was offered.”

In other words, the FBI is recruiting unpaid volunteers to become infiltrators. And they get paid only if they give information leading to an arrest. Which creates a serious incentive for agents provocateurs. This is not a sensible policy at all. It is in fact a very bad idea.

Second, there’s the weird description of the targets — “vegan potlucks” — and the general sense of massive overkill, which contributes to the chilling effect discussed in the article.

I also wonder whether a similar effort is underway for the Democratic convention (not that two wrongs make a right). If it is not, would that be because of a political bias in the FBI, or a considered judgment that McCain is more likely to be a target of violence than the first Black (or female) major-party Presidential candidate?

EmptyWheel:

Now, maybe the vegans we've got here in Michigan are dramatically different from those infesting Minnesota. But where I'm from, vegans tend to be fairly peaceful people. If they're unwilling to steal a bee's honey, I figure, they're going to be unwilling to use force to make their point. So I'm really curious how this operation got beyond the "mere speculation that force or violence might occur" that the US Attorney's own guidelines demands. And if you're really intent on infiltrating groups of vegans in anticipation of a bunch of violence-loving Republicans coming to town, why use the JTTF? Last I heard, we were so threatened by terrorists that we had to give up all our phone data to AT&T. But now we've got time to infiltrate vegans.

The featured guest of this year's White House Correspondents' Dinner was late-night talk-show host Craig Ferguson, and although his act was less searing than Colbert's legendary roasting, he did manage to get some good shots in.

Download | play Download | play (h/t Bill W.)

Seattle Times:

The Scottish-born Ferguson found middle ground between the tepid impersonations of last year's entertainer, Rich Little, and the merciless satire that Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert delivered in 2006.

Ferguson, who became a U.S. citizen in February, asked Bush what he was going to do after leaving office, then suggested, "You could look for a job with more vacation time." The president has drawn criticism for the amount of time he has spent away from the White House during his presidency.

Vice President Dick Cheney, Ferguson said, "is already moving out of his residence. It takes longer than you think to pack up an entire dungeon."

I wonder if Ferguson held back a bit out of fear his newly-gained citizenship would be revoked?

This story just reeks of propaganda and a sneaky agenda. The article mentions that these consultants were paid in part from private donations, and it would be interesting to know just who that is, because I have a feeling that would make clear the agenda working here.

I just hate how fundamentally dishonest this is with the people who will likely be risking their lives in the Middle East in the near future. I know Karl Rove tried to make it an insult that liberals wanted to "understand the terrorists", but personally, I find trying to lie to these students and make it harder for them to understand far more insulting.

NY Times: (reg. req'd)

The Air Force Academy was criticized by Muslim and religious freedom organizations for playing host on Wednesday to three speakers who critics say are evangelical Christians falsely claiming to be former Muslim terrorists.[..]

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