• Can a police officer stop someone and demand papers just because he feels like it? No.
• Can he demand proof of citizenship from someone because they have dark skin and a Mexican accent? No.
• Does this law encourage racial profiling? No. Several times it specifically forbids the use of race or national origin as criteria for determining immigration status. If a cop really hates Mexicans he doesn’t need this law as an excuse. He just needs to pick out a Mexican, watch and wait. Everyone breaks the law every day. That’s just the nature of our already unjust system.
• Does this law make it a crime for citizens not to carry proof of citizenship? No.
• Does it make it a crime for non-citizens not to carry proof of legal alien status? No. That was already a crime. This law only quotes existing federal law.

So what are the real objections? I don’t get it. Please explain. If they are reasonable, I’m open to changing my mind.

Update July 21, 2010: Fred Reed has some very common sense thoughts on immigration policy.

Update July 22, 2010: I was somewhat mistaken. I thought this law was only being implemented via executive order. It is not. You can read the actual laws at KEYTLaw. My conclusions are unchanged. This law is quite reasonable and appropriate.

Good job, SCOTUS.

The Supreme Court has ruled that the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution protects an individual right to own and use firearms, at least in their own homes. That’s definitely a step in the right direction.

CS Monitor reports:

In addition to Stevens, Justice Stephen Breyer wrote a dissent that was joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor.

“The Framers did not write the Second Amendment in order to protect a private right of armed self-defense,” Breyer wrote. “There has been, and is, no consensus that the right is, or was, fundamental,” he said. “No broader constitutional interest or principle supports legal treatment of that right as fundamental. To the contrary, broader constitutional concerns of an institutional nature argue strongly against that treatment.”

“Justices” Breyer, Ginsburg, and Sotomayor are either complete imbeciles or bald-faced liars. There is no reasonable alternative. Either way they have no business judging anything.

Just kidding!

I would love to vote for Alvin Greene, though, just to say I did.

Can’t we all just get along? Umm, no. Israel is completely surrounded by governments (and peoples) who have sworn to kill them all–men, women, and children. They can’t simply forgive and forget. They can’t turn their backs or relax even for a moment. And the Palestinians, whoever they were, whatever their origins, have been hopelessly ghettoized for so long that large segments of their population are no longer capable of living productively with others.

Israel should give the Palestinians their own country. The Palestinians are led by thugs who themselves are pawns for the neighboring Arab states that want nothing more than to kill all Jews. Every attempt at giving the Palestinians more autonomy has been doomed by political maneuvering and insane (literally!) violence against Israel. Even if Hamas and company could all be buried in a deep, mass grave, the Palestinians don’t have a great pool of leaders waiting to take over.

The Jews should give up and go home. And where would that be if not the home of their ancestors? It would make as much sense to suggest that any Cherokee who have found their way to Georgia be sent back home to Oklahoma. Even if we ignored the continuous presence of Jews and other Israelites in the Land for more than three thousand years, at the very least, they have the same right of conquest as every other people. The Coosa were driven out by the Cherokee who were driven out by the English who might soon be driven out by someone else. It’s the way the world has always worked.

The Palestinians should all move to friendlier Arab countries to be with their own kind. Again, what countries would that be? Nobody wants them. Jordan, Egypt, and Syria don’t want them. In fact, they would much rather the Palestinians stay in Israel as a destabilizing force. They are pawns without a single real friend in the world, some willingly but most probably ignorantly. They have nowhere else to go. Maybe those non-Israelis who want the Palestinians to leave Israel could volunteer their suburban homes to house a family or two or three?

There are no clear good guys in that mess, and there are far too many bad guys. The only clear thing in my mind is that the land of Israel, especially that land between the Jordan and the Mediterranean, is a special place to God. He entrusted it to Israel once, and although he removed them from it for a time, he promised to give it back to them. The ultimate title to the land has already been established. It is not on the negotiating table.

“(It’s the Eighties, So Where’s Our) Rocket Packs”
from the album Vox Humana
Words and Music by Terry Taylor
©1984 Twitchen Vibes Music (ASCAP)

It’s the eighties
It’s the eighties so where’s our rocket packs?
It’s the eighties so where’s our rocket packs?
Go anywhere, we strap them on our backs
1. (It’s the eighties so where’s our rocket packs?)
I thought by now I’d walk the moon
And ride a car without no tires
And have a robot run the vacuum
And date a girl made out of wires
No thing’s don’t change that much, do they?
We are still out of touch, by now we should discover
Just how to love each other, like Klattus’ robot man
Your looks have killed again

2. (It’s the eighties so where’s our rocket packs?)
I thought by now we’d live in space
And eat a pill instead of dinner
And wear a gas mask on our face
A President of female gender
Though progress marches on, (new day)
Our troubles will grow strong
And my expectancies, become my fantasies
You turn my blood to sand, the earth stands still again

My hopes are running low
things moving much too slow
No space men up above
And we’re still so very far from love

3. (It’s the eighties so where’s our rocket packs?)
I thought by now we’d build a dome
Around the world, control the weather
In every house, a picture phone; communicate a little better
But some things never change (replay!)
You are still acting strange
No way that I can see, this way we will be free
La la la la la la,la la la la la 7,6,5,4,3,2,1 Lift off!

(It’s the eighties so where’s our rocket packs?)
Repeat 1, 2, 3
(It’s the eighties)

If you worship the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and if you recognize that your only hope for salvation from the eternal consequences of your sin lies in repenting from it and placing yourself at his mercy, trusting in him to forgive you and to make a way for you to be reunited with him, then I call you a brother in Messiah. I don’t care what label you claim. I don’t care what label anyone else puts on you. I don’t care what scriptures you read or what you call your place of worship or even if you have a place of worship.

God knows you. God claims you as his own. Who are we to disagree?

• Taking the Tenth, Fred
• Thoughts from a Disordered Mind, Fred
• Iraq War, Unjust, Illegal, and Immoral, Paul Surlis
• Our Drug Laws, Scott Morgan
• Eminent Domain Abuse, John Kramer

And that’s just a tiny fraction of what goes on all over the world. Every day we see corrupt, lying politicians (and others) seeming to get away with murder and theft. Did you notice that God referred to this behavior as unfaithfulness against YHWH? It won’t last forever. The accounts always balance in the end.