Jay Reding.com

The Italian embassy is providing free dinners for vets at military hospitals.

Speaker Hastert seems to have put his foot in his mouth over a search of the office of Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) as part of the ongoing investigation into Jefferson’s caught-on-tape bribe-taking. Hastert wants to argue that there are Constitutional issues involved with law enforcement searching the office of a sitting Member of Congress – an argument that is incredibly unsound. If anything, the Justice Department went out of its way to avoid even a semblance of impropriety in the search.

Congress’ approval ratings are even lower than the President’s. People feel that our government has become unresponsive, corrupt, and arrogant – and given Hastert’s idiotic response to a perfectly legal search, it’s pretty damned clear why. Jefferson was caught on tape accepting a $100,000 bribe from an FBI agent. Calling that evidence damning would be a massive understatement – and it looks like Hastert is more interested in covering the asses of his colleagues than cracking down on the corruption that plagues both sides of the Congressional aisle.

If this is how the Republican leadership will handle such issues, there are a lot of people who are going to wonder why they should vote Republican at all – and unless Hastert and company get serious about fighting corruption in Congress, the public’s widespread view of Congress as a den of iniquity will only get worse.

UPDATE: Both Pelosi and Hastert are calling for evidence found in Jefferson’s office to be returned. As Orin Kerr observes, the Constitutionality of the search seems quite solid. The Speech and Debate Clause does not apply in the cases of “felony” – and there’s more than sufficient evidence to bring Rep. Jefferson up on felony charges.

This case could have been perhaps done in a better way – such as through the office of the Sergeant of Arms of the House, but that doesn’t excuse Pelosi and Hastert’s little hissy fit. Congress is not above the law, no matter how much they protest.

The current guest-worker bill in the Senate is quite possibly the single worst bill of the Bush Administration’s tenure in office – which is in itself quite an accomplishment. Heritage Foundation researcher Robert Rector takes an in-depth look at the bill and why it will severely harm the American economy:

If enacted, CIRA would be the most dramatic change in immigration law in 80 years. In its overall impact on the nation, the bill would rival other historic milestones, such as the creation of Social Security or Medicare.

The bill would give amnesty to 10 million illegal immigrants and quintuple the rate of legal immigration into the U.S. Under the bill, the annual inflow of immigrants with the option of becoming legal permanent residents would rise from the current level of one million per year to more than five million per year. Within a few years, the annual inflow of new immigrants would exceed one percent of the current U.S. population. This would be the highest immigration rate in U.S. history.

Within 20 years, some 103 million new immigrants would enter the U.S. This number is about one-third of the current U.S. population. All of these immigrants would be permanent residents with the right to become citizens and vote in U.S. elections. CIRA would transform the United States socially, economically, and politically. Within two decades, the character of the nation would differ dramatically from what exists today.

With all the loopholes in the CIRA bill, we’d be better off in the long term to simply annex Mexico – at least we’d get some nice oil deposits out of the deal. Instead, this bill would basically destroy any attempts to control the flood of immigrants to our country. In fact, there’s a good chance that significant portions of this country wouldn’t be America anymore – you’d have essentially created vast ethnic states of relatively unassimilated immigrants who would be divorced from American politics and culture.

The Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act would Balkanize the US in a way that should be absolutely and categorically unacceptable.

Robert Novak also notes some incredibly disastrous features of this bill:

Rector’s updated analysis, based on the Bingaman amendment, downgraded the two-decade estimate for immigrants to approximately 66 million under the reform. That remains a total that boggles the imagination. As a result, critical analyses of other aspects of the bill are getting a focused reception in the Senate.

*The bill supposedly would protect American workers by ensuring that new immigrants would not take away jobs. However, the bill’s definition of ”United States worker” includes temporary foreign guest workers, so the protection is meaningless.

*It extends the Davis-Bacon Act’s requirement for the payment of ”prevailing wage” to all temporary guest workers. That puts them ahead of Americans, who have this protection only on federal job sites.

*Foreign guest farm workers, admitted under the bill, cannot be ”terminated from employment by any employer … except for just cause.” In contrast, American ag workers can be fired for any reason.

Not only would this bill create a new American underclass, but it would place them under the same rules that were used during the Depression to keep blacks from getting federal construction contracts. That would not only shut out many small minority contractors and upend the entire agricultural labor market, but would also be tantamount to the government enforcing wage controls on a significant amount of the American workforce. This is most certainly a bipartisan bill – there is something for everyone to utterly despise about it.

The best we could hope for is that it would leave the status quo intact – why would anyone hire a “temporary worker” when they’d have to pay Davis-Bacon’s exhorbitant wages for labor that’s not worth the cost? Instead, there’s a strong likelihood that people would continue to hire illegals at rock-bottom wages unless there’s serious enforcement of rules against doing that – and actually enforcing our immigration laws doesn’t seem to be a priority with Congress these days. It appears as though the rush to please everyone with this bill will end up pleasing no one. How Congress expects a system that brings in millions of largely unskilled workers and demands they be paid well above realistic market averages (not to mention the costs in bureaucratic red tape) will work is well beyond me.

CIRA must be defeated – it is a poorly-written piece of legislation that would create profound negative changes to the American economy and society, and such a program must not be allowed to come to fruition.

The New York Times(!) has a very interesting article on the growth of charitable organizations in Iraq in the wake of Hussein’s fall:

Since 2003 the government has registered 5,000 private organizations, including charities, human rights groups, medical assistance agencies and literacy projects. Officials estimate that an additional 7,000 groups are working unofficially. The efforts show that even as violence and sectarian hatred tear Iraq’s mixed cities apart, a growing number of Iraqis are trying to bring them together. “Iraqis were thirsty for such experiences,” said Khadija Tuma, director of the office in the Ministry of Civil Society Affairs that now works with the private aid groups. “It was as if they already had it inside themselves.”

The new charity groups offer bits of relief in the sea of poverty that swept Iraq during the economic embargo of the 1990’s and has worsened with the pervasive lawlessness that followed the American invasion.

The burst of public-spiritedness comes after long decades of muzzled community life under Saddam Hussein, when drab Soviet-style committees for youth, women and industrialists were the only community groups permitted.

Mr. Hussein stamped out what had been a vibrant public life. Since the founding of Islam in the seventh century, charity has had a special place in its societies. As far back as the 19th century, religious leaders, descendants of the Prophet Muhammad, formed a network called Al Ashraf that was a link between people and the Ottoman-appointed governor of Baghdad.

The Iraqi Chamber of Commerce dates from the 1930’s, and its volunteers plunged into Baghdad’s poor areas to conduct literacy campaigns in the 1950’s, around the time of the overthrow of the monarchy.

Today’s groups have picked up that historic thread and offer hope in an increasingly poisonous sectarian landscape that Iraqis may still be able to hold their country together.

Indeed, one of the most singularly important parts of democratization – if not the most important is the rise of civil organizations. Charities, service organizations, interest groups, etc., all of them are critical to the democratic health a nation. One can write the best constitution ever put to paper, have a government that was structurally perfect, but still see democracy falter without the key bedrock of civil society.

Of course, all this comes about in a sea of disruption and deprivation that is only slowly getting better for many Iraqis – but ultimately the majority of Iraqis are optimistic about their future and slowly but surely Iraq is emerging from the tyranny of the Hussein regime. As always, democratization is a long and difficult road, but the increase in Iraqi civil associations is one more sign of the progress being made.

Peter Wehner has a good piece on OpinionJournal that dissects and debunks several intellectually dishonest claims about the war in Iraq. The argument that we were “misled” into war, that democratization was an ex post facto rationalization, and that Saddam was no threat to anyone are all blatantly false, but those lies seem to have a life of their own among the anti-war crowd. It doesn’t matter that every independent report on the issue of Iraq has revealed an utterly consistent story: lawmakers did not pressure the intelligence community, there was a wide and mutual consensus that Iraq was developing WMDs in contravention of the Gulf War cease-fire, and that even Saddam Hussein himself had no idea of what his capabilities really were.

The fact is that the vast majority of anti-war arguments bear no resemblance to the truth, and only find currency with those who willfully embrace the paranoid delusions of the far left. George W. Bush did not “lie” his way into war, there was no organized conspiracy to falsify evidence, and the arguments presented in the lengthy run-up to war were based on the best intelligence we had at the time – intelligence that was deeply flawed and the product of a dysfunctional analytic system, but still the best we had at the time.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report, the Duelfer Repot, the results of the Butler Inquiry, and the Robb-Silberman Report all quite clearly come to the same results – not that the facts tend to get in the way of a juicy conspiracy theory.

There are, of course, legitimate and rational arguments against the decision to go into war in Iraq. One can debate whether it was wise in the long term, whether Iraq has a strong prospect for democratization, or whether our strategy committed enough troops in an appropriate manner. However, the vast majority of arguments coming from the anti-war side are based on distortions and outright lies, drowning out the rational critiques in a sea of political poseurs. Actually learning about the way intelligence is gathered and used, the geography and culture of Iraq, and the geopolitics of the Middle East is simply too much for those who can’t understand a political position that doesn’t fit on a T-Shirt or bumper sticker.

A vibrant democracy requires intelligent debate – not the intellectually dishonest “dissent” of fools. Sadly, the amount of intelligent discourse on Iraq is exceedingly low, and many have chose to believe facile lies rather than educate themselves on the reality of our world.

A man named Jesse MacBeth is claiming to be a member of the US Army Rangers, and accusing his “fellow soldiers” of committing horrendous war crimes in Iraq, including the deliberate shooting of unarmed Iraqi civilians.

Of course, real former soldiers can easily tell that MacBeth is deliberately misrepresenting himself. MacBeth’s story is a lie, a lie which real former servicemembers were able to quickly rip to shreds with just casual observations.

Not only is “MacBeth” a liar and a scoundrel, but he is also quite likely to be breaking federal law by impersonating a member of the US mlitary. 18 U.S.C. § 912 makes it a crime to impersonate a US military officer or servicemember for the purpose of obtaining money, documents, or anything else of value. While it’s arguable whether “MacBeth” could be prosecuted under the term of that statute, there is very little room for doubt that he is in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 704 which makes it a crime to falsely wear any sort of military decoration:

Whoever knowingly wears, manufactures, or sells any decoration or medal authorized by Congress for the armed forces of the United States, or any of the service medals or badges awarded to the members of such forces, or the ribbon, button, or rosette of any such badge, decoration or medal, or any colorable imitation thereof, except when authorized under regulations made pursuant to law, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.

I’d hope that “MacBeth” (assuming that’s his real name) has a very good lawyer. He may need one.

Furthermore, this is a further indication of how far some people will go to justify their irrational anti-Americanism. False stories of military atrocities appeal to those who already assume the worst of the US military and are fed on a steady diet of conspiracy theories. Winter Soldiers like MacBeth are beneath contempt – and calling their patriotism is not only fair game, but simple common sense.

Sadly, liars like MacBeth will always find currency with those willing to listen to a convenient lie – and fortunately there are those who will expose these frauds for who they are.

Jane Galt comments on last weeks predictions of a Karl Rove indictment and the disgraced former reporter who spread them.

The lefty blogosphere was all over this story like Michael Jackson at a Gymboree, despite the fact that anyone with a lick of common sense could see right through it. So intently would they like to see Mr. Rove “frog marched” out of the White House gates that they’d latch on to anything that promises them such a spectacle. It doesn’t matter that Leopold was quite clearly full of it, and that the source – Truthout had all the journalistic integrity of The Weekly World News, anything that justifies yet another round of anti-Bush onanism is taken as gospel by some.

Meanwhile, Howard Kurtz finds the best line of the whole affair:

Robert Luskin, Karl Rove’s lawyer, says he spent most of the day on May 12 taking his cat to the veterinarian and having a technician fix his computer at home.

He was stunned, therefore, when journalists started calling to ask about an online report that he had spent half the day at his law office, negotiating with Patrick Fitzgerald — and that the special prosecutor had secretly obtained an indictment of Rove.

The cat’s medical tests, Luskin says, found that “the stools were free of harmful parasites, which is more than I can say for this case.”

I’d imagine that the cat’s ass probably smelled better than this story too.

As P.T. Barnum was quoted as saying — there’s a sucker born every minute. Given that, it looks like lefty blogs won’t have to worry about running out of readership…