Link of the day

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We're a little pressed for time this afternoon/evening but as not wanting to shortchange anything or anybody, drozz over at The Double Standard has a great wrap-up and break-down of the SCOTUS ruling on Arizona's SB 1070 immigration law, here.

Something for everybody in the decision.

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SCOTUS ruling on ObamaCare set for Thursday. Stay tuned.

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Caption Contest!

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Via The Liberator Today:

"Welcome to Arizona, Mr. President. The former Governor sends her regards. Now, will that be a pat-down or body scan?"

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Project Gunrunner/Operation Fast and Furious update

This went down on Friday but a busy schedule has kept us from blogging about it until now. Our bad.

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It's his constitutional right but clamming up is certainly not going to make this thing go away any quicker.

The chief of the Criminal Division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona is refusing to testify before Congress regarding Operation Fast and Furious, the federal gun-running scandal that sent U.S. weapons to Mexico.

Patrick J. Cunningham informed the House Oversight Committee late Thursday through his attorney that he will use the Fifth Amendment protection.

Cunningham was ordered Wednesday to appear before Chairman Darrell Issa and the House Oversight Committee regarding his role in the operation that sent more than 2,000 guns to the Sinaloa Cartel. Guns from the failed operation were found at the murder scene of Border Agent Brian Terry.

The letter from Cunningham’s Washington DC attorney stunned congressional staff. Last week, Cunningham, the second highest ranking U.S. Attorney in Arizona, was scheduled to appear before Issa‘s committee voluntarily. Then, he declined and Issa issued a subpoena.

Cunningham is represented by Tobin Romero of Williams and Connolly who is a specialist in white collar crime. In the letter, he suggests witnesses from the Department of Justice in Washington, who have spoken in support of Attorney General Eric Holder, are wrong or lying.

“Department of Justice officials have reported to the Committee that my client relayed inaccurate information to the Department upon which it relied in preparing its initial response to Congress. If, as you claim, Department officials have blamed my client, they have blamed him unfairly,” the letter to Issa says.

Romero claims Cunningham did nothing wrong and acted in good faith, but the Department of Justice in Washington is making him the fall guy, claiming he failed to accurately provide the Oversight Committee with information on the execution of Fast and Furious.

(italics, ours)

Dude.



This represents the first real break-away in what had previously been a unified government front defending the feds' actions in their wildly successful multi-agency gun-running operation.

Look for an immunity deal in exchange for testimony to be coming much, much sooner than later.






And in related news, the state of Arizona wants some answers of its own:

Arizona's state legislature will open its own investigation into the Obama administration's disgraced gun-running program, known as "Fast and Furious," the speaker of the state House said Friday.

Speaker Andy Tobin created the committee, and charged it with looking at whether the program broke any state laws — raising the possibility of state penalties against those responsible for the operation.

It's a turnaround from the rest of the immigration issue, where the federal government has sued to block the state's own set of laws.

Turnaround? We're not politically naive, but isn't it also just prudent governance to want to know the whys and hows of a deadly gun-running operation of and by the federal government within your state lines?

Project Gunrunner/Operation Fast and Furious update

chutzpah: n: Utter nerve; effrontery. Also: unbelievable gall; insolence; audacity.


Of course, you never want to let a crisis go to waste, especially if it is one of your own making.

As a backlash mounts over the government's failed Fast and Furious gun-tracing operation, the Justice Department will begin requiring firearms dealers in California and other border states to alert officials anytime they sell more than two semiautomatic rifles to someone in a five-day period.

The new reporting requirement will help the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives "detect and disrupt" border gun-smuggling operations, Deputy Atty. Gen. James Cole said Monday.

Once the ATF distributes its new reporting forms, about 7,000 dealers near the border must report multiple sales of semiautomatic weapons in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. Such weapons "are highly sought after by dangerous drug-trafficking organizations and frequently recovered at violent crime scenes near the Southwest border," Cole said.

And without a hint of irony... Unreal.


Well, looking on the bright side; we suppose these new reporting requirements are necessary since the Department of Justice has no real desire to track the very guns they are being allowed sold to Mexican drug cartels.

Establish the narrative no matter how bogus - act on the narrative.

We're in the very best of hands.

Campaign finance reform: yet another in the long list of unintended consequences

The U.S. Supreme Court shot down an Arizona campaign finance law that was supposed to "keep money out of politics" or "level the playing field" or some other such trope that the subject law never comes close to accomplishing.

The U.S. Supreme Court this morning handed down a 5-4 ruling in the consolidated cases Arizona Free Enterprise Club’s Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett and McComish v. Bennett, striking down Arizona’s speech-squelching “Clean Elections” law. The majority opinion, written by Chief Justice Roberts, concluded:

Arizona’s program gives money to a candidate in direct response to the campaign speech of an opposing candidate or an independent group. It does this when the opposing candidate has chosen not to accept public financing, and has engaged in political speech above a level set by the State. The professed purpose of the state law is to cause a sufficient number of candidates to sign up for public financing, which subjects them to the various restrictions on speech that go along with that program. This goes too far; Arizona’s matching funds provision substantially burdens the speech of privately financed candidates and independent expenditure groups without serving a compelling state interest.

The Court also strongly rejected the idea that laws like Arizona’s could permissibly be used to “level the electoral playing field”:

“Leveling the playing field” can sound like a good thing. But in a democracy, campaigning for office is not a game. It is a critically important form of speech. The First Amendment embodies our choice as a Nation that, when it comes to such speech, the guiding principle is freedom—the “unfettered interchange of ideas”—not whatever the State may view as fair.

(italics, ours)

Well said, Justice Roberts.

The Institute for Justice is now 4 for 5 in cases heard before the Supreme Court, their lone setback being the excrable Kelo vs. New London decision that caused 43 states, red and blue alike, to enact stricter eminent domain abuse laws.


Short video below captures nicely the unintended consequences of the "Clean Elections" law.




We all want clean elections and we all want transparent elections and perhaps it would be nice if there wasn't so much bloody money in politics/elections but because of the increasingly pervasive reach of the government into all areas of our lives, politics wield too much power to not be purchased in some form or another.

Long-time followers of this blog know one of our favorite sayings when it comes to the Sisyphean nature of campaign finance reform laws when it comes to the money and politics nexus: You will never keep money out of politics until you remove power from politics by corresponding degrees.

Project Gunrunner/Fast and Furious update

After damning emails surfaced last week that indicated that ATF HMFIC, Kenneth Melson was able to sit at his desk in D.C. and monitor weapons purchases in Arizona, the administration looks to be cutting its losses in the wake of the revelation of the ATF's gun-smuggling operation.

The Justice Department is expected to oust the head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, according to people familiar with the matter, amid a troubled federal antitrafficking operation that has grown into the agency's biggest scandal in nearly two decades.

Moves toward the replacement of Kenneth Melson, acting ATF director since April 2009, could begin next week, although the precise sequence of events remains to be decided, these people said.

The shakeup shows the extent of the political damage caused by the gun-trafficking operation called Fast and Furious, which used tactics that allowed suspected smugglers to buy large numbers of firearms. Growing controversy over the program has paralyzed a long-beleaguered agency buffeted by partisan battles.

"Political damage" is a relative term as it would appear that many in the legacy media are unaware of this rogue operation that is under the jurisdiction of the Department of Justice or simply believe it to be a tad too unseemly to cover.


A couple of exit questions: 1) Do we even know if Gunrunner/Fast and Furious has been shut down? Seriously. The question needs to be asked. Intuitively, one would think someone had the sense to pull the plug on this once it went public but in all the reading we have done on this subject, there has not been a definitive declaration that yea verily, ATF gave a cease and desist order...

... and 2) The Mexican government has been strangely silent on this. What did they know and when did they know it? Were they actively participating in this or did they not have a clue? Either way, now that they are in the know, why aren't they saying anything? Are they being leveraged into silence by the administration with the promise of more goodies down the road in the form of aid or passage of comprehensive immigration reform?


OK, that was more than two but you get the point.

Stow it! (UPDATED)

(please scroll down for update)



Once again, it's the ladies that look to be displaying the most sense in the GOP.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer came out in opposition to the “birther” movement in stronger terms than ever, saying Monday that doubts about President Barack Obama’s citizenship are leading the country toward “destruction.”

Just as birtherism has been re-energized by potential presidential candidate Donald Trump’s media blitz, questioning Obama’s birthplace, the Republican governor has moved in the opposite direction.

“It’s become such a huge distraction,” Brewer said Monday night on CNN. “I, for one — I believe that from what I have seen and after speaking with … the prior governor of Hawaii that indeed he was born in Hawaii. It’s just something that I think is leading our country down a path of destruction, and it just is not serving any good purpose.”

Last week, Brewer vetoed a bill passed by the Arizona state Legislature that would have required presidential candidates to provide documentation showing that they were born in the United States to get on the state’s presidential ballot. The bill, she said in a letter about her veto, was a “distraction” and “a bridge too far” that would have created “significant new problems while failing to do anything constructive for Arizona.”

Amen to that, sister.

We're beginning to think that Donald Trump is actually a Democratic plant. Funny how he just explodes onto the scene at the same time we lose interest in that other overseas distraction in Libya.

Those prices at the pump got you a little chapped? Fugheddaboutit - who's up for some more birtherism?


Of all the legitimate issues for which we can and do take this administration to task and this is the one that has everybody's attention right now? Congratulations, David Axelrod.

O.K. New rule: In winnowing down the field of GOP contenders (we're still not sure if we are actually going to endorse anybody, regardless) you're out if you support ethanol subsidies and now you're automatically DQed for flirtation in any way shape or form with birtherism. In fact, condemnation in the strongest terms a' la Governor Brewer wins you bonus points.

Talk about taking your eye off the ball.



(UPDATE #1): Surprise! The President held a birth certificate news conference early this morning causing us to nearly swerve off the road on our way into work.

Our first reaction was "why?" The administration has now taken off the table a perfect opportunity to paint birthers and anyone within arms-length of them as wackos.

Amazingly, the President said that the reason for holding this press conference was that the whole birther thing had become a distraction. Well, no kidding. Wasn't that the point for the administration in keeping this thing alive in the first place? Now, all the President has left for distractions is Libya and the waste, fraud and abuse hotline set up by the Justice Department to help investigate why gas prices are so high.

For a phenomena that was, ahem, birthed by Clinton Inc. during the Democratic primaries 3 - 3-1/2 years ago and had achieved gale force cultural impact thanks to the relentless pounding by Donald Trump, the ending proved to be rather unceremonious.

And proving that it was indeed time to get down to addressing and solving real issues, the President promptly left after his remarks refusing to field any questions from the press, the first being about General Patraeus moving to the CIA... you know, a real issue.

So, the President took the opportunity to make some political hay. Terrific. Now that we've got all this out of the way, how about that deficit reduction plan, Mr. President?

You are now entering the Republic of Utah

Check out the matter-of-fact opening paragraph of this LA Times Op-ed piece on illegal immigration reform and how business concerns can shape it:

Conservative Utah has bucked the national GOP trend of embracing hard-line — and arguably inhumane — laws meant to make states inhospitable to illegal immigrants. Two weeks ago, Utah Gov. Gary R. Herbert signed into law a bill that will grant work permits, and a path to legal residence, to undocumented immigrants and their immediate families.

If that sounds suspiciously like a state making its own immigration laws, a responsibility heretofore reserved exclusively for the federal government, you would be correct.

One of the bills signed into law grants two-year work permits to illegal immigrants who reside in Utah provided they do not have a criminal record.

A second piece of legislation establishes an adopt-an-illegal program whereby a person can sponsor up to two people or an entire family.

So what is the response of the Justice Department and that miserable hack that runs it to this blatant usurping of the federal government's authority? They have issued a vague statement saying they are "monitoring" the situation.

Now, if you are keeping score at home, we have Arizona which enacts a law enforcing federal immigration laws. The result: They are immediately sued by the Justice Department. And in Utah, they start establishing their own legal residency and immigration requirements over and above federal law. The result: "monitoring".




For years now, we've been saying that it was not possible to negotiate in good faith towards any sort of illegal immigration reform because the other side was not serious about enforcing the border. With a state deciding to make up immigration laws on their own and, so far, getting away with it, the other side isn't even serious about enforcing federal law let alone the border. Add yet another example that only further cements our conviction.

We're assuming they do have indoor plumbing

Leslie of Temple of Mut and Dawn Wildman of Southern California Tax Revolt Coalition are representing at the American Policy Summit at the Phoenix Convention Center which apparently is not "hot" so Leslie has resorted to phoning-in reports.

Some notes:

- Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) did not get the warm reception he thought he was going to receive when he attempted to tout the $61 billion in cuts after the House Republicans were promising $80 billion of the same. Lusty booing ensues.

- Freshman Congressman David Schweirkert (R-AZ) received a warm reception, apologized for this broken campaign promise of sorts and railed against raising the debt ceiling.

- Walter Hudson of Fightin' Words was on hand to speak as well. Though topics of discussion and coordination efforts ran far and wide, Leslie reported that conference attendees were focused and engaged in the goings on in Wisconsin.




H/T: Our cell phone, Leslie's cell phone, a boosted felt tip pin and an empty back page of our road atlas.

Finally....the Mean People Suck set get their own foundation

Alternate headline: "Never let a horrible tragedy go to waste even if there is absolutely no connection between said tragedy and your self-congratulatory boondoggle."

Former presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush will serve as honorary chairmen of a new center at the University of Arizona that will focus on civility in political debate, university officials will announce Monday.

The National Institute for Civil Discourse - a nonpartisan center for debate, research, education and policy about civility in public discourse - will open Monday in Tucson. It was created in the aftermath of the Jan. 8 shootings in the city where six people were killed and 13 injured, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.).

(italics, ours)

For cryin' out loud, even the President who cannot make a firm stand on anything, said that there was no linkage between the lack of civil discourse and the wacko gunman. No matter.


Here's the two big cheeses - let's hear what they have to say:

"Our country needs a setting for political debate that is both frank and civil," Bush said in a statement.

Clinton said in a statement that the new institute "can elevate the tone of dialogue in our country."

Eh... what?

Being civil is essential to elevating the dialog in this country because right now things aren't very civil and that's bad so that's why the elevation of the civil tone in the political arena that will be brought about by this even newer civility will.... blah, blah, blah, blah.


We would rather shove hot pokers in our eyes than have to sit through just 10 minutes of this drivel.



Well, if they're serious about their charter, vision statement, mission statement or whatever they decide to come up with, we know exactly where their first stop should be.

Don't count on it. Remember gang, all this talk of civility is just the poltical class's polite way of telling you to shut the hell up.


(photo courtesy Left Coast Rebel)

Mediocrity as a virtue

Apparently, these are the types of political cartoons that win you a Pulitzer Prize.

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Nick Gillespie of Reason.com breaks down a week's worth of visual hackery by the Arizona Republic's Steve Benson, here.

A Congressman on free speech...

"shut up", he explained.


Clyburn: Words can be danger

U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, the third-ranking Democrat in Congress, said Sunday the deadly shooting in Arizona should get the country thinking about what's acceptable to say publicly and when people should keep their mouths shut.

Clyburn said he thinks vitriol in public discourse led to a 22-year-old suspect opening fire Saturday at an event Democratic U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords held for her constituents in Tucson, Ariz. Six people were killed and 14 others were injured, including Giffords.

The shooting is cause for the country to rethink parameters on free speech, Clyburn said from his office, just blocks from the South Carolina Statehouse. He wants standards put in place to guarantee balanced media coverage with a reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, in addition to calling on elected officials and media pundits to use 'better judgment.'

'Free speech is as free speech does,' he said. 'You cannot yell ‘fire' in a crowded theater and call it free speech and some of what I hear, and is being called free speech, is worse than that.'

We think it is telling and quite appropriate that Clyburn is channeling Forrest Gump there in that last paragraph.

But words can be dangerous, huh? Do you know what is even more dangerous? A room temperature I.Q.-possessing U.S. Congressman, that's what.

Again, craven and shameless exploitation of a horrific tragedy to enact regulations against stuff Clyburn doesn't like.

Interesting news development of the day

Do you remember when they told us that Arizona was simply a home for intolerance and jack-booted fascism and that it should be protested and boycotted against.

Well, they were right.

Harry, it's time to just send everyone home

The lamest of lame-duck Congresses shambles along with some more pleasing results.

The Senate on Saturday blocked a bill that would create a path to citizenship for certain illegal immigrant students who came to the United States as children, completed two years of college or military service and met other requirements including passing a criminal background check. The vote, 55-41 in favor of the bill, effectively kills the measure for this year, and its fate beyond that is uncertain.

Most immediately, the measure would have helped grant legal status to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrant students and recent graduates whose lives are severely restricted because they are illegal residents, though many have lived in the United States for nearly their entire lives.

So severely restricted are they that many of them were sitting in the Senate gallery as the Senate clerk called role.





And in other possibly related news:

Authorities continue to comb the rugged southern Arizona terrain during the manhunt for a suspect they say was involved in the deadly gunfight that claimed the life of a U.S. Border Patrol agent late Tuesday night.

“I assure you, that every effort will be extended to bring that suspect into custody,” said Richard Barlow, the Border Patrol deputy chief of the Tucson Sector.




Agent Brian A. Terry was gunned down the frenzied shoot out that involved a cadre that robs illegal immigrants--vulnerable targets-- as they cross the border. One of the suspects was injured during the shoot out and taken into custody, said Barlow. Three more suspects were later apprehended.

Are we blaming the students for the death of Border Agent Terry? Of course not. However, you will not get us anywhere close to the table to begin discussing comprehensive immigration reform until we see some solid good-faith efforts towards comprehensive illegal immigration enforcement which entails securing the border and which we have not to date.

Taking back the Gadsen Purchase territory, once sovereign U.S. land, would be a good start.

County Road 59 and a naming contest

After traveling through the high desert farming region of the Hopi Nation Reservation in northeast Arizona, we needed to get back to Kayenta, AZ, the gateway to Monument Valley. There was an unmarked road on our Rand-McNally Atlas off of U.S. 191 that turned out to be County Road 59 and it did not disappoint.





















And now for our naming contest...

these dudes showed up about half-way through our trek from Many Farms to Kayenta.


















Our working title so-to-speak will be "Grumpy Norsemen" but we will submit any and all worthy submissions to the Navajo County fathers for their consideration.


P.S. If photos of the Norsemen and other formations are a bit sketchy that owes to them being taken on the fly from the hoopdie.

Battling with a semi and an RV for lead dog position on a remote and undulating single-lane highway was not to be sacrificed by stopping and getting out to take the pictures.

Prescott, Arizona

First stop on our roadie and the "Sorry, Arizona, for that whole insufferably moral preening and yet hypocritical California boycott thing" leg of the trip.


Something is screwy with Blogger this morning, so let's just take it by the numbers:

A couple of looks at Whisky Row in downtown Prescott.

The War Memorial sculpture outside the Yavapai County courthouse of which Prescott is the county seat and which is across the street from Whisky Row.

Inside the Prescott Brewery Co.

And enjoying a Bell's Two-Hearted Ale, a hoppy but balanced red ale, at The Raven Cafe in town.





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So, this is what the return policy is.

We were not aware of any conditional language or cooling off periods that were built into the original contract but apparently some people have other ideas.

The signs were posted by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) along a 60-mile stretch of Interstate 8 between Casa Grande and Gila Bend, a major east-west corridor linking Tucson and Phoenix with San Diego.

They warn travelers that they are entering an "active drug and human smuggling area" and they may encounter "armed criminals and smuggling vehicles traveling at high rates of speed." Beginning less than 50 miles south of Phoenix, the signs encourage travelers to "use public lands north of Interstate 8" and to call 911 if they "see suspicious activity."

Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, whose county lies at the center of major drug and alien smuggling routes to Phoenix and cities east and west, attests to the violence. He said his deputies are outmanned and outgunned by drug traffickers in the rough-hewn desert stretches of his own county.

"Mexican drug cartels literally do control parts of Arizona," he said. "They literally have scouts on the high points in the mountains and in the hills and they literally control movement. They have radios, they have optics, they have night-vision goggles as good as anything law enforcement has.

"This is going on here in Arizona," he said. "This is 70 to 80 miles from the border - 30 miles from the fifth-largest city in the United States."

Let's let one of the Chip Dillers of the bureaucratic ruling class explain this to all you simpletons.

BLM spokesman Dennis Godfrey in Arizona said agency officials were surprised by the reaction the signs generated when they were put up this summer.

"We were perhaps naive in setting the signs up," he said. "The intention of the signs was to make the public aware that there is potential illegal activity here. But it was interpreted in a different light, and that was not the intent at all."

He said there should be "no sense that we have ceded the land," adding that no BLM lands in Arizona are closed to the public.

"I kind of liken it to if I were visiting a city I were not familiar with and asked a policeman if it were safe to go in a particular area," Mr. Godfrey said.

Translation: "Crap... they figured it out. They've interpreted those signs precisely as they were intended"

So, just consider southern Arizona as that part of the city you wouldn't want to venture into were you visiting from out of town. It's not "ceded" per se, rather a portion of our country where you run the risk of getting shot up by Mexican drug cartels. Big difference.

Or perhaps do consider this a Robert Rodriguez-style slo-motion ceding of a portion of our Union.

As the curator of those signs suggest: It's all a matter of interpretation, so take your pick.

Messaging problem

Two men carrying Mexican flags in protest of Arizona's immigration law ran into the outfield during the seventh inning of the New York Mets' game against the Arizona Diamondbacks on Friday night at Citi Field.

The men were apprehended by security fairly quickly without much incident.

Prior to the game, about 40 people across the street from the ballpark chanted "Oppose racism!" and "Boycott Arizona!"

Others stationed closer to the subway exit handed out leaflets that requested Major League Baseball move next year's All-Star game out of Phoenix.

Maybe it was a false flag operation as there is no surer way to turn sympathy for your cause into indignation than running around with foreign nation's flag as the crowd's chants of "U-S-A!...U-S-A!" did attest.

But chances are, it wasn't a false flag operation but rather a counterproductive stunt performed by one of the true believers.

Recall when the open borders crowd started ramping up their protests some 4 years ago and everyone showed up with Mexican flags in Los Angeles on the first day but American flags on the second day as leadership, knowing Mexican flags are a P.R. disaster, sent out the word, pleading with the protestors to sport Old Glory.

Just as the messaging veil slips from time to time, it is merely evidence that this isn't about profiling, it isn't about discrimination and it isn't even about Mexico or Mexicans, per se. These messaging hiccups occur because they cannot be helped as setting at the core of the broad umbrella of the open borders crowd beats a heart of race-based identity politics and victimization. Its a philosophy that detests capitalism and American exceptionalism and to which the rule of law is a completely foreign concept.

It is ultimately hostile to our notions of freedom and liberty as these people view freedom and liberty merely as justifications for exploiting the underclass, the victim, as defined by them.

Don't take your eye off the ball. Stick around past the first few minutes of "No justice, no peace" posturing and sloganeering to hear what these tools of the ruling class really think about this country.

Take us out to the ball game

Lots of fun for the entire family last week up at Angels Stadium in Anaheim, CA where a group of folks gathered to show their support for Arizona's anti-illegal immigration law.

And, er, joining them were a couple from the Brown Berets, a Latino supremacy group.



A couple of things struck us about what you just watched: a) the protesters were ready for the Brown Berets. They got veritable curb side valet service from beginning to end. And b) after hearing and seeing this woman, you will know that she has at least two things in common with Helen Thomas.

via Gateway Pundit with a H/T to Instaglen

We never understood the damn thing ourselves, sir

Right before the 4th of July holiday, the President made what could only be described as a bizarre speech regarding illegal immigration and border enforcement. Before we link you to the ultimate destination, let's review a portion of the 14th amendment of the Constitution as it pertains directly to qualifications for citizenship:

Section 1. 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. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Now, let's bounce that against what the President had to say last week with respect to citizenship:

“Being an American is not a matter of blood or birth, it’s a matter of faith,” President Obama declared at a speech he gave on immigration.

If someone other than Obama had said this, we might reason that it was an inartful way of describing that possessing the "American spirit" is not merely a matter of where one was born or that American exceptionalism takes a "belief" that is not automatically bestowed upon one because he was born within our nation's borders.

Since Obama does not believe in American exceptionalism nor does he even know what it means we're left with the distinct impression that this was his way of blowing off all that dense legalese of the 14th amendment in order for this particular constitutional scholar to qualify American citizenship however the hell he wants.

Hello, Amnesty!

Our blog-buddy, Harrison has an excellent wrap-up of the rest of the President's speech, here.