The Senate Immigration Bill: Another Legislative Disaster

by Bruce S. Thornton

FrontPage Magazine

The “comprehensive immigration reform” bill cooked up by the Senate has a decided Obamacare stink to it. Like that disaster, the immigration bill is rushing to solve a whole host of complex problems with a massive, muddled bill few Senators will have the time or inclination to read in its entirety, with the same plethora of unforeseen expensive consequences, all perfumed with the same dubious CBO estimates of money saved and revenue increased. Continue reading “The Senate Immigration Bill: Another Legislative Disaster”

Immigration: If the Bill Passes

Both Obama’s record and the results of past immigration “reforms” paint a bleak picture.

by Victor Davis Hanson

National Review Online

There are lots of reasons to believe that most of what is promised in the current so-called comprehensive immigration-reform bill won’t be honored if it is passed by the full Congress and signed by the president. Continue reading “Immigration: If the Bill Passes”

Winning the Latino Vote

by Victor Davis Hanson

National Review Online

Over the last three weeks, I think I have read most of the post-election op-eds written on the Latino vote. I have studied exit polling, read sophisticated demographic analyses, and talked to as many Latinos in my hometown as I could. The result is that I would not advise Republicans to go down the identity-politics route. Continue reading “Winning the Latino Vote”

Let Obama Be Obama

by Victor Davis Hanson

Tribune Media Services

After his party’s devastating setback in the 2010 midterm elections, Barack Obama was re-elected earlier this month by painting his Republican opponents as heartless in favoring lower taxes for the rich. They were portrayed as nativists for opposing the Dream Act amnesty for illegal immigrants, and as callous in battling the federal takeover of healthcare. Continue reading “Let Obama Be Obama”

Oh, We Forgot to Tell You . . .

by Victor Davis Hanson

Tribune Media Services

The second-term curse goes like this: A president (e.g., Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, etc.) wins re-election, but then his presidency implodes over the next four years — mired in scandals or disasters such as Watergate, Iran-Contra, Monica Lewinsky, the Iraqi insurgency and Hurricane Katrina. Continue reading “Oh, We Forgot to Tell You . . .”

Anatomies of Electoral Madness

by Victor Davis Hanson

PJ Media

“Gonna be some hard times coming down.”
—Kris Kristofferson, Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid

One way of making sense out of nonsense in this new age is simply to believe the opposite of what you read. I have been doing that and it often works. Continue reading “Anatomies of Electoral Madness”

Bankrupt California

by Victor Davis Hanson

National Review Online

I thought of my fellow Californian Energy Secretary Steven Chu last week, when I paid $4.89 a gallon in Gilroy for regular gas — and had to wait in line to get it. The customers were in near revolt, but I wondered against what and whom. I mentioned to one exasperated motorist that there are estimated to be over 20 billion barrels of oil a few miles away, in newly found reserves off the California coast. He thought I was from Mars. Continue reading “Bankrupt California”

Graffiti on Trees, High-Speed Rail to Nowhere: The Wages of Liberalism

by Victor Davis Hanson

PJ Media

Last week, while reading about an insolvent California’s insistence on going ahead with the first leg of a proposed high-speed rail line (total cost of the system: an estimated $100-$300 billion), I heard the following story on a local ABC news affiliate about a nearby low-Sierra lake: Continue reading “Graffiti on Trees, High-Speed Rail to Nowhere: The Wages of Liberalism”

A Vandalized Valley

by Victor Davis Hanson

National Review Online

I am starting to feel as if I am living in a Vandal state, perhaps on the frontier near Carthage around AD 530, or in a beleaguered Rome in 455. Here are some updates from the rural area surrounding my farm, taken from about a 30-mile radius. In this take, I am not so much interested in chronicling the flotsam and jetsam as in fathoming whether there is some ideology that drives it. Continue reading “A Vandalized Valley”

Obama’s Predictable Scandals

by Victor Davis Hanson

National Review Online

The media finally conceded the Obama administration to be inexperienced and inept, reminiscent of the Carter administration — but, they maintained, not possibly involved in any corruption. Continue reading “Obama’s Predictable Scandals”