Twitter

My publisher at TFT approached me last week with the idea of featuring my Twitter feed on the main TFT site as sort a news-ticker. The idea is that eventually when the news and politics section expand a bit there will be a running feed with multiple writers linking to the big news of the day. For now though it is just me.

I did though have to give up personal tweets as they would seem out of place in a straight news feed. So the quantity of tweets is up and the substantive value is 100% - or at least that's what I tell myself.

Polis to Judiciary

Nice assignment for a freshman Congressman with no legal training. From The Spot,

Congressman Jared Polis (D-Boulder) has landed a seat on the House Judiciary Committee just in time to help shape immigration reform legislation that may move this year.

The Boulder freshman has worked hard to place himself as a player in the immigration debate, no small stretch for non-Hispanic lawmaker whose district is nowhere near the border. He’s given more than a dozen floor speeches on the issue and was an early co-sponsor last year of a sweeping reform bill known as “C.I.R. A.S.A.P.” – an acronym designed to suggest the urgent need for comprehensive immigration reform.

Immigration is an issue that I care a lot about and I think Polis has done a fair job so far, I hope that work continues.

In an ideal world I'd like to see a Select Committee work on this as the issues here intersect with not just the Judiciary committee but also the Education and Labor, Agriculture and Homeland Security committees.

Making us alumni proud...

Brownie,

Brown, who directed FEMA under George W. Bush, is famous for his own botched response to Hurricane Katrina.

So what does he have to say about this latest environmental disaster?

"The delay was this," Brown said on Fox News today. "It's pure politics."

He continued: "This president has never supported big oil, he's never supported offshore drilling, and now he has an excuse to shut it back down."

Brown noted the potential damage the oil slick will cause, and added: "This is exactly what they want, because now [Obama] can pander to the environmentalists and say, 'I'm gonna shut it down because it's too dangerous.'"

So awesome.

I'm really proud of the fact that DU Law has decided to pay this moron to teach classes.

Cabinet Appointment Counter-factuals

Yglesias quoting Neil Sinhababu,

He may not be the first person to blame, but Barack Obama deserves some criticism for letting the Arizona immigration law befall us. If he had left Janet Napolitano as Arizona governor instead of putting her in charge of Homeland Security, there’s no way this law would’ve passed. Instead, Jan Brewer took office, signed it, and is now saying that her state is under terrorist attack from illegal immigrants.

Additionally, we could’ve had Napolitano as a Senate candidate. How that would’ve affected John McCain’s votes over the past year and the 2010 Senate outlook is left as an exercise for the reader. The smart thing would’ve been to have somebody else do Homeland Security with the understanding that they might be asked to step out in two years, and that the Cabinet job would be Janet’s then if she put in a good showing but lost her Senate race. Similar things apply, mutatis mutandis, to Kathleen Sebelius at HHS and Tom Vilsack at Agriculture. (Emphasis Yglesias)

Does anyone find this argument convincing? I certainly don't. The entire argument is based on an assumption that the world would be exactly the same as it is today if Napolitano had stayed in Arizona. That's a huge assumption to make and one that calls into question any conclusion that allegedly flows from the assumption.

Now I'm sounding like a philosophy student (and Neil is an actual philosophy professor) but I just think the entire argument is fatally flawed.

Ross Douthat's Mendacious Column on Immigration

I take on the Times columnist's latest piece over at TFT.