[guest post by Dana]

The New York Times, demonstrating once again that diversity does not include political thought, published an op-ed by recently hired columnist Farhad Manjoo, who attempts to convince us that open borders would be a good thing for the U.S.:

[T]here’s one political shore that remains stubbornly beyond the horizon. It’s an idea almost nobody in mainstream politics will address, other than to hurl the label as a bloody cudgel.

I’m talking about opening up America’s borders to everyone who wants to move here.

Imagine not just opposing President Trump’s wall but also opposing the nation’s cruel and expensive immigration and border-security apparatus in its entirety. Imagine radically shifting our stance toward outsiders from one of suspicion to one of warm embrace. Imagine that if you passed a minimal background check, you’d be free to live, work, pay taxes and die in the United States. Imagine moving from Nigeria to Nebraska as freely as one might move from Massachusetts to Maine.

There’s a witheringly obvious moral, economic, strategic and cultural case for open borders, and we have a political opportunity to push it. As Democrats jockey for the presidency, there’s room for a brave politician to oppose President Trump’s racist immigration rhetoric not just by fighting his wall and calling for the abolishment of I.C.E. but also by making a proactive and affirmative case for the vast expansion of immigration.

It would be a change from the stale politics of the modern era, in which both parties agreed on the supposed wisdom of “border security” and assumed that immigrants were to be feared.

As an immigrant, this idea confounds me. My family came to the United States from our native South Africa in the late 1980s. After jumping through lots of expensive and confusing legal hoops, we became citizens in 2000. Obviously, it was a blessing: In rescuing me from a society in which people of my color were systematically oppressed, America has given me a chance at liberty.

But why had I deserved that chance, while so many others back home — because their parents lacked certain skills, money or luck — were denied it?

When you see the immigration system up close, you’re confronted with its bottomless unfairness. The system assumes that people born outside our borders are less deserving of basic rights than those inside. My native-born American friends did not seem to me to warrant any more dignity than my South African ones; according to this nation’s founding documents, we were all created equal. Yet by mere accident of geography, some were given freedom, and others were denied it.

This is so stunningly naive, convoluted, and simplistic, it boggles the mind. To Manjoo, any border security by default, is bad, immoral, xenophobic, and flat-out un-American. To which I say, tell that to Americans who have lost loved ones at the hands of immigrants who should not have been in the U.S. in the first place. While Manjoo wants to put out the welcome mat to anyone and everyone, those walking through the devastating aftermath of the unnecessary loss of their loved ones might see it a bit differently. Their loved ones are dead, but they would not be dead if that immigrant had not unlawfully crossed the border into the U.S. They would not be dead if that immigrant had been prevented from crossing the border through stricter security measures. Period. In the minutiae of border discussions, this pivotal point is conveniently ignored by individuals like Manjoo and the open-borders crowd. It has to be. To confront it would be to accept that the argument to open the border is severely flawed.

I’m uninterested in taking time to debate Manjoo’s claims, one by one, because the inherent dangers and risks that come with open borders speak for themselves. This is some childish pie-in-the-sky thinking that, when we apply basic common sense, becomes self-refuting. With that, it will be interesting to see if and when the new progressives in Congress make their move toward an open border. They will not only have to successfully convince the hoi polloi that this is a viable policy position in the best interest of the U.S., but also convince their own leadership, including Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, both of whom supported legislature to provide border fencing in 2006. (See Secure Fence Act of 2006.)

Officer Singh was a legal immigrant from Fiji, who like Farhad Manjoo’s family, jumped through the necessary hoops to become a U. S. citizen. This unlike Gustavo Perez Arriaga, who illegally crossed into the U.S. via the Arizona border and has been charged with the murder of Officer Singh. Because Arriaga should not have been the U.S. in the first place, Officer Singh’s death was preventable.

–Dana

[Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.]

Dat’s a nice fahder in law ya got dere. Be a shame if someone was to investigate him:

In an interview with FOX News on Saturday, Trump called Cohen “weak,” accused him of lying to prosecutors in order to get a reduced sentence, and hinted — unprompted and without evidence — that he possessed damaging information about Cohen’s family.

“[Cohen] should give information maybe on his father-in-law, because that’s the one that people want to look at,” Trump told FOX News host Jeanine Pirro. “That’s the money in the family.”

There has been no public indication during the investigation of Cohen that his father-in-law is or was the subject of any criminal inquiry.

“It’s an absolutely shocking violation of norms for the chief executive to suggest a retaliatory investigation against the relative of a witness against him,” said Kenneth White, a former federal prosecutor and criminal defense attorney with Brown, White & Osborn LLP. “This is Nixonian ‘enemy list’ stuff, but instead of the public finding out about it through secret tapes and insiders, the president is saying it openly on TV.”

. . . .

One day after Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison, Trump tweeted that Cohen agreed to plead guilty only “to embarrass the president and get a much reduced prison sentence, which he did – including the fact that his family was temporarily let off the hook.”

I know that many readers here will not find Trump’s threats a “shocking violation of norms” but as business as usual from the Lunatic in Chief. However, the fact that Trump engages in regular surprising violations of norms should not dull our senses to the point where we allow this sort of behavior not to shock us.

If Democrats get around to mounting a genuine effort to impeach Trump, this should be among the articles of impeachment.

Meanwhile, Rudy “Bug Eyes” Giuliani seems to be leaving open the possibility that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, saying his past denials of collusion have related only to Trump personally:

President Trump’s legal spokesman Rudolph W. Giuliani on Wednesday night appeared to grant the possibility that members of Trump’s campaign did, in fact, collude with the Russians during the 2016 presidential election campaign.

And in the process, he contradicted dozens of previous denials that both the Trump team (and Trump himself) have offered.

“I never said there was no collusion between the campaign or between people in the campaign,” Giuliani told CNN’s Chris Cuomo, before getting cut off.

“Yes, you have,” Cuomo said.

Giuliani shot back: “I have not. I said ‘the president of the United States.’”

Here’s the clip:

Kinda hard to deny collusion by the campaign when Trump’s campaign manager gave internal polling data to Konstantin Kilimnik, whom Mueller has described as someone who has “ties to a Russian intelligence service and had such ties in 2016.”

I suspect the next shoe to drop will relate to additional evidence of Trump’s knowledge of the Trump Tower meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya. If I’m right, that evidence will be waved off impatiently by Trump superfans as well.

And the drama continues…

[Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.]