Month: September 2015

How quickly things change when decision making is a purely political exercise.

Just two days ago I quoted Bill Curry of Salon (This is a climate-change nightmare: Droughts rage and fires burn, while evil ALEC and hapless Democrats dither), thusly:

In 2010 Hillary Clinton, nominal front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, said she was “inclined” to approve the Keystone XL pipeline. In July she told a man at a New Hampshire town hall meeting he’d get her final answer when she became president. As Bill McKibben noted in an open letter to her, she spent her years as secretary of state flying around the world telling developing nations to get into the fracking business.

Did that posture reflect a feeling the nomination was in the bag? Could be. Seems the pressure of a real fight for the nomination has changed the thinking of the Hillary camp. From Common Dreams today:

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On Monday, the New York Times reported, Newest Immigrants Assimilating as Fast as Previous Ones, Report Says:

The newest generations of immigrants are assimilating into American society as fast and broadly as the previous ones, with their integration increasing over time “across all measurable outcomes,” according to a report published on Monday by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. (Photo: Naturalization Ceremony).

Immigrants’ education levels, the diversity of their jobs, their wages and their mastery of English improved as they lived for more time in the United States, and the gains were even greater for their American-born children, the report concluded.

“The force of integration is strong,” said Mary C. Waters, a sociologist at Harvard who led the panel of 18 immigration scholars who wrote the more than 400-page report. “However we do it, we are good at it,” she said.

It is the first major report by the national academies on the integration of immigrants since a similarly sweeping overview in 1997. Its timing is linked to the 50th anniversary in October of the Immigration and Nationality Act, 1965 legislation that abolished restrictive national quotas and opened legal immigration to all countries.

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In a bizarre exchange to watch on “Meet the Press,” host Chuck Todd asked Ben Carson if a president’s faith matters. “Well, I guess it depends on what that faith is,” he replied. “If it’s inconsistent with the values and principles of America, then of course it should matter. But if it fits within the realm of America and consistent with the Constitution, no problem.”

Following up, Todd asked, “So do you believe that Islam is consistent with the Constitution?” Carson replied, “No, I don’t, I do not…. I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation.”

“Consistent with the Constitution” would be Article VI of the U.S. Constitution, which is unambiguously clear: “[N]o religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”

Carson’s Islamophobia drew swift rebukes from the White House, each of the leading Democratic candidates, and even many Republicans. Ben Carson draws fire for comments on Muslims. But Carson’s campaign appears to be relishing the attention.

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