Born in the U.S.A. –Dump the 14th!

MoonHowler

Jon Stewart takes a long look at America’s political issues with illegal immigrants.  He analyzes the dreaded ‘anchor babies’ and wonders how illegal immigrants could plan ahead 18 years as he takes a look at the 14th amendment to see what had been said about it in 1866, where citizens worried about the dreaded’ Hottentot.’  Lindsay Graham discusses the Drop and Leave policy of illegal immigrants.

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Born in the U.S.A.
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 Jon brought in Lou Dobbs as a voice of reason. 

Lou Dobbs who has spent much of his life discussing illegal immigration, weighed in on the topic and warned that the GOP was overstepping by proposing that the 14th amendment be repealed.  

Even Lou Dobbs isn’t on board with proposed constitutional amendment ending birthright citizenship, Watch him defend the 14th Amendment:

According to the Huffington Post:

The growing chorus of Senate Republicans urging repeal of the 14th Amendment as a means of denying citizenship to the children of immigrants received a rebuke Tuesday from, of all people, notorious immigration foe Lou Dobbs.

Appearing on Fox News, the former CNN host defended the constitutional amendment which provides birthright citizenship.

“The idea that anchor babies somehow require changing the 14th Amendment, I part ways with the Senators on that because I believe the 14th Amendment, particularly in its due process and equal protection clauses, is so important,” Dobbs said. “It lays the foundation for the entire Bill of Rights being applied to the states.”

That even Dobbs opposes the GOP push to repeal the 14th Amendment is a measure of just how radical the effort is. Some Republicans who signaled their support for the move as recently as Monday, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), have already backtracked from their earlier support for broad review of the law.

The top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee wasn’t one of them. “The Constitution is not as clear as it first appears,” Sen. Jeff Sessions (Ala.) told reporters Tuesday. “I continue to hear good Americans explain to me they think it makes no sense

Those men who drew up the 14 Amendment in 1866 had the following concerns:

The authors of the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed citizenship to all people “born or naturalized in the United States” for a reason. They wished to directly repudiate the Dred Scott decision, which said that citizenship could be granted or denied by political caprice. They purposely chose an objective standard of citizenship — birth — that was not subject to politics. Reconstruction leaders established a firm, sound principle: To be an American citizen, you don’t have to please a majority, you just have to be born here

Political caprice?  When Lou Dobbs thinks ideas are over the top, they probably are. I am still stuck on the idea that others now why a couple has children. I am willing to bet it isn’t so the child can sponsor them 29 years down the road. That reasoning is just far too complex.

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Lou Dobbs Goes Rogue

MoonHowler

According to Poor Richard and the Wall Street Journal, Lou Dobbs is considering running for the Senate from New Jersey as a third party candidate. Equally amazing, he hasn’t ruled out running for President. it was only last week that Lou Dobbs announced his departure from CNN where he went from finance journalism to advocacy journalism. He spent the last several years hammering away over illegal immigration, even going so far as stating that illegal immigrants were bringing leprosy into the country.

Now Dobbs is announcing a change of heart.

First, though, Mr. Dobbs is working to repair what a spokesman conceded is a glaring flaw: His reputation for antipathy toward Latino immigrants. In a little-noticed interview Friday, Mr. Dobbs told Spanish-language network Telemundo he now supports a plan to legalize millions of undocumented workers, a stance he long lambasted as an unfair “amnesty.”

“Whatever you have thought of me in the past, I can tell you right now that I am one of your greatest friends and I mean for us to work together,” he said in a live interview with Telemundo’s Maria Celeste. “I hope that will begin with Maria and me and Telemundo and other media organizations and others in this national debate that we should turn into a solution rather than a continuing debate and factional contest.”

Mr. Dobbs twice mentioned a possible legalization plan for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S., saying at one point that “we need the ability to legalize illegal immigrants under certain conditions.”

Telemundo and Lou Dobbs are certainly not two names I would ever expect to hear together. Is Mr. Dobbs becoming the poster child for Mr. Make-Over?

Letter From SPLC on Lou Dobbs

MoonHowler

Posted below is the correspondence from Richard Cohen of Southern Poverty Law Center on the departure of  Lou Dobbs from CNN.  Whether you agree or disagree, Dobbs’ removal was sought by many hefty organizations.  Without additional commentary:

Nov. 12, 2009

 

Dear Friend,

Last night, CNN anchor Lou Dobbs announced his departure from the network. As you know, we’ve been highly critical of Dobbs because he has used his platform to spread myths and propaganda — poisoning the debate over immigration reform and inciting fear and hate against Latinos.

The SPLC was one of the first groups to bring public attention to Dobbs’ use of false information provided by racist hate groups.

With your support, we exposed his wildly inaccurate reporting about immigrants — such as his insistence that immigrants had brought thousands of new cases of leprosy to the United States during a recent three-year period.

And we condemned his reliance on the Federation for American Immigration Reform as an authority on immigration issues. This is an organization we have named a hate group with longtime ties to white supremacists.

This past July, we called on CNN executives to fire Dobbs after he relentlessly promoted the racist and utterly baseless idea that President Obama is not a native-born American citizen. Soon thereafter, a number of other organizations joined our call.

Immigration reform is an important and complex issue, one that should be debated honestly. We hope that Dobbs’ resignation sends a message to other commentators that the airwaves shouldn’t be used to vent extremist rhetoric and fan the flames of hate. Doing so has serious and sometimes violent consequences, as illustrated by the rise in hate crimes against Latinos and the unprecedented number of threats against Obama.

We are committed to exposing those who disseminate misinformation that foments hate. Together, we took a stand, and our actions made a difference. Thank you for everything you do to combat bigotry and intolerance.

 

Richard Cohen photo Thank you for your support,
Richard Cohen
J. Richard Cohen
President, Southern Poverty Law Center

Geraldo Expresses Disgust with Lou Dobbs

MoonHowler

Geraldo called his boss because of the rumor that Lou Dobbs was leaving CNN and coming on over to Fox.
The boss said NO.

Geraldo defends the presence of immigrants in this country and reviles the defamatory tone used when discussing comprehensive immigration reform.  He blames Lou Dobbs for setting the tone that affects all Latino people.

Geraldo stated the following which was reported in the Huffington Post:

Rivera told the crowd, “One of the aspects of our reality in the United States right now is the defamatory tone of the immigration debate and how that immigration debate has slandered an entire race of people. It has been reckless beyond imagining, it has been reckless beyond precedent.”

He then trained his sights on Dobbs: “Lou Dobbs, a man who was an accomplished journalist, and who left to start his own venture in the digital media… and then came back to CNN, and nobody was watching his program. He discovered that one of the ways he could get people to watch was to make of the image of a young Latino trying to get into this country a profoundly negative icon. Lou Dobbs is almost singlehandedly responsible for creating, for being the architect of the young-Latino-as-scapegoat for everything that ails this country.”