One of these days, someone will point out how sensible our current Supreme Court is. I’m not qualified to judge the precise Constitutional issues raised by the laws that barred immigrants from any legal appeal against deportation, but, at a very basic level, it seems to me that very few laws should be immune from some judicial appeal. Those laws which can change a person’s entire life – sending someone back to a country years after he has left it for minor reasons under U.S. law – should be especially suspect. In some ways, I think the greatest blot on the record of all politicians in the 1990s was immigration. The 1996 Immigration Act was a travesty of Anglo-American principles of fair play and due process. It undid decades of reasonable immigration policy in favor of a populist jihad. To be frank, I’m glad in a way that Pete Wilson turned California into a Democratic state by his anti-immigration stances. Perhaps that kind of political pay-back is the only check on anti-immigrant populism that actually works (would-be immigrants, after all, can’t vote). The law in question, however, was thoroughly bipartisan. Bill Clinton was as loathsome on immigration as he was on civil liberties. Perhaps this Court will help reorient American values back to an understanding that immigrants are the core of this country, in some ways the most American of Americans, and granting them due process and fair treatment is one of the hallmarks of a civilized and humane society. I wish George W. Bush would grasp this as well. It wouldn’t hurt his narrow political self-interest either.
HOW GREEN IS THAT BUSH?: A reality check on W’s brief environmental record. Bottom line: don’t believe the media spin – yet.
WE ALL HAVE AIDS?: One of the crassest, dumbest and most sanctimonious pieces yet on the AIDS crisis from one Donald Berwick (who he?- ed.) from something called the Institute for Health in today’s Washington Post. Hard to know what’s dumber – the facile equation of a disease with the man-made Holocaust, or the sophomoric idea that if all existing HIV medications were ‘free,’ whatever that might mean, the global crisis would be over. Then there’s the insulting notion that we all have AIDS. Sorry, bro, we don’t. Some of us have AIDS; some of us have HIV; others – the vast majority of the people on earth – don’t. Becoming HIV-positive in sympathy with those of us with the virus is a little different than asking an entire country to wear yellow stars to protect persecuted Jews. The first would ensure everyone suffers; the second ensures very few do. Yes, AIDS is a global emergency. Yes, we need human empathy. And yes, we need practical, feasible solutions (one of which is America’s free market in pharmaceuticals). What we don’t need are any more red ribbons, stupid analogies, hand-wringing and moral grandstanding. But all those, of course, are what we are going to have to endure for yet more years and years.
The Dish 