The Dish

John Cole reacts to Duncan Hunter's desire to kick out US-born children of illegal immigrants:

[T]en years ago this month, Republicans were pitching an absolute fit about allowing Elian Gonzalez to go back to Cuba, demanding he be made an American citizen because… his mother almost walked across the border. Ten years later, they want to kick out Hispanic citizens because… their mothers walked across the border.

One of his commenters asks Hunter:

WHERE DO YOU DEPORT U.S. CITIZENS TO YOU BLEEPING MORON?

Benen offers Hunter another history lesson:

The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says that those "born … in the United States" are "citizens of the United States." It also says that no state can "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." For that matter, the Supreme Court ruled in 1898 that a baby born in San Francisco to Chinese immigrants was legally a U.S. citizen, even though federal law at the time denied citizenship to people from China. The court said birth in the United States constituted "a sufficient and complete right to citizenship."

What this Republican congressman is saying, then, is that he supports a policy wherein the U.S. government deports U.S. citizens based on their parents' immigration status. Even for the GOP, this is pretty nutty.

That's one reason Tim Hefferman agrees with Josh Green that my palpitations that Palin will run for president (and probably win the GOP nomination) are all based on paranoid hooey. Gabriel Sherman thinks her dreadful communications team will doom her. I think it's part of her strategy. Well: one of us will be proven wrong. And I'll be sitting here in blogdom, eating crow and hat if I'm wrong. (Bonus Palin derangement post here. And yes, the derangement is perfectly natural when dealing with someone like her.)

The Dish compiled one of our trademark reax posts on British responses to one of the worst timed gaffes in political history. For a one-top trip through the British commentariat, read on.

Some popular provisions are already kicking in – ahead of schedule.

Were her grand-daddies bootleggers, as she suggested in a recent speech in Canada? Or was she actually referring to her husband's grandfathers? Or some other relatives? The Dish came to the provisional conclusion that in her speech in Hamilton, Canada, Sarah Palin was perhaps embellishing a family story about her hubby's relatives. That certainly seems the likeliest explanation. But I somewhat stupidly suggested further press inquiry into the facts behind a public person's public speech just to clear things up:

Did she have two other grandfathers who were in the Canadian bootlegging business? Could she provide their names? Is she referring perhaps to Todd's grandfathers? Or are we in Palin's alternate reality here? Maybe a reporter could ask her?

Of course, this was a stupid question as the reporter who first broke the story notes today:

I would have loved to ask her. But, as the media covering Palin's visit reported at the time, we were kept at a distance, not allowed any questions and were strictly forbidden from recording her speech.

One politician in this country is allowed to operate outside the realm of usual press scrutiny and accountability. And she's likely to be running for president next time around. Does no one else find that a problem?

A reader writes:

The subtitles in question on the South Park video are an explanation of why the entire speech has been cut, not Kyle's speech itself. My Chinese is not good enough yet to provide you a translation, but I assure you that's what's going on.

Another writes:

对白之所以被消声是因为有穆斯林团体恐吓。
The dialogue has been bleeped out because of threats from a Muslim group.
他们警告 SP 的制作人小心会有 Theo Van Gogh 的下场。
They have warned the producers of South Park that they ought to be careful, otherwise they will meet with the same fate as Theo Van Gogh.
他是荷兰导演，曾拍过批判伊斯兰社会的电影
Van Gogh was a Dutch director who made a movie critical of Islamic society
且于 2004年被枪杀。
and was gunned down in 2004.

A reader writes:

“More and more, this feels to me like an essentially cultural revolt against what America is becoming: a multi-racial, multi-faith, gay-inclusive, women-friendly, majority-minority country.”

THIS! You nailed it, Andrew. We’re at a weird point in history, and the Tea Party is a symptom of it.

Now, if you’ll allow me to get all Clay Shirky on your ass, we are in a point in history when institutions that appeared solid are dissolving. The internet has thrashed the old information asymmetry, the monopoly on data that institutions used to have back when the boomers were young and new models aren't appearing fast enough. And of the models that do arise, not one is going to dominate. It'll be, for good or bad, a world of choice.

The costs of organizing people has fallen through the floor, so large institutions, while still extant, are going to have to shrink and take up new policies of transparency in order to survive. We’re going through a cycle of demystification, so it makes sense that folks are clinging to symbols.

It doesn’t help demographics are going bonkers through movement of people, changing birth rates, rates and types of technology adoption, anchor industries disappearing or shrinking, and that this disruption will be semi-permanent because the rate of innovation is going nowhere but up and the price of innovation is next to nothing. This is life in the big city.

The tea-partiers are actually responding to the creative force of CAPITALISM, which despite the temporary straits we find ourselves in now, is churning along with more vitality than at any point in history.

Think about how short the cycle of innovation is these days! And think about how alienating it is to people who have other concerns than keeping track of technology trends. One downside to all the constant tidal pressure of innovation that is our postmodern condition is it becomes very easy to cling to outmoded ideologies (I mean ideology in the broadest sense here, not just politics, but modes of life).

When the world you knew is upended, all you can depend on is your grievances.

How I Met Your Motherboard is a new blog that "shares the stories of your earliest computer memories." Laura Barton recalls:

One warm day the following summer, I stood in the garden and called up to my brother’s window. “Come outside!” I begged. “Come and play cricket!” I saw his face loom, ghostly and pale at the window. “I’m on the computer,” he shouted, and then turned and disappeared. I hurled the cricket ball across the garden with exasperation. Enough, I thought, was enough. In through the back door I came stampeding, muddy plimsolls slapping over the living room carpet, pausing briefly at my Mother’s sewing basket, and then up the wooden stairs to my brother’s room.

“Come and play cricket!” I demanded. He shook his head. “Come on,” I pleaded, “I’ll let you bat!” My brother sighed. He sensed nothing of the dark thoughts swirling my brain, the violent rage coursing through my young veins. “No,” he said firmly, and turned his face towards the screen. I slipped my fingers through the handles of my Mother’s needlework scissors, I felt the reassuring sharpness of their blades, and I lifted them to the computer wires. My brother tapped away, numbers wriggled across the screen. I stared at the rainbow strip across its keyboard, its grey rubber keys, and felt my insides squirm with loathing. I pulled the handles close, felt them slice though cables, wire, plastic, in one sweet, bright snip.

Meanwhile, this kid combined his first two loves. And this one opted of the computer altogether.

Larison's thoughts:

The difference between Connecticut in 2006 and Florida now is that there is a serious Democratic contender in the Florida race, so it is not likely that the state’s Democratic voters will be rallying around Crist to deny Rubio the win. It is possible that he will do enough to split the vote with Rubio that Meek ekes out a victory, or Crist might be able to win a three-way race, but either way his political ambitions will never go beyond the Senate now. If he prevents the new Republican folk hero Rubio from winning, he will probably be more hated on the right than Lieberman ever was on the left, and if he delivers a safe Republican seat to the Democrats he can probably forget about running for office in Florida again. Even if Crist pulls off a win this year, his pattern of looking for the next big political job will come to a screeching halt.

Harry Enten gives Crist low odds of winning.

Ambinder responds to Ross.