Joe Manchin is already America's worst senator

West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin was missing in action when the Senate took two of its highest-profile votes on Saturday.

Manchin, who has been at odds with national Democrats several times since he was sworn in last month, was not present for votes on the DREAM Act and the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell".

A spokesperson for Manchin told the Charleston Gazette that the senator and his wife had "planned a holiday gathering over a year ago with all their children and grandchildren as they will not all be together on Christmas Day."

"While he regrets missing the votes, it was a family obligation that he just could not break," spokesperson Sara Payne Scarbro said. "However, he has been clear on where he stands on the issues."

Manchin did issue statements on Saturday making clear his opposition to both the DREAM Act and the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell"; his position on the latter bill made him the only Democrat to oppose repeal -- just as he was when the Senate voted on repeal last week.

The fact that Manchin was absent from the chamber while another Democrat, Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.), made it in to vote despite being recently diagnosed with prostate cancer doesn't bode well for Manchin's relationship with his caucus.

via voices.washingtonpost.com

This, after last week's first vote against the DADT repeal, which he explained by saying that he'd only been in office three weeks and didn't know what West Virginians wanted on the issue. It's starting to look like Manchin is completely unprepared for and unserious about the responsibilities of his office. Good choice, West Virginia!

The political indoctrination of America's police forces

Ramon Montijo has taught classes on terrorism and Islam to law enforcement officers all over the country.

"Alabama, Colorado, Vermont," said Montijo, a former Army Special Forces sergeant and Los Angeles Police Department investigator who is now a private security consultant. "California, Texas and Missouri," he continued.

What he tells them is always the same, he said: Most Muslims in the United States want to impose sharia law here.

"They want to make this world Islamic. The Islamic flag will fly over the White House - not on my watch!" he said. "My job is to wake up the public, and first, the first responders."

With so many local agencies around the country being asked to help catch terrorists, it often falls to sheriffs or state troopers to try to understand the world of terrorism. They aren't FBI agents, who have years of on-the-job and classroom training.

Instead, they are often people like Lacy Craig, who was a police dispatcher before she became an intelligence analyst at Idaho's fusion center, or the detectives in Minnesota, Michigan and Arkansas who can talk at length about the lineage of gangs or the signs of a crystal meth addict.

Now each of them is a go-to person on terrorism as well.

via projects.washingtonpost.com

That's more from the WaPo story about the rise of the police state. Apparently, taxpayers are paying half-assed "experts" in Islam to train police to be ready for the coming struggle against the Arabs for supremacy over America. This feels like a sick joke.

Big Brother has arrived. You just didn't notice it.

Suspicious Activity Report N03821 says a local law enforcement officer observed "a suspicious subject . . . taking photographs of the Orange County Sheriff Department Fire Boat and the Balboa Ferry with a cellular phone camera." The confidential report, marked "For Official Use Only," noted that the subject next made a phone call, walked to his car and returned five minutes later to take more pictures. He was then met by another person, both of whom stood and "observed the boat traffic in the harbor." Next another adult with two small children joined them, and then they all boarded the ferry and crossed the channel.

All of this information was forwarded to the Los Angeles fusion center for further investigation after the local officer ran information about the vehicle and its owner through several crime databases and found nothing.

Authorities would not say what happened to it from there, but there are several paths a suspicious activity report can take:

At the fusion center, an officer would decide to either dismiss the suspicious activity as harmless or forward the report to the nearest FBI terrorism unit for further investigation.

At that unit, it would immediately be entered into the Guardian database, at which point one of three things could happen:

The FBI could collect more information, find no connection to terrorism and mark the file closed, though leaving it in the database.

It could find a possible connection and turn it into a full-fledged case.

Or, as most often happens, it could make no specific determination, which would mean that Suspicious Activity Report N03821 would sit in limbo for as long as five years, during which time many other pieces of information about the man photographing a boat on a Sunday morning could be added to his file: employment, financial and residential histories; multiple phone numbers; audio files; video from the dashboard-mounted camera in the police cruiser at the harbor where he took pictures; and anything else in government or commercial databases "that adds value," as the FBI agent in charge of the database described it.

via projects.washingtonpost.com

That's from the Washington Post's blockbuster story this morning about the rise of a national security state that collects ever-more information about even the innocuous activities of its citizens.

I wonder what the Tea Party response will be to this. They shout a Iot about tyranny when it comes to marginal tax rates and helping poor people access health care, so -- to me, anyway -- it would be consistent of them to raise alarms about a burgeoning police state. I don't expect that to actually happen, though.

But for what it's worth, I don't think this means that Barack Obama himself is a tyrant. I just think the system itself is increasingly intrusive -- disproportionate to the gains in safety that we'll get. We'll be a free market society with a citizenry tightly under wraps. Welcome to Singapore.

I don't think this guy likes me at all!

Fan mail from Billy Eger:

Dear Joel, I'm having trouble understanding you commies,(liberals), they changed there names to liberals cause noone was voting for them. That's another story tho, what o don't understand is u hate this country Moooooo much an want socialist ideas implemented here ,why don't you move to China, where they kill every 4th women born ,I guess  ud rather destroy the only free country in the world ,to me your a disgrace too all the ww2 soldiers that died so you can write n say  your assinine comments that has NO COMMON SENSE,you truly are a moron an I hope sum1 destroys your family the way you stupid, ego fed,morons are trying too take this country down ,you would probably laugh at concentration camps,I hope you haven't reprodu,ced cause the world has enough stupid assholes in it.you've got 2 brain cells an 1 is looking for the other. To me u r UNAMERICAN,AN I NEVER WISH BAD ON SOMEONE BUT I REALLY HOPE PEOPLE LIKE U DIE,LIKE NOW,GO TO CHINA AN GET THEM TOO CHANGE THERE WAYS, NOW THAT'S A HERO, ANY1 CAN RUN THERE MOUTH IN A FREE SOCIETY,I COULD SEE U CRYING ON NORMANDY BEACHES FOR UR MOTHER,YOUR NOTHING MORE THAN A PUSSY.BIG PUSSY. PLAIN AN SIMPLE, U MUST'VE BEEN THE LITTLE BOY WHO CRIED AN STOMPED HIS FEET UNTIL HE GOT WHAT HE WANTED FROM MOMMY ,YOU MAKE ME SICK TOO MY STOMACH,SAME THING W GAYS,GO START UR OWN COUNTRY,U ARE GAY RIGHT?WELL U LOOK IT,OH AN IT'S MY RIGHT TO HATE THEM.ALL OF THEM . I CAN GO ON AN ON TOO YOUR BRAINWASHED SOUL BUT YOU CAN'T HANDLE THE TRUTH, UD RATHER MAKE IT UP. U WANNA FIX R PROBLEMS,CLOSE THE FEDERAL RESERVE,AN GET UN OUT OF ARE COUNTRY,BET U CAN'T PASS LAWS IN CHINA.

The remarkable thing about this is I have no idea what Billy is responding to. But I agree with him on one thing in the letter. I'll let you figure out what it is.

The DREAM Act, and justice

I didn't write about the DREAM Act before its death Saturday in the Senate, and I regret that now -- in part because, being a bleeding heart liberal, this photo made my heart bleed a little extra.

The bill would have created a path to citizenship for the children of illegal aliens -- young people who aren't legally citizens, but who are in most other respects what you'd reasonably call "American." They have been raised here. They have friends here. They speak English. They've been educated here. They didn't commit the crime that brought them here, their parents did; it's something they can't help, but they wouldn't necessarily be more more at "home" in their home countries. The path to citizenship would require them to demonstrate their willingness to contribute to American society, either by serving two years in the military or two years at a four-year college.

And it was defeated -- in one of those increasingly frustrating displays of Senate impotence, where "only" a majority of 55 senators supported the bill in a procedural vote.

I gather that many of those who opposed the DREAM Act did so largely because they don't want to somehow incentivize illegal immigrants into bringing their children to this country. It's a fair concern. But it doesn't really help us do anything about the situation that we face.

Right now, an estimated 65,000 illegal immigrants graduate from American high schools each year. We are not going to deport all, or even most of them. We just aren't, because we lack the kind of heavy bureaucratic machinery needed to do so. So those kids are here. But they can't go to college, and they can't get legitimate, on-the-books employment. So they're forced somewhat permanently into the underclass. And not for nothing: These kids end up having kids -- only this third generation, born in America, actually is composed entirely of citizens.

Like I said, they're here. For the most part, we're not getting rid of them. Offering them a path to citizenship isn't a perfect solution, obviously, because there is no perfect solution to the situation. But the status quo condemns many of these young people to economic servitude and actually alienates them from the country they live in. The DREAM Act could've helped make the best of a bad situation. Now we're just stuck with a bad situation. It's a tragedy.

The permanence of temporary workers

Despite a surge this year in short-term hiring, many American businesses are still skittish about making those jobs permanent, raising concerns among workers and some labor experts that temporary employees will become a larger, more entrenched part of the work force.

This is bad news for the nation’s workers, who are already facing one of the bleakest labor markets in recent history. Temporary employees generally receive fewer benefits or none at all, and have virtually no job security. It is harder for them to save. And it is much more difficult for them to develop a career arc while hopping from boss to boss.

“We’re in a period where uncertainty seems to be going on forever,” said David Autor, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “So this period of temporary employment seems to be going on forever.”

via nytimes.com

What worries me is that I have no idea what incentives employers have to actually return to fully employing their work force. With temporary workers, they get all the production -- but without the same levels of pay, and certainly without having to pay so much for benefits. Temp workers -- even if they should turn out to be permanent -- end up being an economic plus for corporations.

The downside of that, of course, is that the economy won't get moving again until people start wanting to consume again. If you're in a "temp" job, what will be your capacity -- or inclination -- to spend? This might be bad all the way around.

E-books and holiday gift-giving

A Twitter friend of mine recently lamented that e-books suck as gifts. I can see how that might be the case for the gift-giver, who doesn't get to see a physical object unwrapped and then enrapturing. But I've been given my first Christmas present of the season by a dear friend - The Autobiography of Mark Teain, on my Kindle for iPad - and I can tell you that it is very pleasing to receive an e-book gift.