Political Heat

Here's one Cheney I never worried about...and who will be missed greatly. RIP, Nan Cheney . She was a fierce advocate for many progressive causes in the Madison area as well as the nation. She marched with Martin Luther King, Jr., in Alabama and helped found the Social Justice Center in Madison. Read the link above for more on this wonderful woman.

A Republican from California wants to deport American citizens. Not just that -- in most cases, these specific citizens are children who were born in the country. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) says that the children of undocumented immigrants who are born in the U.S. should be deported along with their parents and stripped of their citizenry rights. "It takes more than walking across the border to become an American citizen," Hunter told a recent TEA Party crowd. "It's within our souls." The U.S. Constitution, through the 14th Amendment , grants citizen rights to "[all] persons born or naturalized in the United States." It couldn't be any clearer than that: if you're born here, you are given citizen rights. While the deportation of parents would ultimately mean the children would most likely leave with them as well (unless they stayed with another relative or family friend who was legally in the country), the rights of these children shouldn't...

Special thanks to Zach Wisniewski over at Blogging Blue for adding Political Heat to their site's blogroll. It's sorta a big deal for Heat to get this kind of recognition, so I'd just like to extend my deepest gratitude for the "props" you've given me. Thanks again! Now that I've thoroughly embarrassed myself (through the giddy excitement of being listed on a blogroll), on with the show!

Last month, Wisconsin Democratic leaders denied J.B. Van Hollen his request to join other states across the country that were planning on suing the federal government over the legality of the new health care law that passed. I wrote on the subject at the time , stating, "Van Hollen’s quest to unravel the health reform package...is a great act of political theater in an election year." I stand by that statement. But it turns out, I was more right than even I knew. One Wisconsin Now, a non-profit group run by Scot Ross, recently obtained documents through a Freedom of Information Act request that shows Van Hollen's office consulted with a GOP-based campaign group, the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC), on how best to go forward with the lawsuit in Wisconsin. State law requires that, in order to pursue such a lawsuit, the Attorney General must be asked formally by the Governor or by either house of the legislature. Van Hollen failed to receive a request, and thus...

The new immigration law passed by the Arizona State Legislature and signed by the state's governor last week is nothing short of legalized racism. The law requires police officers who have suspicions about a person they believe might be an undocumented immigrant to question that person, and to request that they turn over documentation proving their legal status. Failure to do so can result in jail time. The officer's suspicion can be based on anything -- it doesn't have to be justified. The law allows for blatant racial profiling, and will undoubtedly target the Hispanic population within the state of Arizona. Those who appear to be undocumented immigrants -- and in the officers' eyes, that could include anyone with "brown" skin -- will be required to prove their residency in the U.S. is legit. This will include people who reside here legally as well as persons who were, in fact, born here to begin with. It isn't just a law of inconvenience. The law can a...

The history of American presidents is monumental, with each administration offering several stories that many find fascinating. Yet, for all the presidents our nation has seen, only a few are what historians consider "transitional." We know these presidents by their names that we recognize from textbooks we were forced to memorize in our earlier years, but also for the great command they took to the office of the president. These names we do not forget easily: Thomas Jefferson; Andrew Jackson; Abraham Lincoln; Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt; and even Ronald Reagan. These men are considered our nation's greatest leaders, and are followed by historians for what they've done with the office in their hands. What's less studied, however, is how these men came to power and why we consider them to be transitional in the first place. There is two parts to this equation, and the first is an obvious answer: these presidents simply transformed our country in drastic ways, brin...

I read a brilliant blog today, and though I can't find the original source of it, it has been published on various blogs around the net . In it, author Tim Wise posits an interesting conundrum: what would the nation's reaction be if the TEA Party Protesters actually were predominantly black? Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters —the black protesters — spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn’t like were enforced by the government? Would these protester — these black protesters with guns — be seen as brave defenders of the Second Amendment, or would they be viewed by most whites as a danger to the republic? What if they were Arab-Americans? Because, after all, that’s what happened recently when white gun ...

A federal judge in Wisconsin has declared that the National Day of Prayer is an unconstitutional practice . In a lawsuit brought about by the Freedom from Religion Foundation , a Madison-based organization that seeks to preserve a true separation of church and state, Judge Barbara Crabb stated that the National Day of Prayer, held annually since 1952, was an unconstitutional exercise of presidential power. "It goes beyond mere acknowledgment of religion because its sole purpose is to encourage all citizens to engage in prayer, an inherently religious exercise that serves no secular function," Crabb wrote in her opinion . "The government has taken sides on a matter that must be left to individual conscience." Crabb did not say that prayer itself was improper, but rather that the promotion of prayer by the president undermined the people's rights to determine for themselves whether or not prayer was good for the nation in their minds. Is the proclamation unconstit...

The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, in releasing its annual rankings of freedom around the world, has recently lowered the United States of America's ranking from "free" to "mostly free." The reason? The bank bailouts and the recent passage of health insurance reform have caused our economic freedom, in Heritage's mind, to become diminished. The Heritage Foundation has a definite conservative bias, and it doesn't try to hide it. While their rankings of freedom have, in the past, been fairly accurate readings of how the countries of the world behave, the new rankings just released are a clear push to advance their political agenda through fear and manipulation. Why rank America as "mostly free" based upon the health bill passed? Heritage ranked several other countries as being more "free" than us despite those countries having more "socialist-like" health care programs. For instance, Canada was ranked seventh...