Almost as ridiculous as the “death panel” conspiracy theories that are currently being propagated by right-wing lunatics is the notion that the “Obamacare bill will allow illegal aliens to receive taxpayer-funded health care.” Today, the Atlantic’s Derek Thompson tweaked his pro-immigrant argument to include the counter-intuitive suggestion that Democrats should essentially bow down to obstructionist nativist rhetoric to save both health care and immigration reform from its decimation:

“If Democrats lose health care over immigration, then they don’t just lose health care — they also lose immigration reform. Once Republicans stoke fears about illegal aliens snatching up all their taxpayer-provided Medicaid subsidies, the debate over immigration will have already been poisoned by the notion that Americans will not support reform that incorporates illegals. By nipping the illegal care issue in the bud, and strengthening the provisions to bar illegals from receiving subsidies, the Obama administration saves its gunpowder to fight for immigration reform at a later date.”

Thompson’s assessment is flawed on a variety of levels. To begin with, two eligibility enforcement amendments were already proposed in the House, and Democrats defeated them for a good reason. The Heller Amendment would have given private insurance providers unprecedented access to the sensitive income and identity information of all those applying for health care assistance while curtailing the privacy and redress responsibilities that the Social Security Act requires of government agencies. Another failed amendment presented by Rep. Nathan Deal (R-GA) would have “narrowed the categories of legal immigrants who would be eligible for affordability credits,” according to Health Policy Attorney Sonal Ambegaokar, and “imposed a burdensome and costly documentation procedure that we know has been a sledgehammer for a non-existent problem.”

Thompson should know that, ultimately, it doesn’t really come down to if an enforcement mechanism will be established, but rather when and how. Edwin Park of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities admits that the bill doesn’t articulate a specific eligibility verification system. However, he points out that it will be determined once health care reform is passed and “the work of establishing the new system gets underway.” In the meantime, right-wingers should rest assured that there is nothing in the bill that overturns the harsh verification requirements of Medicaid. Jonathan Blazer of the National Immigration Law Center further explains why verification mechanisms for the new subsidy program will be determined during the implementation process (after the bill is passed):
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Back June, Robert Kagan criticized President Obama for being inappropriately unconcerned with the moral dimension of his foreign policy. Now he criticizes the president for being inappropriately obsessed with it.

In the aftermath of Iran’s presidential elections, Kagan published a pretty awful op-ed going after the president for his amoral “realism” in the face of the Iranian regime’s crackdown. Obama’s policy “requires getting past the election controversies quickly,” Kagan wrote, “so that he can soon begin negotiations with the reelected Ahmadinejad government.”

If you find all this disturbing, you should. The worst thing is that this approach will probably not prevent the Iranians from getting a nuclear weapon. But this is what “realism” is all about.

In my response to Kagan’s item, I questioned whether Kagan himself could possibly believe his own simplistic interpretation of Obama’s “realism.” Well, it turns out that he didn’t believe it!

Here’s what Kagan wrote yesterday in response to President Obama’s description of Afghanistan as a “war of necessity”:

[T]here is a deeper reason…for Obama to claim necessity in Afghanistan. It is part of what increasingly seems to be a striving for moral purity in international affairs by this administration. Obama and his top advisers apologize for America’s past sins, implicitly suggesting they will commit no new ones. And that goes for fighting wars. No one can blame you for fighting a war if it is a war of necessity, or so they may believe. All the inevitable ancillary casualties of war — from civilian deaths to the occasional misbehavior of the troops to the errors of commanders — are more easily forgiven if one has no choice.

So which is it? Is Obama a cold, calculating realist with no regard for morality in foreign policy, or is he inappropriately concerned with maintaining the moral high ground? Or is Kagan just throwing arguments up against the wall to see what sticks?

I should note that I agree with the idea (unoriginal to Kagan) that the war of necessity/choice distinction is not particularly useful. But it seems ridiculous to suggest that the president’s arguing for the strategic necessity of a particular action — whether or not one agrees with that argument — represents an attempt to absolve himself of the moral implications of the decision.