Appearing on CNBC this morning, Mark Krikorian propagated the now popular misconception that undocumented immigrants will receive health care subsidies if health care reform passes. Krikorian slammed Democrats for being dishonest with the Americans and decried the absence of a verification mechanism to assure undocumented immigrants do not receive coverage on the taxpayers’ dime:

KRIKORIAN: So the fact is what’s even more important, as far as the political prospects of the bill, is not so much that illegal immigrants will benefit — because they will — it’s the dishonesty of claiming to the public that illegal immigrants won’t benefit, while winking and nodding to the supporters of illegal immigration making clear that illegal immigrants will not be checked and they will be able to sign up.

Nativists and health care fear mongers have welcomed Krikorian’s argument with open arms, citing his concerns as just another reason why Americans should be opposed to “Obamacare” and immigration alike. However, former Undersecretary of Commerce Robert Shapiro — who appeared on CNBC alongside Krikorian — calls the debate at hand a “textbook case of a phony issue.”

Sec. 242 and 246 of America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 explicitly state that only individuals who are lawfully present in US will receive any of the benefits and §142(a)(3) appoints the Health Choices Commissioner with the responsibility of determining the eligibility of individual affordability credits which implies that he or she will also be in charge of instituting a verification mechanism. Other policy experts have also indicated that verification mechanisms are best determined after the bill is passed which allows the government to choose one that matches the underlying process for receiving the benefits allowed. The two amendments to verify citizenship were voted down because one would have given private insurance providers unprecedented access to the sensitive income and identity information of all those applying for health care assistance and the other would have “imposed a burdensome and costly documentation procedure that we know has been a sledgehammer for a non-existent problem.”

In the meantime, if immigration reform doesn’t pass, the health care bill will probably end up hurting undocumented immigrants more than it helps them. A report released by the Congressional Research Service shows that many immigrants who aren’t eligible for federal assistance will be forced to either purchase insurance at their own expense or face serious fines and penalties that will apply to all “resident aliens” and citizens alike. With that said, no one expects a health care bill to fix one of the many products of our country’s broken immigration system and that’s why it makes sense that Shapiro stated that it should be addressed by immigration reform, not health care reform. He also called Krikorian out on national television:

SHAPIRO: What I’d like to ask the other guest [Krikorian] and all these other opponents — if that [verification mechanism] was accepted would you then support health care reform?

KRIKORIAN: I don’t do health care reform, I do immigration.

SHAPIRO: Yeah, right.

Watch it:

In other words, Krikorian knows that his participation in the debate is contingent on his ability to use immigration to “whip up fear and anger” around health care reform while effectively winking and nodding at those who are working to block it.

In the latest issue of West Point’s CTC Sentinel, scholar Babak Rahimi looks at the question of why we didn’t see Iraqi Shia militias employ the tactic of suicide bombing. One of Rahimi’s key conclusions is that “local politics and shifting alliances in the context of a competitive political landscape play an important role in the emergence and thus also the absence of suicide attacks.”

Contrary to the Hizb Allah-Amal conflict in Lebanon during the 1980s, when suicide attacks were used as a way for the factions to outbid each other to gain more popularity and legitimacy within the Shia community, the Iraqi case of Sadr-ISCI rivalry has hardly given way to the emergence of suicide military campaigns. This is primarily because the nature of Sadr-ISCI competition within local Iraqi politics differs greatly from that of their Lebanese counterpart: while Iraqi militias already held relative political power within the Iraqi state in the post-war period, the two Lebanese groups lacked political authority due to a weak state and the highly marginalized and then-minority status of the Shia community within Lebanese society.

Unlike Hezbollah and Amal in Lebanon in the 1980s, who were competing for the allegiance of the Shia community amid a significant lack of political power within the Lebanese system, the Sadr-ISCI competition was between two groups with firmly established stakes in the Iraqi political order. ISCI and the Sadrists had more to lose by alienating their constituencies, which partly explains Muqtada al-Sadr’s decision to order his militia to stand down after ISCI-Sadrist fighting in Karbala in August 2007 resulted in significant collateral damage.

I think we can see a similar dynamic at work in Hamas’ use of suicide bombing in the 1990s and early 00s as a way of establishing greater “resistance” bona fides vis a vis its rival Fatah, followed by Hamas’ public abandonment of the tactic shortly after its January 2006 electoral victory. Having successfully competed against Fatah and established themselves firmly within the Palestinian political system, Hamas’ leaders came to see suicide operations as unacceptably harmful to their image and counterproductive to their political goals.

This isn’t to suggest that Hamas hasn’t been engaged in objectionable behavior since 2006, but, as Michael Bröning notes in this article in Foreign Affairs, its turn from radical violence toward the more prosaic concerns of state-building has been little appreciated in the United States.

Gary Kreep, head of the United States Justice Foundation and founder of DefendGlenn.com is a professional when it comes to defending the racist and bigoted actions of America’s radical right-wing. Aside from spearheading the creation of a website aimed at spreading smears about Color of Change and White House official Van Jones in defense of Fox News personality Glenn Beck, Kreep has also supported the hateful interests of nativists, homophobes, and anti-choice radicals.

After Beck called President Obama a “racist” with a “deep-seated hatred for white people,” Color of Change and its Co-Founder Van Jones convinced 46 companies to cancel their advertisements aired during Beck’s show. In response, Kreep then founded DefendGlenn.com. Kreep himself subscribes to the delusional notion that Obama “has been hiding the truth [about his birthplace] from the American people.” He has also expressed frustration about recent waves of immigration to the US, having told the Los Angeles Times:

“When the Italians came to America, they assimilated. When the Irish came to America, they assimilated…It isn’t the language barrier; it’s the willingness to assimilate. It’s not that hard to come here speaking only a little English and assimilate.”

In 1992, the gay community and the Anti-Defamation League expressed outrage when Kreep brought his “purportedly anti-homosexual views” to San Diego’s Human Relations Commission.

Those Kreep has chosen to defend as an attorney are even more telling of his radical right-wing agenda. Kreep’s professional biography reveals that he has served as General Counsel to the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps — a militant “nativist extremist” group — and has been honored by the anti-choice extremist group Operation Rescue for “his services to the community.” Most recently, Kreep defended the San Diego Minutemen and help win them more than $150,000 in damages for a lawsuit filed against Caltrans for revoking their Adopt a Highway permit. He also defended “anti-immigration crusader” John Monti who was charged with battery, interfering with the civil rights of two day laborers, and filing a false police report. In 2007, Kreep defended anti-immigration activist Roy Warden, who was convicted of one count of assault and two counts of threats and intimidation after burning a Mexican flag outside a Mexican consulate. Warden was also videotaped “threatening to blow a child’s brains out,” and vowed “he would continue to exercise his right to free speech, burn Mexican flags and protect himself from others.”

Fundamentalist pastor Wiley Drake, who has publicly prayed for Obama’s death, has hired Kreep to pursue a lawsuit challenging Obama’s birthplace and presidency.