Today, the Senate Finance Committee began addressing a series of amendments to Sen. Max Baucus’ (D-MT) health care plan that will dramatically affect the benefits that legal immigrants will be able to receive. The amendments cover a range of issues: verification requirements, cross-agency information sharing, waiting periods for tax credits, and eligibility restrictions. The mostly-Republican sponsored amendments seek to limit the coverage of legal immigrants while creating even more verification obstacles for immigrants and US citizens alike:

Amendment	Type	Provision	Offset	Status
Schumer C11	Verification	Proof of citizenship could be authenticated by a future biometric verification system that is mandatory for employment.	Biometric technology is costly, controversial and prone to errors.	Pending
Grassley C8	Verification	Requires applicant to present a government-issued photo ID at the time of application for Medicaid or CHIP benefits.	Creates a significant barrier to coverage and undermines the simple, mail-in and online application processes.	Failed: 10-13
Kyl C12 & C14, Grassley F6, Ensign C1	Waiting Periods	Reinstates five year waiting period for legal immigrants for tax credits.	Legal immigrants would be required to have health insurance but are barred from accessing federal health programs which they help fund.	Pending
Ensign C2	Eligibility	Requires applicants for health insurance tax credits to supply a valid SSN of spouse and qualifying child in the individual’s tax filing unit even if spouse/child is not applying for a tax credit.	Would discriminate against citizens and legal immigrants by denying them health insurance tax credits solely because other members of their households do not have SSNs.	Pending
Ensign C3	Eligibility	Establishes a penalty for sponsored legal immigrants who fail to obtain health coverage.	If an immigrant cannot obtain coverage, the sponsor would be required to pay either the penalty or the tax credit provided to the sponsored immigrant, whichever is greater.	Pending
Kyl C15	Information Sharing	Requires real time information sharing by SSA, IRS and DHS for tax credit application	In direct conflict with health privacy protections and basic confidentiality protections in tax code.	Failed: 10-12-1

When it comes to verification provisions, the Baucus bill already already requires all applicants’ name, social security number, and date of birth to be verified with Social Security Administration (SSA) data. The information of immigrants is checked against DHS data to verify they are lawfully present in the US. Piling on more verification requirements doesn’t just over-complicate the application process for immigrants, it hurts US citizens. Grassley’s amendment would’ve required Medicaid applicants — the poorest US residents — to put originals of documents such as a driver’s licenses in the mail or take precious time off work to visit the Medicaid office in-person. Meanwhile, Schumer may be trying to seem tough on enforcement in anticipation of a looming immigration reform battle which he plans on leading, but his health care amendment is off-the-mark. Besides the fact that it’s going to take a whole lot of time and taxpayer money to develop a national biometric verification system, the system would be built on E-Verify, a flawed web-based verification system that currently has a 4% error rate and could accidentally block millions of eligible citizens.

As it currently stands, the Chairman’s Mark would allow legal immigrants to qualify for health insurance tax credits without a waiting period. The proposed “waiting period” amendments, however, put legal immigrants who have been in the US for less than five years in a position in which they are paying taxes and funding a program that they don’t even have access to. They would still be required to purchase insurance (and face a steep fine if they don’t), but wouldn’t receive any government assistance to do so. Their lack of participation would meanwhile limit the pool of participants and increase the cost of health care for everyone.

Ensign C2 & C3 would impose onerous requirements that many immigrant families will be unable to meet. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U. S. Department of Agriculture has found that requirements similar to those in Ensign C2 imposed by states would violate Civil Rights laws. It’s certainly unfair to require legal immigrants to purchase insurance and then fine them if a family member can not provide a SSN or if they are sponsoring an immigrant who can not afford insurance.

The Senate Finance Committee had good reason to vote down Kyl C15 and keep the DHS, IRS, and SSA operating independently of one another. Tax collection and immigration enforcement efforts are conducted separately “in order to make sure that everyone who earns income within our borders pays the proper amount of taxes,” regardless of their immigration status. Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) called Grassley C8 “a solution looking for a problem” before it was defeated this afternoon. The same could be said for most of the amendments proposed to further limit the few benefits that legal immigrants in the US might be able to receive.

Last night on Glenn Beck’s show, the leader of the American conservative movement undertook to explain to his viewers some of the details and nuances of Iranian Shi’ite Islam, particularly its “Twelver” sect.

Beck’s helper in this task was Joel Rosenberg, a former research assistant to Rush Limbaugh and political adviser to Israeli Likud politicians Binyamin Netanyahu and Natan Sharansky who has written a number of books claiming to show that we are currently living in the End Times. While it’s clear that Rosenberg has spent a lot of time counting words in the Bible, it’s also clear that he’s spent a vanishingly small amount of time studying Twelver Islam:

BECK: So the Ayatollah Khomeini and the revolution of ’79, he said these Twelvers are too crazy for even him. What happened, because is Ahmadinejad the only one? Are there a lot of them? It’s my understanding that the government now is full of these people. Is that true?

ROSENBERG: That’s right. Well, the Ayatollah Khamenei, the current supreme leader was a disciple of the Ayatollah Khomeini and he has been a secret closet Twelver, because he clearly believes the same thing as Ahmadinejad.

Watch it:

Ayatollah Khamenei — “a secret Twelver?” Twelvers “too crazy” for Khomeini? Here’s a news flash for Beck and Rosenberg: Almost all of the clerics in Iran are Twelvers. They are the largest sect of Shi’ism. The idea that Khamenei concealed his Twelverism from Khomeini is complete nonsense — because, like eighty percent of Shi’i Muslims, Khomeini was a Twelver. You know who else is a Twelver? Iraq’s Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani! Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki? Twelver. Maliki’s Da’wa Party? Full of Twelvers. In fact, my friends, there are Twelvers right here in America. I sat next to one on a plane to Seattle a few months ago! I even talked to him! I kid you not!

Of course, the vast majority of Twelvers, like the vast majority of Christians, while they may believe in the Apocalypse, do not believe that it is their duty to trigger it. It’s true that many Iranian leaders, including President Ahmadinejad, believe in the return of the Hidden Imam and the Last Days (many American leaders believe similar things about Jesus Christ.) It’s also true that Ahmadinejad, a pious conservative Muslim, lards his speeches with references to the return of the Hidden Imam, so much so that he was chastised last year by several Iranian scholars, who told him he “would be better off concentrating on Iran’s social problems…than indulging in such mystical rhetoric.” There is no evidence, however, that Iranian policy is guided by a strategy to hasten the Imam’s return.

As for Khamenei’s own beliefs about the End Times, according to Mehdi Khalaji, an Iran analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who spent more than a decade studying Shia theology in the Iranian seminary city of Qom, Ayatollah Khamenei — who, not Ahmadinejad, actually has the final say over Iranian government — is much more concerned with the here and now:

Not one of [Khamenei's] speeches refers to any apocalyptic sign or reveals any special eagerness for the return of the Hidden Imam. As the theory of the guardianship of the jurist requires, the most significant task of the Supreme Leader is to safeguard the regime, even by overruling Islamic law. Therefore, it seems like Khamenei, unlike the Iranian president, does not welcome and military confrontation with the West, the United States, or Israel.

In other words, Rosenberg, who was brought on help Beck and his viewers know what they are talking about, doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Rosenberg pretty clearly does seem to know, however, that Beck is walking the far side of loopy, but he’s also more than happy to help Glenn Beck scare the crap out of the already-frightened sheep who watch Glenn Beck.

Full transcript below. Read more

There are a lot of theories floating around right-wing crowds about what’s behind the brutal death of Census worker Bill Sparkman who was found hanging naked from a tree with the words “Fed” scribbled on his chest. The latest comes from right-wing radio host Rodger Hedgecock who seems convinced that the country’s “open border policy” must have had something to do with Sparkman’s gruesome death. Hedgecock dismisses the possibility that Sparkman was targeted and killed by someone motivated by the anti-government rhetoric being spewed by teabaggers and right-wing politicians who have explicitly bashed the US Census, and instead claims that “illegals” at “pot plantations” may be the cause of forest fires and Sparkman’s death:

Last week, Sparkman’s death became fodder for more attacks on “right-wing violence.” Bloggers wanted to “send the body to Glenn Beck,” and a Time magazine piece speculated that Sparkman was a victim of the culture of another McCain-voting Southern state. Now it looks more like Sparkman was yet another victim of illegal drug operations on national forest land, and possibly also a victim of our still open border with Mexico.

Taking the Census in our national forests is dangerous business. Law enforcement sources say meth labs and marijuana plantations are “prevalent” in the area of Sparkman’s death. Did he stumble across a drug operation in the Daniel Boone National Forest? No one is saying for sure, but the locals believe it…the workers on these pot plantations are illegals from Mexico who live and work in primitive conditions in violation of all workplace safety laws, in a modern day version of slavery…Our open border with Mexico has been changing American society in a number of unpleasant ways. These fires, these destroyed national forest lands, and maybe even Bill Sparkman’s death, may just be the latest way.

It’s unclear what leads Hedgecock or undisclosed Clay County Kentucky “locals” to come to such conclusions about Mexican drug cartel involvement when law enforcement “cited the prevalence of drug activity in the area,” but also conceded that they had “no reason to believe there was a link to Sparkman’s death.” Some recent arrests related to meth lab activity in the Daniel Boone National Forest where Sparkman’s body was found were all of what appears to be white Kentucky-bred natives. Rather than citing Mexican drug cartels, Clay County Sheriff Kevin Johnson attributes the drug activity to “tough [economic] times” in his community. Former Clay County marijuana-grower JC Lawson had long bragged about how his enterprise brought money to his impoverished community.

It also seems unlikely that an “illegal pot plantation” worker from Mexico would commit such a visible crime and risk drawing attention to what Hedgecock describes as a lucrative enterprise. Other lo-brow right-wingers have speculated that Sparkman was a pedophile or that his death might have involved “teenagers and the horrorcore rap scene.”

Even though I have very little sympathy for their “Ahmadinejad won, get over it” theory of the Iranian presidential election, which has aged about as well as Joe Walsh, I think Flynt and Hillary Mann Leverett’s op-ed raises some interesting and valid points in regard to possible outcomes of U.S.-Iran talks. But this bit is just stone nonsense:

Because President Obama assembled a national security team that, for the most part, did not share his early vision for American-Iranian rapprochement, his administration never built a strong public case for engagement. The prospect of engagement is still treated largely as a channel for “rewarding” positive Iranian actions and “punishing” problematic behavior — precisely what Mr. Obama, as a presidential candidate, criticized so eloquently about President George W. Bush’s approach.

What part of “without preconditions” do the Leveretts not understand? As a candidate, Obama promised to do this, and weathered a storm of criticism, only to see the idea find broad acceptance in the foreign policy community by the final days of the presidential campaign. The Obama administration is now preparing to sit down with the Iranians, having accepted — rightly, in my view — an Iranian counter-proposal that amounted to little more than an RSVP. All the while, Iran’s nuclear program has continued, as has its support for terrorism and incitement against Israel.

The Leveretts seem to be suggesting that the only way for the Obama administration to demonstrate good faith going into these negotiations is to avoid expressing any and all U.S. and international concerns about Iranian behavior. This is not going to happen, and, frankly, I think the Iranians are savvy enough not to expect it to happen.

As for this:

Unfortunately, the Obama administration was enticed by the prospect of regime-toppling instability in the aftermath of Iran’s presidential election this summer. But compared to past upheavals in the Islamic Republic’s 30-year history — the forced exile of a president, the assassination of another, the eight-year war with Iraq and the precipitous replacement of Ayatollah Khomeini’s first designated successor, Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri, with Ayatollah Khamenei — the controversy over this year’s election was hardly a cataclysmic event.

I suppose it’s helpful in terms of balance to see someone making the reverse of Robert Kagan’s silly argument that President Obama was “siding with the Iranian regime” against the election demonstrators, but this is the first time I’ve read an analysis of the recent post-election controversy — which saw, among other things, a substantial portion of the Iranian clerical establishment break with the regime — as anything less than a pivotal moment for the Islamic Republic.

As they tend to do with every bit of news having to do with Iran, the Washington War Party is trying to spin the recent disclosure of a nuclear facility near the seminary city of Qom as a debunking of the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (pdf), which stated that “we judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program,” but also assessed “with moderate-to-high confidence that Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons.”

Linking to this Weekly Standard blog post — by Thomas Joscelyn, one of the few people still claiming that torture stopped an attack on L.A.’s Library Tower — Newt Gingrich tweeted yesterday that “Iran’s hidden facility at Qom shows how wrong the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran was.”

That’s not true. As the New York Times reports this morning, “American spy agencies have stood firm in their conclusion” — first made public in the 2007 NIE — “that while Iran may ultimately want a bomb, the country halted work on weapons design in 2003 and probably has not restarted that effort.”

This isn’t to suggest that the Qom site isn’t cause for serious concern. As to the question of whether the facility demonstrates that Iran was prepared, at some point, to proceed covertly with a nuclear weapon, Iran analyst Gary Sick surmises:

If you start with the conviction, as I do, that Iran was and is determined to develop a nuclear capability that would permit it to “break out” and build a nuclear weapon if and when a decision was made by Iran’s highest authorities, probably in response to a direct military threat to Iran by another nuclear power, then the creation of this site would serve two logical purposes.

First, it would disperse Iran’s enrichment capabilities, making it much more difficult for an enemy to destroy its nuclear program with a single strike. If the facility was unknown to the enemy, it would provide an immediate fallback capability in the event the enrichment site at Natanz was destroyed or severely damaged. It was very likely a component of Iran’s post-strike Plan B and assumed that any internal opposition to a nuclear weapon would have been removed by the military attack. As such, this facility would very likely be intended to produce a nuclear weapon.

In other words, in Sick’s view — and granted this is all speculation — the Qom facility was likely intended to produce a weapon — in the event of a strike on Iran, which would both vindicate the claims of Iran’s War Party about the need for an Iranian nuclear deterrent, while removing Iranian domestic opposition to obtaining one. It’s darkly humorous, then, that the American War Party is trying to spin the existence of the Qom site as evidence that we need to strike Iran. It’s turtles all the way down with these guys.

It also worth noting one reason that the NYT article suggests U.S. intelligence agencies are being so meticulous about what the Iran data do and do not show: The Iraq debacle, in which the Bush administration and its media allies misrepresented the intelligence about Iraqi WMD, and then turned around and blamed the CIA when Iraq’s reality didn’t match the Bush administration’s apocalyptic fantasy. So, in their attempt to get America into yet another war, conservatives are being stymied by their lies about the last one. That, my friends, is poetic justice we can believe in.

Today, the Republican National Committee (RNC) released a statement from Chairman Michael Steele announcing the release of a new video in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month. However, though the press release emphasizes the Republican Party’s “commitment to the Hispanic community,” apparently that commitment does not include hiring a qualified Spanish translator. The Spanish translation of Steele’s statement is riddled with embarrassing typos and errors. Even Yahoo’s automatic online translator, Babel Fish, produces better results. A quick revision highlights the multitude of glaring errors:

The substance of the accompanying video isn’t much better. Its main focus is on highlighting the accomplishments of conservative Latinos and completely ignores renowned Latino leaders like civil rights activists César Chávez and Dolores Huerta, and completely sidesteps the recent confirmation of Puerto Rican Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Watch it:

The video doesn’t even acknowledge one of the Republican Party’s most respected leader, former Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL) who resigned from his post as RNC chairman in 2007 in response to his party’s anti-immigrant views. Before abruptly leaving Congress this past August, Martinez admitted that his party’s “divisive rhetoric” during the 2007 immigration debate had tarnished the GOP brand amongst Latinos, stating “the Republican Party had better figure out how to talk to them [Latinos].” Ironically, while Steele indicated that the GOP would not be changing its position on immigration, he did say that the Party had to work on its messaging, which is often perceived as “insensitive.”

Earlier today, while former National Republican Congressional Committee communications director Karen Hanretty and former Dick Gephart campaign manager Steve Murphy agreed that more enforcement measures should be put in place to make sure undocumented immigrants don’t benefit from health care reform, Fox News anchor Greg Jarrett took a more practical stance. Hanretty, who is opposed to even letting undocumented immigrants purchase health insurance with their own money at full cost, was in accord with Murphy who would like to see the government “expand the background check” on undocumented immigrants in the workplace. Jarrett pointed out that it doesn’t really make sense to hurt American taxpayers out of a spitefully stubborn commitment to making undocumented immigrants suffer:

HANRETTY: What this represents are two really big problems that this White House has. First of all, the idea that Democrats are out there suggesting that this particular health care bill should provide health care to illegal immigrants flies in the face of what President Obama said.

JARRETT: Let me just stop you there. Two points to be made. First of all, the government isn’t going to pay for it. The illegals would have to pay for it themselves. We would simply allow them access to it. And second of all, taxpayers, in the long run, would save money. Now, I gotta tell ya, I betcha most of our viewers right now are saying — wait, I can save money? That’s worth exploring.

HANRETTY: Your viewers are not saying that. I wish we had a live poll right now. I guarantee you that if you went out there right now and polled the American public and said should we allow illegal immigrants to buy into a government health care program, there would be a resounding no throughout America. This is a political noose around the necks of Democrats.

MURPHY: I completely agree. We’re not going to allow illegal immigrants to buy into this health care plan. So we should simply expand the background check into a universal background check and solve the problem once and for all…

HANRETTY: I can agree with Steve on on that.

JARRETT: I can’t believe you guys agree and I disagree. I’m on the side of taxpayers saving money.

Watch it:

He may be outnumbered, but Jarrett is actually right. As Christopher Beam of Slate points out, taxpayers are already paying for undocumented immigrants to get health care, but in the least efficient way. Currently, sick undocumented immigrants (or anyone else who’s uninsured) have little recourse other than the emergency room. That means that minor and treatable conditions are neglected until the patient is at death’s door. It also means that taxpayers pay millions and millions of dollars for costly emergency visits that could have been prevented. Furthermore, if undocumented immigrants were allowed to participate in the exchange and purchase affordable private health insurance at full cost with their own money, it would also pool risks and lower the premiums of everyone else participating in the health care system. Most immigrants are healthier and incur less health costs than US citizens, so their self-financed participation wouldn’t just save money, it would make health care cheaper for those who need it.

Murphy’s proposal to drag employment verification into the health care debate would involve sidetracking health care reform with a conversation about how to fix the nation’s broken immigration system. Most lawmakers who discuss something along the lines of a “universal background check” are referring to some sort of national ID system like the one tenuously set up by the REAL ID Act, or a web-based verification system like E-Verify. REAL ID might be repealed, and E-Verify is estimated to have a 4% error rate which could accidentally leave millions of US citizens not only uninsured, but also unemployed.

Besides the purely sensible argument there is to be made against denying consumers the ability to purchase something they need and are willing to pay for, ultimately, there’s also a humanitarian argument to be made in favor of providing affordable health care to those who need it. However, regardless of whether lawmakers want to make the lives of undocumented immigrants easier or harder, the debate should take place in the context of immigration reform instead of being used as a wedge to weaken and block health care legislation. Though it should be noted that in the case of health care and beyond, the more undocumented immigrants are brought into the system, the more they will be allowed to contribute to it.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, one of Sen. John “Bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” McCain’s favorite bons mots was that “There is only one thing worse than military action [against Iran], and that is a nuclear armed Iran.” As with so much else that McCain said during that campaign, it’s really not clear that this is actually true, but its tone of belligerence posing as analysis was very much in keeping with the sort of “tough and stupid” foreign policy that Fareed Zakaria refers to in his op-ed this morning. (“Tough and stupid” was, I believe, one of the taglines originally considered for The Weekly Standard.)

For all the conservative bluster being leveled at Obama’s engagement policy, you’d think that we hadn’t actually just come off of eight years wherein their ideas were tried and shown to be a complete failure, but of course we have. The administration of George W. Bush, especially its first four years, was about as pure an application of hard line conservative foreign policy principles as one could ever hope for, and it was a disaster. It resulted in an Iran that was far more dominated by hardliners, far less inclined to compromise, in a far more secure and influential position in the region, and much closer to a nuclear weapons capability.

Former ambassador John Bolton, who works in this vein of clueless conservative bluster the way some artists work in oils or watercolors, told Fox News this morning that “the only real way to be sure that Iran does not get nuclear weapons, unfortunately, is the unhappy alternative of military force against its nuclear program.”

I don’t see the Obama administration doing that. I think that leaves the decision with Israel. I think President Obama is committed to diplomacy and I think the outcome of that strategy is a world where Iran has nuclear weapons.

As with McCain’s claim about nuclear Iran, Bolton’s isn’t true either. Military strikes would not ensure that Iran does not get nuclear weapons, they would, in even the best case scenario, merely delay it. But what’s more disturbing is the way Bolton raises, with obvious relish, the possibility of an Israeli strike on Iran, something that is becoming increasingly common among the Cheneyite set.

In an op-ed on Saturday, Anthony Cordesman focused on the difficulties that the Israelis would face in a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities (as well as the difficulties that Iran would create for itself by choosing to create a nuclear weapon.) What Cordesman doesn’t discuss, and what has been far too little discussed in the debate over how best to deal with Iran, are the likely consequences that a military strike on Iran would have for the region, and the world.

During remarks at the New America Foundation earlier this month, retired Gen. Anthony Zinni gave a very good — and chilling — overview of those consequences. Zinni said that he liked to respond to advocates of such strikes with “And then what?”

After you’ve dropped those bombs on those hardened facilities, what happens next? What happens if they decide, in their hardened shelters with their mobile missiles, to start launching those? What happens if they launch them into U.S. bases on the other side of the gulf? What happens if they launch into Israel, or somewhere else? Into a Saudi oil field? Into Ras Laffan, with all the natural gas? What happens if they now flush their fast patrol boats, their cruise missiles, the [unclear] full of mines, and they sink a tanker, an oil tanker? And of course the economy of the world goes absolutely nuts. What happens if they activate sleeper cells? The MOIS, the intelligence service — what happens if another preemptive attack by the West, the U.S. and Israel, they fire up the streets and now we got problems. Just tell me how to deal with all that, okay?

Because, eventually, if you follow this all the way down, eventually I’m putting boots on the ground somewhere. And like I tell my friends, if you like Iraq and Afghanistan, you’ll love Iran.

The Carnegie Endowment’s Karim Sadjadpour has also said that he thinks that “Khamenei and Ahmadinejad would actually welcome a military strike; it may be their only hope to silence popular dissent and heal internal political rifts.” It’s hard to think of a more efficient way to extinguish Iran’s reform movement than by either an Israeli or U.S. strike on Iran.

These are, to say the least, very serious consequences. But given the way they have resolutely ignored the catastrophe that ensued the last time their foreign policy ideas were tried, we probably shouldn’t expect conservatives to honestly address them as they prepare the ground for their latest war.

On Saturday, Mike Huckabee gave the keynote address at Phyllis Schlafly’s How To Take Back America conference. Huckabee praised Schafly, calling her book “Choice not an Echo” an inspiration when he was a teenager.

Huckabee spent a considerable amount of his address railing against the United Nations, calling it the “international equivalent of ACORN” and demanding that America should withdraw. As Dave Weigel noted, the crowd greeted Huckabee’s anti-UN rhetoric with a standing ovation:

HUCKABEE: It’s time to get a jackhammer and to simply chip that part of New York City. Let it float into the East River, never to be seen again. [STANDING OVATION] [...]

It’s time to say enough of the American taxpayer dollar being spent that may have had a noble idea, but it has become a disgrace. It has become the international equivalent of ACORN, and it’s time to say enough.

Listen here:

The UN and other international diplomatic organizations have been a popular boogieman for Huckabee and his followers for years. During the 2008 campaign, Huckabee scored the endorsement of evangelical leader Rev. Tim LaHaye, whose books predict that the end-times will be accelerated by the secretary-general of the United Nations. During the campaign, Huckabee also — falsely — boasted that he had been consulted on foreign policy by John Bolton, who has made a career out of bashing the UN.

In August, Huckabee traveled to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories and rejected a two-state solution. As Matthew Yglesias has noted, Huckabee also called for an ethnic cleansing of Palestinians to be removed from the region.

At the Value Voters Summit this past weekend, Corey Stewart, chairman of the Prince William County Supervisors in Virginia, led a panel on “The Threat of Illegal Immigration.” After boasting about the success of the county’s 287(g) agreement with the Department of Homeland Security which allowed its local police to enforce immigration law, Stewart definitively argued that the controversial program has not led to “a single case of racial profiling” in Prince William County.

Stewart also defended a 287(g) champion, Arizona’s Maricopa County Police Chief Joe Arpaio, who is currently being investigated by the Department of Justice (DOJ) following “allegations of discriminatory practices and unconstitutional searches and seizures.” Stewart agrees with Arpaio that the investigation is a politically-motivated attack on the Sheriff on behalf of the Obama administration. Ultimately, Corey stated that he’d like to see all “illegal aliens” deported or leave the country:

There has not been one substantiated case of racial profiling in Prince William County due to this [287(g)] policy. I think that the Sheriff [Joe Arpaio] has been targeted by the Obama Administration. And I think it’s because he’s just doing the job of protecting the citizens of his locality and I support him in his efforts. I know what it’s like to be targeted by the liberal establishment in Washington for simply enforcing the law…I support a policy that would deport illegal aliens. Period.

Watch it:

Prince William County Police Chief Charlie T. Deane is less enthusiastic about the 287(g) program. According to Deane, resident satisfaction with the police department has decreased in response to the police department’s new role in immigration enforcement. Former Arizona Police Chief George Gascon went as far to say that the program is “setting the police profession back to the 1950s and 60s, when police officers were sometimes viewed in minority communities as the enemy.” Several reports have come out saying that 287(g) is expensive, breeds racial profiling and civil rights violations, and makes communities less safe because police end up focusing more on chasing immigrant traffic violators than fighting serious crime.

Prince William County may have not caught the attention of DOJ officials, but the claim that there is no racial profiling is dubious at best. The immigration resolution that Stewart championed was allegedly drafted with the help of a designated hate group and the community’s decision to enter the agreement itself was marked by anti-immigrant vitriol that boiled down to a strong sentiment to “repel this [immigrant] invasion.” Meanwhile, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) recently filed papers on behalf of four Latino men who were arrested for loitering while standing on a public sidewalk in Prince William County. According to the ACLU, “these individuals were targeted because of their ethnicity” and “the anti-immigrant policies and resultant anti-immigrant climate that currently exist in Prince William County inevitably give rise to these kinds of abuses.”

So far, the most egregious case of potential racial profiling and civil rights abuse involved Agueda Dominguez, a Salvadoran immigrant who has legally lived in the US for eleven years and has a valid driver’s license. Dominguez ended up bloodied and hospitalized after a Prince William cop pulled her over for a burned out headlight. According to Dominguez, she was attacked with pepper spray, dragged out of her car, pulled to the ground by the hair, and brutally beaten by the police officer after refusing to sign a citation that she couldn’t read. A local news station quoted Dominguez saying that she was singled out because she’s an immigrant:

There are too many of us immigrants who keep quiet about these things because we are afraid…It’s unjust how they treat us Latinos, it’s purely discrimination…It hurts a lot…you come to the United States to pursue a dream and this type of stuff happens…especially in the Hispanic community. Most people are scared and so I just decided to step up and show everybody that we can stand up and defend ourselves.

Watch it:

The resisting charge against Agueda Dominguez that was later amended to obstruction of justice was dismissed. As of July, state police were still investigating whether the policeman who pulled her over acted improperly.

The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), a group identified as part of the anti-immigrant “nativist lobby,” is now targeting soccer fans in a weak attempt at using the ethnic make-up of the US soccer team to somehow prove that immigration isn’t “helping” America. In a blog post, CIS staffer David Seminara wonders why the US men’s soccer team is so “American”:

If soccer is the world’s sport, and America is the world’s leading beacon for immigrants around the globe, why aren’t immigrants making a bigger impact playing soccer for the Stars and Stripes?…Perhaps the issue here is one of assimilation, or lack thereof in a post-American society, or perhaps it’s just the free agency concept spilling over from professional leagues into international competition. Either way, it sure would be nice to see all of our best players representing the Stars and Stripes, and being cheered by the home crowds. An even greater cause for concern than the lack of immigrants on our national side is the fact that some top-notch U.S.-born soccer players are choosing to play for other countries.

However, the fact that there are few immigrants on the US Men’s and Women’s National Soccer team says a lot more about what’s wrong with the country’s immigration system than what’s wrong with immigrants. In order to play for the US soccer team, players have to be US citizens and the process of legal immigration and naturalization in the US is not easy. To begin with, there are overly restrictive and limited avenues for obtaining legal immigration status in the US. Green cards are only distributed to foreigners who have family members already legally present in the US, political refugees, foreign workers with certain job skills and education-levels that can find an employer to sponsor their visa, and the lucky winners of the annual Diversity “lottery” Visa program which makes green cards available only to persons from countries with low rates of immigration to the US. All of these legal avenues are subject to stringent restrictions that cap visas, irrespective of the supply or demand for workers.

Once here, the process of becoming a US citizen is no walk in the park either. In order to become a US citizen, most individuals must be 18 years-old, have had legal permanent resident status (a green card) for at least 5 years, demonstrate continuous residency and “good moral character,” pass English and U.S. history and civics exams, and pay an application fee. At this point, application fees are so high that citizenship applications are down 62%.

Seminara lists off three US-born children of immigrants who chose to play for the national teams of their parents’ countries to argue that immigration isn’t helping the US in terms of soccer. Meanwhile, Stephen Piggott of the Center for New Community points out that five of the starting 11 players who recently played and won a game against Spain — the number one ranked team in the world — Tim Howard, Carlos Bocanegra, Oguchi Onyewu, Ricardo Clark, and Jozy Altidore are the sons of Hungarian, Mexican, Nigerian, Trinidad, Tobagonian and Haitian immigrants. According to the International Federation of Association of Football (FIFA) world rankings, the US is currently ranked #11 out of 203 other countries.

Seminara also doesn’t name all the talented immigrant soccer players who want to play for the US team, but are ineligible. The US National Soccer team has expressed interest in Costa Rican immigrant Rodney Wallace, however, since he is only 20 years-old and didn’t start the process to attain citizenship until a few years ago, it’s going to be a while until he’s eligible to play. Sengalese immigrant and soccer player Macoumba Kandji wants to play for the US team, but he was only recently granted asylum status in the US, has no green card, and is years away from being granted citizenship. In Orange County, three high school soccer superstars caught the eye of college recruiters, but the fact that they are undocumented immigrants means that they have no chance of getting a sports scholarship, let alone playing for the national team despite the fact that they “were coached and groomed in the US.” Meanwhile, at the local level, a nationwide crackdown on immigration has shrunk some area’s “entrenched Hispanic soccer leagues.” In Prince William County, VA, immigrant players and fans stopped coming to games out of fear of being picked up or intimidated by local police who have been granted the power to enforce immigration laws through a controversial program known as 287(g).

CIS actually promotes even tighter restrictions on legal immigration and has proposed policies that support the deportation of the 12 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the US.

Appearing on Glenn Beck’s show last night to discuss President Obama’s speech to the United Nations General Assembly, former unconfirmable UN ambassador John Bolton engaged in some pretty blatant and dishonest fear-mongering on the president’s policy toward Israel.

“This is the most radical anti-Israel speech I can recall any president making,” Bolton said, noting with alarm “two phrases in what you just heard”:

The president says America does not accept, and I’m quoting now, “the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements.” Not new Israeli settlements, continued Israeli settlements. Which, you know this is Mr. Wordsmith here, that calls into question, in my mind, all Israeli settlements. Then he says ‘we want a Palestinian state that’s contiguous‘ — by the way, Gaza and the West Bank were never contiguous Palestinian areas before — and that ‘ends the occupation that began in 1967.’ That means, I think, a return to the ’67 borders. Now he doesn’t say that, but it’s certainly implicit in this statement.

Watch it:

Beck and Bolton then took a map of Israel and the Palestinian Territories and used a big red magic marker to show how Israel could be sliced up if Obama’s nefarious plans were implemented. Needless to say, Beck and Bolton’s scribblings did not resemble any plan offered by anyone, ever.

“Did we sell out Israel today?” Beck asked, wearing his best grave face.

“I think it’s very close to it,” Bolton answered. “As I said, I think it’s the most anti-Israel speech I can remember by an American president.”

But what Bolton failed to mention in his transparently dishonest attempt to scare Fox viewers is that President Obama’s language almost exactly reproduces language used by President George W. Bush in describing the opening point for Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations in 2008:

BUSH: There should be an end to the occupation that began in 1967. The agreement must establish Palestine as a homeland for the Palestinian people, just as Israel is a homeland for the Jewish people. These negotiations must ensure that Israel has secure, recognized, and defensible borders. And they must ensure that the state of Palestine is viable, contiguous, sovereign, and independent.

As for Obama’s statements on settlements, U.S. policy going back to the 1970′s has been that the settlements are illegitimate and counterproductive to peace in the region. Under the 2003 road map promulgated by the Bush administration, the Israeli government committed to freezing settlements, a commitment it has failed to honor.

Some, like Bolton, feel that Israel should be able to ignore its agreements with the United States, which actually tells you a lot about the low regard in which he holds the U.S.’s credibility as an honest broker. But even that doesn’t justify his misrepresenting decades of U.S. policy, or President Obama’s words, and irresponsibly whipping up paranoia about the United States “selling out” Israel.

Our guest blogger is Allison Johnson, Campaign Coordinator for Christians for Comprehensive Immigration Reform (CCIR) at Sojourners.

Earlier this week, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) released two reports, one titled “A Biblical Perspective on Immigration Policy” and another “No ‘Progress by Pesach’: The Jewish Establishment’s Usurpation of American-Jewish Opinion on Immigration.” It is clear that the anti-immigrant group which the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as having “never found any aspect of immigration it likes” is deeply concerned about an emerging trend: people of faith seeking guidance from their respective traditions in grappling with the issue of immigration reform. CIS’ lengthy reports seem to have one goal in mind: to delegitimize the role faith plays for millions of Americans who see their moral values in alignment with just and humane immigration reform.

The author of “A Biblical Perspective on Immigration Policy” describes the proactive advocacy and involvement of national denominations in the immigration debate, naming the Catholic Church, the National Association of Evangelicals, and the Southern Baptist Convention as being “out of touch” with people in the pews. It states:

“Yet such self-described ‘compassion’ among religious elites differs from the perspective of most rank-and-file Christians. The laity generally opposes legalization and supports enforcement of immigration laws.”

Meanwhile, Stephen Steinlight berates “American Jewish leaders” for waging a “counterfeit ‘civil rights’ campaign for illegal aliens,” and proceeds to scold them for not being “better educated, or at least chastened, contemporaries.” Steinlight focuses on criticizing “Progress by Pesach,” a campaign for humane immigration reform launched on behalf of a coalition of Jewish organizations from “various Jewish traditions” which includes the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Committee, National Council of Jewish Women, and Union for Reform Judaism. Though Steinlight himself admits that “every constituent part of the American-Jewish Establishment engaged in domestic public policy signed onto this effort,” he refers to the alliance as “politically correct McCarthyists” with a “a putatively moral premise” that doesn’t resonate with most American Jews.

Quite the contrary, a new report released yesterday by the Center for American Progress points out that “the plight of an immigrant is as old as humanity” and “the response of people of faith remains constant.” The report documents grassroots-led social activism on behalf of faith communities that are neither “coordinated or part of one network.” “They are people who have just become fed up and have reached out to undocumented immigrants because of their faith commitments to caring for the neighbor,” explains former president of Chicago Theological Seminary, Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite. Between January and July of this year more than 25,000 mostly “rank-and-file Christians” gathered in churches to call for immigration reform and an end to the separation of immigrant families as part of the Families United Tour. The Interfaith Immigration Coalition, a network of religious groups working on immigration reform, gathered people of faith at 167 events in 133 cities for prayer vigils to protect immigrants and their families and to persuade congressional members to enact comprehensive reform in February alone.

Each person interprets scripture through a particular cultural, historical and social context. It is ingrained in the overarching narrative of the Judeo-Christian story that God’s people are to care for the widow, the orphan and the stranger. The actions of a growing faith-driven movement should demonstrate to the rest of the country that not only are people of faith preaching from the pulpit but are living out the call in Hebrew scriptures:

“The stranger who resides with you shall be as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Leviticus 19:34)

Yesterday afternoon, two Senate Finance Committee staffers directly addressed Sen. Chuck Grassley’s (R-IA) redundant and misguided claim that Sen. Max Baucus’ (D-MT) health care bill will allow undocumented immigrants who possess stolen Social Security Numbers (SSNs) to game the system and receive health care benefits. Senate Finance Committee Professional Staff Members Tom Klouda and Thomas Barthold decisively dismissed Grassley’s illegitimate concerns:

KLOUDA: We checked to see if there is a concern with identity theft in some of our other health care programs. And we contacted the National Association of Medicaid Fraud units. And they mentioned that there is a minor degree of identity theft in Medicaid, but it’s very small. It’s not one of their main concerns in terms of Medicaid fraud issues…

Some people that we’ve talked to who are experts in identity theft just think that’s unlikely that people would want to enter the system that way and have to maintain the fraud.

GRASSLEY: You know, one instance that you don’t cover is the fact that if you steal a Social Security Number and you have that number you can write and get income information based upon that number…

BARTHOLD: I just want to point out that the IRS would not pay a credit to the same person twice. So if I were to luck out and find someone who is eligible for the credit, and steal their identity, the IRS would only pay that credit once.

Watch it:

Earlier that day, Grassley slammed Baucus’ proposed health care plan for not containing REAL ID requirements or provisions that would force the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Social Security Administration to share information to prevent undocumented immigrants with stolen SSNs from collecting benefits. He also feared that undocumented immigrants might be infiltrating Indian tribes and posing as Native Americans, who will be subject to less stringent verification requirements.

However, Real ID Act’s requirements don’t kick in until 2017 if it’s not repealed at the state or federal-level before then and the IRS is charged with “zealous[ly] protect[ing]” basic confidentiality protections that require that tax returns and tax return information be held in strictest confidence. Rather than wasting time going into the weeds with Grassley, Klouda and Barthold simply pointed out that he should really stop fretting about undocumented immigrants in the first place as it’s not worth stalling health care reform over wedge-issues that aren’t grounded in reality.

There’s an old chestnut about an economist stuck in a deep hole with two other people whose occupation depends on who’s telling the story. But after the other two try to escape in ways appropriate to their jobs, they turn the economist for a solution. The economist replies, “Assume a ladder.” The point of this story (and similar ones involving economists, desert islands, and can openers) is that economists tend to assume things that aren’t actually so.

This timeless joke about the economics profession popped into my head as I was reading Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s leaked Afghanistan assessment. Overall, the assessment makes good recommendations as to what changes the international military effort in Afghanistan needs to make to improve the odds of success. Increased embedding and enhanced partnering with Afghan security forces, taking greater force protection risks to better protect the population, reversing the insurgency’s momentum, and the like will all be important if the Obama administration decides to go forward with McChrystal’s strategy.

But there’s an incredibly important blind spot in the assessment. Like the economist assuming a ladder, the assessment assumes a more effective Afghan government, and what’s more, an Afghan government that wants to be more effective. It’s astonishing that the assessment makes this assumption given the ink it spills detailing the severe problems the Afghan government has delivering security and basic services — not to mention the crisis of legitimacy the August election has exacerbated. To wit:

The weakness of state institutions, malign actions of power-brokers, widespread corruption and abuse of power by various officials, and ISAF’s own errors, have given Afghans little reason to support their government. These problems have alienated large segments of the Afghan population. They do not trust GIRoA [Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan] to provide basic services, such as security, justice, and basic services.

But at the same time:

ISAF’s center of gravity is the will and ability to provide for the needs of the population ‘by, with, and through’ the Afghan government. A foreign army alone cannot beat an insurgency; the insurgency in Afghanistan requires an Afghan solution. This is their war and, in the end, ISAF’s competency will prove less decisive than GIRoA’s; eventual success requires capable Afghan governance capabilities and security forces. [Emphasis added.]

What these two statements say to me is that even if McChrystal gets all the resources he asks for, (which probably won’t be enough anyway) and even if the ISAF executes the best counterinsurgency campaign in history, it won’t matter much unless the Afghan government can make a noticeable improvement in its ability to govern the country on a minimally satisfactory basis. And that objective in and of itself requires that the Afghan government has the desire and willingness to make an effort at improving the way it operates.

As Spencer Ackerman asked on Monday, “Is a government that was willing to return itself to power by stealing an election really willing to enact the kind of good-government reforms that would be necessary to mitigate this [insurgent] threat?” This question is exactly the one the Obama administration needs to answer before giving General McChrystal the 40,000 troops he’s apparently going to ask for.

It’s also why, contra Eliot Cohen, it’s good to see that there’s still a healthy debate going on in the Obama administration. Vice President Biden has taken the lead in formulating an alternative, and so far President Obama has not committed one way or another. The decision to send more troops to Afghanistan is the biggest foreign policy decision the Obama administration has had to make so far, and it is entirely appropriate and correct not to rush it.

Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) told the Politico that President Obama doesn’t seem to be a “true friend” of Israel. When you think about it, it’s a pretty odd charge for an American legislator to be making about a foreign country. What the congressman from Richmond, Virginia, U.S.A should be asking is whether Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is a true friend of America.

Given Netanyahu’s continuing intransigence on settlements, President Obama’s decision to move past the U.S. request for a settlement freeze in order to begin outlining a final status agreement is the right one. But it’s still very much worth highlighting how central Israel’s intransigence is to the current difficulties — and how shameful it is that so many American neoconservatives have been openly supporting this intransigence against the Obama administration’s attempts to hold Israel to its past commitments on settlements.

In light of the neocon nervous breakdown over Obama’s canceling of the Eastern European missile defense program, which the neocons claim (as they do about pretty much everything) shows weakness and damages U.S. credibility, it’s pretty interesting that we’ve never heard a peep from them about the damage to U.S. credibility by relentless Israeli settlement building in the face of repeated U.S. requests to stop. Not only have successive Israeli governments continued to construct these illegal colonies, they have often done so in ways that seem calculated to humiliate the United States, such as announcing new construction moments after high-level U.S. diplomatic visits.

In his speech to the United Nations today, President Obama strongly reiterated the U.S. commitment to a secure Israel and Palestine, but also repeated that the U.S., like the rest of the world, “does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements.”

Marc Lynch is right to point out, in response to Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s claim that “Israel is interested in the peace process led by Obama, based on an agreement with the Palestinians,” that an Israel which actually wanted such a process “would seek to work with the administration rather than seeking every possible opportunity to poke fingers in the administration’s eyes.” This should be of real concern for anyone who is genuinely concerned about U.S. credibility. Yet it has never seemed to bother the neocons.

At today’s Senate Finance Committee hearing, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) announced that there are “serious outstanding issues that have yet to be resolved” in Sen. Max Baucus’ (D-MT) bill, particularly when it comes to “the enforcement against subsidies for illegal aliens.” Grassley claimed that the Baucus bill “fails the test in at least three ways”:

First, although the mark appears to require the new exchanges to verify Social Security Numbers [SSNs] and citizenship or legal status, it does not include blocking of Social Security numbers, REAL IDs, verification of address and prior year income, or any other mechanism that verifies identity to prevent identity theft.

Second, it appears to contain privacy protections limiting the use of data collected by exchanges, but it does not allow information sharing with the Internal Revenue Service [IRS] and the Social Security Administration [SSA] to detect and preclude the multiple uses of same Social Security Numbers.

And finally, I would also note that that the designation of Indian tribes as “Express Lane Agency” would allow them to enroll anyone under the age of 22 in Medicaid and CHIP and anyone of any age in an exchange without verification of citizenship. And we have discussed so often in this committee, in the past, the role of Indian tribes in verifying citizenship has been questionable.

Watch it:

Grassley’s first point of criticism is a transparent attempt to derail the health care debate by pivoting to a contentious discussion on the use of REAL ID-compliant licenses and identifications cards. Full compliance with the REAL ID Act is not required until 2017 and most states aren’t anywhere near meeting the deadline. At least 15 states have passed legislation blocking the implementation of REAL ID, others have passed resolutions denouncing it, and there’s currently pending legislation in both the House and Senate that would repeal the REAL ID Act’s driver’s license and identification card provisions. Ultimately, a REAL ID provision would affect US citizens more than immigrants as every single American would be required to obtain a compliant form of national identification and pay for the infrastructure necessary to implement an expensive national ID system.

Grassley isn’t alone in his call for the sharing of information between the SSA and IRS as expressed by his second comment. Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) has put together an amendment that would require open-ended “real-time information sharing” between the two agencies and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Yet, there are good reasons why the three agencies operate, for the most part, independently of one another. The Tax Reform Act of 1976 established basic confidentiality protections that require that tax returns and tax return information be held in strictest confidence, with exceptions only being made for criminal cases and instances that involve determining criminal or civil liability. Nina Olson, the National Taxpayer Advocate of the IRS, has described the confidentiality protections as a right that the IRS must “zealously protect” in order to make “the determination of the correct amount of tax that each U.S. taxpayer must pay.” Tax collection and immigration enforcement efforts are conducted separately “in order to make sure that everyone who earns income within our borders pays the proper amount of taxes,” regardless of their immigration status.

Grassley’s last critique is illogical. He may as well openly suggest that there are young undocumented immigrants who have infiltrated tightly-knit Indian tribes and are posing as Native Americans in order to apply for public benefits. Ultimately, Grassley’s concerns aren’t grounded in reality. Undocumented immigrants use phony and stolen SSNs to work, not to collect benefits. It’s highly unlikely that they’ll put their livelihood at risk to receive health care coverage. It’s far more reasonable to suggest that the agencies administering the exchange track and share information amongst themselves so they can investigate any instances in which the exchanges receive multiple applications under a single SSN.

Grassley also named “tax-payer funded abortions” as another “unresolved issue.”

To add a little to Yglesias’ post on Irving Kristol’s support for subverting facts to politics, I think there’s a real irony in the way that neoconservatives have warned ominously of Iranian “taqiya” — dissimulation in service of a higher religious goal — as if Shiite clerics invented the phenomenon of lying in politics. This is, after all, precisely the sort of thing that Irving Kristol advocated in a political context — the sacrifice of truth to Republican political imperatives:

Among the core social scientists around The Public Interest there were no economists…. This explains my own rather cavalier attitude toward the budget deficit and other monetary or fiscal problems. The task, as I saw it, was to create a new majority, which evidently would mean a conservative majority, which came to mean, in turn, a Republican majority — so political effectiveness was the priority, not the accounting deficiencies of government…

You don’t need to look hard to see that this approach is alive and well in the conservative movement. Just look to David Horowitz’s response to David Frum on Glenn Beck’s hysteria, in which Horowitz concedes that Beck’s attacks on Cass Sunstein are “over the top,” but insists that the threat from The Left is so dire that it justifies Beck’s dishonesty. (I’m curious whether Frum — whose website is titled New Majority, in reference to Kristol — recognizes Kristol as a promulgator of the sort of tactics Frum now condemns?)

Or look at NRO’s Andrew McCarthy’s defense of the “death panels” lie, justified, McCarthy wrote, by the fact that “Obama is not a normal politician. He’s a visionary, and using health care to radically expand the scope of government happens to be central to his vision.” The “stakes here couldn’t be higher,” McCarthy wrote, “time is short, and ‘death panel’ cuts to the chase.”

Irving Kristol didn’t invent this practice, of course, but he did develop and sharpen it as an American conservative political doctrine. In that respect, I think Michael Lind lets Kristol off too easily when he writes, in regard to the wilderness into which Irving’s son Bill Kristol has helped lead the conservative movement, that “the sins of the sons should not be visited upon the fathers.” There’s a clear straight through-line from Irving’s support for elites lying to the ignorant rubes to Bill’s recruiting a genuine ignorant rube to tell those lies on elites’ behalf.

Of all the panels at the neoconservative Foreign Policy Initiative‘s forum on Advancing and Defending Democracy, this morning’s on Iran was the most interesting, both in terms of substance and political orientation of the panelists. Moderator Barbara Slavin is the Assistant Managing Editor for World and National Security at The Washington Times, and has written a good book on Iran, Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies. Ray Takeyh recently returned to the Council on Foreign Relations after a brief stint in the Obama administration as an adviser to special envoy Dennis Ross. Karim Sadjadpour is an Iran analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. All three can be fairly described as center-left supporters of greater U.S.-Iran engagement. The fourth panelist, Reuel Gerecht of the right-wing Foundation for Defense of Democracies, was the only conservative on the stage.

In her introductory remarks, Slavin said that Friday’s Al Quds Day demonstrations were “definitive proof” that the Green Wave “is by no means dissipated …this movement is spreading.” She noted that “the Iranian diaspora is linking up with Iranians against” the regime in a way that has not happened before, and predicted that President Ahmadinejad would be met with even larger demonstrations in New York than during his previous visit to the United Nations.

Takeyh said that Iran “has to be viewed as a country in transition, [but] where it will end up is hard to say.” For the moment, Takayh said, “the regime has succeeded in suppressing popular unrest,” but “far more serious in terms of immediate problems,” is the “unbridgeable elite fragmentation,” with leaders like Mehdi Karoubi and Mohammed Khatami increasingly explicitly separating themselves from the regime. Takeyh described the current situation as a kind of stalemate, with Supreme Leader Khamenei unsure whether to go forward with a more “serious suppression of political dissidents, and serious purge” of the regime as took place in the 1980′s. Ahmadinejad’s faction is “eager for this purge to happen,” Takeyh said. Among the opposition, Takey said, there is still no consensus on whether the system should be reformed or overthrown.

As for what Iran may be expected to do in the near future, Takeyh said that “I think he [Ahmadinejad] does recognize… that he has a problem.” He can deal with this either by trying to deliver foreign policy success, “in which we should expect more accommodation,” to international demands, or by greater “externalization of domestic problems,” in which case we would see greater defiance, harder suppression, more accusations of foreign enemies interfering in Iranian politics. Given past behavior, Takeyh believes it’s more likely that the regime will take the latter course. As for whether sanctions could change Iranian behavior, Takeyh said that “Iran has subordinated economics to strategy — sanctions are simply not going to work.”

Representing the neocons, Gerecht played his part well, asserting that U.S.-Iran “engagement is toast — it was always toast.” Insisting that that the “odds continue to go up” on an Israeli strike on Iran, Gerecht said that such a strike “will be a clarifying moment” for the region in terms of revealing Iran’s actual ability to retaliate against the U.S. and Israel. Gerecht was alone among the panelists in calling on the administration to begin designing a crippling sanctions regime immediately.

Sadjadpour said that, after witnessing the last three months, he was “more cynical about the regime, but more optimistic about prospects for change than I was before elections.” Saying that the “underlying problem has to do with character of the [Iranian] regime, not with the nuclear program,” Sadjadpour said that while he didn’t think there was any “deal in the works” that would satisfy current international demands, he was also skeptical that sanctions could bring about the effectiveness of the sanctions currently being considered, saying that this “regime never placed high priority on its peoples’ economic well-being.” Sadjadpour said that President Obama’s outreach to Iran had convinced many Iranian elites “that problem was in Tehran, not Washington,” and thus was partly responsible for the current fissures in the Iranian system. As to the probable future behavior of Iran, Sadjadpour said that the regime “is odious, but not suicidal.” Calling it “messianic and irrational” is wrong, he said.

As part of this week’s installment of the “Senate Doctor’s Show,” Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) claimed that uninsured undocumented immigrants who seek emergency hospital care have created a situation that’s “just like a store where there’s a lot of shoplifting.” Based on this logic, Barrasso also concludes that undocumented immigrants shouldn’t even be allowed to purchase insurance with their own money:

When I talked to high school groups and they ask about this [undocumented immigrant emergency care], I kinda refer to it just like a store where there’s a lot of shoplifting. The owner of the store has to raise the prices for people who pay their own bills — who pay their own way — to make up for what they lose in shoplifting. These folks in the emergency room aren’t shoplifting in the terms of stealing things, but they are using services getting bandages and casts and all sorts of different things and they’re not paying for it. Then the question is, how do you do that?

And a reporter asked me, should we sell illegal immigrants health insurance to pay the way? I don’t think you want to give that kind of — any certification to somebody who is in our nation illegally — somebody who has broken into the country. They broke the law by coming here illegally. And I think that applies to Social Security, I think it applies to drivers’ licenses, as well as to health insurance.

Watch it:

Clearly, Barrasso wasn’t thinking of the 30 million or more uninsured US citizens when describing uninsured undocumented immigrants who can’t pay their hospital bills as “shoplifters.” It turns out that all noncitizens are far less likely than their native-born counterparts to use the emergency room. Communities with low rates of emergency room use tend to have much higher concentrations of noncitizens than areas with high rates of emergency room use. So if Barrasso is really concerned about uninsured “shoplifters” driving up health care costs for those who do have coverage, it might make sense for him to support health care reform that guarantees that all those uninsured individuals have health insurance.

Of course, Barrasso is proposing just the opposite when it comes to undocumented immigrants. Despite the fact that immigrants are healthier than US citizens, use less medical care, use less expensive care, and do not impose a disproportionate financial burden on the US health care system; Barrasso stubbornly holds that those undocumented immigrants who can afford health insurance shouldn’t even be allowed to purchase it because it would somehow “certify” their presence in the country.

The White House has indicated that it supports barring undocumented immigrants from participating in the government exchange and purchasing insurance at full cost. However, the President has indicated that a “basic standard of decency” is reason enough to continue providing undocumented immigrants in a “death situation” or suffering from a “severe illness” emergency care.