The Associated Press reports that “Israeli naval commandos stormed a flotilla of ships carrying aid and hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists to the blockaded Gaza Strip on Monday, killing at least 10 passengers in a predawn raid that set off worldwide condemnation and a diplomatic crisis”:

Israel said the forces encountered unexpected resistance as they boarded the vessels. Dozens of passengers and at least five Israeli soldiers were wounded in the confrontation in international waters.

The Israeli military said in a statement: “Navy fighters took control of six ships that tried to violate the naval blockade (of the Gaza Strip) … During the takeover, the soldiers encountered serious physical violence by the protesters, who attacked them with live fire.”

The Israeli raid has “triggered widespread condemnation across Europe; many of the passengers were from European countries. The raid also strained already tense relations with Israel’s longtime Muslim ally Turkey, the unofficial sponsor of the mission, and drew more attention to the plight of Gaza’s 1.5 million people.”

Greater international attention and sympathy to the plight of Palestinians suffering under the Israeli-Egyptian- (and U.S.) enforced siege of Hamas-ruled Gaza is precisely what Israeli authorities were hoping to avoid. In the days and weeks leading up to the launch of the flotilla, the Israeli government and its American mouthpieces were hard at work both to downplay the extent of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and to present the flotilla’s sponsors as supporters of terrorism. (The evidence for the latter claim seems to amount to the usual game of “Six Degrees of Osama bin Laden,” wherein everyone who has ever contributed money to a Palestinian cause is linked to global jihadism.)

Responding to claims that the aid flotilla itself represented a “provocation,” Hussein Ibish of the American Task Force on Palestine writes, well, yeah: “The whole point of the ‘Gaza flotilla’ was to get a reaction out of Israel and call international attention to the problem of the blockade of Gaza…like all other acts of civil disobedience it was designed to provoke a response.”

Writing that the attack “is likely to create sustained international attention to the way Israel has treated the Gaza Strip in a way that nothing else has since the Gaza war and possibly since the beginning of the blockade,” Ibish suggests we compare the flotilla “to the ‘Mississippi Freedom Summer’ in which young white Americans from around the country went to the bastion of Jim Crow in order to organize local African-Americans, register them to vote, educate them and confront segregation”:

They knew it was a dangerous situation, and they were shocked but not surprised when James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman were abducted and killed by the KKK as the project just got going. There were many other acts of quasi-official violence meted out to the volunteers, and while the organizers obviously would have preferred to have avoided all of that, they expected it and it was part of their strategy. The largely but not entirely unstated reasoning was that the country would continue to ignore massive violence directed towards the African-American community in Mississippi, but could and would not remain oblivious to similar violence directed towards young, white, middle-class college students from New York City and other metropolitan centers. This, indeed, proved the case. The violence directed at the Mississippi Freedom Summer shocked the conscience of the country and was among the numerous decisive moments in the civil rights movement that ultimately succeeded in dismantling the apparatus of formalized racism in the United States.

Like segregation in the American South, the siege of Gaza (and the entire Israeli occupation, for that matter) is a moral abomination that should be intolerable to anyone claiming progressive values. It’s sad that it should require the deaths of non-Palestinians to finally shake the international community from apathy and inaction, but, as with the tragic murders of Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner, if it contributes to ending the situation then that’s a positive outcome.

Unfortunately, the killings will also likely result in the strengthening of support for Hamas vis a vis more moderate Palestinian leaders, causing greater unrest, and stirring more violence.

White House spokesman Bill Burton said in a written statement that “the United States deeply regrets the loss of life and injuries sustained, and is currently working to understand the circumstances surrounding this tragedy.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has expressed his “full backing” for the raid, has canceled his scheduled meeting tomorrow with President Obama.

The Associated Press reports that “Israeli naval commandos stormed a flotilla of ships carrying aid and hundreds of pro-Palestinian activists to the blockaded Gaza Strip on Monday, killing at least 10 passengers in a predawn raid that set off worldwide condemnation and a diplomatic crisis”:

Israel said the forces encountered unexpected resistance as they boarded the vessels. Dozens of passengers and at least five Israeli soldiers were wounded in the confrontation in international waters.

The Israeli military said in a statement: “Navy fighters took control of six ships that tried to violate the naval blockade (of the Gaza Strip) … During the takeover, the soldiers encountered serious physical violence by the protesters, who attacked them with live fire.”

The Israeli raid has “triggered widespread condemnation across Europe; many of the passengers were from European countries. The raid also strained already tense relations with Israel’s longtime Muslim ally Turkey, the unofficial sponsor of the mission, and drew more attention to the plight of Gaza’s 1.5 million people.”

Greater international attention and sympathy to the plight of Palestinians suffering under the Israeli-Egyptian- (and U.S.) enforced siege of Hamas-ruled Gaza is precisely what Israeli authorities were hoping to avoid. In the days and weeks leading up to the launch of the flotilla, the Israeli government and its American mouthpieces were hard at work both to downplay the extent of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and to present the flotilla’s sponsors as supporters of terrorism. (The evidence for the latter claim seems to amount to the usual game of “Six Degrees of Osama bin Laden,” wherein everyone who has ever contributed money to a Palestinian cause is linked to global jihadism.)

Responding to claims that the aid flotilla itself represented a “provocation,” Hussein Ibish of the American Task Force on Palestine writes, well, yeah: “The whole point of the ‘Gaza flotilla’ was to get a reaction out of Israel and call international attention to the problem of the blockade of Gaza…like all other acts of civil disobedience it was designed to provoke a response.”

Writing that the attack “is likely to create sustained international attention to the way Israel has treated the Gaza Strip in a way that nothing else has since the Gaza war and possibly since the beginning of the blockade,” Ibish suggests we compare the flotilla “to the ‘Mississippi Freedom Summer’ in which young white Americans from around the country went to the bastion of Jim Crow in order to organize local African-Americans, register them to vote, educate them and confront segregation”:

They knew it was a dangerous situation, and they were shocked but not surprised when James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman were abducted and killed by the KKK as the project just got going. There were many other acts of quasi-official violence meted out to the volunteers, and while the organizers obviously would have preferred to have avoided all of that, they expected it and it was part of their strategy. The largely but not entirely unstated reasoning was that the country would continue to ignore massive violence directed towards the African-American community in Mississippi, but could and would not remain oblivious to similar violence directed towards young, white, middle-class college students from New York City and other metropolitan centers. This, indeed, proved the case. The violence directed at the Mississippi Freedom Summer shocked the conscience of the country and was among the numerous decisive moments in the civil rights movement that ultimately succeeded in dismantling the apparatus of formalized racism in the United States.

Like segregation in the American South, the siege of Gaza (and the entire Israeli occupation, for that matter) is a moral abomination that should be intolerable to anyone claiming progressive values. It’s sad that it should require the deaths of non-Palestinians to finally shake the international community from apathy and inaction, but, as with the tragic murders of Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner, if it contributes to ending the situation then that’s a positive outcome.

Unfortunately, the killings will also likely result in the strengthening of support for Hamas vis a vis more moderate Palestinian leaders, causing greater unrest, and strring more violence.

White House spokesman Bill Burton said in a written statement that “the United States deeply regrets the loss of life and injuries sustained, and is currently working to understand the circumstances surrounding this tragedy.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has expressed his “full backing” for the raid, has canceled his scheduled meeting tomorrow with President Obama.

Our guest bloggers are Laura Conley, research assistant, and Sean Duggan, research associate at the Center for American Progress.

The House Armed Services Committee voted the FY 2011 Defense Authorization Bill out of committee last week at a whopping $567 billion. By contrast, the FY11 State Department and USAID budget request is a meager $52.8 billion, or about 9% of the money the administration expects to spend next year for DOD’s baseline budget (war spending is covered through a concurrent, but separate supplemental bill projected to include $33 billion for overseas operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, $13 billion for the Department of Veterans Affairs, and $14 billion for other “emergency” measures). With this giant disparity in funding, it’s no wonder that efforts to institute an integrated, whole of government approach to national security have trouble getting traction in Washington.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton noted one potential fix for this problem in her remarks yesterday at the Brookings Institution. As noted by Foreign Policy’s Josh Rogin and others, Clinton remarked that “You cannot look at a Defense budget, a State Department budget, and a USAID budget without Defense overwhelming the combined efforts of the other two and without us falling back into the old stovepipes that I think are no longer relevant for the challenges of today. So we want to begin to talk about a national security budget, and then you can see the tradeoffs and the savings.”

The Center for American Progress has long advocated for a unified national security budget, which would force authorizers and appropriators to consider the full picture of our country’s national security needs when making budget decisions. As we noted in the Center’s national security strategy report last fall, a unified budget “would enable policymakers to more readily recognize and evaluate the difficult trade-offs between the offensive (military forces), defensive (homeland security), and preventative (non-military international engagement, including diplomacy, nonproliferation, foreign aid, peacekeeping intelligence, and contributions to international organizations) aspects of American national power.”

The Center has also been a key contributor to the Task Force on a Unified Security Budget, which publishes an annual report identifying the trade-offs and benefits made possible by a unified budget approach. The Task Force’s sixth annual unified security budget report, published in November 2009, identified $55.5 billion in possible cuts to the baseline FY2010 defense budget. These funds could be redirected from outdated or unproven defense programs without undermining our national security, and could be better used to meet vital diplomatic, development, and homeland security needs.

One of the many areas of national security spending that could benefit from additional funding is the U.S. Coast Guard budget. Although technically a military service, the USCG is responsible for a diverse set of missions ranging from maritime safety and security, to environmental protection and disaster response. As we pointed out in an op-ed earlier this year in the New York Times, the service is perennially over-tasked and under-funded. The administration’s FY2011 budget request for the Coast Guard includes a 3.3. percent reduction from last year’s funding level, and anticipates reducing the Coast Guard’s active-duty strength by 1,112 positions. As CAP will point out in an upcoming report on the USCG, a unified national security budget would give lawmakers an opportunity to make the necessary trade-offs to address the USCG’s critical budget needs.

Clinton’s endorsement of a unified national security budget is a critical step toward reforming our outdated security budgeting process. U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have amply demonstrated that the U.S. can no longer guarantee its national security solely through the use of military force, and it is time to adopt budget procedures that recognize and support this fact. The State Department, USAID, the Department of Homeland Security, the intelligence community, and other critical government agencies and programs will be better able to do their part to safeguard our national security when we can provide them with adequate means to do so.

Unsurprisingly, Max Boot is unimpressed with the Obama administration’s National Security Strategy, which he thinks suffers from an “everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach“:

This is, I suppose, what happens when every branch of government gets to weigh in while such a document is being drafted. But it is possible to do something different. Love it or hate it, the Bush National Security Strategy of 2002 was a truly innovative and influential document that will be long remembered for declaring the need for preventative action against aggressors and terrorists. Eight years later, I can still recalls some of its lines: “The gravest danger our Nation faces lies at the crossroads of radicalism and technology” and “America will act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed.”

I’d quibble with Boot’s contention that the new NSS isn’t innovative — I think its tethering of American strength abroad to economic stability at home will prove to be important and consequential — but is “innovation” really what we should be looking for with this document? Perhaps the 2002 NSS’s assertion of an American right to invade countries that didn’t pose an imminent threat was “innovative,” but what it wasn’t was “good” or “smart” or “an effective way to secure and protect the United States.” It’s nice that some of its language gave Boot that special tingling feeling, but tend to think it’s more relevant that the Bushian “innovation” of preventive war resulted in one of the worst foreign policy blunders in U.S. history, one with whose consequences U.S. policy will be grappling — and for which our children will be paying — for decades to come, and thus not really worth mooning over.

As for the idea that the 2002 NSS was “influential,” given that the actual application of its ideas about preventive war has led to a pretty solid consensus that preventive wars are a horrible idea, the only way that I can think of that this is actually true is that the 2002 NSS, and the ideas that characterized it, “influenced” thousands of people to start their own blogs to write about how preventive wars are a horrible idea.

Last night, the Senate rejected Sen. Jim DeMint’s (R-SC) amendment to the $59 billion supplemental spending bill asking for the completion of a 700-mile fence along the U.S.-Mexico border within a year. Before the vote took place, DeMint attempted to persuade his colleagues to vote for his amendment by comparing the influx of undocumented immigrants to the deadly oil spill that is currently poisoning the Gulf of Mexico:

If any member of the Senate stood up today and said that we should not seal the oil leak in the Gulf until we have a comprehensive plan to clean it up, we would all say that that is absurd. Certainly we need to seal that leak as quickly as possible to minimize the cleanup later. But that is exactly the kind of logic that the President and my Democratic colleagues are using when it comes to immigration. They are insisting that we will not secure our borders until Republicans agree to a comprehensive plan with some form of amnesty and road to citizenship for those who have come here illegally.

Watch it:

Other than the fact that DeMint is offensively equating undocumented immigrants with a toxic environmental catastrophe, his insulting analogy doesn’t stand. Contrary to what Republicans might claim, there is not a constant, gushing flow of undocumented immigrants crossing the border every single second of the day. The Pew Hispanic Research Center found that immigration from Mexico to the U.S. slowed at least 40 percent between mid-decade and 2008, largely due to the economic recession and enhanced border enforcement. The Department of Homeland Security meanwhile documented that “the number of unauthorized immigrants living in the United States declined from 11.8 million in January 2007 to 11.6 million in January 2008.”

DeMint also attempted to emphasize the toxicity of illegal immigration, justifying building a fence by citing the Mexican drug war. However, studies have shown that much of the violence that DeMint points to has remained isolated to the Mexican side of the border. FBI statistics show that crime is declining in U.S. border towns across through the U.S., including Tucson, Arizona; Chula Vista, California; and Laredo, Texas. Meanwhile, when Tim Wadsworth, a professor of sociology at the University of Colorado, studied U.S. cities with more than 50,000 people he found that “the cities that experience the greatest growth in immigration were the same one that were experiencing the greatest declines in violent crime.”

U.S. government investigators have indicated that it will cost taxpayers $6.5 billion over the next 20 years to maintain the fencing already in place and the Congressional Research Service estimated in 2007 that building and maintaining a double set of steel fences along 700 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border would add up to $49 billion over the expected 25-year life span of the fence. The Associated Press reported today that “there’s no shortage of ways to get past the fence” and that “it’s unclear whether the fence cuts the overall number of illegal crossings.”

DeMint has introduced similar failed amendments to the financial reform bill and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) $42.9 billion appropriations bill. His most recent effort was the fourth Republican border security amendment to be voted down in the past 24 hours. Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH) was the only Republican who opposed it.

Responding to Peter Beinart’s recent article on The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment to speak the truth about what’s happening in and to Israel, David Frum writes that “if there’s one thing that defines liberal thinking about the Middle East, it is precisely that it denies that Palestinian actions matter at all — or even that there are such things as Palestinian actions.”

Only Israel acts, and anything bad that happens in the region is a response to an Israeli action.

That does not seem a very sophisticated way to think. And actually when you consider it, it’s not very complimentary to the Palestinians or the larger Arab world. In this version of events, Palestinians and Arabs are never makers of their own story, only passive objects of other people’s stories.

I know a lot of liberals, many of whom are deeply involved in Middle East issues, and I can’t think of one of them who actually believes this. You’ll also notice that Frum cleverly didn’t quote any.

So, via Twitter, I challenged him to name one. Frum responded: “All those who think the way to fix the region is to pressure Israel. It’s the only logical premise for otherwise illogical policy.” Because, he continued, “If Palestinian intransigence is the problem, after all, it makes little sense to snub Netanyahu.”

I responded that it was important to hold both sides to their previous commitments, whereas Frum seems only interested in holding the Palestinians to their commitments, while the Israelis should be spared any “pressure.” Frum responded: “Nobody would think of pressing Bibi if they didn’t first believe that doing so would accomplish something…So don’t tell me ‘nobody believes’ what your own words tell me that YOU believe!”

So, as best I can figure it (and granted, this happened on Twitter, so I invite Frum to correct me if I’m stating his view incorrectly), by believing that the U.S. should hold both Israelis and Palestinians to their previous commitments, I have subscribed to the idea that “Only Israel acts, and anything bad that happens in the region is a response to an Israeli action.” Frankly, this does not seem like a very sophisticated way to think, even for Twitter.

Of course, believing that “Palestinian intransigence” is entirely to blame for the continuing conflict is not a particularly sophisticated way to think either, but this represents a major tenet of the neoconservative faith when it comes to the Middle East: Israel keeps trying to make peace, the Palestinians keep refusing. The Israeli settlements and the continuing occupation are either “trivial,” in the case of the former, or simply wished out of existence, in the case of the latter.

This comfortingly simplistic (and demonstrably false) perception of the conflict is, I think, what leads Frum to his flawed assumption that those who support pressuring Netanyahu to honor Israel’s road map obligations to freeze settlements do so out of a belief that Israeli behavior alone holds the key to Middle East peace. Because this is the mirror image of what he believes about the Palestinians.

Today, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) took to the Senate floor to slam an amendment to the $58.8 billion emergency supplemental bill proposed by Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) that would’ve required $2.2 billion in unspent stimulus funds be poured into securing the border. Though the amendment failed to meet the needed 60 votes and was defeated this morning, Republicans unanimously supported it. Before it was voted down, Schumer delivered a damning speech, chiding voices who claim to support “jobs” and “fiscal moderation” for “throwing caution to the wind” by supporting a “symbolic amendment”:

It’s $2.2 billion, it puts money in just about every program — needed or not. And then it takes that money out of the stimulus — the Recovery Act — takes it away from jobs. [...] For all of the voices on both sides of the aisle which have talked about jobs and all of the voices that have talked about fiscal moderation, to throw caution to the winds, to put $2.2 billion into programs whether they are needed or not — makes no sense at all.

We must stop illegal immigration as it comes across the border. This will not do it. You know it. And I know it. This is what’s called a symbolic amendment to show where you stand in many ways. And it’s $2.2 billion dollars. We can find amendments that will do the job, that cost a lot less, and will not take away jobs that we want to create and preserve in the entire country.

Watch it:

Wonk Room reported earlier this week that spending on immigration enforcement, particular border enforcement, has steadily climbed since 2002 and continues to rise under the Obama administration from about $9 billion in 2008 to over $11 billion in 2010. Overall, the U.S. will spend over $17 billion in FY 2010 just on enforcing immigration laws. However, enforcement without broader reform that doesn’t address the nation’s outdated visa system and does nothing about the 12 million undocumented immigrants already living in the U.S. doesn’t really fix the problem.

Republicans, meanwhile, continue pounding on border security — despite the fact that the border is safer than it has been in years and irrespective of the controversial actions President Obama took this week when he deployed 1,200 National Guard troops to the border and requested $500 million in supplementary funds for border security. Earlier today, the Senate also defeated an amendment proposed by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) that would have sent 6,000 National Guardsmen to the southern border and a separate amendment proposed by Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) that would’ve thrown more money at Operation Streamline, a “zero tolerance” border enforcement program that has been found to “divert scarce resources from core law enforcement priorities and community safety, and strain U.S. courts.”

One of the starkest differences between the Obama administration’s new National Security Strategy (pdf) and the Bush administration’s (pdf) is its tighter focus on Al Qaeda and affiliated extremists, and its recognition that responding to Al Qaeda with fear and overreaction is playing right into Al Qaeda’s hands.

Where Bush’s 2006 NSS stated the goal of “defeating global terrorism,” Obama’s is very specific, stating “The United States is waging a global campaign against al-Qa’ida and its terrorist affiliates.” The new NSS also makes very clear what this effort is not:

We will always seek to delegitimize the use of terrorism and to isolate those who carry it out. Yet this is not a global war against a tactic — terrorism or a religion — Islam. We are at war with a specific network, al-Qa’ida, and its terrorist affiliates who support efforts to attack the United States, our allies, and partners.

Here’s the section that Liz Cheney should read:

The goal of those who perpetrate terrorist attacks is in part to sow fear. If we respond with fear, we allow violent extremists to succeed far beyond the initial impact of their attacks, or attempted attacks — altering our society and enlarging the standing of al-Qa’ida and its terrorist affiliates far beyond its actual reach. Similarly, overreacting in a way that creates fissures between America and certain regions or religions will undercut our leadership and make us less safe.

There’s also a welcome assault on Al Qaeda’s religious legitimacy:

Finally, we reject the notion that al-Qa’ida represents any religious authority. They are not religious leaders, they are killers; and neither Islam nor any other religion condones the slaughter of innocents.

As Malcolm Nance writes in his new book An End To Al Qaeda, challenging Al Qaeda in the realm of ideology is a hugely important and thus far neglected aspect of the effort to diminish and defeat them. On the other side, you have people like Frank Gaffney who argue that Islam is inherently violent, and that therefore Osama bin Laden and his allies are the true Muslims, which is a clever way of effectively ceding the entire ideological debate to our enemies. Fortunately, the new NSS seems to recognize the foolishness of that idea.

The right wing is flailing about in search of an argument to make against the START treaty. Finding few, they have resorted to the same obstructionist tactics used to slow down the process on other big issues such as health care. Their latest effort is to demand that the Obama administration release the negotiating record. Kim Holmes of the Heritage Foundation and formerly of the Bush administration writes in the Washington Times:

Several senators are asking to see the secret negotiating record from the administration’s official talks with Russia. Why? Because U.S. and Russian officials publicly disagree about what the treaty says… Furthermore, there are reports that U.S. negotiators actually told the Russians that the U.S. had no intention of putting strategic missile defenses in Europe. Only a careful review of the negotiating record can set the record straight.

First off there are no “reports” – there is unsubstantiated conspiratorial gossip from American right wingers about some “secret deal.” These accusations are absurd. Did the right not notice that the delays in ratifying START were do to US-Russian fights over missile defense? Demands from the Heritage foundation and Senator Jim DeMint to release the record sound like calls for transparency but really they are just transparent efforts to further throw more mud in the gears of the Senate.

Furthermore, negotiating records are not released for a reason. Releasing the record would set a horrible precedent and would create a terrible chilling effect on future treaty negotiations. As a result, American presidents have been refusing to release treaty negotiating records since George Washington – who rejected a request from the first congress. When the record was released for the INF treaty both Republicans and Democrats in the Senate were so concerned and felt so strongly about that not setting a precedent due to the future “chilling effect” that they put out a statement in the committee’s final report. Senator Kerry read the statement to DeMint at a hearing last week:

Both the Administration and the Senate now face the task of ensuring the Senate review of negotiating records does not become an institutionalized procedure. The overall effect of fully exposed negotiations… would be to weaken the treaty making process and thereby damage American diplomacy. A systemic expectation of Senate perusal of every key treaties negotiating record could be expected to inhibit candor during future negotiators and induce posturing on the part of US negotiators and their counterparts during sensitive discussions.

But the real fact of the matter is that the right’s basic concerns over Russian interpretations of the START treaty’s impact on missile defense are entirely misplaced because ultimately what matters is what is in the actual text of the treaty. Peter Baker explained, “as a unilateral statement, it has no force other than as a symbolic political declaration.” Hence it’s unilateral. The US can do whatever it wants on missile defense even build some insanely destabilizing system.

But why did the Russians release a unilateral statement? Well they happen to have a radical right within their own country that is extremely distrustful and paranoid about the intentions of the United States. My colleague Sam Charap recently interviewed retired Russian General Viktor Yesin, he was the man whose job it was to pick out which US cities to nuke. Yesin noted that the unilateral statements made by the Russians were done for purely domestic reasons. And Charap added, “it was a nod to a domestic political constituency rather than a warning to the United States.” Watch it:

Transcript: Read more

This week, House Republicans excitedly announced the America Speaking Out project, a website to solicit ideas from Americans to craft GOP policies. “[W]e’re…asking you to join us in building a new policy agenda for our country,” said Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). “On this site, we hope you’ll share your ideas. Let us know what your priorities are for a new governing agenda.” The site, like Republicans’ other gimmicky attempts to use new media to superficially engage with the public, was widely mocked and immediately filled with suggestions like tattooing a large “I” on undocumented immigrants.

While the “Terrorism Abroad” section is filled with many ridiculous suggestions (e.g. “we need to employ some of those invincible black knights from Monty Python and the Holy Grail” and “We need to train an army of Ninja Cats”), some progressive ideas — such as repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell — are receiving the most votes. Some examples:

In the Defense/Military section, top suggestions include “Reduce the military budget drastically” and “Get out of Iraq now!!!” There are very very few constructive conservative ideas on the site, and it’s likely that Republicans have stopped listening to what the public is saying in response to their stunt by now.

Republicans may have anticipated this outcome. McCarthy said that the GOP will still stick to its “principles” — meaning they won’t incorporate any idea they don’t already agree with.

Earlier this month, Think Progress reported that Julie Erfle, the widow of a police officer who was killed by an undocumented immigrant and whose name has often been invoked by supporters of Arizona’s new immigration law, accused the bill’s supporters of “using her husband’s name to benefit politically and financially.” Today, Erfle appeared on MSNBC with a new message: she wants politicians to tell her why their reelection campaigns are more important than pushing through immigration reform before the midterm elections:

BREWER: So, Julie, when you hear people like the person who really spear-headed this legislation [SB-1070], Russell Pearce, using your husbands name to sell the idea of this bill — what do you think you’re husband Nick would’ve thought of it.

ERFLE: I don’t think he would’ve been in favor of it. [...] And that’s why I’ve spoke out against it. But I’m not so much speaking out against SB-1070 as I am speaking for comprehensive immigration reform. We need immigration reform. We should’ve had immigration reform before my husband’s death. And now there is no better time. I keep hearing — well there’s a midterm coming up. It’s just too controversial. It’s too political. To that I say — “tell that to me.” I would like to hear from politicians, I would like them to sit down with me and say why this is too political, why their reelection is more important than doing something on immigration reform. Or perhaps they could have that conversation with my children. I would really like to hear why it is more important to be reelected than it is to solve this problem.

Watch it:

Erfle also added that her “biggest issue” with SB-1070 in particular, is that it allows Arizona citizens to sue police officers if they believe they are not going after undocumented immigrants. Today, a group of city policy chiefs from Tucson, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City and Houston who oppose SB-1070 met with Attorney General Eric Holder to voice similar concerns. At a follow-up press conference, John Harris, police chief for Sahuarita, Arizona, stated “You have one side saying that we’re going to be racial profiling. You have another side in a portion of the law that allows people that don’t think we’re doing enough to sue us.” Harris concluded, “It makes it really difficult for us to police our communities.” Police chiefs across the country have been calling for comprehensive immigration reform for well over a year.

Around the same time Erfle appeared on MSNBC, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was griping on the Senate floor about how Congress can’t act on immigration reform until President Obama sends another few thousand National Guard troops to the border. While McCain’s colleague, Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) maintains that Obama is holding border security hostage to immigration reform, others have suggested that McCain and his Republican cronies are holding immigration reform hostage to the tough reelection campaign he is facing.

Last week, Wonk Room reported that the Arizona lawmaker, state Sen. Russell Pearce (R), who introduced the state’s new immigration law, SB-1070, is already planning his next legislative effort: “target the [immigrant] mother” by going after the “anchor baby racket.” “Anchor babies” is a derogatory and “politically charged” term used to refer to the U.S. citizen children of undocumented parents. Pearce wants to essentially overturn the 14th amendment by no longer granting citizenship to the children of undocumented immigrants born on U.S. soil. Today, Pearce appeared on MSNBC defending his upcoming legislation:

It’s an unconstitutional declaration of citizenship to those born here to those who are here illegally. It’s absolutely outrageous. It’s in violation of the 14th Amendment. Do you know the Congress had to act three times to recognize the citizenship of the indians? There’s no doubt where they were born at. [...] Because there was a concern over their jurisdiction and allegiance because they are part of an indian nation. It’s the same thing. I mean, common sense here. Just a little common sense would help.

Watch it:

The 14th amendment clearly states that “[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” Pearce is right that Native Americans were once denied citizenship under the 14th amendment — but the claim doesn’t provide much support for his circular argument. Up until about a century ago, Native American tribes were viewed as being largely outside the “jurisdiction” of the U.S. government — which simply means not subject to its complete control. The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 overturned the provision and granted full U.S. citizenship to the nation’s Native Americans. Since children of foreign diplomats are largely exempt from U.S. laws, they still do not receive U.S. citizenship if they are born in the country. However, no one can argue that immigrants — regardless of their status — are subject to the U.S. legal system. The Center for American progress writes “if the United States lacks ‘jurisdiction’ over the children of immigrants then it would also mean the U.S. government is powerless to deport those individuals or to punish them for crimes committed within the United States.” Such a suggestion is just as ridiculous as Pearce’s own reasoning, which basically suggests that the language of the constitution is unconstitutional on its face.

Pearce also erroneously claimed today that the U.S. is the “only country” to grant citizenship to those born within its borders. However, “birthright citizenship,” as it is called, is rooted in English common law. Nations that observe birthright citizenship include Canada, Brazil, and Mexico. The Center for American Progress examined the effect that stringent citizenship requirements have had on Germany — which does not grant citizenship at birth. The report attributes the income and educational disparities between the German-born children of immigrants and native Germans, in part, to the country’s citizenship laws. The report also found that countries like Germany are still bearing “consequences of that epic mistake today.”

The concept of birthright citizenship has also been upheld by U.S. courts. In The United States v. Wong Kim Ark, the Supreme Court ruled that anyone born in the United States would be a citizen regardless of their parents’ nationality.

Today, Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) proudly announced the launching of “America Speaking Out,” an ” unprecedented initiative of engagement with the American people that will lead to a governing policy agenda for America.” In other words, America Speaking Out is a website that allows visitors to vote for or against user-generated proposals. According to Pence, Republicans will use “this conversation to build on our long-standing belief in a smaller and more accountable government.” “We’ll incorporate your ideas as we develop policy solutions and concrete plans for reforming the way Washington works,” writes Pence.

One of the ideas proposed today questions the patriotism of Latinos and wonders why the U.S. would support immigration reform that would bring the country “down to the level of Mexcico [sic]“:

Fortunately, the user, Kathy Brunatti, expressed an idea that does not represent the views of the majority of the American public. In fact, a poll released today by America’s Voice shows that 76 percent of voters want Congress to take action on immigration reform now. National support for comprehensive reform jumps from 57 percent to 78 percent after respondents hear a description of the reform proposal — which does not include sending Latinos “home.”

Other popular immigration-related “ideas” on America Speaking Out include: “the influx of illegal aliens across our southern bornder [sic] is an invasion and should be treated as such,” “being an illegal immigrant should stay a Crime [sic]!!!,” and “congress should end birthright citizenship for so-called anchor babies.” Many of those users, including Brunatti, have already racked up hundreds of “action points.” While these passionate views are not representative of most Americans, they do raise the question if any of the ideas on America Speaking Out are anything other than the opinions of a handful of radical right-wingers with poor spelling skills and a lot of free time on their hands.

In a great example of how goofy, marginal conservative ideas end up as goofy, mainstream conservative ideas, the Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens cites a couple of items from the right-wing fever swamps in order to raise suspicions about Feisal Abdul Rauf, a Kuwaiti-born imam, and his wife, Daisy Khan, and their proposal to build an Islamic cultural center several blocks from the site of the 9/11 attacks in lower Manhattan.

“As a confidence-building measure for those of us who live in the neighborhood,” Stephens writes, “it would help if the pair voluntarily answered some questions about the nature of their beliefs.”

A sampler:

Who perpetrated the attacks of 9/11, and what was their religion?

Are suicide attacks or other forms of violent jihad acceptable under any circumstances, including against American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Does Israel have a right to exist as a Jewish state?

Do they agree with the State Department’s designation of Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations?

What aspects of Shariah law, if any, do they repudiate?

Will their center invite the input and participation of Muslim gay and lesbian groups?

Do they consider the Muslim Brotherhood to be extreme?

What influence will any foreign funding of Cordoba House have on its programs or on the literature it distributes?

This is pretty astonishing. Would Stephens, or anyone, dare propose a similar religious test for any other faith? What about asking Jews whether they condemn violence by Jewish settlers in the West Bank before they can build a synagogue somewhere? Or asking Christians planning a new church whether they will invite the input and participation of Christian gay and lesbian groups? You know, just as a “confidence-building measure”? Doubtful. It would be considered un-American.

Today, Senate Republicans spoke with President Obama on immigration reform, including plans to deploy thousands of National Guard troops and drones to tighten border security. Prior to the meeting, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) appeared on Fox News to announce one of the ideas he planned on pitching to the President and will also likely introduce as an amendment to the $58.8 billion emergency supplemental bill currently being debated in the U.S. Senate. Cornyn told Fox News Host Bill Hemmer that his amendment will require that unspent stimulus funds be poured into securing the border rather than boosting the economy:

HEMMER: There are unspent stimulus dollars that are still in the pipeline. You would like to take a whopping $2.2 billion of unspent stimulus money and put it towards border patrol and border security. What’s your proposal there?

CORNYN: Well the fact of the matter is we need a credible immigration program starting with credible border security. Last year we had over a half a million people detained coming over our border illegally. No one with a straight face can claim with a straight face that we’ve gotten the job done. I think is as a pre-requisite to doing other things we need to do in immigration reform, we need to start with border security which means more boots on the ground. We need the technology, the airplanes, the drones, the helicopters.

Watch it:

However, Cornyn doesn’t mention that violence and crime on the US-Mexico border has been “on the decline” in recent years. As Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has said, the border is as “secure now as it has ever been.” ABC News reports that “cities like Tucson; Chula Vista, California; and Lardeo, Texas, have all seen year-over-year drops in violent crime, murder, and rape. El Paso, Texas, continues to have one of the lowest rates of violent crime of all U.S.cities.”

Despite the drop in crime, spending on immigration enforcement, particular border enforcement, has steadily climbed since 2002 and continues to rise under the Obama’s administration from about $9 billion in 2008 to over $11 billion in 2010. Overall, the U.S. will spend over $17 billion in FY 2010 just on enforcing immigration laws:

Comprehensive immigration reform, which would include border security provisions, but also do something about the 12 million undocumented immigrants already living in the U.S., would meanwhile generate at least $1.5 trillion in cumulative GDP over ten years. By creating a more flexible visa system, immigration reform would also likely allow border patrol to more effectively focus their resources on dangerous threats to public safety and national security instead of pursuing those who simply come to the U.S. to work. While quick to call for costly ramped up enforcement measures, the Republican Party has so far refused to pursue immigration reform in 2010.

Yesterday on the Senate floor, GOP Minority Whip and leading nuclear weapons advocate, Sen. Jon Kyl went to the GOP’s go to play when they are losing the argument. Kyl called for the Senate to slow down:

some have seemed intent on rushing the treaty that’s been sent to us. According to Congressional Quarterly, “A congressional aide who briefed reporters on the treaty said Thursday that Senate Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., intended to complete hearings ‘in time for the Senate to take up the treaty before the August recess, if it so chooses.’” I’m not aware of any similar precedent for so rushing such a treaty of this complexity.

The Republican Policy Committee report on START also previewed Senator Kyl’s remarks in a report on START that asserted, “there is no reason for the Senate to rush its constitutional duty to evaluate the merits of the replacement treaty independently.”

The GOP attack makes little sense. Giving Congress four months to assess — what Henry Kissinger today called a “modest” treaty — is more than reasonable.

What this really demonstrates is the GOP has been forced to fall back and dust off their standard obstructionist ploy of complaining about process, resulting in calls for Congress to “start over” to “slow down” or to stop “rushing.” In February, I noted that the GOP had tipped their hand in wanting to recycle the same tactics of obstruction used in the health care debate against START. As Victor Zapanta of Think Progress documented, on everything from the recovery act, to health care, to Wall Street Reform, the GOP’s “solution to everything” has been to say slow down or start over:

Claims that the New START treaty is being rushed in the Senate are ridiculous. Senator Kerry has already held four hearings on the START treaty since it was signed on April 8th and will schedule more technical hearings in the coming months on various aspects of the treaty.

Pointing to past treaty ratification times, as the GOP does, is a false comparison. Kyl noted, for instance that the original START treaty took a really long time to ratify — 430 days to be exact. But something really significant happened during that time. The Soviet Union collapsed! The treaty was signed in July of 1991 and 5 months later the Soviet Union collapsed, creating significant complications in the ratification of the treaty. Additionally, the original START treaty took a long time because it was the first time such an extensive verification system was put into place. In other words, the treaty currently before the Senate is not an entirely new treaty, as it extends the previous START treaty that was negotiated under Ronald Reagan.

Furthermore, by citing the Moscow Treaty, which was signed in 2002 and took nine months to ratify, Kyl is indicting the incompetence of the then-GOP controlled Senate. The Moscow Treaty was only three pages long and contained no new verification procedures. There was no reason a three page treaty required nine months before a vote could be held on ratification. It certainly didn’t take that long because Senators were nitpicking over the details of a three page treaty.

Finally, this treaty ratification process should in fact move as quickly as possible. The past START treaty expired December last year, which means that all the verification measures that give us knowledge and insight into the Russian arsenal are in place only on a voluntary basis and some new measures are not in place. Ratifying New START therefore will give us greater insight into Russian nuclear forces and enhance nuclear stability. For the GOP Senators that have expressed concern over Russia’s nuclear arsenal, as Senator Kyl did, stalling and obstructing makes no sense.

The fact is that Senate deliberations on this new START treaty simply do not need to take as long as past treaties. No matter what happens, the most important and detailed hearings will be held this summer in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Therefore waiting or stalling will just place these issues on the backburner. No one is disputing that all necessary hearings should be held, but at the conclusion of these hearings Senators should have the chance to vote when these issues are still fresh on their minds. Taking longer by no means promises greater scrutiny of the treaty and does not guarantee greater attention.

The fact is that four months is plenty of time for the Senate to read, review, and assess this treaty. Saying otherwise is just a call either for Senate laziness or political stalling.