Stanton's Space

Thanks to the Stanley Cup Playoffs, most of my posts since April have centered around hockey. But I have not been ignoring everything else, so here are a few of what Thomas Sowell might call "random thoughts on the passing scene."

I will start with something uniting and uplifting, since those qualities won't be evident when I write about politics. That something is the unmanned spacecraft New Horizons, which today will fly narrowly past Pluto and its five orbiting moons, then proceed into and beyond the Kuiper belt.

When New Horizons left Earth back on January 19, 2006, its detailed flight coordinates for today were already programmed into it. Because flying it remotely is not possible -- any commands from Earth would take more than four hours to reach it -- today's brush with Pluto is a one-and-done opportunity. Plus, this combination of factors makes it impossible for the spacecraft to orbit Pluto and linger for a while. Therefore, there will be no do-overs if something goes wrong.

During its approach, New Horizons has already sent back stunning photographs of the icy dwarf planet and revealed things we never knew. When it blasts by at a speed of 8.7 miles per second, it will basically start -- not continue -- mankind's gathering of information about the icy dwarf. So little has been learned about Pluto in the 85 years since it was discovered that Alan Stern, the renowned planetary scientist and principal New Horizons investigator, recently remarked that "we're not planning to rewrite any textbooks, we're planning to write them from scratch."

Sitting inside the spacecraft are some of the ashes of Clyde Tombaugh, the inquisitive astronomer who discovered Pluto in 1930 ... As I type this sentence a little after midnight, the spacecraft has been flying for more than 3,462 days and 9 hours, and is scheduled to arrive at its destination in less than 7 hours and 28 minutes ... Before long it will be beyond Pluto, and then beyond the Kuiper belt, and Tombaugh's ashes will become the first human remains to leave the solar system.

Like Charles Krauthammer put it when rhapsodizing about New Horizons last Thursday: "For the wretched race of beings we surely are, we do, on occasion, manage to soar."


Now, unfortunately, I return to my regularly scheduled programming:

After officially announcing her presidential candidacy, it took Hillary Clinton three months to grant her first interview to the national media. And when that interview finally happened last week, she was incapable of finishing it without telling the kind of whopper that would have ended a Republican's career.

Specifically, Clinton claimed to have "never had a subpoena" regarding her unauthorized use of a private server and private email address to conduct all of her government business while Secretary of State. But it turns out she has actually been served three subpoenas about the matter, and two of them were served before she destroyed evidence by wiping her server clean.

Of course the media has ignored downplayed this story. After all, the media is one-half of the Democrat-Media Complex and it does everything it can to protect the other half. However, it will only take one Republican candidate broaching this story in one presidential debate to make big-time hay of it. There is no reason for Republicans to fear facing her in the general election, and I will not be surprised if she fails to even make it to the general election.

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I should clarify things by saying there is no reason for Republicans to fear Hillary unless my fellow GOP primary voters somehow make Donald Trump our nominee -- for would-be Emperor Donald is every bit as clothesless as would-be Empress Hillary.

Clinton attended Trump's most recent wedding ... Trump has donated to the Clinton Foundation ... As recently as 2008, a year in which Clinton happened to be running for president, Trump said this: "I'm a big fan of Hillary. She's a terrific woman. She's a friend of mine."

Trump has used eminent domain to seize other people's property without paying them for it, and has then turned around and used that property to make money for himself.

There is nothing inherently wrong about filing for bankruptcy, but Trump has done it four times.

He is pro-tariff and anti-free trade.

He practices crony capitalism, which has more in common with socialism than it does with the free market vision of Friedman, Laffer, and Reagan.

Finally, I do believe that a person's personal life is just that and we should not throw stones from our glass houses. However, it's not unreasonable to wonder if the fact that Donald Trump has been divorced more times than the other 44 presidents combined indicates something about his character. Especially once you remember that he once said "if Ivanka weren't my daughter, perhaps I'd be dating her." 

Sure, it's cathartic to hear him criticize our governments's ambivalence toward illegal immigration. But when pontificating about illegal immigration less than four years ago, the very same Donald Trump lambasted the GOP for being "mean-spirited" and accused Milquetoast Mitt Romney of being "maniacal." So who knows what he really thinks?

The only way he gets the nomination is if the GOP's primary voters lose their collective marbles upon entering the polling booth.

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Nonetheless, there is no getting around the fact that Trump's recent comments about illegal immigration have gotten the big picture right even when they've erred on facts.

And there is no getting around this: Trump's recent rise in the polls is almost entirely the result of his recent comments about illegal immigration.

Illegal aliens do commit crime at higher rates than legal immigrants ... In general they do not represent Mexico's best, brightest, or even most diligent ... They drive down the wages of legal immigrants and native-born Americans alike ... Sanctuary cities are engaging in illegal defiance of the United States, and by their sanctuary status they have caused law-abiding people to be murdered and raped ... Go here if you want to read some numbers about repeat criminality among illegal aliens that such cities have released, often in spite of the federal government explicitly requesting that they not ... Such cities should be stripped of any and all federal funds they are scheduled to receive, and their elected representatives who voted for sanctuary status should be sitting behind bars waiting for a jury trial in federal court.

The two things I suggested in the previous sentence almost certainly won't happen, but a majority of the American people believes that one or both of them should ... Americans do not want migrants gunned down coming across the border, but they do want the border secured and they do want those who are here illegally to be sent back ... They approve of immigration that is legal and orderly, but they have a right to demand a stop be put to immigration that is illegal, underground, and anarchic ... Their anger is justified, and any politician who wants to win next November had better 1) acknowledge that fact, and 2) not insult the people's intelligence when he talks about the issue.

Finally, I am done for now but will be back soon. Take care.

As everybody with an IQ knows, the U.S. government does not enforce its own immigration laws when it comes to people sneaking in from Mexico...and in proportion to their numbers, those illegal immigrants engage in much more crime than people who come here legally.

As a result, areas on our southern border are awash in problems that people from other parts of America can barely comprehend. Arizona leads the U.S. in kidnappings, and 70 percent of its kidnappings involve illegals. Phoenix has the second highest kidnapping rate of any city on the entire planet. Illegals account for more than one in five of Arizona’s felonies, and more than four in ten of the Phoenix area’s fraud and forgery sentencings.

Because the federal government does not do its job to prevent and turn back illegal immigration, Arizona recently stepped up and enacted its own law, empowering its law enforcement personnel to do something about the problem. For the most part, its law mirrors the ignored federal law, and where it diverges it does so by offering more civil liberties protection than federal law.

Arizona stipulates that when there is a “lawful stop, detention or arrest” of somebody for whom “reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States, a reasonable attempt shall be made, when practicable, to determine the immigration status of the person.” In plain English, this means that if somebody is approached or arrested for breaking some other law, and the police then see something that suggests the suspect might be here illegally (for example, a car is pulled over for speeding and none of the occupants has a driver’s license), then they are allowed to try to figure out if the suspect is here illegally -- if they think it is practical to try. Conversely, federal law does not require that there be any suspected law-breaking before people can be asked to prove their legal status.

Arizona’s law goes on to state that police “may not consider race, color or national origin in implementing the requirements of this subsection.” In other words, it explicitly forbids racial and ethnic profiling, which are not forbidden by federal law. Yet, federal leaders are acting as though it is Arizona’s law, not theirs, which ignores civil liberties.

President Obama had the audacity to claim that when Hispanic parents take their kids out for ice cream, Arizona law enforcement personnel can ask them to prove their identity for no other reason than the fact they look Hispanic. Attorney General Eric Holder depicted the law as being constitutionally unsound, even though he admitted he has not read it.

All the while, MSM talking heads have drawn comparisons between Arizona and Nazi Germany by saying that Arizona is allowing its police to demand that people “show their papers.” If only those talking heads knew that it is federal law which states “every alien, eighteen years of age and over, shall at all times carry with him and have in his personal possession any certificate of alien registration receipt card issued to him.”

If common sense is your guide, these initial reactions to Arizona’s law are the stuff of Bizarro World. But things got even more bizarre when Mexico’s president, Felipe Calderon, came to D.C. last week.

For the record, before Mexico will allow people to move there, it mandates that they have a certain amount of savings, have certain work and language skills, and prove they are in good health. Once they arrive, Mexican law limits their freedom to speak and to purchase land. And, Mexican law calls for deportation of immigrants, even legal ones, whose presence is found to be changing the nation’s demographics (in other words, Mexico will kick them out if not enough of them are Hispanic).

Further, Mexico requires its police to “demand that foreigners prove their legal presence in the country before attending to any issues,” and calls for foreigners to be deported if their legal presence can not be proved. Amnesty International recently issued a report which said that illegal immigrants in Mexico “are preyed on by criminal gangs while public officials turn a blind eye or even play an active part in kidnappings, rapes and murders,” and that they “are facing a major human rights crisis leaving them with virtually no access to justice, fearing reprisals and deportation if they complain of abuses.” (emphasis added)

Those are the facts about the country Felipe Calderon leads, yet Calderon did not bat an eye when he described Arizona as “violating the human rights of all people.” Then, last week, he addressed the United States Congress and said that Arizona uses “racial profiling as the basis for law enforcement,” and a large number of Democrats responded by giving him a standing ovation. Also last week, in a joint press conference with President Obama, he called Arizona’s law “discriminatory” and Obama not only let him get away with the slander, but tacitly agreed with it.

Can you imagine any president before Obama allowing the leader of a corrupt, human-rights-violating government to stand on our soil and vilify one of our own states that has done nothing wrong? Can you imagine Leonid Brezhnev standing beside Ronald Reagan, falsely accusing Vermont of allowing discrimination, and Reagan not standing up for Vermont?

There are only three possible explanations for this inanity: 1) We really are living in Bizarro World; 2) Obama is so meek and morally befuddled that he is less equipped to lead than my five-year-old daughter; or 3) Obama agrees with our adversaries, and therefore does not care to defend the founding principles of the nation he swore to protect.

It is disturbing that the first possibility is the most preferable, and frightening that the second one even exists. But it is downright terrifying that of all these possibilities, the third one is most likely to be true. As I have said before, Barack Obama is simply not fit to be president of the United States.

Much thanks to Bill Bennett, Seth Leibsohn, and Mona Charen for brining the crime statistics to light, along with the language of the Arizona and federal laws.