Newspaper Page Text
The ADVANCE, December 27, 2023/Page 6A
Stye Aiiuancg
OPINIONS
“I honor the man who is willing to sink
Half his repute for the freedom to think,
And when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak,
Will risk t’other half for the freedom to speak.”
-James Russell Lowell
editorials
Barring Trump From Ballots
Is a Recipe for Violence
E On Tuesday eve
ning, the Supreme
Court of Colorado
ruled that former
President Donald J.
■'jML Trump had to be re
moved from the state
ballot, for both the
primaries and the
By Ben Shapiro general election.
They cited Amend
ment 14, Section 3 of
the Constitution of the United States,
which states, in relevant part, that candi
dates are ineligible for office if they “shall
have engaged in insurrection or rebellion”
against the Constitution of the United
States. It is unclear whether the provision
applies to presidential candidates; it is
even more unclear whether such a provi
sion is “self-enforcing,” meaning that any
electoral official in any state can simply
declare for himself whether a candidate
has been an “insurrectionist.”
Nonetheless, the court said it is quali
fied to determine who is guilty of “insur
rection” under the 14th Amendment with
out any criminal case or impeachment
case. And the court says that “the events of
January 6 constituted an insurrection
and... President Trump engaged in that
insurrection.”
On a legal level, this is extraordinarily
strained. Section 3 was designed to pro
hibit those who had served in the Confed
eracy from holding public office in the
United States. The Confederacy, as we
know, was an armed rebellion against the
United States that ended in the deaths of
some 600,000 Americans on both sides.
Trump, by contrast, made a series of legal
challenges to the election, all of which
were denied, and then claimed — on the
basis of specious legal reasoning — that
the vice president could simply throw out
electoral slates that had already been certi
fied. He then called for his supporters to
protest at the Capitol building and a riot
broke out. This hardly qualifies as an “in
surrection,” let alone proving that Trump
engaged in one. Trump, let us not forget,
has not been charged with insurrection.
He was not even convicted in his impeach
ment trial over Jan. 6.
Yet the Colorado State Supreme Court
says it can bar him from electoral eligibil
ity anyway.
This is, to put it mildly, unbelievably
dangerous.
It sets up a perverse set of incentives
for both political sides.
Trump can and will rightly claim that
lawfare has been used to thwart the work
ings of democracy — that a slate of judges
in any state can simply negate the will of
the voters, and that President Joe Biden’s
own Department of Justice has been at
tempting to drag him into court before the
election in order to stymie his shot at the
presidency.
Meanwhile, the Colorado Supreme
Court has now set up expectations for
Democrats across the country that Trump
can be legally barred from the presidency
— and when the Supreme Court over
turns that Colorado Supreme Court rul
ing, they will claim that the Supreme
Court itself is rigged.
All of which means that 2024 is going
to be the most insane and ugly presiden
tial election in American history. And
that’s saying a lot, since 1968 and 2020 are
both years that existed. Under what cir
cumstances, precisely, would Democrats
accept the result of a Trump election?
Under what circumstances, precisely,
would Republicans accept the result of a
Biden election?
The weaponization of the legal system
creates an all-consuming fire, burning ev
erything in its path. There is simply no
2024 result likely to result in anything but
complete — and perhaps violent — chaos
at this point.
Ben Shapiro, 39, is a graduate of UCLA and
Harvard Law School, host of "The Ben Shapiro
Show," and co-founder of Daily Wire+. He is a
three-time New York Times bestselling author;
his latest book is "The Authoritarian Moment:
How The Left Weaponized America's Institutions
Against Dissent." To find out more about Ben
Shapiro and read features by other Creators
Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the
Creators Syndicate website at www.creators,
com.
COPYRIGHT 2023 CREATORS.COM
Georgia, Alabama bury hatchet
in Chattahoochee River case
By Dave Williams
Bureau Chief
Capitol Beat News Service
The states of Georgia
and Alabama have reached
an agreement expected to
end a long-running legal
dispute over water allo
cation from the Chatta
hoochee River Basin.
Under the agreement,
the U.S. Army Corps of
Engineers will consider a
first-of-its-kind proposal to
operate its dams and reser
voirs to achieve minimum
water-flow objectives at
Columbus, Ga., and Co
lumbia, Ala., on the Chat
tahoochee along the states’
border.
In addition, the Corps
agrees to maintain the nec
essary minimum elevation
at Lake Seminole, a Corps-
managed reservoir about
20 miles southwest of
Bainbridge.
If the Corps adopts the
agreement following a pub
lic-comment period, Ala
bama will drop a lawsuit it
brought in 2017 challeng
ing the federal agency’s
operations in the region,
including the Corps’ policy
allowing Georgia to make
water-supply withdrawals
near Atlanta.
While this specific
lawsuit is only six years old.
the so-called tri-state “wa
ter wars” between Georgia,
Alabama, and Florida date
back to 1990.
“This agreement is
a win-win for our states,
with neither side sacrific
ing what is important to
them,” Gov. Brian Kemp
said Tuesday. “The Chat
tahoochee River is the
lifeblood of Southwest
Georgia, and this proposal
would give citizens and
businesses certainty about
the flow of water they need
for business and leisure
alike.
“Just as significant,
adoption of this proposal
would end the current is
sues related to water supply
for metro Atlanta at Lake
Lanier, which is crucial to
the future of our state.”
“Alabama and Georgia
have a lot in common,” Ala
bama Gov. Kay Ivey added.
“But we have spent a lot of
time - and a lot of money
on attorney fees - fighting
in court over water. This
proposal is a big deal for
Alabama as the Corps has
never before set minimum
water-flow objectives in the
parts of the Chattahoochee
that affect us.
“It would provide
Alabama with long-term
assurances that, in times
of drought, our citizens
will be protected, and our
stakeholders will know
how much water is coming
their way.”
The agreement an
nounced Tuesday is the
most significant since
September of last year,
when representatives of
water supply systems in
Gwinnett, Forsyth and
Hall counties finalized an
agreement with the state
of Georgia guaranteeing
them water from Lake
Lanier through 2050.
Two years ago, the
U.S. Supreme Court sided
with Georgia in a lawsuit
brought by Florida over
water allocation from
the Apalachicola-Chatta-
hoochee-Flint (ACF) Ba
sin. Steps water planners
in the Atlanta region have
taken during the last two
decades to reduce water
consumption figured into
that ruling.
“As leaders in water
stewardship, we are grati-
Please see Williams page
9A
Where's the big
immigration debate?
THE
RICH
LOWR
COLUMN
Do you remember the big national
debate on whether the United States
would adopt a policy to make the for
eign share of the population the highest
it’s ever been?
Neither do I. For the simple rea
son, of course, that there wasn’t one.
That doesn’t mean that the policy
wasn’t adopted, through inertia and the
Biden administration’s imposition of a
de facto open border for a large swath
of asylum-seekers.
An analysis of Census data by Steve
Camarota and his colleagues at the
Center for Immigration Studies has
found that a 4.5 million net increase in
immigrants since Joe Biden took office
has boosted the share of the foreign
born to 15%, the highest ever recorded.
You know all the black-and-white
photos of immigrants coming to Ellis
Island, the lore about names being
changed upon arrival, “your huddled
masses yearning to be free”?
We are currently higher than that.
We’re eclipsing the Great Wave of Im
migration with an even greater wave.
We hit 14.8 in 1890 and 14.7 in 1910, in
what were, until now, the most historic
decades for immigration.
Just last month, the Census Bureau
was projecting the foreign-born share
of the population wouldn’t hit 15% un
til in 2033. Now, we could keep going
up from here. “If the immigrant popula
tion continues to grow,” Camarota
writes, “it will set new numerical and
percentage records every year going
forward.”
A straight-line projection shows
the share of foreign-born increasing to
15.5 by the end of Biden’s term, and to
an astonishing 17.3% by the end of a
potential second term.
This is not the normal course of
business. According to Camarota, the
foreign-born population has grown on
average by 137,000 a month since the
beginning of Biden’s term, higher than
Donald Trump’s pre-COVID-19
42,000 and Barack Obama’s 68,000.
What accounts for this? Some of it
is a COVID-19 bounce-back in legal
immigration. But that’s not responsible
for the lion’s share of the story. The
Biden administration has boosted the
foreign-bom share of the population
well above the pre-COVID-19 trend
line.
It has done it by ignoring the law
and greasing the skids for new arrivals
even if they have no right to be here. Of
the total net 4.5 million increase of im
migrants on Biden’s watch, 2.5 million
of that is illegal immigrants. Most of
that illegal number is solely a function
of discretion and the administration’s
opposition to excluding bogus asylum-
seekers.
The Biden administration’s border
policy has obviously been the subject of
debate, including criticism from his
own party. The overall number of im
migrants, though, is rarely mentioned,
and even treated as an almost illegiti
mate topic for public consideration.
This makes no sense. The foreign-
born share of the population has conse
quences for schooling, welfare, wages,
politics and the broader culture. It is at
least as important, if not more so, than
trade policy, Ukraine aid, the deficit,
infrastructure or a whole host of other
issues that are routine fodder for con
gressional debate and the Sunday
shows.
It also should be subject to the ap
proval of the American people and its
representatives just like those other is
sues. We should affirmatively decide
whether we want the foreign share of
the population to be 15% and growing,
or less than 15% and shrinking, and the
mix of people who are coming -largely
unskilled, or overwhelmingly higher
skilled?
Instead, we treat immigration as
something that happens to us, like the
weather. (Although progressives now
seek to influence the weather, so maybe
this is a dated analogy.) It isn’t. We are
making the choices that have gotten us
to this point.
The fact is that immigration has
operated largely under its own power,
and under false pretenses, since the im
migration reform of 1965. One reason
there’s so little discussion of the under
lying issue is that many people simply
don’t know the historic numbers in
volved.
In short, there’s been no debate on
15%, and one, shamefully, doesn’t seem
in the offing.
Rich Lowry is editor of the National
Review.
(c) 2023 by King Features Synd., Inc.
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