Expelling the Moriscos

The Expulsion of the Moriscos at the Port of Denía. Vincente Mostre, 1612. Via Wikipedia.

A little clarity from the New York Times:

1. It can't be done.

Putting the policy into practice would require an unlikely act of Congress, said Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor of law at Cornell and a prominent authority on immigration.

Should Congress enact such a law, he predicted, the Supreme Court would invalidate it as an overly restrictive immigration policy under the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

“It would certainly be challenged as unconstitutional,” he said. “And I predict the Supreme Court would strike it down.”

2. It's not about Muslims, it's about Cruz.

Mr. Trump has a track record of making surprising and even extreme comments whenever he is overtaken in opinion polls by other Republican candidates – as happened on Monday just hours before he issued his statement about Muslims. A new Monmouth University survey of likely Iowa Republican caucus-goers found that Mr. Trump had slipped from his recent top spot in the state, which holds the first presidential nomination contest on Feb. 1. According to the poll, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas earned 24 percent of support, while Mr. Trump had 19 percent and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida had 17 percent...

3. Cruz knows that.

...some were more careful in their denouncements. Senator Ted Cruz, who has overtaken Mr. Trump in Iowa and has been gaining on him nationally, said: “Well, that, that is not my policy.” The Republican from Texas went on to explain that he has called for a moratorium on refugees from countries where the Islamic State or Al Qaeda control significant territory.

The whole point of the exercise could just as easily be to make everybody forget that Jeb! and Cruz were both calling for the exclusion of non-Christian refugees on equally unconstitutional grounds, oh, about three weeks ago. Now, says Bush, such ideas are "unhinged" and "not serious". To be fair, he has got it right this time.

Get happy! On the Edge of the World

What with the latest kerfuffle over Republican campaign music—Donald Trump somehow imagining he could have permission to use a song by Bernie Sanders supporter Neil Young—Scott Eric Kaufman at Salon has produced an elegant video history of conservative misappropriation of nonconservative musicians going back to the Reagan campaign's strange belief that Bruce Springsteen's 1984 anthem of despair "Born in the USA" could be used to articulate Reagan's message of sunny, childlike millionaire's greed, and wonders by the way if there's any popular music at all that's safe for Republicans to use.

Here's a suggestion for JEB!, anyhow, with a bright and optimistic message, traditional country club sound values, unifyingly bipartisan reference, and performers who might put up with it because of the high irony quotient:

Speaking of irony, Daniel Scotto at The Federalist (or as we call it here, with reference to its Patrick Henry–Jeff Davis ideology, The Confederalist) offers a remarkable piece of retroactionary music criticism demonstrating that "Born in the USA" is really an attack on the Obama presidency:

Cheap shots and radiant inner light

Image by J.Scott Applewhite/AP.

Jeb! to Declare Presidential Run, Playing Down His Surname

By MICHAEL BARBARO and JONATHAN MARTIN JUNE 15, 2015

MIAMI — Jeb! (who uses only one name), a son and brother of presidents, formally entered the race for the White House on Monday by portraying himself as the most accomplished leader in the 2016 field, declaring war on Washington’s political culture and insisting that his former family name of Bush gave him no unique claim to the Oval Office.

As his mother, Barbara, a former first lady, looked on, Mr. Jeb! directly confronted the central doubt looming over his candidacy: that he presents the latest incarnation of a tired dynasty and thinks himself entitled to the Republican nomination.

“Not a one of us deserves the job by right of résumé, party, seniority, family or family narrative,” he told a crowd of 3,000 supporters in a community college’s gymnasium. “It’s nobody’s turn. It’s everybody’s test.”

Mr. Jeb!, whose tenure as governor of Florida was marked by the privatization of traditional state services, vowed to “take Washington — the static capital of this dynamic country — out of the business of causing problems.”

Nah, just for fun.

NYTimes commenter AR:

Am I my brother's (score-) keeper?

Image by Eric Draper/AP from the 2000 campaign.

J.E.B. in Politico:

Bush said that Obama “abandoned” Iraq and lamented the fall of Ramadi to Islamic State terrorists, saying that “ISIS didn’t exist when my brother was president” and that Al Qaeda was decimated under his brother.

Sorry, Jebbie, but ISIS was founded, under conditions entirely created under your brother's orders, and because of your brother's stupid and probably illegal orders, in Camp Bucca in 2004. This is really a pretty well known fact.