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Reason Alert: Drew Carey Wants Open Borders

  • Drew Carey Calls for Open Borders In New Reason.tv Video
  • Media Buys McCain’s Foreign Policy Deception
  • Hillary’s Southern Crossroads
  • I’m with Stupid
  • New at Reason.com and Reason.org

Drew Carey Calls for Open Borders In New Reason.tv Video
“I think we should welcome all peaceful people to our country,” says Drew Carey in a new Reason.tv video examining the contentious immigration debate. “They get to pursue the ‘American Dream’ and we get to benefit from all the wonderful things that immigrants bring to our country – like good old fashioned soccer. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.” While workers from Mexico draw the ire and fiery rhetoric of anti-immigration forces, Carey points out that there was no outrage or concern when English-speaking soccer star David Beckham brought his family and curling free kicks to America. “Americans, especially, LA Galaxy fans were very excited and greeted David Beckham with open arms when he came here to play in Los Angeles, even though he took the roster spot away from some poor, hard-working American kid,” Carey says in the Reason.tv video. “So I guess we’re very welcoming when it comes to rich famous Brits. And we love our Beatles. But are we as welcoming when it comes to people from other countries?”

Media Buys McCain’s Foreign Policy Deception
Reason magazine Editor in Chief Matt Welch, author of the book McCain: The Myth of a Maverick, dissects Sen. John McCain’s big foreign policy speech, and the media’s coverage of it: “Unless you are the cheapest of cheap dates, or just so predisposed toward the guy that you can’t see straight, it should take more than three words [‘I hate war’] to disprove a totally consistent decade-plus record of hawkish interventionism and dependable boots-on-the-groundism…McCain says he hates the wars he’ll inevitably launch. He says the U.S. cannot act alone with all the unipolar power he’ll continue to amass and flex. He advocates a League of Democracies that will never happen, and an environmental treaty that probably won’t work. As David Brooks noted, ‘Anybody who thinks McCain is merely continuing the Bush agenda is not paying attention.’ He’s right-McCain will close Gitmo, make a couple of cheap rhetorical promises to play nice with the world, then increase this administration’s interventionism in a way befitting a candidate who ran as the neo-conservative favorite against the too-humble foreign policy approach of governor George W. Bush. The only question is whether his deep reserves of credibility in the ‘Bank of Media’ is enough to maintain the fiction that he’s less an interventionist than his predecessor.”

Hillary’s Southern Crossroads
Reason magazine’s Jeff Taylor, who lives in North Carolina, says the race in that state may be closer than it seems: “The early commitment of ad dollars shows that the Obama camp does not put much stock in one recent poll showing him with a 20-point lead in the state. The poll’s methodology almost certainly overstates the pro-Obama turnout for the primary. The consensus view is that Obama now holds a lead, but of, at most, 10 points-and possibly little as five points among likely primary voters. Because the race is relatively close, Clinton will no doubt soon move to counter the Obama ads in the state’s metro cores. When she does, it may well be with the most direct and forceful attacks on Obama the campaign season has yet seen. Hillary, in point of fact, has nothing to gain by holding back. She must, to borrow Bill’s old phrase from the Ken Starr days, ‘just win.'”

I’m with Stupid
In Reason magazine Greg Beato writes, “In 1991, in the wake of the Gulf War, the Kuwaiti government sentenced one man to 15 years in jail simply for wearing a Saddam Hussein T-shirt. Today in the United States, we’re far more enlightened: Selling a T-shirt inscribed with the names of military personnel who died in Iraq will only get you a maximum sentence of one year in Louisiana and Oklahoma. Are you against sodomy or breast cancer? In favor of ‘hot moms’ or John Edwards? In 2007 each of these convictions got at least one high school student kicked out of class. In Wisconsin, Edgerton High School enforces a zero tolerance policy against Insane Clown Posse T-shirts. In Aurora, Illinois, all it takes to earn a trip to the principal’s office is a T-shirt with a large dollar sign on it. How did endorsing capitalism or B-list presidential candidates become so controversial?”