The Downloadable EducationPutting free courses online was the first step in reimagining education. What now? Read Article   

 The GOP's harsh immigration stance will cost it
By Michael Gerson
Friday, May 14, 2010
Has the Republican Party become, as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid recently charged, the "anti-immigrant party"? The accusation is overbroad. Republicans (and others) who are offended by chaos at the southern border, who are concerned about the strains illegal immigration places on public services and who believe enforcement should precede comprehensive reform are not necessarily "anti-immigrant." Reid has an interest in painting with the broadest possible brush to motivate Hispanic supporters in his own, uphill reelection campaign. But it would be absurd to deny that the Republican ideological coalition includes elements that are anti-immigrant -- those who believe that Hispanics, particularly Mexicans, are a threat to American culture and identity. When Arizona Republican Senate candidate J.D. Hayworth calls for a moratorium on legal immigration from Mexico, when then-Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) refers to Miami as a "Third World country," when state Rep. Russell Pearce (R), one of the authors of the Arizona immigration law, says Mexicans' and Central Americans' "way of doing business" is different, Latinos can reasonably assume that they are unwelcome in certain Republican circles. The intensity of these Republican attitudes is evident not just from what activists say but also from what Republican leaders are being forced to say. Sen. John McCain, a long-term supporter of humane, comprehensive immigration reform, has run a commercial feeding fears of "drug and human smuggling, home invasions, murder" by illegal immigrants. Never mind that the level of illegal immigration is down in Arizona or that skyrocketing crime rates along the border are a myth. McCain's tag line -- "Complete the danged fence" -- will rank as one of the most humiliating capitulations in modern political history. Ethnic politics is symbolic and personal. Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy gained African American support by calling Coretta Scott King while her husband was in prison. Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater lost support by voting against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. A generation of African American voters never forgot either gesture. Republicans have now sent three clear signals to Hispanic voters: California's Proposition 187, which was passed in 1994 and attempted to deny illegal immigrants health care and public education before being struck down in court; the immigration debate of 2006, dominated by strident Republican opponents of reform; and now the Arizona immigration law. According to a 2008 study by the Pew Hispanic Center, 49 percent of Hispanics said that Democrats had more concern for people of their background; 7 percent believed this was true of Republicans. Since the Arizona controversy, this gap can only have grown. In a matter of months, Hispanic voters in Arizona have gone from being among the most pro-GOP in the nation to being among the most hostile. Immigration issues are emotional and complex. But this must be recognized for what it is: political suicide. Consider that Hispanics make up 40 percent of the K-12 students in Arizona,…

 The terrorism arrestMichael TomaskyThe swift arrest of Faisal Shahzad, the 30-year-old Pakistani-American, is reassuring. And dramatic - after all those episodes of 24 and all those movies, we could all picture it in our mind's eyes, couldn't we? The FBI tracking down the man who sold Shahzad the SUV. Tracing the locations of the cell phone he'd used and dumped. And finally charging onto the plane he was on, as it was preparing to taxi and head away to Dubai, and making the arrest.The episode would have had scenes, too, of high government officials being on top of things. Attorney general Eric Holder apparently stayed at the office until 9:30, went home to tuck the kids in, and went back to the office (according to the Playbook, a morning news/heads-up email by Politico's Mike Allen), heading straight to something called the SCIF on the seventh floor. The Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility. I swear, that's what it's called.This episode comes complete with Hollywood ending. Well, I guess some would prefer that the feds would have blown the guy's brains out. Instead, starting today, Shahzad will enter the justice system. Excitable blood-lust notwithstanding, this is the preferred outcome because there are still of course lots of things to learn, about whether he acted alone, about what he did during those eight months he reportedly spent recently in Pakistan.But the episode was still rattling. It's just dumb luck that the bomb didn't go off, after all. The genuinely frightening thing, of course, is whether this was just a one-off by a lone wolf (that's the direction of most of the speculation now) or whether it was part of something bigger and signals and possible uptick in such activity.Complacency is to be avoided. But so is hysteria. As I write, I'm watching CNN in my hotel room, and as far as CNN is concerned all other news has been wiped off the face of the earth. That kind of thing only makes people more jittery. It's a permanent fixture of American life now, I suppose, but it doesn't have to guide how we go about our lives.
     

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