Back to Basics

As often as I can, I watch Fox News’s 6 p.m program, and my favorite part of that program is the contributions of Charles Krauthammer.

Charles normally dissects an issue with precision and accuracy.  But not today, on August 5.  He posed the issue whether a congressman was right to say we need to amend the 14th Amendment to deal with the problem of anchor babies.  Krauthammer made the mistake of not reading the Amendment before discussing it.  So did all the other participants in the discussion.

Krauthammer correctly stated that “we should not amend the Constitution to deal with such a small problem.”  He missed the opportunity to point out that the congressman, like much of the American press and punditry, are asking the wrong question and therefore getting the wrong answer.

Let’s read the document, and see where that leads.  The first sentence of the 14th Amendment says, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States….”  Who gets to say who are “subject to the jurisdiction”?

Skip to the last sentence of the Amendment.  It is a clause that appears in many of the Amendments.  “The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”

There you have it, in the plain language of the Constitution itself.  Congress can define by statute who is “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States.  It has long since done so with regard to children born to diplomatic personnel.  A child born of Japanese diplomatic personal who is born in a D.C. hospital is Japanese at birth, not American.  Why is that so?  Because Congress wrote a law that says so.

Congress can solve the anchor baby problem immediately by a statute.  It simply has to say that a child born of a Mexican citizen who has paid a ”coyote” to get smuggled into the U.S., and risked death in the deserts of the Southwest to get to an Arizona hospital is not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S.  It can further resolve the problem by ending all preferences for all known relatives of a prior anchor baby to come into the U.S.

You may have noticed that the mainstream media has virtually dropped “global warming” as a topic worth reporting. That can be traced to “Climategate”, the November 2009 leak of emails that revealed the global hoax perpetrated on us by a small group of scientists who had been generating false information about the non-event that is climate.

Billions of dollars have been wasted on “research” about what amounts to the greatest fraud in the modern era. It is essential to bear in mind that the baseless claim of Earth burning up has been created in the United Nations Environmental Program and is supported by millions of dollars in propaganda from leading environmental organizations.

The public has become increasingly reluctant to be stampeded by specious scientific claims and with good reason; the science cited has often been false. Yet what we saw with global warming is repeating itself, this time with the plastics additive bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical used to harden plastic and has been in wide consumer use for more than half a century. It is used to improve the safety and reliability of everything from DVDs and consumer electronics to sports safety equipment and shatterproof bottles.

BPA is among the most tested chemicals in history and not a single study has ever shown any harm to humans under normal consumer use and exposure. Yet junk scientists have generated enough false or misleading data to prompt lawmakers and regulators to propose and pass bad laws based on this bad science.

A current case in point is Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) who is trying to impose a ban on BPA in applications involving contact with food. The chemical is widely used in the epoxy that lines food cans to improve safety by helping prevent food borne illness, as well as some baby bottles. The problem is her political agenda isn’t supported by sound science. Furthermore, there is no replacement for BPA in can linings and whatever is eventually used will be far less tested for safety, thereby increasing health risks for consumers.

Political pressure has led to BPA ban efforts in New York, Massachusetts and California. Several other states and municipalities have already enacted such bans, all of which were passed on the basis of politics rather than science.

The claim is that BPA poses a health threat, particularly to infants and children up to the age of three. Voting for anything that allegedly “protects” children may be good politics, but in the case of BPA, it is bad science and, worse, risky to human health and bad for the economy when you consider how many containers rely on this chemical to ensure their contents do not spoil.

A real case of government healthcare…

One of my daughters became pregnant and found to everyone’s surprise she was going to have identical twins.  The news came with mixed emotions as well as difficult decisions.  This was not her first child and she, like many in the family, believes in natural childbirth without medication.  Only her first child was born in a hospital while all the others were born at home with a midwife.

She initially started seeing her midwife for prenatal visits, but when they discovered she was expecting twins the reality of government interference took hold.  The state of Arizona does not allow midwives to knowingly delivery twins, so they had to find a doctor.  They are on the state insurance, which poses it’s own challenges.  However, trying to find a doctor that not only would accept the state insurance but would also deliver twins and accept a patient at 10 weeks became almost an impossible task.  It took her a month to even obtain the booklet of doctors she requested from the state to start her search.  She went through the book and was more often turned down because the doctors no longer accepted the state insurance.  With the help of her midwife and fortunately a state employee willing to help, she was able to obtain the services of a high-risk OB team.

Through the ultrasounds they discovered the babies were identical twins, had separate bags of water but shared one placenta.  This put her in a higher risk category.  At one point during the pregnancy they determined she was experiencing twin-to-twin transfer and was then referred to a specialist.  Because of this the doctors wanted to see her 3 times a week and she underwent regular ultrasounds and non-stress tests.  During her third trimester an ultrasound indicated she actually had two placentas; that there was a division in the placenta that had not previously been noticed; the twins may not be identical.  At that time it was also revealed that she had not actual experienced twin-to-twin transfer, it was only borderline.  With only 4 weeks remaining until her due date the doctor told her she needed to find another doctor because she was now no longer considered high risk!

She took childbirth classes at the hospital she was to deliver at.  She is also a childbirth instructor so these classes were quite unnecessary from a childbirth aspect, but with this unusual pregnancy she wanted to be informed about the hospital, their procedures, as well as the special considerations in delivering twins.

During her regular doctor visits they discussed the expectations of delivery.  This resulted in a difference of opinion from the doctors and expectant parents.  The doctors believed in a medicated birth with a likely outcome of an induced labor as well as a cesarean delivery.  The parents believed in an unmedicated birth, as natural as possible, and only in an emergency to save the mother and/or babies did they want a cesarean.  They created their birth plan and the doctors made their modifications.  They were able to “negotiate” delaying an induction until 38 weeks.

She went in to labor naturally and the first baby came quickly.  They never made it to the hospital.  Labor never stopped and what seemed like a very short time later the second baby was delivered; he was a breech delivery.  Both babies were well and of good size, especially for twins (7 lbs. 14 oz. and 6 lbs. 9 oz.) with the mother and father cooperating during delivery; no one else was present.  This was a Sunday and at this point they did not want to go to the hospital because there was no need.  So they contacted one of their midwifes who came over to make sure mother and babies were okay – everyone was fine.  It also turns out the twins are identical, sharing only one placenta – the latest ultrasounds were wrong!