Tag Archives: radical secularism

Matt O’Brien: ProPublica’s “Big Story” Is More Than a Little Wrong 0 (0)

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by Matt O’Brien

Radical news outlet ProPublica is currently running a scare piece claiming, “Border agents can now get classified intelligence information. Experts call that dangerous.” According to ProPublica, “…the Trump administration is creating a new center in suburban Virginia that will allow immigration agents to access, for the first time, the sprawling array of information scooped up by America’s intelligence agencies….”

The article, part of the organization’s “Big Story” newsletter, further claims, “Migrants and others denied entry will be unable to see the evidence against them because it is classified.” It also asserts that, “It could also be nearly impossible for those denied entry to challenge faulty information if wrongly accused, they say, since most of it is classified.”

But, there are so many factual errors in ProPublica’s overwrought monument to pointless, fake news hyperbole that it is difficult to know where to begin debunking it.

Immigration officers throughout The United States Department of Homeland Security already have access to classified information. They have, for decades. In Jay v. Boyd, decided in 1956, the Supreme Court explicitly held that, when determining an alien’s admissibility to the United States, the government may rely on “confidential information not disclosed to the alien.”

In fact, over 20 years ago, in 1998, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) General Counsel Paul Virtue appeared before Congress to discuss the government’s need to consider classified information in connection with immigration applications in order to protect America’s national security. And that was under the Democrat, left-leaning Clinton administration.

And the Trump administration isn’t setting up any shadowy new intelligence center in the capital city’s suburbs. There are already a number of information-collection-and-sharing facilities all around the Washington, D.C., area. They range from the National Counterterrorism Center, operated by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, to U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) National Targeting Center (whose motto is “Catching smugglers, terrorists and lawbreakers works better through partnership.”). Many other agencies also run information-sharing centers in the area. Their collective purpose is to protect the United States from foreign national security threats, particularly terrorism.

The suburban Virginia facility referenced by ProPublica is called the National Vetting Center (NVC). And it serves one simple purpose that its parent agency, United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP), has loudly and publicly proclaimed:

Over time, the U.S. Government has developed multiple, unconnected processes to bring together threat information already lawfully held by the government about individuals seeking to enter the United States or obtain benefits under our immigration laws.  The NVC is centralizing and improving these processes to more efficiently and effectively inform department and agency vetting.  Relevant, appropriate information will be accessible in a consolidated and timely manner to the departments and agencies leveraging the NVC’s process and technology.

As for those “civil rights concerns” that ProPublica is crowing about: There aren’t any. As the Supreme Court has repeatedly pointed out, requests by foreign nationals for admission to the United States don’t give rise to constitutional civil rights claims, because “the admission of aliens to this country is not a right, but a privilege, which is granted only upon such terms as the United States prescribes” – Ekiu v. United States (1892), Fong Yue Ting v. United States(1893), Knauff v. Shaughnessy (1950), Kliendienst v. Mandel (1972).

Finally, ProPublica’s claim that individuals denied entry to the United States on the basis of classified information will be denied an opportunity to review and contest such information is utterly specious. Foreign nationals can’t even challenge a denial of admission made on the basis of unclassified information. Under existing statutes and case precedent, the Department of State can summarily deny a visa to a foreign national and CBP personnel at the border may deny admission to anyone who fails to establish his/her admissibility – and the law provides absolutely no legal mechanism  for challenging a denial of admission.

In reality, it turns out that this “Big Story” is actually much ado about nothing.

IR: https://www.immigrationreform.com/2019/11/04/pro-publica-bias-reporting-fake-news-immigrationreform-com/

Matt O’Brien joined the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) in 2016. Matt is responsible for managing FAIR’s research activities. He also writes content for FAIR’s website and publications. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in French from the Johns Hopkins University and a Juris Doctor from the University of Maine School of Law.

Scalia, God and the Constitution 0 (0)

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Scalia, God and the Constitution

by Bill Lockwood

Visiting a suburb of New Orleans this month Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia told an audience that though it was that the United States was founded without an official “established church,” it was never intended to be “neutral” toward religion itself. It is “absurd,” said Scalia, to think the Constitution bans the government from supporting religion.

More than that. There is “no place” for radical secularism in our constitutional tradition, he said. “To be sure, you can’t favor one denomination over another but can’t favor religion over non-religion?” [emp. added]
Scalia noted that favoring religion was common practice in the United States until the 1960’s when “activist judges” began imposing their own ideas. Atheists should not try, per the judge, to “cram” secularism “down the throats of an American people that has always honored God on the pretext that the Constitution requires it.”

Justice Scalia is exactly right in this interpretation of the Constitution and the place of religion. I would, however, add that it is not merely “religion” which has a place in our society, but Christianity itself. Benjamin Morris, in his magnum opus work, Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the Unites States, summarizes the Founders’ intention: Christianity is the principle and all-pervading element, the deepest and most solid foundation, of all our civil institutions. It is the religion of the people—the national religion; but we have neither an established church nor an established religion.

John Jay, one of the authors of the Federalist Papers referred to this as a “Christian Nation” and Roger Sherman wrote to one of his acquaintances in 1790 pointing out that “his faith in the new republic was largely because he felt it was founded upon Christianity as he understood it.” Similar sentiments from the Founding generation could be added almost endlessly.

Justice Joseph Story, who spent 34 years on the Supreme Court and founded Harvard Law School even went so far as to remark that concept of “neutrality” in religious matters, to which modern society goosesteps and Scalia criticizes, “would have created universal disapprobation, if not universal indignation” had it been suggested in early America.

First Amendment
What then is the meaning of the First Amendment that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”? “Establishment of religion” simply refers to “National denomination” in the sense of an official State Church supported by taxes. “Congress” singles out the “federal government.” The Federal Government was to establish no National Denomination. Remembering that both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison encouraged future generations to interpret the Constitution according to its original intent, and that that ALONE is the “legitimate Constitution,” how do we know that the forbidding of a National Denomination by the Federal Government is the meaning of the First Amendment?

George Mason, the father of the Bill of Rights, commented that “no particular sect or society of Christians ought to be favored or established by law in preference to others.” Madison himself commented upon the First Amendment: “…nor shall any national religion be established.” In the Annals of Congress (June 8, 1789 to September 25, 1789) is noted this: “August 15, 1789: Mr. Peter Sylvester of New York had some doubts … He feared it [First Amendment] might be thought to have a tendency to abolish religion altogether.” Well might he fear, knowing the onslaught of atheists and secularists throughout history to deny simple truths!

In response to Sylvester, Elbridge Gerry suggested in Congress that the First Amendment would better read, “[N]o religious doctrine shall be established by law.” But that was not quite broad enough to meet the Founders’ intention. Fisher Aimes, who authored the final version of the Amendment, offered this: “Congress will not make any law establishing any religious denomination.” One version even added the words “in preference to others” to the clause “religious denomination.” The final draft simply reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion …” It is crystal clear what these great minds desired.

Capitalizing on ignorance of the people plus animus to Christianity, modernists which fill the press as well as Congress wish us to be satisfied that our Constitution demands the government to be “neutral” between atheism and theism, between Christianity and Islam. Nonsense. Justice Scalia is correct. Legally speaking, in the context of the Constitution, there is no place for “secularism.”

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