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According to Breitbart, Bob Woodward thinks it is absurd to pass an immigration bill no one has read.

Legendary Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward criticized the “Gang of Eight” immigration bill process, and the new rush to pass the repackaged bill with the amendment from Sens. Bob Corker (R-TN) and John Hoeven (R-ND), on Fox News Sunday.

“You can’t have a Congress that is kind of going around picking this and picking that and that fails and that fails and this fails,” Woodward said in the online post-show panel of Fox News Sunday this weekend.

Woodward added that “when you pass complicated legislation and no one has really read the bill” then “the outcome is absurd.”

Woodward is the veteran journalist who, with Carl Bernstein, broke the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon, and has remained a force at the Post over the past several decades.

Steve Hayward takes a look at the bill.

I’m pretty sure it was my first Washington mentor, the great M. Stanton Evans, who told me—and perhaps originated—the famous story of a senior Senate aide explaining American democracy to a Russian visitor shortly after the Soviet Union broke apart in 1991.  The story is probably apocryphal, but like Xenophon’s re-telling of Cyrus the Great, or Machiavelli’s subtle mis-tellings of so many stories, it contains the “effectual truth” of the matter:

‘It’s true, we have a two-party system in America: The Evil Party, and the Stupid Party.  And every once and a while the Evil Party and the Stupid Party get together to pass something really evil and stupid.  That’s called “bipartisanship.” ‘

It would seem the perfect description of the Gang of Eight and immigration reform.  Please save us from bipartisan gangs.

Stan also taught me that whenever you hear about a bad piece of legislation under development in Congress, when you actually read the bill you invariably find out that it’s even worse than you imagined.  So Stan’s column a few days ago (I don’t have a link) notes:

“On first appraisal, the amnesty/immigration bill before the Senate looks pretty bad.  On a more careful comb-through, clause by clause, it looks much worse – like a complete disaster.  It also looks like a massive venture in deception. …”

Mickey Kaus has his metaphor for the bill.

I’ve been trying to think of the right metaphor for the giant Corker-Hoeven amendment, the one that is reportedly giving the Gang of 8′s immigration bill enough votes to pass the Senate. Sure, it’s a fig leaf–but a fig leaf is usually something insignificant-yet-real. This is something grandiose that’s a fraud.

The best I can come up with is this: A man comes into your restaurant. You recognize him–he’s a guy who ate a $100 meal last year and said he’d pay later, but he stiffed you. Now he’s back and wants another meal on credit. He senses you are wary and makes a new offer. “This time I’ll pay you … $2 million! How can you refuse? It’s 2 million dollars!”

You get the idea.  Just try and collect.

Similarly,  Schumer, Durbin & Co. have offered a deal to Corker, Hoeven, and conservatives. In essence, it’s this: You’ll immediately legalize 11 M immigrants who are unlawfully in the country. They’ll get work permits renewable ad infinitum–we call it “provisional,” but basically they’re in. Yes, we know that in 1986 we passed an amnesty and promised enforcement that never happened, but this time we promise to … militarize the Southern border! Hire 20,000 new agents! That’s the ticket. Double the Border Patrol! Spend $20 billion. Quadruple the budget.  Drones in the sky–triple the number of drones. Drones! Sensors on the ground!  700 miles of fence! 100% use of E-Verify! ”I don’t know what more to do, short of just shooting people,” says Gang of 8-er Lindsey Graham.

Just try and collect. …

The Atlantic posts on the increasing prison population. Another result of the foolish drug war.

The U.S. incarceration rate has more than quadrupled since 1980. It’s now the highest in the world, just ahead of Russia and Rwanda. …

… Why have U.S. incarceration rates skyrocketed? The answer is not rising crime rates. In fact, crime rates have actually dropped by more than a quarter over the past 40 years. Some look at these statistics and find confirmation of their view that expanding prison populations reduces crime rates. In fact, however, these same decreases have occurred even in places where incarceration rates have remained unchanged.

New sentencing guidelines have been a key factor. They have reduced judges’ discretion in determining who goes to jail and increased the amount of time convicts sentenced to jail spend there. A notable example is the so-called “three-strikes” law, which mandates sentences ranging from 25 years to life for many repeat offenders. Though championed as protecting the public, such sentences have resulted in long confinements for many non-violent offenders, who constitute half of all inmates.

Perhaps the single greatest contributor has been the so-called “war on drugs,” which has precipitated a 12-fold increase in the number of incarcerated drug offenders. About 1.5 million Americans are arrested each year for drug offenses, one-third of whom end up in prison. Many are repeat offenders caught with small quantities of relatively innocuous drugs, such as marijuana, a type of criminal activity often referred to as “victimless.”

Some sentencing laws seem little less than perverse. For example, in the 1980s, crack cocaine received a great deal of public attention. In response, the U.S. Congress passed legislation imposing a 100 to 1 sentencing ratio for possession of crack cocaine, as compared to its powdered form. That is, someone carrying 5 grams of crack cocaine would get the same sentence as someone carrying 500 grams of powdered cocaine. From a medical point of view, this makes little sense. …

WSJ has the lowdown on America’s Cup spying.

The America’s Cup, which begins in San Francisco July 4, isn’t just sailing’s most prestigious competition. It is also a showcase for the most shamelessly conspicuous spy operation in professional sports.

From San Francisco’s waterfront, it’s impossible to miss the teams practicing on their 13-story-tall yachts—and the fleet of enemy spy vessels trailing them. Onboard the powerboats, which sport their teams’ logos, are photographers with $10,000 Nikon lenses trying to shoot pictures of something the other guys don’t want them to see: a shorter sail, a lighter foil, a modified rudder.

Reconnaissance in the Cup is about as old as the 162-year-old competition itself, and it’s especially crucial this year because the four teams are racing largely untested, state-of-the-art yachts. The squads spy on each other to avoid missing technological breakthroughs and to learn their opponents’ racing strategy.

“Sometimes you get caught up in your own processes and you want to think outside the box,” said Cameron, the New Zealand team photographer. “Those guys”—the competition—”are thinking completely outside the box.”

Espionage has already permeated this Cup. New Zealand coach Rod Davis said that in November, his team needed to test a new foil, which elevates a boat’s hull above water so the boat goes faster. The problem: An Oracle spy boat was lurking outside their Auckland dock.

The solution was to prepare two yachts. One had the new foil. The other didn’t. Both left dock, but the sailors on the new-foil boat pretended to suffer a breakdown. The decoy sailed off and Oracle took the bait, Davis said, leaving the first yacht to test the foil. …

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Mark Steyn on the trip to Europe.

Descending from the heavens for the G-8 summit at beautiful Lough Erne this week, President Obama caused some amusement to his British hosts. The chancellor of the Exchequer had been invited to give a presentation to the assembled heads of government on the matter of tax avoidance (one of the big items on the agenda, for those of you who think what the IRS could really use right now is even more enforcement powers). The president evidently enjoyed it. Thrice, he piped up to say how much he agreed with Jeffrey, eventually concluding the presentation with the words, “Thank you, Jeffrey.”

Unfortunately, the chancellor of the Exchequer is a bloke called George Osborne, not Jeffrey Osborne.

Obama subsequently apologized for confusing George with Jeffrey, who was a popular vocal artiste back in the ’80s when Obama was dating his composite girlfriend and making composite whoopee to the composite remix of Jeffrey Osborne’s 1982 smoocheroo, “On the Wings of Love.”

I suppose it might have been worse. When Angela Merkel proposed a toast to a strong West, he could have assumed that was the name of Kim and Kanye’s new baby. …

While the president is busy being a citizen of the world, his economy is proving a disaster for those he claims to want to help. NY Times OpEd has some examples.

In a working-class neighborhood in Lowell, Mass., in early 2009, I sat across the table from Diana, then 24, in the kitchen of her mother’s house. Diana had planned to graduate from college, marry, buy a home in the suburbs and have kids, a dog and a cat by the time she was 30. But she had recently dropped out of a nearby private university after two years of study and with nearly $80,000 in student loans. Now she worked at Dunkin’ Donuts.

“With college,” she explained, “I would have had to wait five years to get a degree, and once I get that, who knows if I will be working and if I would find something I wanted to do. I don’t want to be a cop or anything. I don’t know what to do with it. My manager says some people are born to make coffee, and I guess I was born to make coffee.”

Young working-class men and women like Diana are trying to figure out what it means to be an adult in a world of disappearing jobs, soaring education costs and shrinking social support networks. Today, only 20 percent of men and women between 18 and 29 are married. They live at home longer, spend more years in college, change jobs more frequently and start families later.

For more affluent young adults, this may look a lot like freedom. But for the hundred-some working-class 20- and 30-somethings I interviewed between 2008 and 2010 in Lowell and Richmond, Va., at gas stations, fast-food chains, community colleges and temp agencies, the view is very different. …

Mark Helprin writes about the degradation of our armed forces. 

In the rush to paper over its delinquencies in the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, the Obama administration seems unaware that its failures are fundamental rather than merely anomalous. They are, unfortunately, a portent of the future.

On March 26, this newspaper reported that “In the wake of the attack, the military has examined how to improve its rapid response forces,” specifically by “adding special operations teams of roughly 10 troops to ships carrying larger Marine Expeditionary Units.” MEUs shipborne in amphibious ready groups usually number 2,200 Marines in special forces, reconnaissance, armored reconnaissance, armor, amphibious assault, infantry, artillery, engineer and aviation battalions, companies and platoons. They can get over the beach fast, and they fight like hell.

On March 21, 2011, during Operation Odyssey Dawn, an American F-15 went down in Libya. Immediately after the Mayday, the 26th MEU started rescue operations from the USS Kearsarge, and a short time later two of its Harrier fighter jets, two CH 53 helicopters, and two MV 22 Ospreys were at the scene, with more than a hundred Marines. Hundreds more might easily have arrived if required. Forces like this could have shattered the assault in Benghazi in minutes. Adding 10 men to such echelons rich in special forces would have little relevance. Fine in itself, the proposal is an obfuscation. The issue is not the composition of already capable MEUs but rather that one was not available when the attack took place. …

And while the government’s ability to protect us has diminished, the government’s ability to protect itself has exploded. HuffPo has the story.

Want to make money on the drug war? Start a company that builds military equipment, then sell that gear to local police departments. Thanks to the generation-long trend toward more militarized police forces, there’s now massive and growing market for private companies to outfit your neighborhood cops with gear that’s more appropriate for a battlefield.

Some of this is decades-old news. For over 25 years, the Pentagon has been supplying surplus military equipment to police agencies across the country, largely in the name of fighting the drug war. In fact, in as early as 1968 Congress passed a law authorizing the military to share gear with domestic police agencies. But it was in 1987 that Washington really formalized the practice, with a law instructing the Secretary of Defense and the U.S. Attorney General to notify local law enforcement agencies each year about what surplus gear was available. The law established an office in the Pentagon specifically to facilitate such transfers, and Congress even set up an 800 number that sheriffs and police chiefs could call to inquire about the stuff they could get. The bill also instructed the General Services Administration to produce a catalog from which police agencies could make their Christmas lists. …

… By 1989, fully-armed Guard troops were stationed in front of suspected drug houses in a series of drug raids in Portland. In Kentucky, local residents grew so enraged at Guard sweeps in low-flying helicopters, they blew up a Kentucky police radio tower. In Oklahoma, Guard troops dressed in battle garb rappelled down from helicopters and fanned out into rural areas in search of pot plants to uproot. Guard troops would later tell USA Today Some would later tell media outlets they were told to exaggerate their haul in order to boost federal funding for future efforts. …

Cool pictures from Amusing Planet of grass covered tram tracks in Europe.

Tram tracks on many European cities are lined with grass, a practice that probably started in the 1980’s to bring greenery back to city space and at the same time, provide habitable zone for numerous insects and invertebrates. These swaths of green provide a host of benefits to any urban area, like reduce urban heat island effect, provide a permeable surface for storm water to infiltrate, reduce pollution and absorb noise generated by the grinding of metal wheels on metal tracks. Not to mention, they look incredibly good in comparison to concrete or asphalt.

Green tracks have become increasingly popular in Europe and can be seen in pretty much every major European cities from Barcelona to Frankfurt, Milan, St-Etienne and Strasbourg.