The main point of the provision was to make the freed slaves citizens. And for those of you who are not history buffs, those slaves had parents who were not themselves citizens. So the tortured reading being suggested here would make the 14th Amendment not even accomplish its main purpose. If you want a good sign that you are not reading a provision right, the fact that you have made it useless for accomplishing its main purpose is about as good a sign as you can get.

It is funny that people who claim that the Constitution is easy to understand and can be read at face value suddenly wrap themselves in contortions to create second class citizens. The relevant portion of the Constitution is clearer than many of the parts that conservative claim are self-evident. It just says: " All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside" But people are subject to the jurisdiction of the United States if they are in the United States with the limited exception of foreign diplomats and under some treaty conditions American Indians on reservations.

It is odd that the writers of the 14th Amendment forgot to mention the "born of two US citizen" part. It does not take a lot of words to include it. But it is nice of you to correct their mistake instead of taking them to mean what they said.

So your point is that more of the bill should be in direct spending, because the tax cuts are inefficient?

I am not sure if the page numbers are different, but page 155 on the version I found sets the limits of the provisions on people who make at least 200,000 if single and 250,000 if married. And it does not do away with the deductions altogether, it lets them be deducted at 28% rather than higher percentages. Your first point is wrong because the bill specifies that if the SuperCommittee fails to find the cuts then the specified cuts go into effect. You even comment on some of those cuts that go into effect of the SuperCommittee does not find the cuts. So all three of your points are false to the degree that they make factual claims.

I don't have strong opinions on whether Pollard's sentence should be commuted. If it is really out of scale with what other people convicted of espionage have received then it is a reasonable request. But Glick's attempt to equate a man who committed espionage against he US with American Jews in general does a disservice to American Jews. American Jews do not generally have the dual loyalty that Glick's column suggests. Pollard clearly did and was willing to break our laws in furtherance of them. (Actually maybe his loyalty was not dual, it appears it was just to Israel). Certainly Jewish traitors should not be treated worse than other traitors. But they are not the norm for the Jewish community.

Liberals Lie, I am always impressed by the people who don't simply say nothing, but tack their nothing on to other people saying nothing. It really takes shallowness to a new level, although not that new since it is common here.

arpiem, A nice comment. As you mature you can try to insert some content into your criticisms. Did you have trouble following Obama's point? Are you unaware that Republicans have a history of passing their controversial legislation by simply tacking the costs onto the debt? Have you been following the Senate maneuvering on the Jobs bill? The dispute is that while all of the Democratic senators like the stimulus proposals, oil state Senators do not like a proposal to cut subsidies for oil companies, and some objected to other cuts in deductions for people making more than 200,000. So instead the proposal is to offset this with a surtax on millionaires. (That offset could be replaced if the Supercommittee finds more deficit cuts).

Yes Dan we can. We can pick some future column of Ransom's when one of us will have to admit we are wrong. I assume you acknowledge that if more than 50 Democrats vote for cloture on the bill it will not be Democrats who shot it down?

badgerpat, You are simply wrong. Obama was responding to criticism from Congress that he will run against a do-nothing Congress, something that Truman did successfully in 1948. He simply noted that Congress could stop him by passing legislation. And that if Congress instead continues to just obstruct, they will be creating their own problem. You will not see Ransom addressing that point at all above. It is not a complex point. It is not hard to get it from what Obama said (although you might need some history to know the Truman link). Ransom is pretending that is hard to follow. And maybe it is for him.