May 22, 2007 | By Nathaniel Ward

Watch Ed Meese on immigration

Heritage scholar Ed Meese, who served as President Reagan’s attorney general, has filmed a new Heritage video to debunk myths about the proposed immigration legislation.

Click here to watch the video on MyHeritage.org.

Debunking immigration distortions

One indication that The Heritage Foundation is taking charge in the immigration debate is the lead editorial in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal. That newspaper, which favors the Senate’s amnesty legislation, directly attacked research by Heritage’s Robert Rector that pointed out the consequences of the law.

While Journal editorials are typically well-founded—the editorial board has quite rightly been a staunch supporter of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, for example—Thursday’s editorial unfortunately suffered from a number of analytical flaws.

Rector outlines these deficiencies in a letter he sent the Journal, which you can read online here. “By changing the subject and thus failing to engage the facts,” his letter concludes, “your editorial obscures the real fiscal impact of low-skill immigration.”

Ten major flaws in the immigration bill

Heritage Foundation experts have spent the past week closely examining the immigration legislation currently being considered in the Senate.

Working with Kris Kobach, a former top immigration adviser to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, Heritage scholar Matthew Spalding has put together a list of the ten worst provisions in the portion of the bill that “create[s] a new ‘Z’ visa exclusively for illegal aliens.”

Click here for the list of top ten flaws.

Limiting political debate

Liberal proposals to reinstate the so-called “Fairness Doctrine” would make for bad policy and violate the Constitution, Heritage regulation expert James Gattuso writes in an important new Heritage paper.

Liberals who seek to restore this “deeply unfair” policy, he explains, “are frankly concerned about the amount of ‘conservative’ programming, especially in talk radio, and would like to see a different balance.” And this balance would, of course, be enforced by big-government bureaucrats.

The Fairness Doctrine was a government regulation, repealed in 1987, that mandated that the media consider political issues in a “fair” manner. It’s effect, though, was to limit political debate—and to keep conservative talk radio off the air. “It’s no coincidence that such media as talk radio—virtually non-existent while the rule was in place—flowered after its repeal,” Gattuso writes.

The whole premise of the regulation is flawed, he concludes. “It is simply not the job of politicians to ‘correct’ the mix of opinions being expressed in the marketplace of ideas, even if—and especially if—they disagree with those opinions.” And that means the Fairness Doctrine must remain in what he calls the “regulatory dustbin.”

How a new law could drain drivers’ wallets

Just in time for the holiday weekend, when millions of Americans are expected to hit the roads, the House of Representatives has passed a law prohibiting “price gouging” at the gasoline pump. (“Price gouging” is the supposed setting of “unfair” prices, however that’s defined.) Liberals claim that such regulations will help ease high prices, but as Heritage energy expert Ben Lieberman explains, such rules would “backfire and exacerbate the pain at the pump.”

Laws against “price gouging” would have the same effect as price controls on gasoline—like those in the 1970s that resulted in shortages and long lines to fill up. “While the definition of price gouging is subjective and vague, the penalties would be severe,” Lieberman says. This sort of regulation would serve as a “chilling effect” on the energy industry and reduce supply—which would have the effect of raising prices at the pump.

Heritage experts meet with U.N. official

The United Nations has once again appointed a “special rapporteur” to investigate alleged human rights abuses in the United States. Steven Groves, Heritage’s Lomas Fellow in the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, explains in a new paper that a Finnish academic is visiting the country this week to prepare his report.

As part of its efforts to ensure the United Nations report is fair, a delegation of Heritage experts met with the investigator last week. “The discussion,” Groves reports, “covered a wide range of issues relating to the U.S. legal system, the Military Commissions Act, the Patriot Act, the REAL ID program, and other policies and practices relating to the war on terrorism.”

Groves insists that the special rapporteur “should take care to keep in mind U.S. sovereignty, the American constitutional system, and that system’s basis in the consent of the governed and not forsake these principles for ill-defined international norms to which the U.S. has never acceded.”

In other news

• You can always tell the Presidential campaigns have started up when politicians begin making ever more audacious promises of federal largesse. Sen. Hillary Clinton, for example, recently called for universal government-funded preschools. “That’s really a remarkable new role for federal government,” Heritage education expert Dan Lips told The Washington Times.
• In an important vote Thursday, Congress has finally carried out its obligation to fund the American troops on the frontlines of the global war against terrorism. Heritage experts point out in a new paper that the bill eliminates calls for withdrawal and strips out billions of dollars in wasteful pork-barrel spending.
• Hidden within the Iraq bill approved Thursday was a 40 percent increase in the national minimum wage. While well-intentioned, minimum wage increases tend to hurt the very people they are intended to help as employers lay off workers to cover their increased labor costs.

Coming up at Heritage

To attend the following Heritage Foundation events, RSVP at Heritage’s events website. Or you can watch these events live online at Heritage.org.  All times are Eastern.

• On Tuesday, May 29 at noon, Heritage hosts a panel discussion on the prospects for democratic reform in Pakistan.
• On Wednesday, May 30 at 6:00 p.m., Heritage will screen the new documentary “Mine Your Own Business: A Documentary about the Dark Side of Environmentalism.”

Nathaniel Ward is the Editor of MyHeritage.org—a website for members and supporters of The Heritage Foundation.

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