Trump's gift to Hillary is born in the USA -- Aug. 20, 2015 column

By MARSHA MERCER

Here we go again. Donald Trump’s proposal to stop birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants is forcing Republicans into a debate they can’t win and should have ended decades ago.

In 1996, the Republican Party Platform called for a constitutional amendment to end automatic citizenship for children born to parents who are in the country illegally or are not long-term residents. The party's presidential and vice presidential nominees Bob Dole and Jack Kemp both rejected the plank. 

“Born in America, you’re an American,” Kemp declared.

But that wasn’t the last word.

Since 2007, as anti-immigrant sentiment has flowed, a few congressional Republicans have backed bills to stop birthright citizenship. A measure by Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, has 27 cosponsors, all Republicans. 

Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said at a hearing on birthright citizenship in April that he rarely has a conversation about immigration policy without someone asking about automatic citizenship. 

“The question of whether our forefathers meant for birthright citizenship in all circumstances to be the law of the land is far from settled. In any event we must still determine if it is the right policy for America today,” Goodlatte said.

But there’s little appetite for the issue in the Senate, even among Republicans. A bill introduced by Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana has zero cosponsors.

Now comes Trump and his extreme immigration plan released Sunday. He cited Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid as wanting to end birthright citizenship, which Reid did -- in 1993. By 1999 Reid called his own proposal an embarrassment, high on his “list of mistakes.”

“I didn’t understand the issue,” Reid explained, as the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported in December 1999. “I’m embarrassed that I made such a proposal.”

Naturally, Hillary Clinton’s campaign was quick to criticize Trump’s plan.

“It is disturbing that Republican presidential candidates continue to embrace extreme anti-immigrant positions as core pieces of their immigration platform,” Lorella Praeli, Hillary for America Latino Outreach director, said in a statement.

If Democrats now are united behind birthright citizenship, Republicans are in disarray. Presidential hopefuls Scott Walker and Bobby Jindal support ending automatic citizenship. Others, including Lindsey Graham, John Kasich, Rand Paul and Rick Santorum have supported changing the law in the past.

Mike Huckabee and Jeb Bush prefer sticking with the law.   

“Mr. Trump can say that he’s for this because people are frustrated that it’s abused. But we ought to fix the problem rather than take away rights,” Bush said on CBS. There must be ways short of a constitutional amendment to deal with the phenomenon of pregnant women entering the country to give birth so that their babies become citizens, Bush said.

Bush knows his brother George got 44 percent of the Hispanic vote in the 2004 presidential election, according to exit polls, a modern record for a Republican. In 2012, Mitt Romney won just 27 percent of the Hispanic vote, after his comment that undocumented immigrants should “self deport.”

The Constitution as originally written did not define citizenship, but since after the Civil War, anyone born in the United States has been a citizen. The 14^th Amendment in 1868, a Reconstruction measure pressed by Republicans, overturned the Supreme Court’s odious Dred Scott decision that no black persons who had been “imported into the country, and sold as slaves” or their descendants could ever become citizens.

The 14^th Amendment states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the state wherein they reside.”

In 1898, the Supreme Court ruled that a child born in San Francisco to Chinese parents was a citizen even though the parents could never become citizens because of the Chinese Exclusion Act.

Changing the law would require passage of a constitutional amendment, a feat of bipartisanship nearly unimaginable in this era. Most legal scholars consider the 14^th amendment settled.

So do pragmatic Republicans, those who actually want to win in 2016 – and not merely make debating points.

“If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t even be talking about immigration,” Trump bragged at the first Republican candidates' debate. He’s right. Most GOP candidates would prefer not to alienate a large swath of Hispanic and other immigrant voters with a plan that’s going nowhere.

But Trump might be making someone happy. Her name is Hillary.

©2015 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

Let the sun shine in Supreme Court -- Jan. 8, 2015 column

By MARSHA MERCER

The Supreme Court is poised this year to make momentous rulings – on the future of the Affordable Care Act, pregnant workers’ rights on the job and, probably, same-sex marriage.  

If you want to see the court in action, though, you’ll have to be present – just as when everybody wrote with a quill pen. Speaking of which, white quills are still set out on counsel tables every day the Supreme Court is in session – a nice touch for the lawyers arguing cases.

But citizens of the 21^st century shouldn’t have to journey to Washington to see justice.

After all, millions of Americans watch the Super Bowl without having to travel, Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, said last month at a hearing of the House Judiciary subcommittee on courts. Most people watch the game on TV -- a technology that was cutting edge 60 years ago.

The hearing was on the proposed Sunshine in the Courtroom Act, a perennial, bipartisan effort to open the Supreme Court and lower federal courts to television cameras.

Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate as well as C-SPAN and media and legal organizations have tried unsuccessfully for decades to persuade the Supreme Court to televise its proceedings.

C-SPAN, which began covering the House of Representatives in 1979 and the Senate in 1986, first made a request to cover oral arguments to Chief Justice William Rehnquist in 1988.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. dashed hopes that the court might relent in 2015 in his year-end report on the federal judiciary, released on New Year’s Eve. He didn’t mention cameras, but he did stress that the court shouldn’t embrace technology too quickly.

“The courts will often choose to be late to the harvest of American ingenuity,” he wrote. His goal is to make legal briefs and other filings available online “as soon as 2016.”

Roberts’ report prompted criticism from the incoming chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“The courts have yet to embrace the one technology that the founders likely would have advocated for – cameras in the courtroom,” Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, a longtime proponent of televising court proceedings, said in a statement.

“The founders intended for trials to be held in front of all people who wished to attend. The First Amendment supports the notion that court proceedings be open to the public and, by extension, the news media and broadcast coverage, the same way CSPAN opened Congress to the public,” Grassley said.

Every state allows TV coverage of courts, and some federal courts do too. The Supreme Court releases written transcripts and audio recordings of oral arguments, sometimes the same day.  

Independent organizations, including SCOTUSblog, blog arguments and opinions live as they happen. The court allows sketch artists. But cameras? No way.   

Justice David Souter quipped in 1996 that cameras would roll into the courtroom over his dead body.  Souter has since retired. Justice Anthony Kennedy has said the court should not become part of the “national entertainment network.” Justice Clarence Thomas has said his colleagues on the court would lose their privacy.

Justices fear that the public wouldn’t understand the court’s arcane proceedings, that lawyers might grandstand and that soundbites would wind up out of context on the news and late-night TV. 

A lot of that already happens. Ordinary citizens, kept at arms’ length, have to rely on pundits who offer flamboyant interpretations. If people could see the action for themselves, they would get a more measured view.

Interestingly, nominees to the court often approve of cameras but as justices favor keeping the door shut. For example, Elena Kagan said in her confirmation hearing in 2010 that she thought cameras in the courtroom would be “terrific.”

“I think it would be a great thing for the institution, and more important, I think it would be a great thing for the American people,” she said.  A couple of years later, though, Justice Kagan had cooled to the idea, saying she had “a few worries” about cameras.

Even if Congress were to pass the Sunshine in the Courtroom Act, you still might not be able to watch the Supreme Court from your den.  The act authorizes the chief justice and judges in lower courts to allow cameras but it doesn’t require them to do so. The court could still say no.

For the foreseeable future, if you want to see the court, you’ll need to saddle up for the trip to Washington – and that’s unjust.    

© 2015 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Back to school -- and food fights -- Aug. 29, 2013 column

By MARSHA MERCER

It’s back-to-school time, so naturally that means food fights.

The school cafeteria has been an unlikely political battleground since the Reagan administration tried to classify ketchup and pickle relish as vegetables more than three decades ago. The ridiculous proposal was withdrawn but not forgotten.  

Today, the federal government is pushing for healthier lunches in the fight against childhood obesity. Congress passed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, championed by first lady Michelle Obama. Congress and Obama deserve praise for standing up for kids’ health.

Starting last fall, the nation’s lunch trays have been filled with leaner, less salty fare, but, as nutritionists say, “It’s not nutrition until it’s eaten.”

Some students have given the new and improved lunches an F. They’re tossing veggies into the trash, chowing down for lunch at nearby fast food restaurants and brown-bagging. As a result, some schools are dropping out of the National School Lunch Program altogether.

“So many students turned up their noses at meals packed with whole grains, fruits and vegetables that the cafeterias were losing money,” the Associated Press reported.

Well, not “so many.” The federal government says the number of students eating cafeteria lunches nationwide dropped nearly 3 percent in 2012-13 from the year before. The decline is mostly among kids who can afford to buy their own lunch. Most can’t; about 71 percent of students received free or reduced-price lunches last May.

Complaints about cafeteria “mystery meat” are as old as steam tables, so it’s hardly a surprise that whole wheat might not win fans after one year. Several news stories picked up a quote by a school board member in Harlan, Ky. You may not want to read what she had to say if you’re having your corn flakes. Fair warning.   

“They say it tastes like vomit,” said Myra Mosley.

The Daily Caller suggested that the quote was a condemnation of the first lady’s efforts to make school lunches healthier. The Caller’s headline read, “Kentucky students to first lady Michelle Obama: Your food ‘tastes like vomit’”

But the students did not say that. The Harlan Daily Enterprise reported that Mosley twice said the kids were complaining about the 1 percent fat milk they now are served. A school official explained they’re using the same brand of milk, but the kids are used to the taste of 2 percent and whole milk.

The Department of Agriculture has a sensible, new “Offer versus Serve” policy. At lunch, instead of serving everybody the same five required foods – meat or meat alternative, grains, fruit, vegetable and milk – schools offer the five and allow each student to choose three and decline two. It’s hoped that will reduce waste, bring kids back to the lunch line and stop school districts from heading for the exits of the lunch program.

A School Nutrition Association survey this summer found 1 percent of school officials planned for at least one of their schools to drop out of the national lunch program in 2013-14. About 3 percent are considering removing a school, said the association, which concluded, “there is no national trend” of schools abandoning the national lunch program.

You might think the problem with school lunches is too much of a good, or healthy, thing. Not so, say Republican Reps. Steve King of Iowa and Tim Huelskamp of Kansas. They say the  “nutrition nannies” have unfairly put the all nation’s students on a diet.

Elementary pupils’ lunches now may contain 650 calories, middle school 700 calories and high school 850 calories. Some high school football players complain their lunches weren’t filling enough to keep hunger pangs at bay during hours of after-school practice.

King and Huelskamp’s “No Hungry Kids Act” would roll back the new rules and prohibit calorie caps. 

Instead of giving up on the new lunch guidelines, smart schools are experimenting with salad bars and attractive fruit baskets. School lunches in Madison, Ala., now include roasted Alabama sweet potato wedges and locally grown cherry tomatoes and watermelon.

More nutrition battles surely lie ahead, though. In 2014, the federal government will require schools to stock healthy foods in school vending machines, snack bars and stores.

I can’t wait to see where the politicians line up in the face-off between gummy bears and granola bars.

© 2013 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Food fight! Nanny state vs. national security -- Sept. 27, 2012 column

By MARSHA MERCER

The nanny state was undiscovered territory when Congress passed and President Harry Truman signed the National School Lunch Act in June 1946.

The law was good for children and farmers, the president said. The military wanted it because it was good for national security.

During World War II, more than 40 percent of rejected military recruits were sent home because they were malnourished.

Today, our platter-sized plates and our gargantuan soda cups runneth over. Rather than being too malnourished, our young Americans are too overweight to enlist. One in four can’t qualify for service.

Obesity, not malnourishment, is our national security issue. More than 300 retired generals and admirals joined a group called Mission: Readiness to goad Congress into taking steps to try to stem the childhood obesity epidemic by improving nutrition in schools.

The group’s 2010 report, “Too Fat to Fight,” pressed Congress for healthier school lunches. For once, Congress listened. The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, supported by first lady Michelle Obama, reforms the school lunch program for the first time in 30 years.

New rules requiring more fruits and vegetables, lower-fat milk and less bread and condiments went into effect this fall in schools around the country. It’s America so naturally there have been protests. Students and teachers at a school in Kansas produced a video that has gone viral. Critics are eager to map -- and disarm -- the nanny state.

''This is the nanny state personified,'' declared Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, who said constituents tell him their kids are starving in school and are being rationed on calories. King wants to repeal the law.

Really? Under the new rules, a high school lunch must not exceed 850 calories, compared with 825 calories under the old guidelines. Elementary pupils, in kindergarten through fifth grade, now get up to 650 calories at lunch.

Mission: Readiness wants Congress to take more action to curb obesity. This week the group released a follow-up report, “Still Too Fat to Fight,” asking that the government expel junk food from school. Schools sell more than 400 billion empty calories a year, outside the lunch program, in school stores, snack lines and vending machines, the report said.

Again, the brass says, it’s a national security issue.

The military leaders recognize that parents are their children’s first teachers and role models, but parents can’t control junk food at school. America’s children consume up to half their daily calories at school, so stopping the flow of junk food there could be significant.

For the military, overweight isn’t just a recruitment problem. The United States has the highest rate overweight and obese men among major countries -- three in four men are overweight or obese. The Defense Department spends $1.1 billion a year treating diabetes, heart disease and other medical problems related to obesity for service members, their families and veterans.

And problems with staffing the volunteer military go beyond weight, says Richard B. Myers, a retired Air Force general and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“When weight problems are combined with other disqualifying factors, like failing to finish high school or being convicted of a serious crime, an estimated 75 percent of Americans age 17 to 24 are not able to join the military,” Myers wrote in an op-ed in Politico.

Three in four young Americans can’t qualify to serve? That’s appalling. We must do more to help kids stay in school and qualify for the military training and personal confidence that service can provide.

We can start with soda.

Three studies in the latest New England Journal of Medicine link obesity to sugary sodas. The American Beverage Association insists that the industry already has reduced sales in schools and no single food or drink is responsible for the obesity epidemic.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York has riled many with his quest to ban gigantic sodas. Starting in March, unless a judge intervenes, New Yorkers will not be able to buy supersized sodas at restaurants, on the street or in movie theaters.

To hear some conservatives, you’d think our God-given rights include the freedom to scarf and guzzle vast quantities of anything and everything without any government interference whatsoever.

Seriously, does that make sense -- with health care costs skyrocketing, with three of four American men overweight or obese?

Does anyone really need more than 16 ounces of a soft drink at a time? The original Coca-Cola bottle held about 6 ounces. If you’re still thirsty, drink water.

In this great country, there will always be another soda. But we don’t have to drink it right now.

©2012 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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