Updates

Blackwater: Mr. Prince, the company founder, claims that pockmarks on Blackwater vehicles prove that his men were fired upon during the September incident in which, according to the Iraqi authorities, 17 people were killed. He's being careful in his assertions, not going so far as to say his evidence proves that any insurgents fired first, although he'd clearly like people to infer that. He only states that the pockmarks prove that his men weren't firing at each other. But what makes him so sure? It was apparently a chaotic scene that day. I usually don't speculate along these lines, but since I really don't trust Blackwater, I have to wonder whether Prince's evidence is legitimate. Bushies might take offense that I give the Iraqis the benefit of the doubt over an American, but Erik Prince is a war profiteer, and that fact testifies against his character as far as I'm concerned.

License to Break the Law? As far as the Governor of New York is concerned, it's none of his business if people enter the United States illegally. At the least, it should have nothing to do with whether the state issues drivers' licenses to undocumented immigrants. Mr. Spitzer condescended to address people's complaints in an interview published today in the Albany Times Union. Let's put him on the record here:

The issue of our giving a privilege to those who are not here legally,
necessarily, I don't think is the right way to view it. These are individuals
who are here in our communities, going to our public schools, going to our
hospitals, working in our economy. And we are all better off making them part of the aboveground economy rather than keeping them beneath the surface where we don't even know they exist.

In other words, they're here, they're ... whatever, get used to it, to borrow someone else's slogan. Facts on the ground count for more than the law, which is an interesting principle to apply in other cases where the criminal law looks equally clear. For a former prosecutor it's especially interesting, but as you'll see, immigration isn't his problem:

The fact that when you crossed the border you didn't have a visa, you
didn't come in properly, that is not the purpose of the driver's license. That's
the federal government's responsibility, and they have failed for decades to
enforce and do their job.

In that case, maybe what's needed is a federal law prohibiting all the states from issuing licenses to people who violate what is, after all, a federal law. It would be even more interesting to see whether the Governor would enforce such a law. He's been careful so far not to espouse any actual open-borders or "no one is illegal" doctrine. He's basically using lawyer tactics to narrow the focus of debate to his preferred public-safety-on-the-roads track, but it only looks like he has tunnel vision.