Last Call For The Iowa Border Wars

Trump is the unalloyed rage of the GOP, and his supporters are nothing more than a mob.  Even in a state like Iowa.

Round them up, nearly half of likely Iowa Republican caucusgoers say. 

Forty-seven percent say it's a good idea to gather up an estimated 11 million immigrants who are in the United States illegally and send them to their home country. 

Among Donald Trump supporters, nearly three-fourths (73 percent) say so. 

But among all the other Iowans who support the other 16 candidates, just 40 percent say rounding up immigrants here illegally is a good approach. A plurality, 45 percent, say it is a bad idea. 

"That's what they do when they find Americans that are illegal in their country — they either send them back or throw them in jail," said poll respondent Walter Allsup, a 58-year-old retired musician from Keokuk. "We're crazy to let people come in and do anything they want like that." 

Allsup added: "Race has nothing to do with it. I'm totally blind. I can't tell what color they are anyway. ... I don't care if they're from Liechtenstein."

It's not racism, just going into where people and families live in the middle of the night and rounding them up like cattle to ship them off.  There's nothing wrong with that if you're a Republican, and especially if you back The Donald, apparently.

But still Iowans, your neighbors think this is a good idea, at least a healthy chunk of the Republican ones do.  After all, angry folks have to blame somebody, and "illegal immigrants" are always a fun choice.

So who will they want to round up after that, you have to wonder.

The problem is that there are other Republicans running for offices other than President in 2016. Republicans are trying to hold on in the Senate and it's looking worse and worse for their chances because of Trump.

Lichtenstein was not available for comment.

Insane In The Methane

A potentially huge natural gas field discovered off the coast of Egypt could shift the calculus of power in the Middle East in a very bad way.

Italian energy group Eni says it has found one of the world's largest natural gas fields off Egypt's coast.

The company said the area was 1,450m (4,757 feet) beneath the surface and covered 100 sq km (39 sq miles).

It could hold as much as 30 trillion cubic feet of gas, or 5.5 billion barrels of oil equivalent, Eni said.

The company says that the Zohr field "could become one of the world's largest natural-gas finds" and help meet Egypt's gas needs for decades.

"This historic discovery will be able to transform the energy scenario of Egypt," said Claudio Descalzi, CEO of Eni.

Eni, which has full concession rights to the area, is the biggest foreign energy firm in Africa.

This is going to make the Egyptian military government a lot of money, and will help the Italians too.  US energy companies are cut out of the loop here, but so are the Russians, the other major gas player in Europe.  They'll get their money by other means, I'm sure.

How that's leveraged by General Sisi and his government, we'll see.  But somehow I don't see this as a major boon for your average Egyptian.  It's only a question of how much of a cut our good "ally" in Cairo takes. And considering Egypt is the kind of place where journalists are convicted for exposing corruption, I don't have a very good feeling about this at all.

Now Sisi and his friends will have the money to hold power indefinitely, and I'm sure they'll buy all the toys they want from the biggest arms dealers in the world, America and Russia.

Awesome.

We Have To Want To Follow The Law

With Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis facing a federal judge today for her refusal to issue marriage licenses despite June's Supreme Court ruling allowing same-sex marriage across the land, Kentucky Republicans, led by State Senate President Robert Stivers, are demanding that they get a say in the matter too.

The Republican president of the Kentucky state Senate has asked a federal judge to withhold his ruling ordering a county clerk to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. 

Republican Senate President Robert Stivers says U.S. District Judge David Bunning needs to give the state legislature time to pass a law that would exempt Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis from having to issue marriage licenses. The state legislature is not in session and won't be until January. Democratic Gov. Steve Beshear has refused to call for a special session, arguing it would waste taxpayer money for an issue that only affects one clerk. 

"The Supreme Court ruling has completely obliterated the definition of marriage and the process for obtaining a marriage license in Kentucky," Stivers said in a news release. "The General Assembly will be compelled to amend many sections of Kentucky law, not just for the issuance of marriage licenses, to comply with the recent Supreme Court decision." 

Stivers says nearly all of Kentucky's laws governing marriage are invalid following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in June that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. For example, Kentucky's state law requires a couple seeking a marriage license to apply for one in the county "in which the female resides" or at another county so long as the woman applies for it. 

"(The Supreme Court decision) clearly contemplates marriages that do not involve a female, as well as marriages that involve two females," Stivers' attorney wrote to the court. "It is unclear at this juncture what the proper venue for the issuance of a license for same sex marriages is after (the Supreme Court's decision.)

Mike Huckabee was saying something similar, that same-sex marriage licenses remain invalid until the states choose to "enable" them.  That's complete hogwash, what Stivers is saying is that no marriages in Kentucky are legal right now until the state legislature amends the laws to comply with the Supreme Court.

It's idiotic, but that's where we are right now in this mess.

[UPDATE]: At the hearing today, the judge jailed Davis, saying that he didn't believe fines would compel her to obey the Supreme Court's ruling.  Sen. Rand Paul is very unhappy with this.

"I think it’s absurd to put someone in jail for exercising their religious liberties," the GOP presidential candidate and outspoken advocate of states' rights told CNN on Thursday, shortly after Davis' fate was decided by a U.S. District Court Judge David Bunning. 

"This is really the problem when from on high we decide to get involved on a federal level with something that has always been a local issue," Paul said.

Weird.  Guess Paul is now against federal abortion restriction then, huh.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2015/09/02/4016199_news-briefs-from-around-kentucky.html?rh=1#storylink=cpy

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