Month: March 2015

Millions More Wanted to Vote in 2012, But Couldn’t

Buck Banks

We estimate that keeping registration open through Election Day in 2012 would have allowed an additional 3 million to 4 million Americans to register and vote. We used the number of Google searches for ‘register to vote’ in the weeks leading up to the 2012 election to measure late interest in registering. These search terms were entered millions of times, and much of the activity fell at the very end of the campaign period.

— Alex Street, writing in the Washington Post’s Monkey Cage blog.

Ted Cruz is the New Galileo

Buck Banks

On the global warming alarmists, anyone who actually points to the evidence that disproves their apocalyptical claims, they don’t engage in reasoned debate. What do they do? They scream, ‘You’re a denier.’ They brand you a heretic. Today, the global warming alarmists are the equivalent of the flat-Earthers. It used to be that it is accepted scientific wisdom the Earth is flat, and this heretic named Galileo was branded a denier.

– Sen. Ted Cruz, in an interview with Texas Tribune.

Jeb’s Father-in-Law Was an Undocumented Alien Who Retired on U.S. Social Security

Jon Ponder

Jeb Bush's father-in-law, Jose Maria Garnica
Jeb Bush’s father-in-law, Jose Maria Garnica
Outside Florida, Jeb Bush may be viewed as being more liberal — more reasonable and smarter — than his infamously witless, reflexively conservative brother, George W. But Floridians know better. As governor, Jeb was a right-wing hardliner — a doctrinaire supply-sider who slashed at least $14 billion in revenue to the state government by cutting taxes, mostly on the wealthy, and killing programs for the middle class and services for the poor. It was Jeb who signed Florida’s infamous “Stand Your Ground Law” and Jeb who tortured a stroke victim, Terri Schiavo, by ordering her to be kept alive artificially years after she’d suffered irreversible loss of brain function.

One area where Jeb’s positions are famously out of synch with the extreme right, however, is immigration. Last year he outraged tea party types when he expressed compassion for those who cross the border illegally. The undocumented, Jeb said, come to the United States seeking employment as an “act of love … an act of commitment to your family.”

Now a report in the Washington Post may explain why Jeb’s position on immigration is an outlier from conservative orthodoxy. It’s personal. His wife Columba’s late father, Jose Maria Garnica Rodriguez, was a undocumented worker from Mexico:

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