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Flap’s Links and Comments for March 16th on 20:49

These are my links for March 16th from 20:49 to 20:55:

  • C.I.A. Security Officer Is Freed in Pakistan as Redress Is Paid – A C.I.A. security officer jailed for killing two Pakistanis on a crowded Lahore street was released Wednesday after weeks of secret negotiations between American and Pakistani officials, a pledge of millions of dollars in “blood money” to the victims’ families, and quiet political pressure by Pakistani officials on the courts.

    The fatal shootings by Raymond A. Davis, who was immediately flown out of the country to Kabul, Afghanistan, had ignited a furor here and brought relations between the C.I.A. and Pakistan’s spy service to perhaps their lowest ebb since the Sept. 11 attacks.

    Mr. Davis’s release appears to have temporarily cooled frictions between the two wary allies, but it left unresolved many of the irritants that strained ties in the first place. American officials insisted on Wednesday that the C.I.A. made no pledges to scale back covert operations in Pakistan or to give the Pakistani government or its intelligence agency a roster of American spies operating in the country — assertions that Pakistani officials disputed.

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    Davis or whatever his name is should have been flown out of Pakistan weeks ago.

  • There’s More to Birthright Citizenship Than You Think – The debate over birthright citizenship has focused on children born here to illegal aliens. Admittedly, this is a big deal, with more than 300,000 births a year to illegal-immigrants mothers, though I’m on record as skeptical that changing our citizenship rules should be a high-priority objective for immigration hawks.

    But there’s a whole other part of the problem — children born here to legal, but temporary, visitors. Not green card holders, who as permanent residents are best seen as candidate-members of the American people and whose children should definitely be citizens at birth. The issue, rather, is about “non-immigrants,” foreigners here temporarily as tourists, students, workers, whatever. In this regard, the issue of birth tourism has gotten attention lately, as has the citizenship status of terrorists like Anwar al-Awlaki and Yaser Esam Hamdi, both born in the U.S. to visitors but raised entirely abroad, who’ve tried to use their nominal citizenship to protect themselves from justice.

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    First, E-Verify and then secure the border.

    Civil rights organizations go wild over this issue of birthright citizenship and frankly is too difficult to change with a Constitutional amendment.