Immigration reform the Max Power way*

A new administration! A new era in America! We're going to take care of all the horrible stuff from the Bush years and put this country back on the right track. So let's get that environmentally and culturally destructive border wall built, and expedite issuing 287(g) agreements that deputize local police agencies like Sheriff Joe** to enforce immigration law.

Wait, what?

Then again, if Obama can't seem to find a Treasury Secretary who pays his taxes or a Commerce Secretary that believes there should be a Department of Commerce, perhaps I shouldn't be so surprised.

On a related note, the bumbling performance of the new administration thus far makes me dubious that we can be sure that since the text of Obama's recent executive order bans extraordinary rendition and secret prisons, his administration will never use extraordinary rendition and secret prisons. I mean, they're called secret prisons for a reason, and many of Bush's outrages on this count were pilot-tested by the Clinton administration. I think a lot comes down to how much you trust Obama and his staff as people, as well as how much of a role you think the personal dispositions of our officials matters compared to the instututional/situational features of the offices they occupy. I suspect many liberals have spent the last eight years building up an excessively disposition-based account of the Bush administration's follies.

*post title source

**I agree that Arpaio's antics are absolutely outrageous and unconscionable, but I think the concentration camp analogy is stretching too far.