Original post is Holder: Critics of Federal Court Terrorist Prosecution ‘Simply Wrong’ by Political Capital.

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The U.S.-Mexico border on February 26, 2013 near Sonoita, Arizona.

The Heritage Foundation has taken some hits for projecting 50 years out with its projection that the cost of government services for undocumented immigrants becoming citizens will far exceed the tax revenue they contribute to the economy — by about $6.3 trillion.

It’s partly a matter of education, Heritage President Jim DeMint, a former Republican senator from South Carolina, explains — questioning the earning potential of people lacking higher education, or even high school.

It turns out that skepticism about the potential contributions of immigrants runs even deeper at Heritage — it goes to their very IQ. The Harvard doctoral thesis of one of the co-authors of the Heritage report is making the rounds of the Internet today, starting at the Washington Post’s Wonkblog.

“The average IQ of immigrants in the United States is substantially lower than that of the white native population, and the difference is likely to persist over several generations,” co-author Jason Richwine wrote in his 2009 thesis for a PhD in public policy. “The consequences are a lack of socioeconomic assimilation among low-IQ immigrant groups, more underclass behavior, less social trust, and an increase in the proportion of unskilled workers in the American labor market.”

The bipartisan sponsors of the Senate’s immigration bill have pledged that undocumented immigrants won’t be eligible for public assistance for more than a decade, as they pursue a path to citizenship.

“That pushes some of the cost past the 10-year window,” DeMint said in an interview with National Public Radio yesterday. “But once you get past 10 to 14 years, the deficit is extraordinary. And the reason you have to go out a number of years, the average unlawful immigrant is 34 years old so their life expectancy is 84. So we’re looking at the cost, during their lifetime, particularly with Social Security and Medicare, which is already broke…

“Back 30, 40 years ago, immigrants who came to America had the same education and skill level as American citizens, sometimes even more,” DeMint said. “We’ve changed that so the whole formula for assumptions is different. And they’re saying now that people with 10th grade educations can move upward. If they can, we need to do that for our own citizens. We’ve got millions of Americans without high school diplomas who are languishing without any opportunity.”

As Wonkblog’s Dylan Matthews notes:

“Richwine’s dissertation asserts that there are deep-set differentials in intelligence between races. While it’s clear he thinks it is partly due to genetics — “the totality of the evidence suggests a genetic component to group differences in IQ” — he argues the most important thing is that the differences in group IQs are persistent, for whatever reason. He writes, “No one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach IQ parity with whites, but the prediction that new Hispanic immigrants will have low-IQ children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against.”

Richwine is not without a solution — from that dissertation: “Selecting high-IQ immigrants would ameliorate these problems in the U.S., while at the same time benefiting smart potential immigrants who lack educational access in their home countries.”

Mike Gonzalez, vice president  for communications at Heritage, is busy at damage control today, telling the Post: “This is not a work product of The Heritage Foundation. Its findings in no way reflect the positions of The Heritage Foundation. Nor do the findings affect the conclusions of our study on the cost of amnesty to the U.S. taxpayer.”

Yet just when Republicans were intent on making amends with Hispanic voters lost in the 2012 election, the party will be working on this one for a while.

heritage researcher thinks hispanics r dumber. maybe so but we are smarter than heritage researcher miamiherald.typepad.com/nakedpolitics/…

— Alex Castellanos (@alexcast) May 8, 2013

Original post is Low-IQ Immigrants: Not Heritage Policy by Political Capital.

Photograph by Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

First Lady Michelle Obama signs her book, “American Grown: The Story of the White House Kitchen Garden and Gardens Across America,” at a Barnes & Noble bookstore in Washington, DC.

The Obamas have had some success with books.

The president’s autobiography and campaign tome made him a millionaire.

The first lady’s book is another story — marketed as a benefit for the National Park Foundation.

Her ``American Grown: The Story of the White House Kitchen Garden” – on bookshelves for much of the past year — showcases the first vegetable garden at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue since Eleanor Roosevelt’s Victory Garden.

Michelle Obama will sign copies of the book at Washington’s premier political bookshop, Politics & Prose, next week.

She already made the rounds of morning talk shows with her book last spring.

The White House says today that she accepted no advance fee for the book, and all proceeds from its sales will go to the National Park Foundation, to support programs promoting gardening and healthy eating.

Random House, too, is donating “a portion” of its profits to the foundation, the White House says.

Original post is Michelle Obama’s Green Thumb Warms up for Book-Signing by Political Capital.

Photograph by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Senate Budget Committee staff members hand out copies of the Obama Administration’s proposed FY 2014 federal budget in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill April 10, 2013 in Washington, DC.

The 2014 budget that President Barack Obama proposed today is all about creating jobs and boosting the economy, the president said today.

His budget, he said, replaces the cuts of sequetration with “smarter ones.” It builds new roads and bridges, helps children from an early age — “these are things that should not be controversial,” he said.

“It does so without adding a dime to our deficit,” the president said in an appearance in the Rose Garden on a summer-like spring day, the cherries of Washington in full bloom and partisan budget-sniping running full bore.

Calling the safety net of Medicare “an iron-clad guarantee,” he said, changes must be made in the interest of controlling the federal debt — “manageable” changes. He proposes cutting the cost of health care rather than cutting benefits for the elderly.

His budget also includes new tax revenue, closing tax loopholes that benefit the wealthy, which is the biggest of his non-starters for Republicans. The pre-Kindergarten program that Obama proposes is financed with a significant increase in tobacco taxes.

All of these ideas aren’t “optimal,” the president said, but they do amount to a compromise. “The numbers work, there is not a lot of smoke and mirrors in here,” he said. “If we can come together and have a serious debate,” he said, the White House and Congress should be able to agree on a path forward.

Original post is Obama: ‘Not a Lot of Smoke and Mirrors’ by Political Capital.

Photograph by JB Reed/Bloomberg

A woman smokes a cigarette in New York.

While President Barack Obama won’t submit his 2013-14 budget to Congress until April 10, some proposals have already drawn the ire of groups that would be affected by his proposals.

Tobacco companies and the stores that sell their products oppose Obama’s plan to raise taxes on cigarettes and other tobacco products and use the proceeds to fund prekindergarten programs, as he mentioned in his State of the Union address.

“We oppose another federal tax increase on tobacco products,” said David Sutton, a spokesman for Altria Group Inc. “While the specific amount of the proposed increase has not been released, it is important to remember that the largest federal tobacco tax increase in U.S. history was enacted less than four years ago.”

Convenience stores would be hurt as higher taxes curb the spending power of customers, including tobacco purchases, which account for 40 percent of their non-gasoline sales, said Jeff Lenard, a spokesman for NACS, formerly the National Association of Convenience Stores. “It is not just the loss of sales but also the loss of customers.”

Anti-smoking groups, on the other hand, applaud the proposals, saying that higher cigarette taxes help convince smokers to quit and others from taking up the habit.

“Study after study has shown that the fastest way to encourage individuals to quit smoking,  and keep others from ever starting, is to increase the cost of tobacco products,” said Nancy Brown, chief executive officer of the American Heart Association. “We must use all of the tools we have to defeat the public health menace that is tobacco.  A tobacco tax increase will be a strong incentive for current smokers to have their last cigarette and a convincing deterrent  for individuals who are considering their very first cigarette. ”

See the full report at Bloomberg.com.

Original post is Tobacco Tax Opposed Before Proposed by Political Capital.

Photograph by Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

Staff members sit behind a chart of guns during a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill on January 30, 2013 in Washington, DC.

The National Rifle Association today released a plan calling for more armed personnel in schools — and pitching itself as a school safety trainer.

The gun-rights lobby, which claims five million members, is spending $1 million on what it calls the National School Shield, accordingt to former Arkansas Rep. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican paid consultant to the NRA and director of its schools project.

In the days after a gunman killed 20 schoolchildren and six educators at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre said schools should increase security measures, including arming teachers and hiring more school officers, while opposing federal legislation such as expanded background checks for gun-buyers and limits on certain weapons and large-capacity ammunition magazines.

At today’s press conference in Washington, Hutchinson reiterated that sentiment.

Among the eight recommendations in a 225-page report Hutchinson delivered to the NRA: The group should serve as the nation’s premier advocate and trainer for school safety while the federal government should focus on doling out money to school districts that need it to improve safety.

“The NRA has the nationally recognized expertise to develop and implement the stringent training courses” recommended by Hutchinson’s team, the report says. Grants to help pay for new school officers and security measures such as  heavier doors and metal detectors could be administered by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the report suggests. It doesn’t recommend a specific dollar amount.

The NRA released a statement after the press conference saying its officials “need time to digest the full report” yet is confident that Hutchinson and his team’s recommendations “will go a long way to making America’s schools safer.”

Laura Murphy, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington legislative office, called the NRA plan “radical.”

She called on Congress to “reject any proposal that militarizes our schools.”

Original post is NRA Training Your School Guards? by Political Capital.

Photograph by Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

District of Columbia Mayor Vincent Gray in this file photo.

Washington Mayor Vincent Gray, who is under investigation for allegations of misusing campaign funds, was upbeat and optimistic about his tenure over lunch at the Georgetown Ritz Carlton.

Gray was the guest and interview subject of Washingtonian editor-at-large Carol Joynt as part of her “Q & A Cafe” program, which is aired on local television.

Gray cited progress in the field of education, saying the District of Columbia has “the most robust early-education program in America.” He also said that unemployment has declined to almost 8 percent from more than 11 percent when he took office.

When Joynt questioned him about how his administration is seen by investors in the wake of his scandals, he saidm“I haven’t had one question from Wall Street. They look at the books.” (Two Gray aides pled guilty in federal court to misusing campaign funds and lying under oath. He is still under investigation.)

Gray acknowledged “the hugely changed population” in the District, but dodged questions about the possibility of a white mayor. City Councilman Jack Evans is among the likely white candidates to run against Gray next year. If Evans should prevail, he would be the District’s first white mayor.

At the lunch, Gray also waded into lighter subject matters, such as his fondness for bulk-shopping at Costco (he buys his cat food there) and his preference for San Francisco to win the Super Bowl.

Original post is Washington’s Mayor Sees Bright Side by Political Capital.

Photograph by Michael Okoniewski/Bloomberg

Graduates wearing mortarboards attend Syracuse University’s commencement ceremony.

That’s the number of Americans age 25 and older in 2012 whose highest level of education was a bachelor’s degree, according to the Census Bureau.

That’s about one-fifth of the civilian non-institutionalized population of 204.6 million, Census data show.

Women outnumbered men by 21.1 million to 19.4 million among people whose highest level of education was a bachelor’s degree. There were also more women than men with master’s degrees last year. There were more men than women holding doctoral and professional degrees.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: 40.6 Million by Political Capital.

Photograph by Emile Wamsteker/Bloomberg

Shoppers crowd a store at the Premium Outlet Mall in Tinton Falls, New Jersey.

Here’s a nightmare moment for every statehouse reporter with a college education heavy on liberal arts and light on statistics.

“Explain the unemployment rate to me,” New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, whose bombastic demeanor tends to elicit rapid compliance, said today at a news conference when the state’s 9.6 percent jobless rate came up.

No volunteers.

New Jersey added 30,900 private-sector jobs in December, according to data released by the state Department of Labor and Workforce Development. Christie called it “the greatest private-sector job-growth month since we’ve been keeping statistics,” starting n 1990.

The jobless rate responded — with a drop of just one-tenth of 1 percent.

“I told you guys this before: I have no idea what the unemployment rate means and I suspect the people who do it have no idea what the unemployment rate means,” Christie said. “The unemployment rate is based on a poll. So I don’t know what to make of it. All I could tell you is this: 30,000 jobs in one month? Pretty good month. Historic month. What it tells you is that New Jersey is doing quite well.”

End of lesson.

Original post is Unemployment 101: Professor Christie by Political Capital.

Photograph by Alex Brandon/AP Photo

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor speaks during an event at the University of Pennsylvania Law School in Philadelphia.

Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, acknowledges the role that affirmative action played in her education — an admittance to Princeton that paved the way for a child of Puerto Rican immigrants in the Bronx.

On the Supreme Court, she will face a decision on the issue in a case brought by a white woman denied access to the University of Texas.

She isn’t commenting on that case publicly, but she is speaking about her own life before the court in interviews surrounding the publication of her book, “My Beloved World,” which will be released Monday.

She and fellow Justice Clarence Thomas part ways on this matter, she readily allows.

“I do know that, for me, it was a door opener that changed the course of my life,” Sotomayor says in one interview, airing Sunday on CBS News’ “60 Minutes.”

And in a series of talks airing on National Public Radio starting Monday, Sotomayor says: “I know Clarence, admire him, and have grown to appreciate him and his views. We are different people. I have never, ever focused on the negative of things. I always look at the positive. ”

“And I know one thing: If affirmative action opened the doors for me at Princeton,” Sotomayor says in the NPR interview, “once I got in, I did the work. Proved myself worthy. So I don’t look at how the door got opened.”

She also recalls her first lesson about the controversy in affirmative action.

“The first day I received in high school a card from Princeton telling me that it was possible that I was going to get in, I was stopped by the school nurse and asked why I was sent a possible and the number one and the number two in the class were not,” she recalls in the CBS interview. “Now I didn’t know about affirmative action. But from the tone of her question I understood that she thought there was something wrong with them looking at me and not looking at those other two students.”

She encountered the question again as she was graduating from Yale Law School, she tells NPR. At a recruiting dinner, a partner in a large Washington, D.C., law firm asked her: “Did you get into Yale only because you are Puerto Rican?”

”It took me aback to think that someone was actually looking at me that way,” she says, noting that the man apparently knew nothing about her academic successes. ”Now that’s the price of affirmative action that Clarence Thomas talks about … and it’s one that can lead to the sense that the benefits might be outweighed by the negative impressions it leaves. But that was my first moment experiencing that kind of overt discrimination.”

The same remains true today, she tells “60 Minutes:”

“You can’t be a minority in this society without having someone express disapproval about affirmative action.”

Read more about her life in the NPR interview here.

See an excerpt of the CBS interview here.

Original post is Sotomayor on Affirmative Action: `How the Door Got Opened’ by Political Capital.