Texas Fires: An Emergency?

Texas is experiencing severe wildfires in 2011 with the worst months yet to come. So far about a million acres have been destroyed. Gov. Rick Perry has declared a state of emergency and requested the White House to do the same, but while the forest service has sent several firefighters to Texas, Washington is yet to respond to the emergency request. This has Perry fuming. What's going on here?

Going through the reporting the following points emerge:

1. Perry is accusing Obama of neglecting Texas while declaring emergency in Alabama due to the tornado damages. The not so subtle innuendo being that Obama is letting Texas burn due to political considerations. It's not clear to me why Alabama would be any higher than Texas on Obama's love list. It's more likely that the human deaths in Alabama played a bigger role.
2. The main game seems to be about money. Declaration of emergency would allow 75% of the costs to be covered by the federal government. Texas has already run up a tab of $23 million with the federal government and now they want more. And meanwhile (from the CS Monitor) "The state legislature, meanwhile, recently proposed slicing $34 million out of the Texas Forest Service's $109 million biennial budget, with most of the cuts coming from training and equipment grants for volunteer crews who deal with wildfires."

But there has been no response from Washington so it's not clear what is the thinking from the administration.

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Petreus: Common Sense or Hypocrisy?

We just witnessed the circus surrounding the proposed Koran burning by a Terry Jones in Gainesville, FL. In midst of all that, the following snippet caught my attention. Among several high profile officials denouncing the proposed bonfire was General David Petreus, "General Petraeus said Tuesday that the Koran burning could endanger American troops in Afghanistan and the safety of Americans around the world by inciting violence among Islamic extremists." On the surface it seemed like an eminently sensible comment. However, with time the irony of the comment began to dawn on me.

Jihadi Islam is indeed a big threat to America, but the reason for the violence of the past decade and a half stems from the continuing presence of American troops in Saudi Arabia. That is the stated caucus belli for Al Quaeda. Of course since then the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have provided more fodder. What endangers Americans are the military policies of the government which Petreus champions. How ironic that the cheerleader of the policies endangering Americans is accusing Terry Jones of the same.

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AZ SB1070

The AZ Senate Bill 1070, also known as the Arizona Immigration Law has come under much scrutiny. A more readable version of the text can be found here. The main aspects of the law seems to be the following:

1. Violations of federal immigration laws are now state crimes in Arizona and the laws are now enforceable by state police.
2. Foreigners are required to carry immigration documentation at all times (this is actually a federal statute).
3. The law effectively requires citizens to carry some sort of identification, in absence of which they are presumed to be aliens and hence subject to detention.

Several professors at the University of Arizona have posted a preliminary analysis of the law at SSRN. However, the main precedence might have been set by the Supreme Court decision in Hines v. Davidowitz U.S. 52 from 1941 in which the court found that Pennsylvania could not require foreigners to carry their registration cards and could not make not doing so a state crime.

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