Sunday School 3/28/21: Extra Credit

For your Extra Credit this week, I spent time in the Fox News Sunday classroom. Chris Wallace had two guests: press secretary Jen Psaki, and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-Trump), which is where we'll start.

Graham, who has called our current border policies "a magnet for illegal immigration," proposed the Secure and Protect Act (SPA). It would require asylum-seekers from the 'Northern Triangle' countries to file claims at home or in Mexico, not here - but it also allows families that cross illegally to stay here for 100 days, not 20. His bill ideas aren't an illegal immigration magnet, though. CBP folks told him that, with 100 days and additional judges, they could get decisions on asylum cases and "never let the families go."

You need to make sure nobody is released until their case is adjudicated in the United States, you should keep them in Mexico or their home country, and you should be turning every unaccompanied minor away after they've been tested for human trafficking abuse back to their home country and it will stop this. If you don't, we'll have 150,000 a month by this summer.

Wallace and Graham failed to mention that the SPA (great acronym, don't you think?) was submitted in May 2019, when illegal immigration was surging under the Trump regime - and that it had only one co-sponsor. 

While Graham says that HR 1, the massive bill passed by the House without Republican support, "is the biggest power grab in the history of the country," he doesn't accept that Georgia's voting reforms are "un-American" as President Biden said. And he suggested that saying it was amounts to racism. 

So, every time a Republican does anything, we're a racist. If you're a white conservative, you're a racist. If you're a black Republican, you're either a prop or Uncle Tom. They use the racism card to advance a liberalism agenda and we're tired of it. HR 1 is sick, not what they're doing in Georgia.

He didn't mention his own power grab - his alleged attempts to have ballots tossed in Georgia, but he does say that criminalizing giving water and snacks to voters standing in line "doesn't make a whole lot of sense" to him.

Wallace asked why having a debate on gun issues, including assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, would be a bad thing; Graham basically dared Chuck Schumer to bring an assault weapon bill to the floor, where "it won't get 50 votes, much less 60."  And then he added this, which made me giggle. 

I own an AR-15. If there's a natural disaster in South Carolina where the cops can't protect my neighborhood, my house will be the last one that the gang will come to because I can defend myself. You don't have to have an AR-15, but if you have one lawfully, I think you should be allowed to keep it.

Graham said most mass shootings "have a lot to do with mental health. Count me in for addressing that issue. Red flag laws exist in 19 states. There are some things we can do," but an assault weapons ban is not what we need. And even though he's on record saying that the left wants to take people's guns away, he's pushing a red flag law himself. Those bills are designed to take someone's guns away. I guess that's OK if a Republican suggests it? 

I'll eagerly await Graham's support for the bills that the House passed. I've added the emphasis in case Graham reads this post. Both address background checks. 

• One tackles the "so-called Charleston loophole," which give the FBI only three days to do the background check. That's how Dylann Roof, the Mother Emmanuel shooter, got a gun. The bill would give the FBI ten days to complete the background check. 
• And the other bill? That one would require private sellers to conduct background checks on Internet and gun-show sales. Those are already requirements for all federally-licensed firearms sellers.

"Count me in," Graham said.

So, count me in for dealing with the mental health aspects of this. Count me in for trying to have common sense background checks to get the best information into the system. And if you fail a background check, count me in for telling the local cops that the individual failed it. 

I love that he's in favor of that stuff - he's just like the rest of us Americans of every political stripe, who have long supported this kind of reasonable legislation. And I think there's some nice symmetry here - he's in favor of extending the time we have to investigate asylum claims, so hopefully he appreciates extending the time we have to investigate whether someone really should be able to purchase a gun. 

For her part, Psaki basically said a whole lot of "we're committed to transparency" and a whole lot of "we're committed to working with everyone" and a whole lot of "Democrats and Republicans working together" and a whole lot of "the Senate should be able to get stuff done" and a whole lot of "there's a whole lot of stuff going on" - and I'm not a whole lot of certain that she successfully handled any of the questions she was asked. 

See you around campus - be sure you can answer questions, with transparency, when I call on you.