William Safire's garbage

So, no surprise, William Safire starts shilling for an amendment that would allow Ahnuld to run for president. I don't have any particular opinion on this either way, actually, but here are some phrases that made me go `huh?'

That makes all naturalized citizens - including taxpayers, voters, servicemembers - slightly less than all-American. Even children born abroad of U.S. citizens have fallen under the shadow of Article II; this has caused pregnant women to race back to our shores to make certain their children's political potential is not somehow beclouded.

Now, I'm not in law school, so I could be wrong -- but I thought the children of American citizens were automatically American citizens. It doesn't matter where you were born so much as the citizenship of your parents at the time.

He's a libertarian conservative, a man of the right whose popularity is rising on the Left Coast. Under the tutelage of former Secretary of State George Shultz and former Gov. Pete Wilson, he is using his celebrity, charisma and political moxie to break up the logrolling logjam that put this state into the hands of easily rolled legislators and budget-busting initiative rule.

I haven't been following Californian politics as closely since I moved off the West Coast. But I do glance at the front page of the Chron every couple weeks, and talk about the issues of the day every so often with my admittedly liberal parents. So, again, I could be wrong -- but I don't think Ahnuld has done shit in the past year. He got some emergency bonds passed, but hasn't done anything to reign in spending; I'm not sure he was even running on anything else. Possibly the stem-cell research funding initiative was his idea, but that wasn't a legislative achievement.

Maybe after Safire leaves the Times will bring in Barbara Ehrenreich permanently. That would make me happyful.