Just Because She Has Crazy Eyes Doesn’t Mean She’s A Traitor

Ryan Noonan

Ryan Noonan is an economist with a small federal agency. Fields in which he considers himself reasonably well-informed: literature, college athletics, video games, food and beverage, the Supreme Court. Fields in which he considers himself an expert: none. He can be found on the Twitter or reached by email.

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56 Responses

  1. Dan Miller says:

    “even likes the food”–fighting words, sir. Hendl is goddamn delicious.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HendlReport

  2. Mo says:

    I don’t think dual-citizenship is an issue for regular citizens. However, I think it’s odd and inappropriate for a legislator to proactively apply and get foreign citizenship while in office.Report

    • Ryan Noonan in reply to Mo says:

      This is actually an interesting aspect of the argument that I now wish I had discussed!Report

    • Will Truman in reply to Mo says:

      I would go with “odd” and maybe even raising questions, but I don’t think I would full-on say “inappropriate.” The whys matter here. If you have a foreign spouse, for instance. Or you adopted internationally and want citizenship in your child’s country of birth.Report

    • Pierre Corneille in reply to Mo says:

      I agree with Will, but I’ll add that when it come to someone who wants to be president, it becomes less appropriate for someone to retain dual citizenship, again assuming it’s not an issue similar to the one Will describes where the person might only unwittingly be a dual citizen.Report

  3. Will Truman says:

    I can’t disagree with any of this. I also appreciate you taking Krikorian’s argument seriously. There is a case against dual citizenship. I don’t find it convincing, but it should be addressed as you do here. (Also, props for the Catholic angle!)Report

  4. BlaiseP says:

    She wouldn’t be eligible for membership in any intelligence oversight committee. SECRET/NOFORN means no foreign nationals and almost everything of national significance is so classified.Report

    • Will Truman in reply to BlaiseP says:

      Would this apply to a Jennifer Granholm?Report

      • BlaiseP in reply to Will Truman says:

        DoD Secret clearances are routinely denied to dual citizens.Report

      • Turgid Jacobian in reply to Will Truman says:

        Interesting point. I do wonder how that all gets adjudicated for elected officials. I imagine it really isn’t the same as us peons.Report

        • BlaiseP in reply to Turgid Jacobian says:

          DoD does the classification. They run that part of the show.Report

          • Turgid Jacobian in reply to BlaiseP says:

            But Congress provides oversight. There is no situation where the fox can completely choose who guards the hen-house.Report

            • BlaiseP in reply to Turgid Jacobian says:

              Not really. Some Congresscritters get the PDB, others don’t. DoD wants you to shove your CAC card in the reader. No tickee, no washee.Report

              • Kolohe in reply to BlaiseP says:

                If you have first hand info on that I’ll take your word for it, but my impression is that they play a little looser with clearance rules of committee’s Congresspersons (not really a problem) and their staffers (a problem)Report

              • BlaiseP in reply to Kolohe says:

                Lots has changed over the last few years in the wake of the Bradley Manning fiasco. Upthread, I said membership in the intelligence committees would be the big issue for a dual national. Most Congresscritters don’t know any more than the average civilian. Staffers, jeebus, who the hell knows. I don’t.Report

              • Kolohe in reply to BlaiseP says:

                Nothing’s changed on the clearance or access side due to Manning – there was nothing in his background that would have been negative anyway, under today’s rules. The changes have all be in info systems and the processes associated with them.Report

              • BlaiseP in reply to Kolohe says:

                Manning would be revoked in a heartbeat after his Article 15 these days. And hanging around with hackers.Report

              • Kolohe in reply to Kolohe says:

                Yes many people get there clearances suspended or revoked going the mast depending on the offense. And for questionable associations. That was true before Manning and is true now. If you want to say supervisors in sensitive positions are being a bit less laisez-faire and more into the intrusive leadership of their troops right now when the spotlight’s on, I won’t disagree.

                (otoh, hookers in Colombia)Report

              • BlaiseP in reply to Kolohe says:

                If only this were equally true of the swarms of vile contractors which infest the nether parts of Uncle Sam. The untold and presently un-knowable tiers of subcontractors that swell the ranks of parasites upon his Dark and Stinky Parts have become a national disgrace.Report

          • Turgid Jacobian in reply to BlaiseP says:

            Interesting, as of 2005, members of Congress appeared to gain S ex officio. References throughout the interwebs seem to also have bloomed during the ’08 election when birthers were terrified we were electing a Kenyan Usurper–a transcript of a radio interview with an FBI SAC who claimed same (ex officio)Report

            • BlaiseP in reply to Turgid Jacobian says:

              Ecch, having a Secret clearance is like being vice-president of a bank, it’s a big nothing. Want a Secret clearance? Get hired by some federal contracting firm, they’ll push you through. Next thing you know, you’re sitting there at that little office at Ft. Dix or some damned where and they’ve printed up your CAC card, hey nonny nonny, you’re back in the saddle again.Report

              • Turgid Jacobian in reply to BlaiseP says:

                I’m aware. And in point of fact the same is true for TS. But the point was that they are not adjudicated in the usual way. Staffers go through the usual process, as far as I know–and I know folks who’ve staffed the relevant committees and they were cleared through the same process that everyone else goes through.Report

              • BlaiseP in reply to Turgid Jacobian says:

                Your point was that some folx were getting CAC cards ex-officio. I could throw a rock from one end of DC to the other and hit some consulting firm like SAIC or CSC or Boeing or NG every time, they’d hire on any damned old political has-been as a rainmaker and get him a CAC card. Those consulting firms are sprouting up like mushrooms on horse turds all over the area.Report

              • Turgid Jacobian in reply to BlaiseP says:

                Negative, my point was exactly as stated, that congresspeople are not cleared through the normal channels. It was merely an interesting question to me and I’d never even cursorily looked for info. It would seem that I was not alone.Report

              • BlaiseP in reply to Turgid Jacobian says:

                You sure about that? It seems like a pretty standard pipeline, they’re civilians, they do an e-Qip just like the rest of us contractors and get fingerprinted. Now, as for what happens in the approval pipeline, you might be right — oh, he’s a Congressional aide, stamp him approved. If that’s the case, we’ve got waaaay bigger problems than I understand and you do.Report

              • Turgid Jacobian in reply to Turgid Jacobian says:

                I was referring to the member, not the staff–I know for a fact that staff go thru the normal process.Report

              • BlaiseP in reply to Turgid Jacobian says:

                Here’s what seems so odd about this: a clearance is revoked upon project termination and I presume on termination of officeholding. I don’t think even an ex-POTUS gets to keep a DoD clearance after his term in office. Mine are always shut down the minute I leave the project, I turn in my CAC card on the spot, just before I go out to the goodbye dinner.

                You’d pointed out some dumbass ex-FBI SAC was spouting off. There must be a thousand such bozos trading on past laurels. That moron Robert Baer’s been at this for years. There’s a rule of thumb I use for detecting such bullshit artistes: the more they saw the less they say.Report

              • wardsmith in reply to Turgid Jacobian says:

                Ahh, I saw Turgid, swollen and staff all in the same post and it didn’t go where I was expecting at all. 🙁Report

              • wardsmith in reply to Turgid Jacobian says:

                Whoops, Freud got the better of me there, meant to say I saw turgid, MEMBER and staff in the same post… Ah the hell with it… I’ll never ever ever be as funny as Jaybird.Report

              • North in reply to Turgid Jacobian says:

                Welcome to the club Ward, we’ve a large bitter membership. Have a drink on me and we can sit and smolder with resentment at Jaybird and his obnoxiously easy wit.Report

    • Mike Schilling in reply to BlaiseP says:

      Would a Jew who lived in Israel for a few years have to explicitly renounce Israeli citizenship?Report

    • Stillwater in reply to BlaiseP says:

      BP, I know you can’t talk about it if it’s true and all, but your inside baseball take on oh-so-many things gives me the impression that you’re ex CIA. If that’s true, then of course, you can’t say anything about it. So don’t! Just deny it. Or admit it on the pretense that no one will believe you anyway.

      {{{It’ll be our little secret.}}}Report

      • BlaiseP in reply to Stillwater says:

        Heh. Let’s just say I served my country, a little patriotic missionary’s son who had an aptitude for languages, an abiding hatred for Communism and an ability to Go Native in extraordinary circumstances. I worked with CIA but was not one of them. I was strictly US Army.Report

  5. Tod Kelly says:

    Good post. There is a good discussion to be had on the issue of dual citizenship, and I certainly hope we have it here in the threads. But if I may just digress…

    I’d just like to say that having the former presidential candidate most likely to patriotically wave the “traitor” flag over where someone else may or may not have been born seemingly having no issues with applying for dual citizenship after the primaries are over, tells you everything you ever need to know about people that run on populist platforms.Report

  6. Mike Schilling says:

    One of the talking points I recall about why it was OK to kidnap and torture Maher Arer was that he was suspect because he’s never renounced his Syrian citizenship. That’s completely evil BS.Report

  7. James B Franks says:

    Dual Citizen is an issue when she has access to classified intelligence.Report

  8. Mike Schilling says:

    I think NRO writers are required to put in stuff like

    The fact that even a patriot like Bachmann would do something like this is testament to how thoroughly the moral relativism of the post-national Left has permeated our culture.

    It’s like the tech support guy who has to ask “How may I provide you excellent service today?”

    I love this from his Wiki biography, though:

    Mark Krikorian is an Armenian anti-immigration activist. He is the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think-tank in Washington, D.C. that promotes stricter immigration control and enforcement.

    […]

    Krikorian studied two years at Yerevan State University in then-Soviet Armenia, after which he moved to the United States

    Of course, he’s also the guy who thinks it’s weenie to pronounce people’s names correctly.Report

  9. Huh. My dad’s from another country, and I’m still a dual citizen (which has had pretty much zero impact on my actual life). I had no idea it made me traitorous to this country.Report

  10. Burt Likko says:

    Ryan, you need a picture for the post. The question for you is whether it will be the Newsweek cover or the eating-the-corn-dog shot. I doubt there’s going to be many of her in front of the Swiss flag.Report