FINE, LET'S WITHHOLD PUBLIC ASSISTANCE FROM ALL REFUGEES -- INCLUDING CUBANS

I know the wingnuts are gleeful because the right-wing Boston Herald is reporting that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was on welfare in Massachusetts -- but what's their policy recommendation? Should the government go through a time machine before providing public assistance, in order to determine whether recipients will someday commit felonies? Or do righties think we should withhold public assistance from refugees?

And if it's the latter, should it be all refugees? Including the ones the wingnuts like? The Cubans, for instance?

I see that Elian Gonzalez's great-uncle Lazaro, paterfamilias of the "Miami relatives," came to the U.S. in 1984. During the battle for Elian's custody, he remained unemployed for seven months. Did he receive any government benefits upon his arrival, or while jobless during the custody battle, or in between, or afterward? Funny, I don't recall any right-wing journalists scouring the rolls to find out. And I suspect no winger would have complained if Lazaro or anyone else in his family was on the dole. Cubans, after all, are the good refugees.

And, yes, by all means let's hold state public assistance agencies responsible for monitoring potential terrorist activity -- because administering benefits and reviewing eligibility and rooting out fraud and making sure kids on public assistance aren't being chained to radiators by abusive parents leaves them so much free time to monitor geopolitically suspicious behavior, right? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.