Making it clear that he believes that it is not his role to represent either the membership of the GOP or the people of the state of Florida, Senator Mel Martinez vowed to hold his breath until he turns blue.

The Chairman of the Republican Party on Friday lambasted Democrats and Republicans who helped kill an immigration bill in the Senate and challenged them to come up with a solution beyond ``just build a fence along the border.''

``The voices of negativity now have a responsibility to come up with an answer,'' RNC Chairman and U.S. Senator Mel Martinez, R-Fla. said.

``How will you fix the situation to make peoples' lives better? How will you continue to grow the economy? How will we bring people out of the shadows for our national security and for the sake of being a country that is just?'' he demanded.

In other words, he still doesn't get that 75% of Americans reject the bill he supported, and that the bulk of the GOP grassroots found its provisions repugnant. Rather than attempt to represent the beliefs of the overwhelming majority of Americans (or even the overwhelming majority of Republicans), Martinez has made it clear that he refuses to do anything other than attempt to revive the dead bill for a third go-round.

Martinez promised to work with members of the U.S. House of Representatives to try to revive the legislation, a measure the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials supports.

Yep -- a real man of the people, that Mel Martinez. So much so that he is prepared to ram the flawed amnesty plan down the throats of the American people, whether they like it or not.

Well, Mel, I've got a plan for you, one that I articulated the other night after the American people one in the Senate. Here it is again, with an addition based upon your comments.

So this time American citizens win and border-jumping immigration criminals -- and the craven politicians who support them -- lose.

Now it is time for some real immigration reform.

Build the fence/wall IMMEDIATELY. Set up a working system to verify legal status of every employee -- if VISA and MasterCard can verify the validity of my credit card in a matter of seconds, the US government should be able to do the same with regard to eligibility to work. Impose meaningful fines upon those who knowingly hire illegals -- and follow up with prison sentences for repeat offenders.

And, of course, as always there is one more element.

Round 'em up! Ship 'em back! Rawhide!

But based upon Mel's comments, I'd like to include this little addendum to the plan.

1. Fire Mel Martinez as Chairman of the GOP.
2. Expel Mel Martinez from the US Senate.
3. Revoke the citizenship of Mel Martinez.
4. Deport Mel Martinez back to Cuba, where his top-down leadership style and contempt for the voice of the people would make him a valuable asset to the Castro regime.

Now who can we get to include this new addition in the next round of immigration legislation?

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Posted by: Greg at 12:38 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Has a stake been driven through the heart of the amnesty bill?

The Senate voted today to effectively block efforts to overhaul the nationÂ’s immigration laws, meaning that the issue is most likely dead until after the 2008 elections.

Needing 60 votes to bring debate on the contentious bill to an end — a step called cloture — and move it toward passage, proponents of the bill could only muster 46 votes in favor today, with 53 opposed.

In the debate leading up to the vote, Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, said, “If we do not invoke cloture, the bill is dead.”

So this time American citizens win and border-jumping immigration criminals -- and the craven politicians who support them -- lose.

Now it is time for some real immigration reform.

Build the fence/wall IMMEDIATELY. Set up a working system to verify legal status of every employee -- if VISA and MasterCard can verify the validity of my credit card in a matter of seconds, the US government should be able to do the same with regard to eligibility to work. Impose meaningful fines upon those who knowingly hire illegals -- and follow up with prison sentences for repeat offenders.

And, of course, as always there is one more element.

Round 'em up! Ship 'em back! Rawhide!

Posted by: Greg at 05:27 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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After all -- who really gives a tinker's damn about what the American people think about this legislation?

Legislation to overhaul the nation's immigration laws cleared a key hurdle yesterday when the Senate voted 64 to 35 to take up the measure again after a nearly three-week break. But opponents of the proposal insisted they would scuttle it by week's end.

The procedural vote squeezed past the 60-vote threshold needed to bring the bill back for debate, but even advocates said that was the easy part. The immigration bill must run a gantlet of 26 politically charged amendments and clear another 60-vote hurdle tomorrow to cut off a filibuster before a final vote Friday.

The bill's most ardent opponents forced the Senate clerk last night to read all 26 of those amendments in their entirety as a delaying tactic. "This is going to begin some very heavy trench warfare," Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said. "It's going to be like World War I."

Still, Bush administration officials who have championed the proposal insisted that a bill once left for dead was now on its way toward passage.

"We are confident in Senate passage, because we look at the alternative, and the alternative is nothing," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said.

"In the end, logic, common sense and wisdom will prevail," added Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez, in a shot against detractors, who continue to say the immigration bill's border security provisions are unworkable and its path to citizenship for 12 million illegal immigrants amounts to "amnesty" for lawbreakers.

And lest you doubt that this is an amnesty bill, even the President admitted that it is in a rare moment of truthfulness on the subject.

"You know, I've heard all the rhetoric — you've heard it, too — about how this is amnesty," Bush told supporters of the bill at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. "Amnesty means that you've got to pay a price for having been here illegally, and this bill does that."

Tony Snow and the White House Press office released a statment "correcting" the president's true statement.

Posted by: Greg at 02:10 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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You know, this argument is only persuasive if you accept its starting premise -- that those opposed to the current proposal giving amnesty to border-jumpers really hate immigrants and want to keep foreigners out of the US.

How do you justify a border fence? Why is it OK to consign millions of unskilled Mexicans to lives of desperate poverty? I'm told it's because Americans should care more about their countrymen than about a bunch of foreigners. OK, but how much more? Surely there's some limit; virtually nobody thinks, for example, that Americans should be allowed to hunt Mexicans for sport. So, exactly how much are you willing to hurt a foreigner to help an American? Is a foreigner's well-being worth three-quarters as much as an American's, or half as much, or one-quarter as much?

The column then goes on into a rather tiresome analysis of wages and ends with a fatuous comparison between our immigration policy and the three-fifths compromise (which the author gets precisely wrong -- but then again, so is his entire analysis) that is designed to paint advocates of border security as knuckle-dragging nativists who hate Mexicans.

The problem is, of course, that he is dead wrong. The overwhelming majority of us welcome immigrants from anywhere on the globe -- but what them to come here legally, and for our government to stop those coming illegally. Indeed, we recognize the need to make immigration from south of the border "safe and legal" -- not unsafe due to the means and location of illegal border crossing or dominated by criminals who have no regard for their human cargo.

Posted by: Greg at 04:38 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Maybe -- if the president and the bill's supporters in the Senate have their way.

Proponents of the immigration bill that stalled in the Senate regrouped Friday, holding strategy sessions and conference calls aimed at salvaging the overhaul.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and other key negotiators said they would return soon to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) with a plan to move the bill toward passage.

The challenge is to whittle a lengthy list of amendments down to about 20, convince Republican critics that they are getting adequate opportunity to air their concerns and spend only two or three days of the Senate floor time to complete the bill, senators said.

“We are not giving up. We are not giving in,” Kennedy said. “The American people expect us to legislate. I think all of us look at the Senate the old-fashioned way: We are here to get something done.”

Kyl said they “have already begun the process of figuring how to get this back together and concluded in the next few weeks.”

And Reid signaled again Friday that he would accommodate them. “We are committed to finding room in the Senate schedule as soon as possible to get this bill passed,” said Reid’s spokesman, Jim Manley.

President Bush, who has staked his domestic agenda on immigration, will go to the Capitol Tuesday to meet with Senate Republicans during their weekly policy luncheon. And Saturday he will appeal to Congress in his weekly radio address.

“I urge senators from both parties to support it,” Bush said in an early transcript released by the White House.

The Kennedy quote indicates a fundamental flaw with the approach of the bill's supporters -- the notion that they are expected to pass some legislation is simply wrong. What is really expected of them is that they pass a good piece of legislation that actually solves the problems of border security and settles the illegal immigration problem once and for all. This piece of legislation will not do that -- and so the better course of action is to do nothing rather than allow a bad bill to become law.

Ultimately, the bill is probably doomed in the House, where teh bill faces bipartisan opposition.

Some House Democrats and Republicans declared the Bush-backed legislation dead, saying the only viable alternative would focus more heavily on tightening borders without granting lawful status to those who entered the country illegally.

"The Senate immigration bill was a deeply, deeply flawed proposal, and I'm glad it has finally landed in the political graveyard," said freshman Rep. Nancy Boyda, D-Kan. "America needs enforcement, not amnesty."

"This bill is dead," said Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-Calif. He called for new legislation "that does not grant amnesty" but focuses instead on border security and workplace enforcement.

Let's have a bill come out of the House of Representatives -- the People's House -- first, and have the Senate approve that and the President sign it. The current approach has failed.

Posted by: Greg at 02:38 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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We can certainly hope so -- and that any future legislation does not include an amnesty program.

A bill that would overhaul immigration law suffered a crippling defeat this evening in the Senate, casting grave doubt on the prospects for changing the system any time soon.

The defeat was in the form of a motion to shut off debate and move the bill toward a yes-or-no vote. The vote was 50 to 45 against the motion. Thus, it fell 15 short of carrying, since 60 votes were required under Senate rules.

After the cloture motion failed to win Senate approval, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic majority leader, held out the hope this evening that the bill could be acted upon again within “several weeks.”

“I have every desire to complete this legislation,” he said.

Otherwise, Mr. Reid may shelve the bill for the year. He said beforehand that the lawmakers had to turn their attention to other issues.

Amnesty. Overturning court-ordered deportations. No significant enforcement mechanisms. No dealing with the problem of anchor babies. This legislation sucks, and must never see the light of day again.

Posted by: Greg at 01:33 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I received this in my email tonight, and am passing it on for your consideration.

Immigration Attitudes Survey

Increasingly, Americans are turning to the web for news about politics. This is a survey about online news coverage of the immigration issue. We are interested in your thoughts on this important political controversy. If you decide to participate in our survey, you will start off by answering a few questions about yourself and your political attitudes. Then you will watch a short news clip of an immigration story. After the clip, we will ask you some questions about your position on immigration policy. In total, the survey should take about 15 minutes to complete. The survey is completely anonymous and you can skip any questions you do not wish to answer.


Click here to take the survey:

http://www.ic.sunysb.edu/stu/crweber/TAKESURVEY/videohuddy.htm

Please feel free to contact Chris Weber or Mary-Kate Lizotte at Stony Brook University with any questions or concerns. Thanks for your help!

Posted by: Greg at 02:31 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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And the suporters call this comprehensive immigration reform/border control?

The Senate's immigration bill will only reduce illegal immigration by about 25 percent a year, according to a new Congressional Budget Office report, Stephen Dinan will report Tuesday in The Washington Times. The bill's new guest-worker program could lead to at least 500,000 more illegal immigrants within a decade, said the report from the CBO, which said in its official cost estimate that it assumes some future temporary workers will overstay their time in the plan, adding up to a half-million by 2017 and 1 million by 2027. "We anticipate that many of those would remain in the United States illegally after their visas expire," CBO said of the guest-worker program, which would allow 200,000 new workers a year to rotate into the country.

* * *

"CBO estimates that those measures would reduce the net annual flow of unauthorized immigrants by one-quarter," the report said. Still, with estimates of hundreds of thousands to one million illegal aliens per year, CBO is assuming a large problem will remain.

So if I get this straight, there will be 50,000 "overstayers" each year, plus 500,000 to 750,000 border jumpers.

In other words, we really won't see that much of a reduction in illegal immigration -- and we will need another amnesty 10, 20, or 30 years down the road, after the population of immigration criminals has again reached critical mass (remember, we did an amnesty like this in 1986 under Reagan, and it has clearly failed) Maybe then it will require super-duper comprehensive legislation to solve the problem.

H/T Confederate Yankee, Captain's Quarters

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Posted by: Greg at 05:05 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I guess he really does wants to alienate the pro-border GOP base in time for the 2008 election. After all, spewing insults at the party's front-line troops certainly isn't a wise move if he has any interest in party-building.

President Bush took on opponents of immigration legislation again today, accusing some of them of fear-mongering and prodding members of Congress to act despite their worries of a backlash at home.

While not saying so explicitly, some people “certainly allege or hint that probably the best way to deal with 11 to 12 million people is to get them to leave the country,” Mr. Bush said, referring to estimates of the number of illegal aliens in the United States.

“That’s impossible,” Mr. Bush went on. “That’s the kind of statement that sometimes happens in the political process aimed to inflame passion. But it’s completely unrealistic. It’s not going to happen.”

The president said the time for comprehensive immigration reform is at hand, with a sweeping bill emerging in the Senate, and with the House expected to take up a bill next month. “This is a good piece of legislation,” he said of the Senate work in progress.

Mr. Bush favors immigration reform that calls for more secure borders, allows for a guest worker program and offers illegal aliens an eventual path to citizenship.

Unfortunately, what most of the GOP base wants is the promised fence, border enforcement, and a road back to their home country for the border-jumping immigration criminals. I talk to Democrats all the time who want the same thing -- but we all seem to be ignored by the Kennedy-Bush axis in favor of amnesty.

Maybe that has a lot to do with the need to lay off the staff of the GOP fundraising call center.

Or posts like this one on blogs that generally favor the GOP.

But sometimes I'm just an old softie at heart. Like, for example, earlier today, I went over to GOP.com to give the Party a quarter, because I figured they might need it to call someone who cared. There's a saying, "even a whore has her pride," and so it is with the GOP. They wouldn't take my quarter. The minimum donation they would accept was four quarters. Being the old softie I am, I went ahead and gave them four quarters, so now they can call four people who care.

And now they know that, whatever the reason they're not getting any real money from me, it's not because I forgot about them, or because I'm just too lazy to make a donation. Now they know that I've put some thought into just how much I value their efforts out in Washington, and I went out of my way to contribute accordingly.

Michelle Malkin offers this option for disaffected GOP supporters to send in instead.

And Peggy Noonan offers this little gem in explaining why the GOP needs to start moving beyond George W. Bush immediately.

I suspect the White House and its allies have turned to name calling because they're defensive, and they're defensive because they know they have produced a big and indecipherable mess of a bill—one that is literally bigger than the Bible, though as someone noted last week, at least we actually had a few years to read the Bible.

The 2008 election is not that far away -- maybe it is time to find a leader to represent what the GOP base really believes.

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Posted by: Greg at 12:59 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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