 |
What They've Thought
|
||||
|
|
||||
What They Thought March 19, 2006 Alan
Caruba Click here for columnist bios |
|||||
If Hillary Clinton were to be the Democrat Party candidate for President in 2008, one issue alone could defeat her. No matter who the Republicans run for President, one issue alone will prove an obstacle to victory. That issue is illegal immigration. In her typically strident fashion, Sen. Clinton told a rally of immigrants on Capitol Hill that she opposed making illegal entry into the United States a felony and that the Republican proposal to round up illegal immigrations for deportation would turn the country into “a police state.” Mind you, they have already broken the law by sneaking into the U.S. or by over-staying their visas. The real problem for both the Democrats and Republicans is that America is now home to an estimated eleven million or more illegal immigrants. For a nation that is said to be hated by foreigners, an awful lot of them want to come here. Just ask the Immigration and Customs Service, a division of the Department of Homeland Security. Remember why this department was created? It had to do with a number of illegal immigrants who flew commercial jet planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001. The Bush administration has ignored the issue of illegal immigration despite the fact that thousands cross into the United States every day. They mostly come across our southern border, but it is just as easy to come in from the equally vast border we share with Canada. After they arrive, they find work, they apply for a variety of benefits, send their kids to school, use the emergency rooms of hospitals which by law cannot turn them away, and some commit crimes. If they give birth to a child here, it is automatically granted U.S. citizenship. According to the Center for Immigration Studies that has just issued a 44-page report on “The Connection Between Legal and Illegal Immigration,” as legal immigration levels have risen since 1965, illegal immigration has increased with it. The Center found that “the share of the foreign-born population who are illegal aliens has risen steadily. Where they made up 21% of the foreign-born in 1980 and 25% in 2000, they numbered 28% percent as of 2005.” Several amnesties have masked the rise in illegal immigration, the most recent being the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act. Suffice it to say this whitewash piece of legislation did nothing to reform or control immigration. It legalized three million illegal aliens. They, in turn, became eligible to sponsor additional immigrants, thus contributing, says the Center, to the ranks of both legal and illegal immigrants. The more you legalize, the more who see the opportunity to enjoy the same instant process. As commentator Michelle Malkin points out, this is a slap in the face to every naturalized American who patiently went through the process to become a citizen. The entire immigration system is broken and, to make matters infinitely worse, Chairman Arlen Spector (R-PA) of the Senate Judiciary Committee has begun debate on a proposal that would create a “Gold Card” program to grant amnesty to illegal aliens who broke the law to get here before January 4, 2004. So we have the Democrats criticizing efforts to make illegal entry a felony offense with Sen. Richard Durban (D-IL) saying it would make the job of law enforcement seeking illegal aliens more difficult. Isn’t that the job of law enforcement, finding criminals? And isn’t it the job of Immigration and Customs Services to deport illegal aliens? Meanwhile, on the other site of the political aisle, you have Republicans saying that we should expect the ICS department to conduct background checks on those who want the Gold Card visa. The only problem with that is that the Government Accountability Office has issued a report that says ICS has no grasp whatever on the problem of immigration fraud, doesn’t do enough to deter it, and won’t have any kind of a working fraud-management system in place until 2011. The ICS can barely cope with those seeking naturalization. Little wonder that a significant portion of the Mexican population continues to move to the United States without bothering to inquire about the naturalization. According to the Center for Immigration Studies, Mexico accounted for 30% of the foreign-born in 2000 and more than half of the Mexicans known to be living in the U.S. were here illegally. Granting yet another amnesty, no matter how you dress it up or what you call it, brings us full circle back to the fact that amnesties simply invite more illegal aliens. So-called “undocumented workers,” another way of saying “illegal aliens,” are the focus of both Democrats and Republicans trying to figure out a way to put them on a fast track to citizenship. A lot of Americans don’t like this idea and a lot of them vote! This is happening when the United States presumably has a homeland security problem in the form of porous borders, a laughable deportation program, and virtually no system in place to track anyone who enters the U.S., whether as a tourist, a student, a businessman, or to pick crops. The 2008 national elections are going to revolve around the issue of illegal immigration and, at this point, neither party has a sensible solution other than to make it a very good choice to come here any that way you can. |
|||||
If liberals and pseudo-cons had written "The Iliad," it would have gone like this: “Helen shacked up with Paris in his crib and Paris died.” If they had written "The Odyssey," it would have gone like this: “Odysseus kept running into other women and he got lost. His wife was worried. He got home, but it was sort of an accident.” Anybody with a lick of sense knows there’s a lot more to these two stories than that, and so it is also true with history, both recent and ancient. But demagogues don’t have much use for the details. They are far more interested in extorting terror from the minds of the masses that don’t know any better. A good example of the difference between the left and the right can be found in the deafening silence surrounding the death of Milosevic. I ran across a great commentary on that where the writer was comparing European prisons to "Club Guantanamo." In the four years that Guantanamo has been operating as a holding camp, there hasn’t been a single death there. But that doesn’t matter one bit to the demagogues. They are still carping about the horrors and the cruelty of Guantanamo. I haven’t heard a peep out of the peeps on the left regarding the death of Milosevic. That’s because they hate him. I think it’s a safe bet that there’s no love lost on the prisoners in Guantanamo by those of us on the right, but we aren’t stupid enough to think that one of those prisoners dying is a good thing. But that has to do with the consistency of a conservative versus the inconsistency of a radicalized lefty. The death of Milosevic can be viewed through another leftwing myopic lens too. When we went to war to back the terrorist drug dealing KLA the left cheered because we were liberating a bunch of people and there was no strategic interest on our part. For the first time ever we had done something just to be nice. Milosevic became the poster child for abusive governments and the amazing thing was that we never did find the mass graves there. They simply didn’t exist. Now we are being treated to a four-year whine-a-thon about how we had no strategic reason to liberate the people of Iraq, where we actually did find the mass graves. We found all kinds of neat things there, but we’re still the bad guys. All of the reasons we went after Milosevic were the right reason in the minds of the wrong, but they were still lies and didn’t exist. Those same issues were verifiably present in Iraq and suddenly we’re wrong? That kind of thinking is what is called factionalism and once it starts it usually becomes unmanageable. These people have apparently never heard of Neville Chamberlain. They can’t seem to grasp the fact that appeasement will only make the problem worse. They only have to look at the history of Islam when it is in expansion mode, and that is what this really is, to see that pushing back is the only thing to do. I’m not saying all Moslems are bad. But those that aren’t bad have a tendency to keep real quiet for the sake of safety. That’s a mistake on their part. I think I have more respect for radical Moslems than I do the left-wingers in this country. At least they’re consistent. I keep getting letters from some of these phony conservatives, who are really left-wingers in disguise, telling me that defending ourselves and taking the fight to the enemy has endangered all of us. There was a time when I found such blame America first talk to be amusing. I don’t anymore because the terrorist media likes to use their words against us. I have come to view these people as psychological cross-dressers and geo-political crash dummies. My daughter is in the military and doesn’t share their cowardly views. For that reason alone, I think she’s twice the man most of these people will ever be. When I think of the left these days, I get this horrible mental image of Dean and Kerry out of the closet and in a gay bar, dressed to the nines and looking. Although I find the image amusing I also find it to be, in an archetypical way, quite accurate. R.A. Hawkins Web Site Contact Back to Top |
|||||
It’s time to forget September 11th. That’s right. You heard me. It’s time to push it out of our minds. You can hoot and holler all you want about this concept. You can say I’m anti-American. You can even accuse me of spitting on the memories of all those who died. But you would miss the point of what I’m about to say here, because this has nothing to do with the heroes or victims, and nothing to do with politics. This has to do with us. Four and a half years have passed since the craziest day in American history. At this point, that’s all 9/11 is: Just one crazy day that happened four and a half years ago. It sucked, but we can’t change it. We shouldn’t let it change the American dream. I was reminded of how important this is last week, when the deal that would’ve sold six American ports to an Arab company — Dubai Ports World — collapsed under the weight of widespread American uproar. I’ve been thinking we should “forget 9/11” for a while now, but I’ve never shared it, because I know how folks will react to it, and I didn’t want people to get any wrong ideas. To me, forgetting 9/11 isn’t about forgetting the dead or forgetting what happened. It’s about returning to normal. It’s literally about getting over it, accepting it, and, for lack of a less politically loaded phrase, moving on. To a certain extent or another, I tricked myself into believing we’d already done that. Not politically, but on a personal, practical, everyday level. I could’ve sworn we got all the paranoid fears out of our systems during the celebrity-bashing, freedom-fry-eating early days of the Iraq War. But I was wrong. The reaction to Dubai Ports World resembles 9/11’s immediate aftermath in every meaningful way. The only reason anyone cared about this transaction was because this Arab company was just that: Arab. No one cared that they were also just that: a company. And no one wanted to hear that enabling terror wasn’t in their best business interests. This harkens back to September of ‘01, when everyone knew someone who knew someone who “saw” the Pakistanis down at the local Dunkin Donuts cheering the Twin Towers’ destruction. It resembles those days of national paralysis, when a forward — a mere email, from a friend of a friend who “never sends these things” — was enough to keep us out of the malls for fear of terror on Halloween. It made sense to react that way back then. Because back then, we were starved for information. We were still gripped by the shock and the awe. But after four and a half years, we’ve had time to think it over. I’m not saying we should forget those who perished, and I’m not suggesting we should pretend terrorism doesn’t exist. But is it time to get over September 11th, to move on — to, in some sense, “forget” it? Yeah. It really is. This place we call “post-9/11 America” — it’s not the same place I grew up in. This isn’t the land of the free and the home of the brave. A free people would fear doing business with no one. And a people committed to free enterprise would seek to do business with everyone — Arabs included. The ports scandal isn’t about national security. It’s about the new and unimproved America. The country that wants fences on its borders. The land where the free want protection from outsourced jobs. Post-9/11 America doesn’t think it can compete with the rest of the planet. It doesn’t believe in the products it’s selling. And it doesn’t believe in its own ideals. Nothing proves this more than an article I happened to read a couple of weeks ago, that complained about U.S. Olympians wearing Canadian-made uniforms. Apparently, this was “anti-American.” How? I don’t know. I would think the quest for better, less expensive products — wherever they come from — is patriotic. After all, it’s capitalism. And capitalism’s the American way. But that was what we believed in the old country — in pre-9/11 America. This is post-9/11 America now. Things are different here. Look around, and you’ll find the only thing America’s confident in anymore is its military. Take that away — take the pageantry, the yellow ribbons, and the thanks to “our men and women serving abroad” before sporting events — and it’s clear that we think we have nothing to offer. We’ve grown soft in the era of get-rich-quick McDonald’s lawsuits. Our culture is vacuous, and our belief in it is missing. Even the best stuff we have — like our colleges — are too busy being reviled to be respected and enjoyed. I blame September 11th for all of this. I blame the terrorists for the destruction that day caused, but I blame us — we, the people — for letting it destroy us. It’s time to pack our bags and move out of here — time to get out of post-9/11 America, and time to return to our senses. Americans need to believe in themselves again. We need to get back to business. This country didn’t become great because of some abstract freedom imposed by an army. It became great because of the tangible things inspired by our zeal to be free. If the country that gave the world electricity, light bulbs, telephones, airplanes, moon landings, and cyberspace needs a fence on its border and a pledge to “buy American,” then that country can’t compete with the world anymore, because that country’s not dreaming the American dream. On September 12, 2001, I wrote of the folks who attacked us: “screw their women, screw their children, screw every last one of them.” I don’t regret writing that, because I believed it back then. Most of us did. But for God’s sake, it’s time to move on now. Screw September 11th. Screw being attacked. Screw going to war. Screw anything that gets in the way of the peace and prosperity once synonymous with our name. If we’re a free people, if we believe in free enterprise — let’s prove it. If we want our enemies to embrace our way of life, let’s embrace it ourselves. Let’s do business with Dubai. Let’s do business with Cuba. Let’s welcome a little competition from China and India. And let’s “buy American” because it’s better — not because it’s ours. Let’s open the markets and open the borders. Make America more free, not less. We should never forget September 11th happened. And we should never forget the lessons of the carnage that it caused. But just because 3,000 people died four and a half years ago doesn’t mean we should stop believing in the power of what we believe. Let’s stop living in fear and start dreaming again. At the end of the day, that’s what people in the land of the free are supposed to do. Jonathan David Morris Web Site Contact Back to Top |
|||||
PRESS RELEASE: Congressman Ron Paul of Texas recently introduced the “Sunlight Rule,” which would radically change the way Washington does business — for the better. As Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously stated, “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.” Congressman Paul proposes to shine a bright light on the House of Representatives and restore integrity to that institution by putting an end to the outrageous practice of voting on huge spending bills that have not been read. The Sunlight Rule changes the actual procedural practices of the U.S. House of Representatives. It requires all bills to be made available to members of Congress at least ten days before a vote. The Rule also allows ordinary citizens to publicly censure their Representative if he or she votes for a bill brought to the floor without the ten-day review period. While it might amaze many Americans to know that members of Congress virtually never read the bills they pass, it’s a common practice. Many bills are thousands of pages long and contain thousands of spending earmarks. Since most bills are never read except by their actual authors — often staffers or even lobbyists, not the elected Representatives themselves — the opportunities for taxpayer abuse are enormous. “Average Americans often wonder how so much pork-barrel spending happens in Washington, and why it can’t be stopped,” Paul stated. “One big reason is that most members of Congress have no idea what’s really in the bills they pass. The latest budget vote is a perfect example. We voted at 4 in the morning on a huge bill that wasn’t even finished until midnight. Nobody could have read it. It funded thousands of pet projects and earmarks. Is this any way to vote on a budget that spends 2.7 trillion dollars?” “That’s why I introduced the Sunlight Rule, to let Congress actually read the bills they pass,” Paul concluded. “It’s the least they can do with your money.” Editor's Note: Congressman Ron Paul is also an author of H.R. 1606, the Online Freedom of Speech Act. In its efforts to promote passage of the measure, The Liberty Committee wrote: The elites have become afraid of you. Whether they are in Washington, Moscow, Beijing, Paris or Sydney, the political and media elites are afraid you will eventually know too much and say too much. Which is why they are determined to control the Internet in whatever ways they can. [Soon, the] U.S. House will vote on the Online Freedom of Speech Act (H.R. 1606). We strongly urge a "yes" vote, as do organizations such as Gun Owners of America, National Taxpayers Union, National Right to Life Committee, Family Research Council, National Rifle Association, and American Conservative Union. H.R. 1606 is needed because federal courts have ordered the Federal Election Commission to regulate "electioneering communications" on the Internet because of the Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act (McCain-Feingold). If H.R. 1606 fails to become law, your Web site or blog could be shut down for the 30 days prior to a primary election and the 60 days prior to a general election should you express "electioneering communications." And any e-mail you send expressing such opinions could also be disallowed. So, grass-roots political activism will be silenced. But the media elite, such as The New York Times, won't be muzzled because they are exempt as members of the "official press." They will be allowed to write editorials about the candidates, but you won't have approval from the State to say a word. By the way, The New York Times [published] an editorial...urging a "no" vote on H.R. 1606. The vote will be held [soon]. Please urge your U.S. representative to vote "yes" on H.R. 1606. Don't be silenced! Rep. Ron Paul Web Site Back to Top |
|||||
In a recent article entitled, Flunking The Electoral College Once Again, Daniel Sobieski writes about a proposed election reform, “The Campaign for a National Popular Vote” in which, “a group of states would agree to award their state’s electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote, regardless of who carried their state.” Sobieski effectively dismantles any justification for this “scheme to improve” the electoral process by pointing out that if this was actually implemented, it would be the, “ultimate in voter disenfranchisement.” By asking the question, “How can it be fairer for a state’s electoral votes be given to the loser of that state’s popular vote?” I should think that he puts an end to any more discussion about this. If anyone wants to continue arguing about it, he throws out a few more bones to chew on. “If a presidential election is considered illegitimate because the winner of the popular vote is not the winner of the electoral vote, is legislation passed by the Senate also illegitimate because it was passed by senators representing a minority of the population? Wyoming’s two senators can cancel out California’s senators, who represent 69 times more people. Is that “fair”? It seems like yesterday that Al Gore and the Democrats called foul after President Bush won his first term in office, based on the electoral vote. With all of the attention drawn to the issue of being able to win an election without a majority of the popular vote, I would have thought by now, in 2004, there would have been some substantial election reform in the offing. In 2001, at least
26 states initiated legislation which would retain the Electoral College,
but eliminate the winner take all method of receiving all the electoral
votes for their states. Instead, electors pledged to a particular candidate
would be voted into the college on a congressional district basis, with
two chosen statewide. This method is already used in Maine. Another
possibility was to assign electors to candidates on the basis of the
popular vote each receives.1 Initially, the founders determined that the president should be chosen “indirectly” through the Electoral College rather than “directly” by the voters. The Electors charged with the duty of electing our president were entrusted to vote for whomever they pleased. Today, the Electors that make up the college are chosen by their state party organizations, as a reward for faithful service. They pledge to support the candidate nominated by the party. The reality is that they are entrusted to cast their vote for the candidate who receives the majority of the popular vote in their state.2 The obvious problem with the winner take all system is that the loser receives none of the electoral votes in a state, regardless of the amount of support for his candidacy. Why is it, then, that 48 states use this method? In the early years of our nation’s history, the people who made up the populations of their state had similar ideas and beliefs. Many identified with their state before their country. This is why the power in this country is divided between the federal and state governments. “What was good for the majority of the state was good for the entire state, and this helped the original states emphasize their rights.” 3 Another reality of the time period was that two hundred years ago the accuracy in vote tallying could not be relied upon. Today, many people share the same values of those living at opposite ends of the country, rather than with those who reside in their own state. Think about the difference between urban and rural lifestyles.4 The accuracy of the vote tally is open to debate (especially when it’s convenient to disallow the absentee ballots of our military). There are other reasons why the winner take all system should lose validity. There might be an increase in voter turn out if the votes cast by each individual were factored into the number of electoral votes each state receives. As it stands, each state receives the same number of electoral votes whether 100% of the people vote or if only one person votes. That hardly seems equitable. As it stands, the votes of some people in a state actually carry more weight when others in that state choose not to exercise their right to vote.5 In the present system, third party candidates can’t win. They simply can’t attain the majority of votes in the majority of states. Election results do not reflect the will of the people under this circumstances.6 A final inequity exists because electoral votes allocated to states more accurately reflects the number of representatives they send to the house; which isn’t always indicative of the general population in the state. Therefore, smaller states end up with more electoral votes per voter.7 The founders had the foresight to sanction the state legislatures with the power to determine how their state’s electoral votes should be allocated. The people residing in the 48 states where the winner takes all of them should be apprised that the current Electoral College rules are not written in stone and that it’s time they be rewritten to reflect the will of the people. Because of the winner take all electoral voting system, candidates for the highest office of our country can choose to ignore the will of an entire region in the United States and still gain the electoral votes necessary to win an election. When a political faction wins the right to inhabit the executive branch of our government for four years without a real mandate for their beliefs and ideas, we have stopped functioning as a republic. We have obviated the checks and balances assured to us by the founders and opened ourselves to the will of the minority. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 The Electoral College Inhibits Democracy Nancy Salvato Web Site Contact Back to Top |
|||||
©2004-2006 by their respective authors. Reprinted by permission. |
|||||
|
news | constitution | bill of rights | our view | your view | their view awards to win | awards we've won | resources | goodie shoppe our mission | about us | contact us | privacy policy | site map | home This page last updated on Tuesday, March 21, 2006 6:10 AM Optimized for Microsoft Internet Explorer |
|||||
|
site content ©2002-2006 site design by |
|||||
