Redstate

...the bloodthirsty mob is wrong, as I think they are in this case. I'd tell Kyl: "Do the right thing. Let history be the judge."

I would suggest we are not a bloodthirsty mob and that the right thing would be to oppose this bill in this form and then let history be the judge. I love that let history be the judge how nice of you to have our children deal with any fallout of the future if those who support this bill like La Raza are wrong. I personally am unwilling to thrust this on future generations. Secure the border then get an agency set up to truly do background checks, deport the 600K that have already been ordered by a judge to be deported and all criminal illegal alien gang members MUST be deported and no chain migration. These are not unreasonable requests and why shouldn't the bill just be 10 pages at best with those items mentioned above?

10 pages wouldn't even get us through securing the border. Our border with Mexico is enormous. How could a bill regulate that border effectively with a mere 10 pages? Additionally, we must have something in the bill to deal with the millions here. I agree that we need to remove the 600K that were already ordered deported... but I ask "HOW?" I agree that this needs to be done intelligently and carefully.
That I support the immigration bill has nothing to do with La Raza, the ACLU or anyone else. It is simple common sense. Something has to be done. Simply sealing the border accomplishes nothing other than sealing in the 12 million that are here already. I disagree that this is 9/10 thinking. It is silly to think that every immigrant already here picking strawberries or avodados is a terrorist. I say, secure the border, have a national immigrant biometric ID and reasonable background checks. Give those that are here an incentive to check in, pay their fine, get back to picking strawberries and start paying taxes. Without this bill, we have 12 million people here with ZERO control over who they are. Such lack of control IS 9/10 thinking. We can do better. I don't say that those who believe otherwise are a "bloodthirsty mob". I would agree that those opposed to the bill are sincere and worried about our country. However, it is my opinion that their arguments terribly and dangerously oversimplify a serious and difficult issue.
Shawn Weber

Why? What needs to be said that hasn't already been said.
A person has already been put in charge of border security- The president. Do we need to rewrite the Constitution?

A unit has been designated as responsible for Border Security? If they can't do it fire them and get someone else.

The only reason for long bills is to provide full employment to a bunch of lawyers and make sure that no already legal American is protected.

Don't you understand that promises of more this or more that are just promises from people who have shown no willingness to keep their word about border security in the past? What about "we don't believe you" is so hard to understand?

To quote a nice old lady... Where's the fence?!

Border security now. Nothing else. It is folly to go comprehensive. Period.

Don't you understand that promises of more this or more that are just promises from people who have shown no willingness to keep their word about border security in the past?

...and that I doubt if Home Depot or Lowes have 350 miles of Do-It-Yourself-Border-Fence on stock in their Tucson locations, then "promises", in the form of explicit and binding language in legislation, is the best that Kyl can do, dontcha think?

Border security now.

OK, just HOW does Jon Kyl, or anyone for that matter, provide border security NOW!!?? Is Major Nelson assigned to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson? Or Luke AFB outside of Phoenix? If so, then perhaps the good major has Jeannie in her bottle close at hand. With one blink---VOILA---Border Security Now!

Or, jonb, do you have another idea for how to satisfy the old lady and produce Instant Border Fence?

Just what would you have Senator Kyl DO?

Killing this bill won't build this fence, have you thought about that? What if Team Reid-Kennedy decide to retaliate by blocking border fence provisions out of revenge? What will you do then? (Especially if MAJ Nelson PCS'es out of CONUS.)

"Who will stand/On either hand/And guard this bridge with me?" (Macaulay)

Killing this bill won't build this fence, have you thought about that? What if Team Reid-Kennedy decide to retaliate by blocking border fence provisions out of revenge? What will you do then?

So there it is huh? Kyl can't build the fence the President won't build the fence so the obvious answer is open borders because the promise of secure borders is just that a promise. There is no need to prove it there is no need to kill the bill until it is proven because the Democrats might get mad so white flag it baby.

In a stream of consciousness, fueled by anger, leading to nowhere.

But, that's just my opinion.

"Who will stand/On either hand/And guard this bridge with me?" (Macaulay)

......

Oh, and you should also retort better than and we know what opinions are like right

"Who will stand/On either hand/And guard this bridge with me?" (Macaulay)

the dunce you appear to make yourself by picking apart someone else's typing and comments and stick to the issue at hand. If you have nothing to add to the story stop reading.

Originally, you responded to my post by demanding "border security now." I asked you how you expected SEN Kyl to do that.

Here is your response:

So there it is huh? Kyl can't build the fence the President won't build the fence so the obvious answer is open borders because the promise of secure borders is just that a promise. There is no need to prove it there is no need to kill the bill until it is proven because the Democrats might get mad so white flag it baby.

Ummm...what? Where's your practical suggestion for what Kyl can do and should? Is that what this juvenile mishmash of words is supposed to be?

I asked you to step up and contribute to the discussion, in a way that could help further debate. Instead, you chose to keep peeing in the corner.

I suspect you have nothing to contribute to this discussion but pee.

Prove me wrong.

And yes, your grammar does stink. THAT is what I'm picking apart. (We've already established that you've yet to advance any real ideas worthy of fisking). Or, is your computer to blame for your inability to satisfy fifth-grade writing standards?

"Who will stand/On either hand/And guard this bridge with me?" (Macaulay)

I think the best course would be to have all of the elected officials in DC, along with their staffs, come to the SouthWest and personally, physically build the fence. It's summertime, the weather's good, and they'll do less damage to the republic doing physical labor than they will in DC.
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CongressCritter™: Never have so few felt like they were owed so much by so many for so little.

and being a good American I will come and help as well. I love to volunteer and there are lots of people who do also so lets get a thread started on volunteering to build the fence. I think a week including the surrounding weekends as a commitment would be good. I am serious, if we scream about it we should be willing to do something about it. I am committed to seeing this bill die and it has been exhausting but this suggestion has me reenergized. If we can do hands across America:) we can do this.

The "We've got to do SOMETHING" mentality gives us horrible bills like this that will perpetuate no border security.

And only Charlie Brown would believe the promises of this bill's supporters (aka Lucy).

If the choice is between doing nothing or doing this bill, we are way better off without the bill.

I said we should be willing to do something, my thought process was something akin to the site that was set up for people to sign up to look at the 32K earmarks and help the Democratic congressman do the job that his staff just couldn't do. It was a slight embarrassment to the Congressman and so along those lines. Having Americans sign up to build a fence that the President will not build might or might not embarrass him however it's a start.

this bill good for America. Sen Kyl and any senator who believes in America should announce they can not support this bill and end this farce now. The most effective border agents we seen to have had are in jail for defending America. Someone let 12, 20 or whatever million number of illegals in to this country, we should increase the size of the group who allowed this?

There is no chance that the supporters of this bill are going to allow any more fence to be built. There is no chance people who support La Raza support the United States of America. La Raza and their supporters intend to create a United States of Mexico.

Until this country has border security, there can not be a balanced, reasoned discussion of the immigration problem.

Secure our borders now. Then talk about what to do about the illegals who are here. Then talk about who should be allowed to come to America legally in the future.

has been destroyed by the company he kept. Maybe by turning away from it now, he could save himself. But I fear he won't.

...and Ted Kennedy is laughing about how he ruined Jon Kyl.
...and Lindsey Graham is clueless about how he ruined Jon Kyl.

Don't flatter yourself---this won't destroy Jon Kyl. He's made of much tougher stuff that you suspect. Arizonans are grateful to have him as our premier Senator.

Senator, I trust your judgement. You hang in there. Charlie Mike.

"Who will stand/On either hand/And guard this bridge with me?" (Macaulay)

he's our only Senator. The other one represents the interests of government and the politics of Washington DC.
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CongressCritter™: Never have so few felt like they were owed so much by so many for so little.

those who trusted him when they put him into office.

I hope Kyl will retire in 5 years. It's the only way we might be able to save the seat.

Can you point to anything other than this bill that Kyl has been wrong on? Who exactly do you think you're going to get that will be better than the Senator?

I wish we would put this much wailing moaning and threatening against some Senators that are on the wrong side more often than they're on the right side.

It's turning out that liberals aren't the only ones prone to hysterics.

you have no idea how difficult and thankless it is to go in to negotiate with an implaccable adversary that has as much or more political power as you do.

In this case, I don't know if Kyl is attuned to the base or his Senatorial constituency, but whichever it is, you presume he went in and got what he could with the knowledge that the Ds could get pretty much what they wanted without him, but since it would be easier with some R support, they gave him some things.

I've done it in the collective bargaining arena where I knew that the administration or the legislature's expectations could not be met because they would not pay the necessary political price. At some point you go to the boss and say, "that's the best I can do, now let it stand or fall." The usual result is that they go ahead and take your "best deal possible" and then spend the next few years blaming the high costs on your sorry negotiating skills. Nobody will ever recall that the reason you had to take that deal is because they didn't have the guts to get any more.

Kyl is in a somewhat different position in that he doesn't answer to anyone but his own home constituency and I don't know how AZ politics plays out on this.

I'm not saying this to defend him; I think anyone with an R should have refused to cooperate with the Ds at all, let them pander to the Left, as they surely would, filibuster their bill, then beat them soundly about the head and shoulders with it in '08. But obviously somebody doesn't have the guts for that.

In Vino Veritas

This will be a back burner issue by then, I suspect we'll have new stuff to focus on (I hope). He'll get reelected in a walk.
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CongressCritter™: Never have so few felt like they were owed so much by so many for so little.

and why the party hasn't learned. The politicos go to the "safe" senator and twist his arm until he does what they want. I like Kyl too. But it's time for the party to start paying the price for thumbing their noses at the base. Maybe we can do it with phone calls to Kyl, and honestly I'd prefer that. If not, we'll need to remember when the time comes to settle up accounts. The other part of the problem is that most of us who are upset with Kyl won't get a chance to express our dissatisfaction at the ballot box, even though the damage he is causing will be to the whole country, not just his state. (Yes, I know, AZ will bear more of the brunt of this mistake than most other states. But he still doesn't have to answer to everybody who is upset with him.)

If we "taught a lesson" to every Republican that went contrary to the base on a single issue we'd have nobody left. Even a cursory glance at things would leave us with only a half dozen members of the Senate caucus. And I bet we can knock out all 49 if we looked at their voting records.

There is no 100% purity. There is a menu of issues and every person needs to prioritize for himself. I understand that some people consider this the single most important issue of our time, but lots of people don't. I am not willing to lose Kyl's support and leadership on issues like spending, judges, the War, and taxes, because he supported this bill.

And there is no such thing as "the base" as some monolithic entity. The "base" shifts a little from issue to issue when you get to the level of individuals (as opposed to interest groups).

The bottom line is, on the whole, (and according to the ACU), every Republican in the Senate is better than 50 of the 51 Dem/Socialists in the Senate (Ben Nelson being the exception - he's on par with people like Collins, Snowe, Specter). How much better off would we be if we even managed to replace every Democrat with another Gordon Smith? Maybe we should spend more time beating the enemy rather than threatening people with 95+ lifetime ACU ratings.

We need to make it clear that we will regard voting for cloture as voting for amnesty. If you vote for closure you are voting to pass the bill, because the Dems already have the votes they need to approve the amnesty, and Bush is committed to signing it. No "personally opposed" or "I voted against the bill after I voted for it" on this issue.

to support this legislation, and the chain migration prohibition now has been basically stripped out. The good Senator has D.C. dementia, apparently, and as this goes down in flames he thinks he won't feel the heat. Sad, truly sad, when you consider his stated reason to support this insanity no longer is even there.

I wouldn't be at all surprised by this, but I was unaware of it. Are you saying that when the bill is resubmitted, that the provisions that would allegedly end chain migration will no longer be there? Senator 'if-you-don't-agree-with-me-you're-a-bigot' Graham says that its a deal breaker if this is removed. That was the cause of his heated exchange with Obama a few weeks ago.

Unless I am mistaken, the bill prior to amendments had an eight-year lag time before chain migration ended. Before the final draft circulated, Sen. Kyl went on television and announced chain migration would end immediately even as the drafters watered down what he wanted (and I agreed with the senator completely that this made the bill more palatable). If I had been him, that would have been a dealbreaker then and there.

And during the amendment process, the so-called "merit system" was tamped down essentially to allow more chain migration past the eight-year moratorium, if I recall correctly.

If any of that is wrong please correct me, but I'm sure that is what happened.

I didn't realize that Kyl originally thought that chain migration would end immediately. If so, then that would cast him in a much better light. I agree that the eight year delay (during which chain migration would greatly increase) would probably mean that the transition never takes place. If the Democrats control Congress and the Presidency (or if there is a Republican president like Bush) then I could see them opening up more immigration based on merit...as well as maintaining unending chain migration, but I can't see them letting end a system that is guaranteed to give them so many new voters and destroy the Republican party.

As to the amendment votes a few weeks ago; I could be mistaken myself, but I believe Obama's amendment that would end the point-based merit system after so many years failed, as did the Menendez amendment to make the backlong even longer. Again, I might be wrong, and there may have been others that I don't remember. I'll have to check on that.

I blogged about it at the time: http://redstate.com/blogs/spainishirish/2007/may/17/lesson_one_never_tru...

It galled me to see a decent man undermined to the extent he was. He literally was on television as the Senate and House leaders contradicted him. It was astonishing in its tackiness.

I believe you are right about the merit system, though. I will check but your memory served you better than mine, I think.

I do remember both Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi saying that they'd work to retain unending chain migration in the final bill as soon as the 'grand bargain' was announced. I also remember Kennedy himself saying that they'd work to fix the bill after it was passed, which I took to mean he'd try to gut any of the allegedly conservative provisions.

I am not surprised by their duplicity, but I am a bit surprised that Kyl actually thought that Kennedy would let go of something that produces so many new Democrats, and that is so close to demographically destroying the GOP. The eight year delay should have been a huge red flag for Kyl. If he felt he must be a part of the compromise in order to make it suck less, then he should have held out for a more definite and immediate end to chain migration. If he couldn't get that, then he should have walked away.

though. I hope he takes it because Reid and Pelosi did put the screws to him.

I forgot one;

5. This bill does not end the ridiculous Diversity Visa Lottery: There is no reason to have this Ted Kennedy visa system. I remember back during the mid 90s when there was a brief hope for good immigration reform that there seemed to be widepsread support for getting rid of this nonsense. It passed a judicial committe vote easily, yet now, we don't hear anything about it. I guess Kennedy informed Kyl, Graham, and McCain that it must stay, and they all obeyed.

Section 505 eliminates the diversity visa program.

I have read a lot about the bill and have not heard that until now. If so, then it stands as something in the bill that is actually good.

How on earth is it better to increase the concentration of immigration from one culture, than to decrease it by bringing in more people for more places?

If your goal is assimilation you should want more diversity to prevent what's going on with Mexican immigrants.

Run like Reagan!

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CongressCritter™: Never have so few felt like they were owed so much by so many for so little.

Sadly, I failed to adequately check for typos before I posted.

I hope I do a little better with this post and don't have any typos. If I could edit my typos, I would do it.

I'm glad I didn't commit a typo with Jon Kyl's first name and incorrectly type "John".

I hope soon that Jon Kyle will stop supporting the Senate amnesty bill. I would then have no need to post any future messages about Jon Kyle and Ted Kennedy working togtether to reward millions of illegal alien lawbreakers with amnesty.

"The defense of our nation begins with the defense of our borders." - Rep. Tom Tancredo

www.tancredo4prez.blogspot.com and www.teamtancredo.org

I happen to be a terrible speller, spell check is my best friend. And you did it again :>). Once our fingers get trained, it's almost impossible to stop them. Kinda like picking your nose. :>)
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CongressCritter™: Never have so few felt like they were owed so much by so many for so little.

I give up on trying to correctly type the last name of the junior senator from Arizona. I will just refer to him as Jon K.

I also incorrectly typed the word "Senate" in my initial post.

"The defense of our nation begins with the defense of our borders." - Rep. Tom Tancredo

www.tancredo4prez.blogspot.com and www.teamtancredo.org

FWIW, IE7 has a spell checker, as does Firefox (which I use). MS also has a spell checker that works exactly like the one that comes with IE7, but will work independently with earlier versions of IE as a toolbar button. If you don't want to download a new browser, I'd be happy to send you the add in, just contact me via the "contact" form.
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CongressCritter™: Never have so few felt like they were owed so much by so many for so little.

If this bill passes, my wife and I are out the Republican Party. We have held our noses for long enough and "stayed the course", but if this goes through with the blessing and help of the Republican Party we're "out of here"! For both of us, this would be the "the straw that broke the camel's back"

Grassley-Baucus-Obama amendment is Republican? So rigged, heh. This surprises me though:

1198 Boxer Reducing Y visa cap by number of Y workers who overstay

I'm glad I wrote Sen. Boxer. That sounds like an improvement.

Run like Reagan!

But hey, at least she's trying.

Run like Reagan!