In 1965, Ted Kennedy was chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization. He essentially directed President Lyndon B. Johnson's immigration policy.

Kennedy, in supporting an immigration reform bill, said, "I want to comment on what this bill will not do. First, our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually. Under the proposed bill, the present level of immigration remains substantially the same."

Again in 1986, speaking on behalf of another immigration bill, Kennedy said, "This amnesty will give citizenship to only 1.3 million illegal aliens. We will secure the borders. We will never again bring forth an amnesty bill like this."

Now, another 21 years later, we revisit the debate, and we are dealing with 10 times the amount of immigrants Kennedy promised in 1986. If this bill should pass, what will the next bill look like 21 years from now? Can a man I wouldn't trust to drive me home from a party be trusted with the future of our country?

There are signs that Politicians are beginning to listen to the people that elected them. In theory, these elected officials are charged with learning about and debating the issues so that the concerns of their constituents can be heard and their best interests safeguarded. In the end, they cast their votes on legislation as representatives of their constituencies. This is how it is supposed to work, but in case you haven't noticed, IT HASN'T BEEN WORKING. That may now be changing, at least on the illegal immigration question. Most of us are NOT "immigration opponents", but rather, we are "ILLEGAL immigration opponents". And yes, we fear a repeat of the huge mistake of 1986. How can we believe the Government will enforce any new laws contained in this bill when they have not even pretended to enforce immigration laws already in effect? The promises of tougher enforcement ring hollow! Everyone knows it isn't going to happen! No doubt, it would work wonders if we put arrested illegals to work for a few months building the border fence, right where other aspiring invaders can see them. Let everyone see they are losing a season's pay and being forced to work for nothing. It needn't be hard or degrading work, but it should be very visible to dissuade others. Meanwhile, heavy border enforcement with an emphasis on keeping people out while letting those who want to leave travel unmolested would be a big help. If this immigration bill should pass (God forbid), our biggest concern should be how we as a nation will change if we take in millions of immigrants, illegal or otherwise, from Mexico and South and Central America? It is one thing for business to expect illegal immigrants to take what ever is offered when they are illegal and in constant fear of being deported, it will be quite another when that fear is lifted and they have a vote. Many argue that illegals take mostly the jobs that Americans won't do, well if that's true, what happens when those illegals become one of those Americans? And what happens when, millions more in extended immigrant family members arrive and they all become voters? They would become the new special interest, the new swing vote. Democrats can hardly wait to work their magic on the unsuspecting “new voters”, and President Bush seems to be completely oblivious to what will happen if he should get his way. The pandering by both parties will likely become a competition of who can dole out the most entitlements. These new Americans will be dazzled by the promises: “In America, you don’t have to pick lettuce for slave wages; IT ONLY REQUIRES PICKING US AS YOUR LEADERS.” Act now and take what is rightfully yours, a share of the American dream you came here seeking, but have yet to realize as you struggle daily as second-class citizens in your new country, victims of racism and exploited by the corporate machine. All you need to do is “elect us.” Politicians see it as the time to replenish the voting rolls with a new useful underclass. It is most unfortunate that their need for a new underclass coincides with the need for an underclass by businesses seeking to hold down labor costs. The transparency of all this is total insanity. Ask yourself when was the last time you heard people who idolize Marxism, despise capitalism and advocate equality of the classes, argue that it is important to enact laws and policies that will guarantee capitalist American corporations have a ready supply of unskilled, exploitable labor? Will our elected leaders fall over themselves to pander to the new American voters, ignoring the rest of us in the process? I think the answer to that question is evident. It's already happening and they are not even voters yet. All the while they have been disregarding what is the largest groundswell of opposition from the American public that any of us have seen in our lifetimes. Some are beginning to realize that we will not be ignored. It's time to fix the problem! Yes, we do indeed need a comprehensive immigration bill, but this bill will only make it worse! Stop the political pandering! And the vote buying! Stop the Madness! FIX THE PROBLEM!!!!!! Your constituents are watching how you vote on this one.


http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070625/EDITORIAL/106250001/1013&template=printart

In fear of the public forgetting the rapidly expiring "scandal," congressional Democrats have issued subpoenas to former White House Counsel Harriet E. Miers and former White House political affairs director Sara M. Taylor, demanding their testimony regarding the administration's 2006 decision to replace eight U.S. attorneys. Similar demands will no doubt be made of other White House officials, including presidential advisor Karl Rove. The president, however, should stand firm and refuse to permit his subordinates' compliance. He can, and should, claim executive privilege.

From the get go, this affair was totally void of any legal substance. There is no evidence that firing these U.S. attorneys was unlawful or inappropriate. Chosen for political reasons, they can legally and morally be fired for any reason, including political reasons such as insufficient loyalty, a perceived failure to pursue administration priorities or simple because someone with better political contacts has come along. Politics is not always a pretty business, and anyone seeking job security should not take a political appointment.

Moreover, there is a core constitutional principle at stake here which is worth fighting for. Political appointees like U.S. attorneys exercise the president's authority, and they serve at his pleasure. The confidential decision-making involved in replacing an U.S. attorney is, therefore, appropriately a matter of executive privilege, a doctrine inherent in the concept of separation of powers. Its critics often complain that it is not based on the Constitution's text, but neither is Congress' oversight and investigatory function.

Executive privilege has been recognized by the courts and asserted by presidents since George Washington refused to give the House of Representatives material regarding the controversial Anglo-American Jay Treaty in 1796.

It is not just GOP presidents who seek to protect executive privilege. In 1999, it was Atty. Gen. Janet Reno who advised President Clinton that Congress had no right to investigate matters that were the "exclusive province of the executive branch." On that occasion, a Republican Congress was seeking information about Clinton's clemency offer to 16 convicted members of a violent Puerto Rican separatist group. Reno noted correctly that "subjecting a senior presidential advisor to the congressional subpoena power would be akin to requiring the president himself to appear before Congress on matters relating to the performance of his constitutionally assigned executive functions" and would be a violation of "constitutionally mandated separation of powers."

Of course, most congressional/presidential clashes over executive privilege end in a deal. However, President Bush should not be overly eager to compromise with his opponents on this issue. In this instance, there is little reason to think that any meaningful working relationship can be restored between Bush and the current Congress, certainly not on the U.S. attorney's issue.

The Democratic leadership understands very well that the president was entitled to fire these individuals for political reasons. It knows how little job protection political appointees have; the very same rules apply to congressional staff. The newly emboldened Congress is on a grand fishing expedition, hoping to uncover something to weaken and discredit the administration and the presidency itself.

Because there is no legitimate congressional concern here to weigh against the president's clear interest in keeping White House political personnel deliberations confidential, a claim of executive privilege should be upheld by the judiciary. The president's answer to both House and Senate subpoenas should be "See you in court."

Perhaps it is matters such as this that has cause the approval rating of Congress to fall from 54% to 14% sense the Democrats gained control.

Jimmy, please just go fishing or build some more houses, enjoy your retirement and try to remember that you are no longer the President.  

The ole peanut farmer is still the same "nut case" he has always been.  Now he's scolding the West for refusing to bankroll Hamas terrorists who've just seized power at gunpoint in Gaza.  This is a new low, even for him.

As the Gaza Strip flamed into Hamas gang warfare and the West Bank slid into another civil war, Carter, who was in distant Ireland accepting another "human rights" award — found cause Tuesday to blame America first for all the violence.

Yes, Jimmy isn't happy just being remembered as Americas worst President ever, he continues to build on his legacy as America's worst ex-president.  He said the refusal by the U.S., Israel and the EU to support Hamas (an armed terror group that just launched a coup d'etat and civil war), was nothing but a "criminal" act at the root of the trouble there.

"The United States and Israel decided to punish all the people in Palestine and did everything they could to deter a compromise between Hamas and Fatah," he said.  The statement was unbelievably malicious and illogical even for Carter.

Carter insisted Hamas was entitled to American aid because Fatah had been getting it. But he left out some details: Hamas is a terrorist organization that has broken six previous cease-fires, and it has vowed to destroy Israel. Hamas would gladly take Western cash to make good on that promise.

No one is obligated to support an international terrorist organization just because it "won" an election. The proper response is to cut it off until it renounces violence.  For refusing to fund Hamas but propping up the slightly less unworthy Fatah, Carter charged the U.S. with trying to "divide the Palestinians into two peoples."

Apparently Carter favors appeasement of those who would seek to bring devastation to American cities, a position not altogether different from the position he took in the face of threats of Soviet aggression during his presidency.  There doesn't seem to be a white flag of surrender that Jimmy Carter doesn't enjoy waving.

With such words, Carter can hardly be called a peacemaker. In fact, he should have been profoundly ashamed at his acceptance of his Nobel Prize. Ironically, his partner in peace, Yasser Arafat, got his stolen and desecrated by the very Hamas Carter defends. That ought to give him pause as he defends terrorists.

As lame duck George W. Bush waddles toward the end of his tenure and off into the Texas sunset, he will be remembered by at least one major and enduring positive accomplishment: the transformation of the Supreme Court. His approval rating is in the toilet with conservatives because of his obsession with amnesty for illegals and for his failure to control government spending. As far as his approval rating with Liberals go, it would be in the toilet regardless of what he did or did not do. However, when it comes to the Supreme Court Justices he appointed, his approval rating is one hundred percent with me.

The first full term in which Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., have served together will soon end, and the changes on the Court, and their implications for the nation, are profound. For the first time in its history, the Court upheld a categorical ban on an abortion procedure. I am of course referring to partial-birth abortion. But more important than the ruling were the implications of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s opinion. The Court all but abandoned the reasoning of Roe v. Wade (and its reaffirmation in the 1992 Casey decision) and adopted instead the assumptions and the rhetoric of the anti-abortion movement.

To the Court, it was the partial-birth-abortion procedure, not the risks posed to the women who seek it, that was “laden with the power to devalue human life.” In the most startling passage in the opinion, Kennedy wrote, “While we find no reliable data to measure the phenomenon, it seems unexceptionable to conclude some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained.” Small wonder that Kennedy’s search for such data was unavailing; notwithstanding the claims of the anti-abortion movement, no intellectually respectable support exists for this patronizing notion. The decision to have an abortion is never a simple one, but until this year the Court has said that the women affected, not the state, had the last word.

All the conservative victories were decided by votes of five to four, with Kennedy joining Roberts, Alito, Antonio Scalia, and Clarence Thomas to form the majority. (The last big case outstanding this term is a challenge to school-desegregation plans in Louisville and Seattle. Based on the oral argument, Kennedy appears likely to join the same quartet in striking down the plans.) Kennedy holds the balance of power in the Roberts Court, much the way Sandra Day O’Connor did in the Rehnquist years. Kennedy is more conservative than O’Connor, so the Court is, too. He sided with the liberals in only one important case this year, when the Court ruled that the gases that cause global warming are pollutants under the Clean Air Act, a ruling that repudiated the Bush Administration’s narrow view of the law.

Ginsburg has taken to reading her dissenting opinions aloud from the bench as a means of protesting the court decision. In her dissent (also joined by the others) in the abortion case, she observed that in 2000 five justices rejected a Nebraska ban on partial-birth abortions that was nearly identical to the one the Court upheld this year. O’Connor was still on the Court and in the majority in the Nebraska case, so the only meaningful difference between then and now, as Ginsburg noted, is that the Court is “differently composed than it was when we last considered a restrictive abortion regulation.”

And that, ultimately, is the point. When it comes to the issues that end up in the Supreme Court, what matters are not the quality of the arguments but the convictions of the justices. Presidents pick justices to extend their legacies; by this standard, Bush chose wisely. The days when justices surprised the Presidents who appointed them are over—the last two purported surprises, Souter and Kennedy, surprised no one. Souter’s record pegged him as a moderate; Kennedy was nominated because the Senate rejected the more conservative Robert Bork. All the subsequently appointed justices—Thomas, Ginsburg, Breyer, Roberts, and Alito—have turned out precisely as expected by the Presidents who appointed them.

The four to four tie with one swing vote could change if a Conservative wins this presidential election. Stevens is eighty-seven and Ginsburg is seventy-four; Roberts, Thomas, and Alito are only in their fifties. The Court, no less than the Presidency, will be on the ballot next November, so vote accordingly.

I