PRESIDENT BUSH MAY CHANGE HIS MIND ON IMMIGRATION REFORM

As the House of Representatives’ Republican leaders prepare to embark on a series of nationwide hearings that could determine the fate of the Senate “comprehensive” immigration reform bill, President Bush is indicating a new willingness to negotiate with House Republicans in an effort to revise the stalled legislation before the November elections.

Republicans both inside and outside the White House say Mr. Bush, who has long insisted on comprehensive reform, is now open to a so-called enforcement-first approach that would put new border security programs in place before creating a guest worker program or path to citizenship for people living in the United States illegally.

“He thinks that this notion that you can have triggers is something we should take a close look at, and we are,” said Candi Wolff, the White House director of legislative affairs, referring to the idea that guest worker and citizenship programs would be triggered when specific border security goals had been met, a process that could take two years.

When the House Republicans pushed through a tough immigration enforcement bill, they were lambasted by the Democrats, some GOP senators and the news media. They were condemned as being meanspirited and criticized for wishing to criminalize illegal alien workers. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) told a crowd of immigrants that the House Republicans are attempting to create a “police state.”

Not only are the House Republicans in favor of enforcement-first, several Democrats are calling for the government to first stop the flood of illegal aliens before considering other measures such as guest worker programs and pathways to citizenship.

Political analysts believe the President’s almost sudden change of heart is based on the groundswell of criticism of his “amnesty” plan by American citizens. Thousands upon thousands of e-mails, telephone calls and letters continue to flood the White House and the offices of key GOP members calling for real action on the US borders.

In May the Senate passed immigration legislation that appeared weak on border security, but would create a program permitting illegal immigrants who had resided in the United States for five years or more to “earn” their citizenship after paying a fine and back taxes, learning English and holding a job for six years.

But conservatives began digging deeper into the bill and discovered a grab-bag full of goodies — social security, wage regulations, etc. — for people viewed by many as lawbreakers. The Senate bill also would allow illegal immigrants who have resided in the United States from two to five years to apply for a guest worker program.

President Bush strongly supported the Senate’s “comprehensive” approach to immigration reform. Many conservative Republicans, especially those in the House, said the Senate’s approach amounted to “amnesty” and vociferously oppose any legalization program before border security has been strengthened.

Then when the Senate “amnesty” bill arrived in the hands of the House leadership, Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert proposed that GOP congessmen would hold citizen hearings all across the country in order to get citizens’ input.

Many senators at first complained that the House’s call for hearings was their way of stopping the immigration bill, but now they seem more receptive to the House enforcement
bill as does President Bush.

Speaker of the House, Denny Hastert says that the “top thing needed is to secure the borders and we need to have the law enforcement to go along with that.

Immigration is the most important issue for the Republicans and conservatives, a House Republican aide said, and will drive conservatives to the polls — unlike the recent Senate debate on gay marriage or the upcoming vote on an amendment to ban flag burning.

As evidence, House Republicans point to the victory by Rep. Brian Bilbray in a special election in California earlier this month. Bilbray ran against the approach favored by President Bush and the Senate and argued that the borders must be secured first. His opponent lost the election partly because she was recorded telling illegal aliens they didn’t need “papers” to vote.

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Read more by this author on our site here. (Scroll down)

Jim Kouri, CPP is currently fifth vice-president of the National Association of Chiefs of Police and he’s a staff writer for the New Media Alliance. He’s former chief at a New York City housing project in Washington Heights nicknamed “Crack City” by reporters covering the drug war in the 1980s. In addition, he served as director of public safety at a New Jersey university and director of security for several major organizations. He’s also served on the National Drug Task Force and trained police and security officers throughout the country. Kouri writes for many police and security magazines including Chief of Police, Police Times, The Narc Officer and others. He’s a news writer for TheConservativeVoice.Com. He’s also a columnist for AmericanDaily.Com, MensNewsDaily.Com, MichNews.Com, and he’s syndicated by AXcessNews.Com. He’s appeared as on-air commentator for over 100 TV and radio news and talk shows including Oprah, McLaughlin Report, CNN Headline News, MTV, Fox News, etc.

SEND HER ASS TO VENEZUELA

ONE-WAY TICKET TO VENEZUELA

By Michelle Malkin

Her heart belongs to Hugo

I've done a little browsing on Expedia for Cindy Sheehan, who says she'd rather live under Venezuelan thug Hugo Chavez than in America (transcription below). (Here's the video via Allah.) Here are current one-way ticket prices from NYC to Caracas:

Fund-raiser, anyone?

Stephen Spruiell at The Media Blog has a partial transcript.

I'm adding a transcription of the soundbite of her Hugo endorsement:

MSNBC'S Norah O'Donnell: Would you rather live under Hugo Chavez than President Bush?

Sheehan: Um, yes, (giggle). You know, Hugo Chavez is not a dictator like you, like you introduced him. He's been democratically elected eight times.

O'Donnell: Saddam Hussein was democratically elected.

Sheehan: Yeah, hold on a second, though. He is not anti-American. He has helped the poor people of America. He has sent aid to New Orleans. He has sold heating oil to disadvantaged people in America, in the United States of America, at low cost. The people of his country love him.

Let's remember to buy Harry Belafonte a one-way ticket, too.

More Friends of Chavez.

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Related: Sweetness and Light catches AP using Code Pink as a photo source.

Previous:
A closer look at Code Pink
Code Pink's photoshop perversion
Talking back to Code Pink
Code Pink beats a hasty retreat
Dems gave Code Pink disrupters tickets
Code Pink "on the other side"
A challenge to Code Pink
Howard Dean's true colors

LIBERALS WORRIED ABOUT SUPREME COURT BALANCE

Ruth Marcus’ Washington Post column is nothing without her hyperventillating over the Supreme Court’s balance. Here’s what she’s written:

The interesting, and unsettling, aspect of this term is not how Kennedy voted but what it could have looked like just one liberal retirement away. It’s not simply that four justices appear to have a far-reaching view of presidential power (Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. didn’t participate in the military tribunals case at the high court, but as an appellate judge he had voted to uphold the administration’s position).

Actually, the Founding Fathers anticipated the need to wage war and codified into the Constitution extended presidential powers. That the courts and Congress have whittled those powers down doesn’t make it right.

What’s scary isn’t the fact that conservatives take the words of the Constitution seriously. I’d posit that what’s scary is that (a) 4 liberal idiots in black robes think that the Constitution means whatever they think it should mean and (b) that they can make law without going through the legislative process. I’d suggest that we’re more endangered by Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, Stevens and Souter essentially making this a government of, by and for the judiciary, not the people.

The Founding Fathers worried that one branch would get more powerful than the other two. That’s what’s happening now with the Supreme Court deciding that the right of private property should be rewritten without legislative debate (Kelo v. New London), the right to speak about politics without restraint should be abolished (the Court’s upholding of BCRA as not infringing on my First Amendment rights in the name of good government) & now the 4 idiots being joined by a power-hungry semi-conservative jurist saying that presidents don’t have the power to protect us from our enemies.

This is a court that could be a single vote away, if that, from crippling affirmative action; curtailing, if not abolishing, abortion rights; dramatically lowering the wall of separation between church and state; and limiting congressional authority under the Constitution’s commerce clause to protect the environment and enact other laws of national sweep.

Heaven forbid the justices from shrinking the abuse of the Commerce Clause to be a catchall for doing whatever the federal courts want to do. God forbid that the Justices re-establish Constitutional logic to the debate on the Establishment/Free Exercise clauses concerning the practice of religion. Here’s what the relevant section of the First Amendment says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

It sounds Ms. Marcus would prefer living in an America where people of faith wouldn’t be able to “freely exercise” their religious faith in public. Unfortunately for Ms. Marcus, that isn’t what the ruling would be if the justices used the clear translation of the Constitution.

President Bush or his Republican successor, if there is one, could soon have the chance to cement the impregnable court majority that has long eluded conservatives. By contrast, the election of a Democratic president in 2008 would probably merely halt the court’s steady drift rightward. Unless the vacancy comes from an unexpected quarter, the best a Democratic president could hope for is maintaining the current conservative tilt, and even that could be optimistic.

President Bush’s Republican successor will move the court rightward, appointing strict constructionists to the courts, thereby re-establishing Constitutional sanity to the high court’s rulings. That isn’t something to be feared. Rather, it’s something to be rejoiced over.

FREE FLOW OF ILLEGAL ALIENS ENDING AMERICA?

“Those who study our national illegal immigration crisis watch with knowing sadness as millions of Americans outraged over our porous borders eventually get to the obvious question: Why has the president of the United States refused to secure American borders?

Perhaps it is part of a larger plan.”

– D.A. King, Atlanta-Journal Constitution

As we enter the 4th of July, let us remember that the first responsibility of government is to protect its’ citizens from enemies foreign and domestic–not the Endowment for the Arts, not bridges that go no where, not tens of thousands of IRS folks trying to squeeze more money from hard working families. Yet for twenty years our government has had an “Open Border” policy with Mexico, to the detriment of our security, safety and economy. Ask the folks directly on the border about the invasion our Federal government refuses to stop.

Ask those trying to get government services on the phone and are asked to “hit 1″ for English, the businesses that pay for Workers Comp and lose bids, while their competitions hire illegal aliens, and pay nothing in mandated fees like Social Security, Workers Comp, etc, and get the bids.

We are at War, and government, from city councils to the States, to the Federal government are refusing to use the basic weapon–current laws. Until they do, including the impoundment of cars used by those with phony ID’s, no drivers licenses and no auto insurance, the War is being won by the invaders.

The North County Times today has a story about San Diego Fair goers complaining about the Mexican flag being flown at with the US and California flags at the entrance of the Fair. The Mexican flag is symbolic of the next step of the invasion, OUR governments recognizing the invaders as equal to honest U.S. citizens.

While the Federal government is not securing our borders, local government by failing to enforce laws already on the books is saying to those violating our laws that it is OK. American citizens violate laws and they get arrested and sent to jail. Illegal aliens violate laws and you will be punished with free education, free health care, workers protections, no need to pay taxes, drive whenever and wherever you want without licenses, use phony documents and we will give you vouchers for low cost housing, etc.

The 4ht of July is time for citizens to demand government enforce the laws. The Minutemen would not exist if your city council, Board of Supervisors and Legislators and Governor were doing their jobs.

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Steve Frank is the publisher of California Political News and Views and a Senior Contributor to CaliforniaConservative.org. He is also a consultant currently working on gambling issues and advising other consultants on policy and coalition building.

Read more of his work here or at his blog.

CONGRESS WILL OVERRIDE SUPREME COURT ON TRIBUNALS

Congress appears ready to overrule the Supreme Court and establish military tribunals for detainess in the war on terror, allowing for the most efficient process possible to determine the culpability of terrorists captured in the act. Senators from both parties have determined that the Supreme Court has forced them to act to keep al-Qaeda operatives from exploiting the civil court system:

The US Congress is ready to craft legislation to prosecute Guantanamo war-on-terror prisoners after the government's plan for military trials was rejected by the Supreme Court, top senators said.

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham told the Fox News Sunday television program that Congress could conceivably pass a new law allowing the government to try the prisoners by military commissions by September. ...

Democratic Senator Jack Reed told Fox News that the minority Democrats are likely to cooperate with Republicans and the White House to pass the legislation enabling detainee trials.

"This has to be a process where we understand and recognize that we have to have a legitimate procedure -- legitimate in the eyes of the court, legitimate in the eyes of the American people, that we can move quickly to try these individuals and do justice," Reed said.

"And I think that's something that will come together in a bipartisan basis, I hope, in a deliberate and quick fashion, and do that."

Let's hope that we can take Senator Reed at his word. The ruling from the Supreme Court that essentially grants terrorists Geneva Convention protections despite explicit disqualifications from it needs to get reversed as quickly as possible. The court's majority decision declared that the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) issued by Congress in 2001 somehow did not cover the establishment of military tribunals for unlawful combatants, which leaves Congress the opening to fill the gap.

I actually prefer the method that Justice Stevens explicitly left open to the Bush administration in his opinion: leave them detained until hostilities cease in the war on terror. Radical Islam does not leave many deterrents to its lunatic pawns. Death in combat or a summary execution suits them fine. Public trials give them the opportunity to exploit our civil justice system as platforms for their screeds, as Zacarias Moussaoui showed. However, the perpetual and anonymous detention offered by Stevens does give the terrorists the one situation they find most repellent -- and that could persuade at least a few of them that taking on the US holds nothing but a miserable stretch of decades in an iron cage, with no public outlet for their hatred.

Failing that, the military tribunals clearly give the US the most efficient system of handling these detainees. Terrorists captured on the battlefield or in conspiracies against us abroad do not have any rights to access our civil system, nor to invoke the normal issues of Miranda rights and revelations of intel techniques. Congress is making the right decision in explicitly filling the gap that the Supreme Court left in its decision.

THE BLABBERMOUTHS BACKPEDAL

By Michelle Malkin

NY Times ombudsman Byron Calame's belated defense of the Times' exposé of the monitoring of the SWIFT banking program contains a fascinating passage:

There was a significant question as to how secret the [monitoring of the SWIFT banking program] was after five years."Hundreds, if not thousands, of people know about this," [executive editor Bill] Keller said he was told by an official who talked to him on condition of anonymity.

Thousands of people may have known about the program before the Times blabbed about it? If a Times editor says so, it must be true!

Keller's claim goes a good bit further than the claim by Richard Clarke and Roger Cressey that terrorists already assumed their financial transactions were being monitored.

Calame neglects to note, of course, that Keller's claim contradicts both the tone and facts presented in the Times' initial coverage by reporters Eric Lichtblau and James Risen. Lichtblau and Rosen, you will recall, stated unequivocally that "the [monitoring of the Swift] banking program is a closely held secret..."

Yesterday's observations by See-Dubya in response to the Clarke-Cressey op-ed are even more apt today in light of Keller's comment. An excerpt:

The New York Times can’t have its cake and eat it, too. Will Keller, Times, and Lichtblau continue to insist that the program was both effective and secret, and the story was a major Pulitzer-worthy scoop? Or will they continue backpedaling?

If they want to try to weasel out of this, let’s see it right there on the corrections page: "Importance and Secrecy of SWIFT Monitoring Program Greatly Exaggerated". We might not believe them, but if they want to back away from the story, they should go all out.

Patterico has noticed a shift in tone at the LA Times as well.

Weasels.

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Allah breaks down Fox poll results.