THE U.S. IMMIGRATION DEBATE

I have just posted here some feisty comments from the Minutemen and below are some more comments on the same issue

The immigration question : "The recent immigration protests in Los Angeles have brought the issue to the forefront, provoking strong reactions from millions of Americans. The protesters' cause of open borders is not well served when they drape themselves in Mexican flags and chant slogans in Spanish. If anything, their protests underscore the Balkanization of America caused by widespread illegal immigration. How much longer can we maintain huge unassimilated subgroups within America, filled with millions of people who don't speak English or participate fully in American life?"

Immigration reform, risky business for Congress: "As a 26-year veteran of Congress, I am often asked to explain our system of government to members of foreign parliaments, college students and even high ranking members of our own federal civil service. There is one fundamental feature of our legislative process that I always highlight: it is much easier to defeat something in Congress than it is to pass major changes in law. In other words, the status quo prevails most of the time. A classic example is the current immigration law reform effort. I predict that Congress, after much huffing and puffing, will not pass any significant immigration legislation this year.

Borders and liberty: "Borders play a critical role in our lives. Some of the borders that matter to us are ones we establish ourselves: this is my house and property; that is your house and property. By choosing what is mine and using the legal system to mark it off from what is yours, I create a border. While not quite as invulnerable as suggested by the maxim 'A man's home is his castle,' my property gives me a firm border against you. Borders come from property rights and are essential to a free society."

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ELSEWHERE

Perhaps one should not gloat but one of Europe's proudest boasts seems to be on the verge of coming unstuck. The huge A380 airliner seems to have been swatted by smaller but superior Boeing products. It looks like the A380 will end up as the same huge boondoggle that the Concorde was. But the Europeans love paying taxes so blowing a couple of billion more won't bother them any. One can only hope that the A380 will not be as big a disaster as another "innovative" aircraft -- the the Comet airliner. See here and here for the A380 troubles.

Government goons murder puppies!: "In the course of researching paramilitary drug raids, I've found some pretty disturbing stuff. There was a case where a SWAT officer stepped on a baby's head while looking for drugs in a drop ceiling. There was one where an 11-year-old boy was shot at point-blank range. Police have broken down doors, screamed obscenities, and held innocent people at gunpoint only to discover that what they thought were marijuana plants were really sunflowers, hibiscus, ragweed, tomatoes, or elderberry bushes. (It's happened with all five.) Yet among hundreds of botched raids, the ones that get me most worked up are the ones where the SWAT officers shoot and kill the family dog."

Top half of US income earners see tax burdens grow: "As the annual tax filing deadline approaches, many public officials traditionally use the occasion to launch into a debate about the fairness of the nation tax laws. Policymakers who believe the federal income tax rewards the wealthy at the expense of the poor are likely to be shocked by the latest data from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and National Taxpayers Union Foundation (NTUF). IRS figures released late last year for Tax Year 2003 (for which returns were filed in 2004) show the richest Americans shoulder a disproportionate burden of the federal income tax, and the burden is getting heavier."

Grand jury to review actions of arrogant black: "A federal grand jury will soon begin hearing evidence about Rep. Cynthia McKinney's run-in with a Capitol Police officer, a lawyer familiar with the case said late Wednesday. The lawyer, who declined to be identified because of grand jury secrecy, confirmed that federal prosecutors had agreed to get involved in the case in which a black lawmaker is accused of striking a white officer after he tried to stop her from entering a House office building without going through a security checkpoint."

Meddling damn government again! "America's 70 million poker players say they aren't bluffing in their resistance to the latest congressional efforts to ban online casino gambling. To dramatize that determination, their leader, San Franciscan Michael Bolcerek -- president of the national Poker Players Alliance -- staged some unusual events on Capitol Hill on Tuesday. He brought three big-name professional poker stars to court the press, lobby members of Congress and attend an evening reception for members and their staffs at which a few hands of Texas Hold 'Em were probably played. Not for money, of course. Congress is considering legislation that seeks either to get banks to block customers' transactions with overseas Internet gambling sites or force Internet service providers to block access to poker Web sites. Poker players say the proposed bans attack nothing less than the American way of life."

Putting the cuckoo in our clocks "Shortly after April Fool's Day turned into today, we foolishly set our clocks forward for the annual launch of Daylight Savings Time (DST). Unless you show up an hour late for church, you probably won't think much about it. Thankfully, Congress is thinking about it for you. Not content to make a mess of just the federal budget, which is on pace to post a record $423 billion deficit this year, Congress has imposed chaos on our clocks. The pork-filled energy bill signed by President Bush last year will extend DST by about a month starting in 2007. Why? Congress thinks this little time trick reduces our 'addiction' to foreign oil and cuts electricity use. But the so-called evidence that DST accomplishes any such thing is as suspect as a clock that strikes 13." [I am pleased to say that the "Luddites" of Queensland where I live had a referendum on Daylight Saving and roundly rejected it. So we don't have it. Queenslanders don't like people messing with their clocks, however good it is in theory]

Laurence Simon has the latest Carnival of the Vanities.

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here). I also post several times a week on "Tongue-Tied". There is an archive of my "Tongue-Tied" posts here or here

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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