Colorado Gov. Bill Owens signed a tough package of immigration laws Monday that could force 1 million people receiving state and federal benefits to prove they are legal U.S. residents. To handle an expected avalanche of people seeking waivers so they can keep getting government benefits while they line up the documents they need, Owens designated 32 driver's license bureaus as places to apply and opened an office at the Capitol to process their requests. A waiver would extend the deadline for producing the required identification until March 1. The law requires government agencies to verify that adults older than 18 are entitled to the benefits.
Other bills included measures passed during a special session this month requiring employers to verify that they do not employ illegal immigrants before they can receive grants from the state Economic Development Commission. ''This legislation will make a positive difference in the future of Colorado,'' Owens said.
Under emergency rules adopted Monday, the state will grant temporary waivers to an estimated 4,000 people in nursing homes or people with chronic health problems and accept some other forms of ID. The federal government has barred the state from imposing stricter limits on food stamps and Medicaid, Owens said, adding that he believes the state should be allowed to make its own rules for those programs.
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REPORT FROM ZIMBABWE
Parliament re-opened on Tuesday this week but all attempts to watch the full event on state run TV were in vain. There was a power cut just a few minutes after the special repeat broadcast began and the night went dark and quiet - again.
Those few brief minutes however had been more than enough to raise eyebrows. A number of "cultural reforms" have been undertaken by Zimbabwe's parliament which now resembles a safari lodge. A stuffed leopard and two antelope heads hang on the walls and a leopard skin adorns the ceremonial chair used by Mr Mugabe. Two enormous elephant tusks now frame the Presidential chair and it was between these two great teeth that Mr Mugabe stood to address the House. Near him sat Mrs Mugabe on a high backed green leather chair which had been carefully placed on a striking zebra skin. Hardly had these images registered and before the speech began, the electricity went off.
The images of our leaders sitting amongst elephants and kudu, zebra and leopard are particularly ironic now as the country plunges back in time and people ravage the environment in order to survive. Our lavishly decorated safari parliament is about as far away from the reality of life in Zimbabwe as you can possibly imagine.
Every morning the sound in urban and rural Zimbabwe is that of wood chopping. All day every day you see lines of women walking with bundles of great long tree branches balanced on their heads and men with hand carts and wheel barrows piled high with newly chopped indigenous wood. All day, every day and in every direction you see smoke. Some is from urban householders cooking outside on open fires. More is from incessant uncontrolled fires streaming across the horizon, consuming everything in their path.
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A FUNERAL WE MIGHT SEE SOON
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ELSEWHERE
I like it!: "Palestinian protesters stormed the U.N. compound in Gaza City on Sunday during a protest against Israel's bombing of a building in southern Lebanon that killed around 60 people, witnesses and U.N. staff said. Hundreds of members of Islamic Jihad militant group, some throwing stones and others firing rounds from assault rifles, attacked the compound at the end of a rally, witnesses said. At least two people were wounded."
Warren's piece: "Every time neocon warmongers like me get exasperated by the Bush administration (and we've had increasingly good reasons for exasperation in the last year or so, I might add), someone like first-term Clinton secretary of state Warren Christopher pops up. Maybe 'pops up' isn't quite right, conveying as it does an implication of activity and even energy. So let's just say that Warren Christopher presented his credentials to the Washington Post op-ed page Friday, criticizing the Bush administration, more in sorrow than in anger. Bush, you see, had 'resisted all suggestions that the first order of business should be negotiation of an immediate cease-fire between the warring parties,' i.e., between the state of Israel and the terrorist group Hezbollah. Christopher's piece needs to be read to be believed. It needs to be read as an example of the fatuousness of liberal elite opinion about the world we live in."
Social network sites face US ban: "Children in the US could be banned from using social networking sites in schools and libraries by a new law. The Deleting Online Predators Act tries to limit the access paedophiles have to the networking sites which have become hugely popular with minors. The act has already been approved by a large majority in the House of Representatives. Critics say the act is too broad and could mean a huge number of websites are cut off from users."
Genes for brain size have now been discovered -- and they have a huge effect on IQ! How pesky for the Left. (HT Chris Brand)
I think most readers of this blog will agree that I am rather prone to speaking unpopular truths. I was therefore rather pleased to find that there was a John Rae of long ago who also got into hot water for doing that. See here. Ray or Rae is an old Celtic name.
For more postings, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. (Mirror sites here, here, here, here, here, here and here).
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"All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State." -- 19th century German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Hegel is the most influential philosopher of the Left -- inspiring Karl Marx, the American "Progressives" of the early 20th century and university socialists to this day.
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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