Politics Blog

You can see the list of heroes and traitors here.

Some heroes who deserve your support in tough re-election battles in 2006 (click links to contribute):

Allen (R-WA)
Burns (R-MT)
Ben Nelson (D-NE)
Santorum (R-PA)
Talent (R-MO)

Traitors and agents of Mexico, whom we will never support in any way for any elected office ever:

Akaka (D-HI)
Baucus (D-MT)
Bayh (D-IN)
Bennett (R-UT)
Biden (D-DE)
Bingaman (D-NM)
Boxer (D-CA)
Brownback (R-KS)
Cantwell (D-WA)
Carper (D-DE)
Chafee (R-RI)
Clinton (D-NY)
Coleman (R-MN)
Collins (R-ME)
Conrad (D-ND)
Craig (R-ID)
Dayton (D-MN)
DeWine (R-OH)
Dodd (D-CT)
Domenici (R-NM)
Durbin (D-IL)
Feingold (D-WI)
Feinstein (D-CA)
Frist (R-TN)
Graham (R-SC)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hagel (R-NE)
Harkin (D-IA)
Inouye (D-HI)
Jeffords (I-VT)
Johnson (D-SD)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Kohl (D-WI)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Lieberman (D-CT)
Lincoln (D-AR)
Lugar (R-IN)
Martinez (R-FL)
McCain (R-AZ)
McConnell (R-KY)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Murray (D-WA)
Nelson (D-FL)
Obama (D-IL)
Pryor (D-AR)
Reed (D-RI)
Reid (D-NV)
Sarbanes (D-MD)
Schumer (D-NY)
Smith (R-OR)
Snowe (R-ME)
Specter (R-PA)
Stevens (R-AK)
Voinovich (R-OH)
Warner (R-VA)
Wyden (D-OR)

One senator on the traitors list who would make a good example for conservatives to defeat in 2006 is Mike DeWine (R-OH). Please do not contribute to, volunteer for, vote for, or otherwise support DeWine in any way.

And some of the 2008 presidential hopefuls on the list of traitors are: Brownback, Clinton, Feingold, Frist, Hagel, Kerry, McCain, and Obama.

I know very little about this. But it sounds interesting; most people would get about $100 from the federal government, after the abolition of a “luxury” tax on telephones dating back to 1898, from during the Spanish-American War. Could someone click Comments and enlighten us further?

Watch Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) commenting on the Quisling Senate’s amnesty bill. Then donate to his 2006 Senate campaign.

Watch Senator George Allen’s (R-VA) comments and donate to his 2006 Senate campaign.

Mickey Kaus:

P.S.: If the House GOPs now pass a watered-down enforcement-only bill (e.g., a fence or wall, employer sanctions, but no felony) wouldn’t that put a difficult choice to Democrats running in swing districts: Do they really want to explain, right before November, why they voted against reasonable enforcement measures? Whose ‘back would be to the wall’ then? … And are we sure such a bill would founder in the Senate? Would, say, Hillary really vote against it? DeWine? Frist? I don’t think so. …

P.P.S.: The concise, anti-Timesish Deborah Orin set out two interesting sub-contests in today’s Senate immigration-bill vote: a) Would it get a majority of all Republicans (so it couldn’t be portrayed, in the House, as a “Democratic bill")? and b) How would it do among those Republican senators up for reelection. … The answer is it lost among all Republicans by a non-trivial 32-23 margin. And it lost, 10-5, among Republicans up for reelection. … Among all senators up for reelection, however, it won by a 20-13 margin. … (The bill passed, with lots of Democratic support, 62-36. kf spin: That’s a solid starting base of 36 for the enforcement common-denominator!) …

WashTimes:

Liberal House Republicans are taking an increasingly tough stance on immigration reform and are more determined than ever to delete the portions of the Senate bill that grant citizenship rights to more than 10 million illegal aliens.

“I don’t want to see a bill come to the floor of the House that gives them a path to citizenship,” said Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut, one of the most liberal Republicans in Congress.

This is a change from three weeks ago, before Mr. Shays attended 18 community meetings in his district, where the questions invariably turned to immigration. At the first meeting, he told a group of constituents that he supported providing a path to citizenship to illegals. Not anymore.

“There were real questions about that,” Mr. Shays said yesterday. “There is not much tolerance for allowing people to become citizens who came here illegally.”

It’s the same reaction many House Republicans in moderate and liberal districts have had after hearing from angry constituents in recent weeks, said Rep. Thomas M. Davis III, the former chairman of the House Republican Campaign Committee who can cite encyclopedic knowledge of congressional districts off the top of his head.

“It is the hottest issue out there,” he said, referring to public reaction nationwide, including his own moderate district in Northern Virginia. “Everywhere I go, even the ethnic groups, everybody is talking about this.”

It was with much uneasiness, Mr. Davis said, that he voted for the House’s tough border-security bill last year. But since then, he said, he has been stunned by the overwhelming public support for the House approach to immigration reform.

How much is a US “Green Card” worth? After all, such a card allows one to:

1. Live and work permanently in the United States of America

2. Become a US citizen after a few years.

The Central-American country of Belize allows you to purchase citizenship for $25,000. Surely, a US Green Card is worth at least $100,000.

The Senate’s amnesty plan proposes to effectively give away at least 60 million such Green Cards. In effect, that’s about 60 million * 100,000 = $6 Trillion worth of Green Cards. (Yes, that’s Trillion with a T. It has twelve zeros: 6,000,000,000,000. It’s six thousand billions.)

Suppose the Senate decided to instead auction off those Green Cards on the world markets, we could almost completely wipe out our $8 trillion national debt. If we didn’t want to wipe out our debt, we could send every American man, woman, and child a check for $20,000.

Instead, the Senate is giving these Green Cards away to the 12-20 million low-skilled, under-educated, non-English-speaking, immigration-law-breaking, fraudsters, forgers, and perjurers euphemistically described as “undocumented workers.”

It’s a $6 trillion giveaway only to criminals.

That’s over ten times the size of the much-maligned Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit. However, unlike the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit, it’s not available to needy American citizens, only to proven foreign criminals.

Now that’s what I call Big Government!

Jeb Bush is as fervent a supporter of illegal immigration as his Quisling brother. Therefore he will never have my support for any elected office.

Nevertheless, illegal–immigration-opponent Kathryn Jean Lopez, at NRO, floated Jeb’s name for the presidency in 2008. The responses were predictable:

So I wrote a column just to test the waters (and because I buy the unfairness principle of shutting out the Jeb man) and, yeah, not too many are in the mood to consider ever considering such a thing. E-mails (other than expletive-ridden ones), look typically like:

You better get out and talk with the grass roots. I would prefer to see Hillary elected than vote for another Bush. After all if you are going to be betrayed and ignored by your elected officials it is much more emotionally acceptable to be betrayed and ignored by those you would expect it from. It is much more difficult to be betrayed and ignored by those you trusted and supported.

This about sums it up:

No conservative could vote for the immigration bill expected to come up in the U.S. Senate today. It is the worst bill ever considered by the Republican majority Congress.

NRO’s John O’Sullivan:

Beneath all these legislative deceptions and contortions, the politics of this bill are not hard to read. It is being pushed by an alliance of Big Business (cheap labor), the Democrats (cheap votes), the immigration lawyers (more business), and the White House (economic illiteracy plus moral preening) against the opposition of most Republicans in both House and Senate—and of most Americans. Yet if this legislation is passed, the Republicans will share the political blame for what the media will call a bi-partisan compromise—and they will suffer at the polls for a bill drawn up by Teddy Kennedy.

But a political party is not a suicide pact. Neither House nor Senate Republicans need follow George W. Bush—a lame lemming if ever there was one—over a cliff. Senate Republicans can mount a filibuster against the bill. And if that fails, House Republicans can refuse to go to conference on it and halt the bill that way.

They would be entirely justified. The net effect of this legislation is that in the next 20 years 66 million immigrants will “enter” the country. Most of them will be either illegals or “temporary” guest-workers who, in return for paying a small fine and modest back taxes assessed by themselves, will get first place in the line for U.S. residency, a green card (worth at least $100,000 on the world market), a social security entitlement of unknown size, and a early path to citizenship in anewly bicultural America.

Jonah Goldberg finally weighs in on the wall:

The U.S. Congress — the seat of American democracy — is surrounded by a giant wall, concrete barricades, armed guards and German shepherds. You need to pass through layers of security to enter the Capitol. Has this diminished American democracy? No. Have the rules of the Senate or the House changed? No. Has the Constitution been altered as a result? No. Are lawmakers less tolerant of each others’ views than they were before the walls went up? OK, maybe, but not because of the security outside.

In fact, except for it taking a little more time to get in and out of the Capitol, one would be hard-pressed to point to a significant change in the daily operations of our democratic system as a result of the “militarization” of Capitol security. You can play this game with universities, museums, hospitals, day care centers, many of our own homes and even churches and make the exact same point: Walls do not a prison make, nor do they magically “betray” all of the principles an institution represents. It’s only when you talk about putting a wall, or even some extra fencing, along the U.S. border that — abracadabra — walls crush all that we as a people stand for.

Don’t get me wrong, I can see the symbolism too. For years, I opposed a barrier between the United States and Mexico because of the symbolism. But this objection, while legitimate, isn’t sufficient.

It’s funny, even the most liberal advocates of “comprehensive” immigration reform — Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, et al. — insist they’re for “securing the border” in principle. It just seems they oppose it in practice.