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Bully Pulpit

The term "bully pulpit" stems from President Theodore Roosevelt's reference to the White House as a "bully pulpit," meaning a terrific platform from which to persuasively advocate an agenda. Roosevelt often used the word "bully" as an adjective meaning superb/wonderful. The Bully Pulpit features news, reasoned discourse, opinion and some humor.

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

RE: Gore: Bush is 'renegade rightwing extremist'

I guess Algore was worried we would forget what a moron he is.

Poor old Al must live in an alternate universe. That's the most charitable explanation for this bizarre statement. The others are that he is terminally stupid or completely insane. If Gore's public record is any indication, with the exception of his enviro-whack-job positions, he is probably slightly to the right of Bush. However, since Gore has been repeatedly proven to be an inveterate liar, it would be hard to tell exactly what he believes.

Dean Smith: Politics is Just Not His Game

Dean Smith is a great basketball icon who is very liberal in his politics. He certainly has a winning record on the basketball court, however, having his political support is definitely the political kiss of death.

Nathan Tabor

Wednesday Funnies... :-)

David Letterman: "Top Ways United States Automakers Can Increase Sales": Rig GPS screens to display Cinemax After Dark; Switch gas and brake pedals to make driving more exciting; Zero down! Zero interest! Zero payment until after the bird flu pandemic!; Cars come with monkey that keeps an eye on your blind spot; Bumpers that make comical "boing" sound; Find a way to make objects in mirror appear even closer; Fill airbags with delicious butterscotch pudding.

Jay Leno: [T]he capitol building Washington, DC was on lockdown because someone heard gunshots from the parking lot. When the capitol police heard this they all said the same thing—"Cheney!" ... Police conducted a room-by-room search of the Capitol Building today. And that's just what congressmen want to hear: a knock at the door, "It's the police." They were flushing bribe money. Ted Kennedy was out on the ledge naked. ... Hillary Clinton called for Americans to save gas by returning to the 55 mile per hour speed limit. I'm not going to believe she's serious about saving gas until I see her and Bill actually drive somewhere together in the same car. ... The highest gas prices in the nation are in San Diego at an average of $3.40 a gallon. This is especially tough on illegal immigrants. Do you know how hard it is to hide in the trunk of a hybrid car? ... Mexican President Vicente Fox was in the United States last week. He says he came here so he could speak directly to the Mexican people, one on one. ... He's in the U.S. for four days. Well, that's how it always starts. Four days, then three weeks, then four months. ... Former Enron founder Ken Lay and former CEO Jeffrey Skilling were found guilty in the Enron case. Ken Lay is so guilty I'm surprised people aren't calling him Congressman Ken Lay. ... They found a sunken Roman city off the coast of Egypt that is 2,000 years old. They believe it happened during the reign of Emperor Ray Nagin.

A Build-a-Protest Approach to Immigration

By Carl Hulse
The New York Times

WASHINGTON, May 30 —
Talk about constructive criticism.

Advocates of tougher border security have sent thousands of bricks to Senate and House offices in recent weeks to make a none-too-subtle point with lawmakers about where many of their constituents come down on emerging immigration bills.

Leaders of the campaign, which has delivered an estimated 10,000 bricks since it began in April, said they had hit on the idea as a way to emphasize the benefits of a fence along the border with Mexico.

In an age when professionally planned lobbying campaigns have long since overwhelmed spontaneous grass-roots pressure, organizers of the brick brigade said they also saw an opportunity to deliver a missive not easily discarded.

Gore: Bush is 'renegade rightwing extremist'

Al Gore has made his sharpest attack yet on the George Bush presidency, describing the current US administration as "a renegade band of rightwing extremists".

Oliver Burkeman and Jonathan Freedland
Guardian Unlimited

Source of Pollutants?

Fox News

Outdoor outfitters Timberland have long studied how to reduce carbon emissions in the manufacturing of their famous leather boots to be more environmentally friendly, but researchers discovered that most of those harmful gases weren't released during the manufacturing process.

As Timberland CEO Jeffrey Swartz tells The New York Times, "the vast majority of the greenhouse gases associated with manufacturing leather come from cows in the field." The company is currently researching ways to reduce bovine flatulence — including changing the livestock's feeding habits.

Quote of the day...

"Government machinery has been described as a marvelous labor saving device which enables ten men to do the work of one."

John Maynard Keynes

RE: [A]bstract [R]uritanian said...

[A]bstract [R]uritanian said...

I was placed into Special Services for expressing myself, not violently or in any way vulgar or offensive, but expressing myself through poems and drawings... Imagine a 5th grader showing off a drawing he made of a rabbit and a motorcycle. Then getting sent to a counselor, then a psychiatrist, then sitting in front of the board of Education and being sent to a school for the mentally ill.

I assume and hope that your scenario is rare. By the way, you didn't attend Stokes County Schools, did you?

As for the children/teens in Foster care, why does the state send them to a school with alleged delinquents?

Is that the case in NC? If so, good question.

While I'm generally against the idea of alternative schools, I support the idea of hiring instructors to train students 'bound' for alternative schools to take the GED within their own high schools. GED training is another way to help those saddled with the consequences of misfortunate life scenarios and/or life choices. If someone wants a high school diploma and not much else, then great. If not, then they should be able — and encouraged — to leave the public school system.

In establishing such a daytime, high-school GED course — run within each high-school for as many that are discipline problems — the responsibility of keeping kids in check is returned to the traditional school and the additional bureaucracy created by the existence of alternative schools is eliminated. Instead, education dollars are better spent on the system that is public education, not redirected to creating a school where all expectations are lower from day one.

Ann Coulter Quote

"I don't care what liberals think. I don't care that they're spineless suck-ups. Just don't insult my intelligence by telling me they're brave." — Ann Coulter

RE: Don't move school, says group of Stokes parents

"If you did nothing wrong, then why did you do things in secret?" asked Bill Hart,

Precisely.

who added that he supports leaving the alternative school separate from other school campuses.

And since 'alternative' schools exist, I agree. But I'm not a fan of the alternative school concept anyway. That's what private schools are for. If schools are truly 'public,' there's one school for everyone who can adapt, learn, and behave as a responsible human being. If you can't, tough luck — a public school can't help you.

Further, how can young adults with behavioral problems ever possibly learn something by exclusively hanging out with others with behavioral problems? Parents of children attending an alternative school should be able to take back their fair share of education tax dollars and figure out what to do about their child's education. The public school system should be done with it.

Don't move school, says group of Stokes parents

Protesters say school board failed to seek input

By Sherry Youngquist
Winston-Salem Journal

DANBURY


Parents fighting the moving of a Stokes County alternative school urged the school board last night to withdraw the plans and consider other options.

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Icing on the Poop Cake

Robert said...


In terms of cliches, I'll add one about tearing down the termite infested house instead of wrapping it in siding.


Obviously, I wholeheartedly agree that the institution is beyond salvage, but is it possible for it to be any other way? Isn't it the idea that is irreparable? Won't the end result always be nothing more than lipstick on a pig?


I'll have more specifics later.


This ought to be great. I can hardly wait.

RE: Bush signs Foxx bill

Hazard pay is a ridiculously small amount of money, but then again, these people don't do what they do for money.

It is, however a sign of just how degenerate our government has become when it takes special action to shield some of this least of rewards from the grasping clutches of the greedy, power-drunk elite.

Well done, and thank you, Virginia.

Calm is my middle name

Strother asks...


By the way, what exactly is hard work to you, Steve?


Framing houses with a hammer and nails, farming (in most cases), cattle and horse ranching, orthopedic surgery, masonry, raising children (don't even think of comparing that to teaching), cleaning houses, highway maintenance, being a fighter pilot or an astronaut, Marine Corps infantry.


What isn't besides teaching?


Software architecture, paralegal, writing for the entertainment industry, just to name a few.

Regarding hard lives, I don't think that these kids have much to do with their households being one-parent environments or the financial situations they were born into... hardly self-inflicted wounds for most of them.

Why does that have anything to do with their success as students? Besides, what is it about living in a one-parent household that makes it such a hardship? I spent most of my childhood in a single-parent home and now I have a college degree and make a six-figure income. That's what I meant when I said that "lots of people have hard lives." The self-inflicted wounds are the ones that will result in these kids being no different than their parents and continuing the legacy with their own.

The denizens of these cesspools make no effort to improve their lot through the "gift" of an education and the elite depend in this behavior to keep these people dependent and keep themselves in power. While it is, for the most part, a closed, self-sustaining system, it is so fragile that all it takes to break it is the will to be an individual with responsibility for one's self. Of course, the government-school crowd is so busy working toward the lowest common denominator, the only chance they'll ever find the solution is if they trip over it, and maybe not even then.

RE: RE:48 Urban Trailblazers: Teachers set out to help students in tough schools

Robert W. Mitchell, Jr. opines:

Home run, Steve. Your critique of the 48 Trailblazers article should be required reading for all "educators." What that article lacked was a few more self-congratulatory "pats on the back" and some additional cliches about children being our future.

News flash: The Vice-mayor of Collinstown is in the process of an intellectual & ideological transformation in how he views public education. I have always been more radical than my colleagues and have been suspicious of the "give us more money and we will educate better" crowd. Yet I am now comfortable calling for a total dismantling of our public schools. In terms of cliches, I'll add one about tearing down the termite infested house instead of wrapping it in siding. I'll have more specifics later.

RWM

More Embarrassing Education News

Shameful. That’s the only apt term to describe the state of North Carolina’s “accountability” system for public schools.

John Hood

Hell Is for Hasterts

By Jed Babbin

If Bill Clinton had done it, we'd be shouting for impeachment. When President Bush ordered the sequestration of documents seized from the office of Rep. William Jefferson (D-La), he was trying to calm outraged House Speaker Dennis Hastert. Hastert sided with the Democrats in demanding the return of evidence in a criminal investigation taken pursuant to a properly issued search warrant. It is only by the courage of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales that the Hastert-Bush effort to obstruct justice wasn't immediately successful. Gonzales threatened to disobey an order to return the papers and to resign -- loudly -- if so ordered.

Bush signs Foxx bill

Law lets service members put hazard pay into IRA, shields it from taxes

By Mary M. Shaffrey
JOURNAL WASHINGTON BUREAU

WASHINGTON

President Bush used the Memorial Day holiday to honor Americans serving in war zones by signing into law a bill that allows them to put their salaries into their individual retirement accounts.

The Heroes Earned Retirement Opportunities Act was sponsored by Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-5th. The new law, also known as the HERO Act, takes effect immediately. It changes a previous law that did not allow military personnel earning hazard pay to make contributions to their IRAs.
Kudos to Foxx for sponsoring this bill.

RE: RE: 48 Urban Trailblazers

Steve: Here's a news flash for you, teacher-lady: teaching ain't hard work and lots of people have hard lives. I expect you'd also be shocked to learn that most of the wounds are self-inflicted as well.

Now, now — calm down, Steve. By the way, what exactly is hard work to you, Steve? What isn't besides teaching?

Regarding hard lives, I don't think that these kids have much to do with their households being one-parent environments or the financial situations they were born into... hardly self-inflicted wounds for most of them.

But yeah, for the most part, this article is what it is.

RE:48 Urban Trailblazers: Teachers set out to help students in tough schools

Well, well, well. The Winston-Salem Journal reprinting an article on public education from the Charlotte Observer. This ought to be interesting, a veritable orgy of liberal self-congratulation.


Nothing, she says, prepared her for how hard this work would be. Nothing braced her for how hard her kids' lives are.


We sure didn't have to wait long for that. Here's a news flash for you, teacher-lady: teaching ain't hard work and lots of people have hard lives. I expect you'd also be shocked to learn that most of the wounds are self-inflicted as well.


Teach for America, a 16-year-old national project that is often compared to a Peace Corps for public schools, strives to overcome the educational obstacles that hinder poor students.


I hope I'm not the only person who appreciates the surreal quality of a situation in which our government-run schools have become third-world countries in need of a "peace corps."


As teachers from the first group move on, they will form an alumni network to advocate for public education, whether they are working in the field or pursuing other paths.


Translation: They are the future union reps and lobbyists. They spent a year or two in some urban sewer to gain their "Up The Down Staircase" cred so they can use it to browbeat reluctant pols into spending more money on government schools. Lots more money if they're any good.


The trailblazers have earned praise from principals and top administrators, who struggle to fill teaching posts in high-poverty schools.


Translation: A warm body is a warm body.


The young teachers have weathered a bruising two years. Their urban schools have been the target of judicial outrage and harsh political rhetoric.


The poor widdle fings. I'll bet it was nearly impossible to do all that "hard work" while politicians and judges were saying nasty things. Everyone knows, rhetoric can leave a bruise. I'll bet more than a few of these tender darlings had to go on disability for the rest of their lives just because some Congress-critter questioned whether their program was actually effective.


Pohl is among the successes. More than 80 percent of her students passed their state English exams last year.


Wow! Eighty percent! That means only two out of ten of them were functionally illiterate at the end of their freshman year in high school. What a breakthrough!


Her husband, Travis, works for clothing company American Eagle and agreed to follow her to Charlotte.


That's a nice touch. She's an archaeology major who teaches English and he works in a teenie-bopper mall clothing store. We're not talking about a pair of over-achievers here.


She learned that even the simplest task, such as getting out work sheets, requires patient coaching.


And let's not forget the awesome challenge of wiping their noses and taking them to the bathroom as well.


She developed tricks for keeping her class engaged. On Friday, students had to walk to her desk to get their two-page homework handout stapled. The movement keeps them alert, Pohl said, and the kids can't claim the popular "I never got the homework" excuse.


I don't even have to comment on that one. It is lamentably pathetic all by itself.

In fact the whole article is an exercise in pathos, but not the kind of pathos that these "news" outlets were going for. The pathetic nature of it is illustrated by two of North Carolina's three main outlets for leftist agit-prop spending time trumpeting the unremarkable achievements of an unremarkable teacher in a way intended to inflame the bleeding hearts of the army of simpletons who revere government schools as if they constitute some latter-day shrine. A shrine to what, I wonder?

Senate Leader Took Free Boxing Tickets

Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, who has criticized Republican ethics, accepted free ringside tickets to three professional boxing matches from Nevada officials who were trying to influence his federal legislation regulating the sport.

By JOHN SOLOMON
Associated Press Writer

Monday, May 29, 2006

3rd-party freedom lovers unite!

For five years, Republicans have been wondering what in the world is going on inside the minds of their leaders. To be sure, there were no shortage of treacherous stabs in the back even before the current president's father was asking the American people to read his lips, but those could be explained away as political strategies – however incompetent – and individual failings.

And the Republican leadership always found the grass roots willing to swallow such betrayals in the name of the long march toward power. Conservatives were able to tolerate much in the name of expanding the big tent and obtaining Republican majorities in the House, Senate and Supreme Court to provide a Republican president with what Ronald Reagan lacked, effective partnership across the three branches of federal government.

But Republicans have looked on, aghast, as the man they believed would be Reagan's heir instead turned out to be the illegitimate heir to Woodrow Wilson and Lyndon Baines Johnson. From his bizarre dabbles in Islamic theology to his enthusiastic embrace of activist, ever-expanding central government power, George W. Bush has sold out every Christian, every nationalist, every constitutionalist, every libertarian and every conservative in the Republican Party.


Vox Day

RE: GE invests $50m in 'green' China

Just out of curiosity, how much is GE investing in 'green' America? Is it their fair share?

Just out of curiosity, what constitutes GE's "fair share?" Who decides how much it is? Who defines "fair?" Is there some objective measure, or is it some arbitrary amount that increases until some elite entity "feels" like it is enough?

48 Urban Trailblazers: Teachers set out to help students in tough schools

By Ann Doss Helms for the Charlotte Observer:

Two years ago, Jen Pohl was one of 48 young pioneers who signed up to make a difference in some of Charlotte-Mecklenburg's highest-poverty, lowest-performing schools. Three didn't finish their two-year Teach for America stint. Many others will move on when school ends in June, picking up career paths they started before their teaching detour.
But Pohl, a Wisconsin archaeology major who teaches freshman English at West Mecklenburg High, is one of several who will stay. Nothing, she says, prepared her for how hard this work would be. Nothing braced her for how hard her kids' lives are.
She never guessed how much she would come to love them.

Colombia's Uribe wins second term

Honest poll: Does anyone think this election could change anything (over the longterm) for Colombia?

From BBC:

Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe has been re-elected in a landslide election victory, taking 62% of the vote, the country's electoral commission says. Mr Uribe, who changed the constitution so he could run for a second term, wins another four years in office.
Correspondents say his tough policies against drugs and militants paid off.
There was no major violence on election day, after huge numbers of security forces were deployed, and Farc rebels pledged not to interfere.
President George W Bush called Mr Uribe, who is Washington's main ally in Latin America, to congratulate him.

GE invests $50m in 'green' China

From BBC:

US industrial giant General Electric has struck a deal with the Chinese government to invest $50m (£27m) on developing green technologies... This made its plans a "good fit" with the Chinese government's aims as it modernises the economy, it added...
It will also train 2,500 managers and government officials in the country over the next five years. "Not only do I view China as a market but I view it as a centre of excellence for research," said chairman Jeff Immelt.


Just out of curiosity, how much is GE investing in 'green' America? Is it their fair share?

Friday, May 26, 2006

John Kerry Thanks Voters at Mean Bean Appearance

U.S. Senator John Kerry had a cup of Mean Bean coffee and spoke to an audience of about 30 people on May 20 in the downtown coffee shop's second-floor meeting space.
After delivering the commencement address at Kenyon College, Kerry visited Delaware, where he spoke for some 15 minutes about prescription drugs, health care, the war in Iraq, fair trade, gas prices, and other issues facing the U.S.
Ohio Wesleyan University professor of fine arts Cynthia Cetlin was checking out the Delaware Arts Festival when she saw the crowd forming at the Mean Bean's back door.
"And then I saw his head, because he's so tall," Cetlin says.

Were commencement comments our preview of coming attractions?

Steve's favorite editor, Linda Brinson, of the WSJ:

If anyone needs proof that presidential politicking never ends, consider this: Here we are, more than two years away from the next presidential election, yet colleges and universities have no trouble rounding up prospective candidates to be their commencement speakers.

RE: Democrat Deep-Freeze and GOP Brain-Lock

And now Bush has ordered the siezed records sealed for 45 days.

I guess the GOP leadership thought they hadn't yet alienated enough of their core constitutency over the immigration issue to insure a Democrat victory this Fall. Maybe Bush thought this would harm Hillary's chances at being President.

These people can't be that stupid. I almost have to suspect that the entire GOP leadership are double agents. Or, as Occam would suggest, the truth is what we all should already know: one party, two factions.

Roll Call Votes on Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006

Kudos to Burr & Dole for voting AGAINST this bill.

Bordering on fraud, part III

Some people are worried that amnesty will give illegal aliens the same rights that American citizens have. In reality, it will give the illegals more rights than the average American citizen.

Since most of the illegals are Mexican, that makes them a minority. Under affirmative action, combined with amnesty, they would have preferences in jobs and other benefits.

Those who set up their own businesses would be entitled to preferences in getting government contracts. Their children would be able to get into college ahead of the children of American citizens with better academic qualifications.


Thomas Sowell

Our Brave New World of Immigration

In the dark of these rural spring mornings, I see full vans of Mexican laborers speeding by my farmhouse on their way to the western side of California's San Joaquin Valley to do the backbreaking work of weeding cotton, thinning tree fruit and picking strawberries.

In the other direction, even earlier morning crews drive into town - industrious roofers, cement layers and framers heading to a nearby new housing tract. While most of us are still asleep, thousands of these hardworking young men and women in the American Southwest rise with the sun to provide the sort of unmatched labor at the sort of wages that their eager employers insist they cannot find among citizens.

But just when one thinks that illegal immigration is an efficient win-win way of providing excellent workers to needy businesses, there are also daily warnings that there is something terribly wrong with a system predicated on a cynical violation of the law.


Victor Davis Hanson

NYC Mayor Advocates U.S. Worker Database

Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg thrust himself into the national immigration debate Wednesday, advocating a plan that would establish a DNA or fingerprint database to track and verify all legal U.S. workers.

The mayor also said elements of the legislation moving through Congress are ridiculous and said lawmakers who want to deport all illegal immigrants are living in a "fantasy."

In an editorial for The Wall Street Journal and two nationally televised interviews, the mayor reiterated his long-standing belief that the 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States should be given the opportunity for citizenship, saying that deporting them is impossible and would devastate the economy.

Aides said Bloomberg believes his views are relevant because he has a rare perspective as a former businessman who ran a company for two decades before he became mayor, in charge of enforcing the laws in a city with an estimated half-million illegal immigrants. They said that the editorial was his idea and that CNN and Fox News approached him to discuss his views on the air.


Sara Kugler

Let me see if I have this straight. Deporting 12 million illegals is crazy, but creating a DNA database of 190 million American workers is sane and feasible. Where do these retarded morons come from? Bloomberg is also the same guy who said last week that one of the main reasons to keep illegals around is so that the golf courses will stay pretty.

Every time I read something like this, it makes me hope the revolution will be starting soon.

Thursday, May 25, 2006

The Price of Republican Gas

By David Hogberg & James Dellinger
The American Spectator

Consumers and politicians will have to learn about supply and demand if they want to cut the price of gas. Because a growing economy like ours won't reduce its demand for gas, the only real option is to increase supply. That makes drilling in ANWR one of the few good energy policy proposals before Congress. Sadly, few things are harder to get passed in Congress than good proposals.


I found this interesting:

Kingston's bill also increases to 10 percent the amount of ethanol that must be mixed with gasoline. That's a proposal that actually increases the cost of energy to consumers. Ethanol advocates like to say that a gallon of ethanol currently sells for about 30 cents less than a gallon of gasoline. What they don't admit is that it takes 1.5 gallons of ethanol to produce the same amount of energy as 1 gallon of gasoline. A car that gets 30 mpg on a gallon of gasoline will get 1/3 less gas mileage on a gallon of ethanol, or 20 mpg. Do you want to drive 300 miles? Then you will need to buy ten gallons of gasoline: At $3 dollars a gallon, it will cost you $30. But try that with ethanol in your tank and you will need to buy 15 gallons. At $2.70 a gallon, your cost to go 300 miles is $40.50. If consumers do the math, expect those new E85 vehicles to languish at dealer showrooms.

RE: The 'shamnesty' legislation

Steve opines: "Who wants to jump in here and tell me again why electing the Senate by popular vote is a good idea?"

I don't know if it's a good idea or bad...

Democrat Deep-Freeze and GOP Brain-Lock

William Jefferson's troubles are such a godsend to Republicans that they've promptly moved to squander their advantage.

Paul Chesser

The American Spectator

WIRE: Gore and his team were seen driving the 500 metres or so from hotel to the Cannes festival headquarters in several cars...

CANNES, France (Reuters) - A representative affiliated with "An Inconvenient Truth", a film about global warming involving former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, has stressed that the movie and Gore's tour to promote it are "carbon neutral".

Last week, Gore and his team were seen driving the 500 metres or so from a hotel to the Cannes festival headquarters in several cars. The representative said that arriving at events like photocalls and news conferences in cars was normal practice in Cannes. And Gore walked the shorter distance from another hotel to the festival for the movie's screening.

One Cheer for Temporary Tax Relief

Pardon me, and other taxpayers, for not expressing exuberant joy at the paltry, fleeting gifts the General Assembly seems poised to provide. Their leaders can and should do better.

John Hood

Carter Wins Second Coogler

By R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.
The American Spectator

WASHINGTON --
Facts are facts, and such is the degree of politicization in the republic today that when a political organization announces a literary prize the perspicacious among us have a pretty good idea who the winner will be. When the left-leaning New York Times Book Review announced on its cover that a survey of litterateurs had chosen the finest novel of the past 25 years, close students of that tribe knew before opening the magazine that the award had gone to Toni Morrison. Thus, you will not be surprised to hear that the conservative panel that annually awards the J. Gordon Coogler Award for the Worst Book of the Year has conferred the 2005 prize on Jimmy Carter. Jimmy published a book; he wins the Worst Book of the Year Award -- once again. This is not Jimmy's first Coogler. He has now won the award twice. No other literary impostor can make that claim.

Supreme Court: 9-0 is better than 5-4

The Supreme Court regularly has to choose between issuing narrow rulings and issuing broader ones.

Suppose, for instance, that an alleged enemy combatant, who is also an American citizen, argues that he has a right to a hearing before he can be held as a prisoner by the United States. A minimalist court would be inclined to rule on the combatant's particular claim without saying a word about the president's general power to wage war on terror, and it would remain silent about the rights of foreigners.

Or suppose that an elderly cancer patient is challenging a state ban on physician-assisted suicide. A minimalist court would focus on the specific facts of the case and the law in question and refuse to say anything about whether the Constitution provides a more general right to privacy that might encompass a right to commit suicide.

Or imagine that a rejected white applicant is challenging an affirmative-action program at a particular medical school. A minimalist court might strike down the specific program for some narrow, perceived flaw in its structure without saying whether affirmative action is generally permissible.


Cass R. Sunstein

So Roberts finds himself idealogically aligned with Sandra Day O'Connor. I don't want to be accused of throwing Roberts over after just one speech, though. To be fair, I'm not ready to say I smell a Souter just yet. But there is definitely an air of Kennedy in the air.

The author misrepresented Scalia's position, by the way. He was obviously trying to associate it with judicial activism in the minds of his readers. If a jurist is a strict constructionist, minimalism is a moot issue.

MEXICAN MAN, DISGUISED AS A CAR SEAT, BUSTED BY U.S. BORDER AGENTS


RE: RE: The 'shamnesty' legislation

Strother said...


If you don't want bees in your midst, put away the honey.


Yep, or as Fred Reed put it, "If you invite poor Mexicans, don't be surprised when you have poor Mexicans."

RE: The 'shamnesty' legislation

Unskilled immigrants depend more on government services than they pay in, making them a natural Democrat constituency. On the other side of the equation, Republicans are beholden to the big-business, country club lobby. Their need for cheap labor trumps the need for strong enforcement and border control.
Middle-class Americans will be bowed and broken under this burden being piled on their shoulders. Americans need to hold their elected representatives accountable on this vote. If your representative in the House or Senate is not on your side, kick them out of office.


In this scenario, those residing on opposite ends of the economic spectrum win and those in the middle lose. That's a 'black & white,' two-party political system for you — there will always be a shortage of great ideas, good intentions, and level heads.

Steve asks: Who wants to jump in here and tell me again why electing the Senate by popular vote is a good idea?

Not me... at least in this thread.

As I stated before, a tough crackdown on employers of illegal immigrants must happen if we are to solve this problem. If you don't want bees in your midst, put away the honey.

The 'shamnesty' legislation

Right now, the Senate is desperately trying to convince the American people that their immigration bill is something else — anything else — than what it is: a massive amnesty for all 15 million to 20 million illegal aliens without any meaningful enforcement provisions. This same open-borders crowd that has betrayed the American middle class for years is hoping to fool us again.
This "shamnesty" bill spells out the level of contempt the Senate has for middle-class Americans. This "comprehensive" bill includes:
  • In-state tuition for illegal aliens. Your kid has to pay full freight if they cross state lines, but the illegal alien who broke into the country doesn't.

  • All temporary guest workers have to be paid the prevailing wage. American citizens do not have to be paid prevailing wage.

  • All agricultural guest workers under this bill cannot be fired by their employers except for what the bill calls "just cause." However, American agricultural workers can be fired for any reason

  • Illegal aliens are made eligible for Social Security. Not only will they receive retirement benefits, but their children will receive survivor benefits should the parents pass away. This is at a time when we are trying to keep Social Security solvent for the next generation.


  • Employers of illegal aliens get amnesty, too. Employers would be exempt from civil and criminal tax and criminal liability under immigration law. God forbid we hold employers accountable for helping illegal aliens break the law and being the magnet that has drawn them here for years.

  • Taxpayer dollars to radical immigrant-rights groups so they can help illegal aliens adjust their status. Millions of your tax dollars will go to the same groups that organized those rallies where people who came here illegally waved foreign flags and thumbed their noses at our laws.


Dana Rohrabacher

Who wants to jump in here and tell me again why electing the Senate by popular vote is a good idea?

On bilingual ballots

"Of course not.'' That was Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' answer last Sunday on ABC's "This Week'' when asked whether he would favor prohibiting bilingual ballots.

"Of course not''? Did he mean, "This is not something about which decent people differ''?

To understand why millions of conservatives do not trust Washington to think clearly or act reasonably about immigration, consider bilingual ballots. These conservatives, already worried that both the rule of law and national identity are becoming attenuated because of illegal immigration, now have another worry: The federal government's chief law enforcement official might need a refresher course on federal law pertaining to legal immigrants.


George Will joins Virginia Foxx in pandering on English as the official language.

Bordering on fraud: Part II

Of all the insults to our intelligence in the current discussions of immigration legislation, the biggest insult is the claim that border control legislation and legislation on the illegal immigrants already in the country must go together.

Why? What will happen if they are done separately? And who will be worse off?

The claim that the two pieces of legislation must be passed at the same time has been repeated endlessly. But endless repetition is not a coherent argument.


Thomas Sowell

Cabbie cleared in ‘rape’ that never was

When a 15-year-old girl ran up to a cop May 8, screaming and claiming that a taxi driver had tried to rape her, the officer assumed the worst and police arrested the cabbie later that day.

But it turns out the girl made up the story to get out of paying the cab fare, police said, and all charges were dropped Tuesday against driver Oluyemi Otunba-Payne, a Nigerian immigrant and father of two who lives in Hamden.

"I was crying in the courthouse," said Otunba-Payne, 48, who has lived in the United States for 25 years. "I’m just happy this is all over."


Phil Helsel


While many reported rapes are legitimate, this is not the first time an alleged victim has been caught fabricating a sexual assault in Connecticut.


Less than 1 out of 5 rape reports are valid, according to the FBI Uniform Crime Report.

Duke women's lacrosse to wear 'innocent' sweatbands

In a show of solidarity with the Duke University's men's lacrosse team, members of the school's women's team plan to wear sweatbands with the word "Innocent" written on them.

The university canceled the rest of the season for the highly ranked men's team because of a woman's complaint she was sexually assaulted in March at a team party where she had been hired to perform as an exotic dancer.

The women's plan to wear sweatbands on their arms or legs was reported Wednesday by The Herald-Sun of Durham. The teams plays Northwestern in the NCAA semifinals Friday.

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Inconvenient Truths Indeed

"An Inconvenient Truth" is billed as the scariest movie you'll ever see. It may well be, but that's in part because it is not the most accurate depiction of the state of global warming science. The enormous uncertainties surrounding the global warming issue are conveniently missing in "An Inconvenient Truth."

Dr. Robert C. Balling Jr.
Arizona State University

Wednesday Funnies :-)

David Letterman: "Top Signs The Government Is Spying On You": Post office wall has several photos of you sleeping; Your houseplant occasionally sneezes; Domino's keeps delivering to unmarked van parked across the street; Birthday card from your mom has several words blacked out; You get nominated for "Outstanding Lead Performance in an NSA Surveillance Video"; Your dishwasher functions are "Wash," "Rinse" and "Record"; Local news only reporting things that happen in your living room; Every time you say goodbye on the phone, you hear a strange voice say, "Roger that, Chico."

Jay Leno: The Pentagon announced that Iraq's border is now 90% under control, which is pretty impressive when you realize that San Diego's border is only 20% under control. ... President Bush went to the border in Arizona. White House Spokesman Tony Snow said it was not a photo opportunity. Apparently Bush was just looking for some guys to do some landscaping around the White House. ... The Senate voted 63-34 to make English the official language of the United States. They say it's a largely symbolic amendment with no real effect. You know like the congressional ethics bill. ... When asked if they approve of the resolution, 75% of the people in Los Angeles said, "Si." ... A realtor in Ogden, Utah inspecting a townhouse found 70,000 empty beer cans left behind by the former tenant. I didn't know the Kennedy's had a place in Utah. ... Here's a shocking statistic—One in 136 Americans are currently behind bars. A more shocking statistic, one in three Kennedys are currently in a bar. ... Pat Robertson said this week that God told him that possibly a tsunami could hit the Pacific Northwest this year. I don't want to be disrespectful, but possibly? Like God's thinking "60/40." Pat, that wasn't God. You fell asleep in front of the Weather Channel.

Jeb Bush Approached About Running NFL

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) -- Florida Gov. Jeb Bush said he was privately approached about his interest in becoming the NFL's next commissioner.

Profile in Disgrace

By NRO Editorial Writers
National Review


Courage just got a little bit cheaper. That's the conclusion to be drawn from the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library's bestowal Monday of a Profile in Courage Award on Rep. John Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who made headlines last year by calling for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

A.C.L.U. May Block Criticism by Its Board

The American Civil Liberties Union is weighing new standards that would discourage its board members from publicly criticizing the organization's policies and internal administration.

"Where an individual director disagrees with a board position on matters of civil liberties policy, the director should refrain from publicly highlighting the fact of such disagreement," the committee that compiled the standards wrote in its proposals.

"Directors should remember that there is always a material prospect that public airing of the disagreement will affect the A.C.L.U. adversely in terms of public support and fund-raising," the proposals state.

Given the organization's longtime commitment to defending free speech, some former board members were shocked by the proposals.


Stephanie Strom

This is not all that surprising. The ACLU has its roots in the Socialist Worker's Party and the American Communist Party, neither of which are historically known for their tolerance of dissent.

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Bordering on fraud

The immigration bill before Congress has some of the most serious consequences for the future of this country. Yet it is not being discussed seriously by most politicians or most of the media. Instead, it is being discussed in a series of glib talking points that insult our intelligence.

Some of the most momentous consequences -- a major increase in the number of immigrants admitted legally -- are not even being discussed at all by those who wrote the Senate bill, though Senator Jeff Sessions has uncovered those provisions in the bill and brought them out into the light of day.

How many times have we heard that illegal aliens are taking "jobs that Americans won't do"? Just what specifically are those jobs?

Even in occupations where illegals are concentrated, such as agriculture, cleaning, construction, and food preparation, the great majority of the work is still being done by people who are not illegal aliens.


Thomas Sowell

Mandatory helmets? Let bikers make own choices

Since the federal government stopped threatening to withhold highway money from states that don't require headgear in 1995, a few states have repealed helmet laws. Don't look for North Carolina to join them.

The three legislators who have introduced bills to change the helmet law in the past 10 years have either left the General Assembly or will do so this year.

"I don't think it ever will pass here," said Rex Baker, a former state representative who sponsored at least three bills to repeal the mandatory helmet law for riders with six months of experience. "People just don't understand the issue."

Some bikers say that helmets can restrict their peripheral vision and hearing. Some also say that helmet laws infringe on their rights.

"We don't require medical insurance for people who ski or bungee jump," Baker said. "I just think it's unfair."

If you want to ride without a helmet, you should be able to do so. Government shouldn't dictate morality or common sense.

It's your brain. Use it or lose it.


Scott Sexton

The Myth of Functional Finance: Mises vs. Lerner

Those familiar with the history of twentieth 20th-century economic thought know of the dominance of "Keynesian economics" following the Second World War. While John Maynard Keynes typically receives credit for transforming economics, much postwar Keynesian economics was actually developed by his interpreters and followers.

Perhaps the single most important one of these followers was the Romanian born economist Abba P Lerner. Keynes's book The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money popularized the notion that market economies were prone to persistent unemployment. Keynes often receives credit for promoting government deficit spending as a means of combating unemployment. However, Abba Lerner developed this part of the Keynesian program.

Keynes did suggest the socialization of some investment by elected officials. This would solve the problem of unemployment within the framework of a democratic society. Yet Keynes did not work out the details of how this would work. Lerner (1943) proposed a program of "functional finance" to counteract the business cycle.


DW MacKenzie

Steyn's Song Of The Week

The Battle Hymn of the Republic
by Julia Ward Howe and William Steffe


In America, Memorial Day is just ahead – or Decoration Day, if you’re a real old-timer, a day for decorating the graves of the Civil War dead. The songs many of those soldiers marched to are still known today – “The Yellow Rose Of Texas”, “When Johnny Comes Marching Home”, “Dixie”. But this one belongs in a category all its own:


Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored…


In 1861, the United States had nothing that was recognized as a national anthem, and, given that they were now at war, it was thought they ought to find one – a song “that would inspire Americans to patriotism and military ardor”. A 13-member committee was appointed and on May 17th they invited submissions of appropriate anthems, the eventual winner to receive $500, or medal of equal value. By the end of July, they had a thousand submissions, including some from Europe, but nothing with what they felt was real feeling. It’s hard to write a patriotic song to order

Mark Steyn

Monday, May 22, 2006

Remembering the Gipper


"The freedom of thought and action we Americans enjoy today seems as natural as the air we breathe. But there is a danger we may take this freedom for granted. We must never forget it was bought for us at a great price. The brave and resourceful Americans whose sacrifices gained our Independence and preserved it for more than 200 years against formidable foes have set an example of unflinching loyalty to the ideal of liberty and justice for all."

Ronald Reagan

Keith Richards to Return to Rolling Stones Tour Next Month...

Breitbart.com

Keith Richards has returned to the United States after being treated for a head injury in New Zealand, his publicist said Monday.

"He is feeling great, happy to be home and looking forward to getting back on the road with the Rolling Stones next month," according to a statement from LD Communications in London.

Mexico restricts jobs to its native citizens

If Arnold Schwarzenegger had migrated to Mexico instead of the United States, he couldn't be a governor. If Argentina native Sergio Villanueva, a firefighter hero of the Sept. 11 attacks, had moved to Tecate instead of New York, he wouldn't have been allowed on the force.

Even as Mexico presses the United States to grant unrestricted citizenship to millions of undocumented Mexican migrants, its officials at times calling U.S. policies "xenophobic," Mexico puts daunting limitations on anyone born outside its territory.

In the United States, only two posts - the presidency and vice presidency - are reserved for the native born.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Sunday, May 21, 2006

RE: N.C., Virginia want toll booths on I-95

I like toll roads. They are a great way to finance roads as a user fee. With the improved technology in load cells and the ability to weigh vehicles while they are in motion, they should start charging differential tolls based on weight and number of axles.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin Wins Re-Election

Fox News

NEW ORLEANS —
Mayor Ray Nagin, whose shoot-from-the-hip style was both praised and scorned after Hurricane Katrina, narrowly won re-election over Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu on Saturday in the race to oversee one of the biggest rebuilding projects in U.S. history.

With 93 percent of precincts reporting, Nagin had 52.9 percent, or 56,068 votes, to Landrieu's 47.1 percent, or 49,884 votes.

RE: N.C., Virginia want toll booths on I-95

Tucker Miller asks: "Is that a legal option for any (& specifically our) county to pursue? I wouldn't be surprised at all if there is some sort of law preventing a county government from collecting a toll on a US highway."

Counties can't collect tolls... That is a state responsibility.

Saturday, May 20, 2006

Better Reading

I guess I'll get around to reading it some time or another.

I wouldn't bother. Seriously. It will be time you can't get back. Try Foucault's Pendulum. You'll have a much better time.

RE: RE: RE: REVIEW: DA VINCI CODE, THE

Silly boy, of course I read it, almost a year ago.

Okay, just checking. I haven't. I guess I'll get around to reading it some time or another.

RE: RE: REVIEW: DA VINCI CODE, THE

Have you even read the book?

Silly boy, of course I read it, almost a year ago. Also, since I generally give an author at least two chances, I also read The Digital Fortress. Both were utter garbage. Contrived plots, paper-thin characters, wooden dialog, and a writing style for which any middle school student would get a D- in creative writing.

If you want to read an actual novel by an actual author on the same subject, read Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum. Brown is a hack and whoever is encouraging him to publish should be ashamed of themselves.

Strother's Thought Of The Week

The only true difference between one man and another is whether he must — week after week and for whatever reason — mow his own lawn.

Toll Roads

Andy asks: What are your thoughts on toll roads???

I'm fine with them. I'm fully in favor of building new roads that are funded by toll revenue from the very beginning. I'd love a toll road that would allow you to avoid the perpetual mess on I-40 from W/S to the RDU airport. Just name the price — it's gotta be better than guessing what Greensboro, Durham, and Raleigh traffic will be like on any given day.

I don't know about making I-95 a toll road, though. I guess my problem with it is that taxpayers have been funding the upkeep of this existing road for many years, then suddenly, access to their investment in a means of transportation becomes restricted... not exactly fair, I think.

But, if 30 percent of the traffic on I-95 consists of commercial trucks, then why not let them help pay for the road's upkeep?

An idea: why not allow NC/VA residents to apply for a toll pass, where they won't have to pay the toll, leaving the toll to be paid for by non residents and commercial vehicles?

Bad Decision

Winston-Salem Journal

To be blunt, the Journal's reasons for removing Peanuts from the Journal's pages - explained in "So Long, Charlie Brown!" (May 14) - are stupid. Dumping Peanuts is like dumping the Beatles from radio play lists because they broke up and half the band is dead. It's like television stations ceasing to air reruns of The Andy Griffith Show because it's old.

Two full pages are devoted to comics each day, and you choose to dump Peanuts, a strip that continues to be relevant and loved by children and adults alike after more than 50 years of publication? Why not ax one of the other sub-par, unfunny, and/or otherwise forgettable strips, one of those that no one will remember after they cease to exist in a year or two?

This decision - as difficult or as flippant as it may have been for the Journal staff - means that many young newspaper readers will never really get to know Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus, Lucy, Sally, and the rest of the gang as we have. New art is not always better art, and an educated group of newspaper editors shouldn't have to be reminded of this fact.

STROTHER BULLINS

Winston-Salem

Stokes festival focuses on county's past

By Sherry Youngquist
Winston-Salem Journal

DANBURY

The Stokes County Historical Society will hold its annual festival today, and aside from celebrating the county's past, organizers also hope to drum up more interest among residents to donate items for the society's museum.

RE: REVIEW: DA VINCI CODE, THE

The book is universally acknowledged as being utterly worthless from any point of view and the movie is being widely panned as well. I can't share Faraci's optimistic outlook that The DaVinci Code could have been made into anything worthwhile. After all, you have to have something to start with. Puzo's Godfather was not much of a novel, but as bad as it was, it was literature in comparison to any of Brown's puerile nonsense.

Have you even read the book?

N.C., Virginia want toll booths on I-95

N.C. DOT estimates that it needs $4 billion for its share of repairs

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

RALEIGH

Legislators in North Carolina and Virginia hope to go into the toll-road business together.

A law passed by Virginia's legislature in April and legislation filed this week in Raleigh would set up a toll booth at the border on Interstate 95, charging each passing car $5.

The money raised through the Virginia-North Carolina Interstate Toll Road Compact would be split between the states and used for improvements to the highway. "We proposed this to get the discussion started about the concept," Sen. Clark Jenkins, D-Edgecombe, said Thursday.
What are your thoughts on toll roads???

Bill leaves House leery

Immigration change called tough subject

By Mary M. Shaffrey
Winston-Salem Journal

WASHINGTON

The Senate is expected to pass an immigration bill next week that will give illegal immigrants a chance at citizenship.

Some senators, including Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., say they think that provision will stop any progress toward the passage of an immigration bill this year.

"It will incorporate a degree of amnesty that I think is impossible to conference with the House of Representatives, so I don't think at the end of this process we're going to get a bill that is signed into law," he said.

RE: House Votes to Keep Offshore Drilling Ban

And yet, these politicians will complain the loudest when energy prices go up.

The problem is that residents of coastal states don't want to see this happening on their own coasts... just someone else's. Representatives of those states must keep that in mind if they're to truly represent the will of their state's residents.

And, as I stated before, there are silver linings to energy price increases. It can only encourage the development of new energy sources as well as encourage the practice of energy conservation among Americans too preoccupied to do so otherwise.

Friday, May 19, 2006

The Teacher Pay Myth and Other Budget Observations

By Terry Stoops
Carolina Journal


Gov. Mike Easley’s proposed budget for education starts from a number of faulty assumptions. Teacher pay, high school reform, and class-size reductions are among the spending items that grow in his budget plan despite a lack of evidence that they improve education in North Carolina.

Here are some of the facts behind the myths and some recommendations about how to use the money better.

Budget may drop 'temporary' taxes

Senators to include minimum-wage increase, pay raises in plan

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

RALEIGH

The N.C. Senate's state-budget proposal will likely offer about $225 million in tax cuts that would attempt to phase out long-standing "temporary" increases in sales and individual income taxes passed in 2001, according to chamber leaders yesterday...

The proposed spending plan that Democrats expect to make public next week probably also will raise the minimum wage and offer significant pay increases for teachers and other state employees as sought by Gov. Mike Easley.

House Votes to Keep Offshore Drilling Ban

By H. JOSEF HEBERT
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) --
Despite talk of an energy crisis and the need for independence from foreign oil, Congress seems to be in no mood to open more of the country's coastal waters to energy development.
And yet, these politicians will complain the loudest when energy prices go up.

Dem Leader Reid Calls Proposal To Make English The Official Language 'Racist'...

By Charles Hurt
The Washington Times


Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid called a proposal to make English the official language "racist" on the Senate floor yesterday.

"This amendment is racist. I think it's directed basically to people who speak Spanish," the Democrat said during the already tense debate over immigration reform.

Congressional Hearing Loss

Illegals granted Social Security

The Senate voted yesterday to allow illegal aliens to collect Social Security benefits based on past illegal employment -- even if the job was obtained through forged or stolen documents.

"There was a felony they were committing, and now they can't be prosecuted. That sounds like amnesty to me," said Sen. John Ensign, the Nevada Republican who offered the amendment yesterday to strip out those provisions of the immigration reform bill. "It just boggles the mind how people could be against this amendment."

Charles Hurt
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

REVIEW: DA VINCI CODE, THE

In the opening scene of The Da Vinci Code, an old man is gutshot by Paul Bettany, who has been covered in pancake makeup. The film then cuts to a lecture delivered by Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor of “religious symbology,” who is in France presenting what appears to be a version of the “What is This Picture” feature from Jack and Jill magazine (you know, the one where a super close-up of a weird shiny black object is revealed to be a button). As this lecture goes on the old man is dying offscreen, but not before he runs around the Louvre leaving anagrammatic messages written in the invisible ink pen he keeps on hand for any such occasion, as well as rehanging a giant framed painting he took off the wall while being chased by Bettany. Everything that follows in The Da Vinci Code is ludicrous, but nothing ever manages to top the image of this old man, bleeding profusely from his stomach, picking up and rehanging a huge painting. Except that perhaps the old man next strips naked, paints a pentagram on his own chest in his own blood and makes sure to die in a posture that will recall a Da Vinci drawing.

Devin Faraci

I picked this review because the author seemed to have no agenda regarding the controversial subject of the novel and the movie. I think the sound and fury over the book and the movie are probably wasted effort. The book is universally acknowledged as being utterly worthless from any point of view and the movie is being widely panned as well. I can't share Faraci's optimistic outlook that The DaVinci Code could have been made into anything worthwhile. After all, you have to have something to start with. Puzo's Godfather was not much of a novel, but as bad as it was, it was literature in comparison to any of Brown's puerile nonsense.

Thursday, May 18, 2006

RE: Steve's not playing well with others... :-)

Let me get this straight: Roberts gives one decision that you don't like, so now you want to throw him off a cliff.

Well, no, actually I said there were three of which I was aware, but I'll admit I haven't followed every decision. But what difference does that make? How many "oopsies" should I give him? Five? Ten? Considering that every utterance of the SCOTUS seems to be with us for life, I'm not inclined to be very forgiving. In the game of avoiding the mangling of our constitution, we get no do-overs.

Rehnquist was a good conservative justice...

No doubt, that's why I gave Nixon credit for him. His "conservative" positions led him to act as an originalist many times, but not always. Nowhere near as often as Thomas or even Scalia, though.

Unlike you, I'm not going to throw somebody overboard because I disagree with one decision.

Um...it was at least three. I already said that.

Other than this one, what were the other two decisions???

So you were paying attention. What was all that stuff about one decision? I don't remember the case names, but I can look them up for you. In both cases, Roberts ruled like a Republican and not an originalist. They were both politically tinged decisions as well. I see no difference between a justice who makes liberal political decisions on the bench and one who makes so-called conservative political decisions. Both are judicial activism.

RE: King Strother's Decrees On Immigration

Luckily for me, you were being sarcastic.

Only half sarcastic. At this point, I'm almost willing to concede that anything you come up with has to be brilliant in comparison to the nonsense the Senate is considering.

The kingdom will make every effort to secure its borders.

That's a good start. So maybe you can tell me why the dimwits in the Senate can't seem to grasp this one. I'm not even going to bother asking you about Bush since we would probably give the same answer on that question.

If you're here and an illegal immigrant, consider yourself lucky.

Oh! Barely out of the gate and he rides right of the track and into the weeds.

What does the term, rule of law mean to you, Strother? The entire rest of your post involves building up a huge bureaucracy around regulating and monitoring people who are breaking the law. You're not doing anything about the fact that they're breaking the law, you're creating a whole system around codification of their lawlessness. Can we assume that you would be similarly in favor of a government agency to regulate where and how often petty thieves could hold up liquor stores? Or how about something similar to Ann Coulter's example? Maybe we should start up the Federal Serial Killer Agency to make sure the government knows who they're killing and when they kill them.

Furthermore, you're not offering anything to disincent more illegals. You said secure the borders, but what does that mean? Signs? Harsh language? Mine fields? I assume you would concede that no method of securing the borders would be foolproof, so what do we do about the inevitable leakage?

But all of these decrees are better than the idea of mass deportation, which would most likely result in civil war-like uprisings in border state cities such as Los Angeles.

First of all, that's doubtful. We've already seen that just the threat of immigration enforcement has sent more than a few illegals scurrying for the border. And it depends on who is doing the enforcement and deportation. Remember, the President is only constitutionally prevented from using the military against citizens.

Steve's not playing well with others... :-)

Steve opines: "What was that Kool-aid about voting for Republicans to get originalists or even quasi-originalists on the court?"

Let me get this straight: Roberts gives one decision that you don't like, so now you want to throw him off a cliff. If you're going to get rid of everybody that disagrees with you on any one decision or issue, you are going to be alone in your quest to spread conservatism.

"The Republicans have a 4 in 11 record since Nixon (and I'm being extremely generous by giving Nixon credit for Rehnquist)."

Rehnquist was a good conservative justice... Kudos to Nixon for appointing him.

"I wonder how long the GOP will keep trying to pump that particular canard."

Other than the Harriet Myers pick, I've been pleased with Bush's judicial picks. Unlike you, I'm not going to throw somebody overboard because I disagree with one decision.

"Lest you think my developing problem with him has to do solely with him siding against Thomas and Scalia on this case, this is now the third decision that has reached my awareness in which Roberts took a distinctly non-originalist position."

Other than this one, what were the other two decisions???

Fans Commission Don Knotts Statue

Fox News

MOUNT AIRY, N.C. —
Two fans of the "The Andy Griffith Show" have commissioned a life-sized bronze statue of Barney Fife that they plan to donate to Mount Airy, N.C., the model for the show's fictional town of Mayberry.

Federal-style house stands tall in village

By Mary Giunca in today's WSJ:

Since 1978, the brick foundation sat in the empty lot near Old Salem's famous coffee pot like a ghostly footprint of the distant past.

In a town that values historical authenticity, open lots are preferred to historically inaccurate buildings, so museum officials were content to wait for the right person to come along and rebuild the house that was once there, said John Larson, the vice president of restoration for Old Salem Inc.

"It does take somebody who has a special passion for historic buildings to undertake a process like this," Larson said.

Last year, Stevie Cole, a builder from Danbury who has spent his career taking down old buildings and using salvaged building materials, some of which he then uses to put up new "old" buildings, began rebuilding the Cooper House on that empty lot. Cole is the owner of Steven Cole Builders Inc.

The two-story Federal-style house now rising on the site stops traffic on Main Street. At 4,000 square feet, the house is one of the largest in the restored village.

"You have to be someone like me to tackle this or you would go crazy," Cole said.
Mr. Cole's daughter, Autumn, was a good friend of mine in high school. How I wish I had her father's skills to take on such a challenging and rewarding physical and mental endeavor.

A Good Approach

From an editorial in today's Winston-Salem Journal:

The compassionate conservative is back.
In his speech on national immigration policy Monday night, President Bush was conservative in calling for securing the nation's southern border and compassionate in reminding Americans that we are a nation descended from immigrants and that tolerance is essential.

King Strother's Decrees On Immigration

Please note that this thread actually started with my commenting that Virginia Foxx seemed to be more concerned about making English the official language of the US than addressing feasible solutions to our illegal immigration problems.

From Steve's 'More Pandering' post from Tuesday:

I'm tired of playing defense. Let's hear your brilliant suggestions for solving the immigration problem, Strother. I mean you have no lack of negative opinions on the participation of those who are actually in the debate, you surely must have your own ideas on what to do. Let's hear them.

Okay, but I don't know about 'brilliant,' though. Luckily for me, you were being sarcastic. But you asked for it, so here goes:

If I were King of the United States, here would be a few of my decrees regarding our immigration problem. Please keep in mind that I am an entertainment industry writer, not a poly-sci expert or constitutional scholar. My backstory is that I became the king by rocking the nation — something like Jack Black would do in one of his films. Use your imagination. I have no idea how these decrees would be written up, BTW. Some member of my court would handle those minor details.

-The kingdom will make every effort to secure its borders. This will include increased border control, sophisticated new border surveillance equipment, and more physical barriers along its borders.

-If you're here and an illegal immigrant, consider yourself lucky. But you better get to work. Illegal immigrants over the age of 18 must produce proof of employment signed by their employer to the US government within four weeks of the implementation of this decree. Exceptions will only be made for mothers of children under the age of 5. Why 5? Because I'm the king and I said so.

-Employers of illegal immigrants must register all undocumented workers with the US government in the same amount of time.

-Both illegal immigrant employees and their employers must re-register and/or update this information every four weeks.

-If you are an illegal immigrant under the age of 18, you must be here in the US under the supervision of a parent or guardian who is working. You must also attend school or work.

-All illegal immigrants who participate in this program will wait their turn to apply for US citizenship. If they don't want to become US citizens, then they must stay employed to avoid deportation.

-The additional bureaucracy and increased law enforcement that this will necessitate will be exclusively paid for via revenue from taxes imposed on those employers who continue to employ illegal immigrants and the working illegals themselves. These new taxes will be in addition to their fair share of federal taxes. While working in the US, illegals will gain no social security or other such federal government-sponsored benefits.

-Ignoring my decrees can result in fines, prosecution, jail time, and/or deportation.

-I realize that there are a few potential loopholes in my decrees. Pointing those out can result in fines, prosecution, jail time, and/or deportation.

But all of these decrees are better than the idea of mass deportation, which would most likely result in civil war-like uprisings in border state cities such as Los Angeles.

Either that, or I'd simply inform the Duke of Texas, Duke of New Mexico, Duke of Arizona, and Duke of California that it's their problem and I'll tax them for the inconvenience their porous external borders have caused the kingdom.

How's that?

In all seriousness, though, taking away all the appeal of illegally entering the United States to work is really the only solution to this problem. To minimize illegal immigration, we must make living here unattractive to foreign workers with no visa and employing illegals uncomfortable for employers.

RE: RE: Playing Well With Others?

So Steve — I assume that you disagree with the decision in 'Jones v. Flowers'?

I think the SCOTUS should never have heard the case. It was a state matter. But since they did hear it, I am in agreement with Thomas in that the court has no standing to use the Constitution to mandate administrative measures for local governments. I think the position Roberts took is, like those with whom he agreed, purely political.

Arkes' reasoning on why the 'liberal' wing of the Court voted the way that they did works well for his article, but isn't necessarily the case.

Are you going to offer some evidence that Arkes is wrong, or did you just intend to cast aspersions without anything to support them?

So far, I have no problems with Roberts. He seems like a reasonable guy.

Of course you don't. Lest you think my developing problem with him has to do solely with him siding against Thomas and Scalia on this case, this is now the third decision that has reached my awareness in which Roberts took a distinctly non-originalist position.

RE: Playing Well With Others?

So Steve — I assume that you disagree with the decision in 'Jones v. Flowers'?

"For the liberals, the move was understandable: The Court had inflamed people in the country with the Kelo case on eminent domain. Here was a chance to show that the liberal wing was not really insensitive to the property rights of ordinary folk owning modest dwellings."

Arkes' reasoning on why the 'liberal' wing of the Court voted the way that they did works well for his article, but isn't necessarily the case.

So far, I have no problems with Roberts. He seems like a reasonable guy.

Playing Well With Others?

In the legends of the University of Chicago, the late, irrepressible Jason Aronson etched a memorable place with a dissertation that encompassed Louis Hartz and the Earl of Shaftsbury: “Hartz, Shaftsbury, and Marx: An Unsuitable Trio.” But just a couple of weeks ago, Aronson’s strange grouping was superseded by what could be called an Unsuitable or Implausible Quintet: Roberts, Stevens, Souter, Breyer, Ginsburg.

Hadley Arkes

It looks like Ann Coulter was right about Roberts. What was that Kool-aid about voting for Republicans to get originalists or even quasi-originalists on the court? The Republicans have a 4 in 11 record since Nixon (and I'm being extremely generous by giving Nixon credit for Rhenquist). I wonder how long the GOP will keep trying to pump that particular canard.

The biggest scandal

The worst thing said in the case involving rape charges against Duke University students was not said by either the prosecutor or the defense attorneys, or even by any of the accusers or the accused. It was said by a student at North Carolina Central University, a black institution attended by the stripper who made rape charges against Duke lacrosse players.

According to Newsweek, the young man at NCCU said that he wanted to see the Duke students prosecuted, "whether it happened or not. It would be justice for things that happened in the past."

This is the ugly attitude that is casting a cloud over this whole case. More important, this collective guilt and collective revenge attitude has for years been poisoning race relations in this country.


Thomas Sowell

Read my lips: no new amnesty

On the bright side, if President Bush's amnesty proposal for illegal immigrants ends up hurting Republicans and we lose Congress this November, maybe the Democrats will impeach him and we'll get Cheney as president.

At least Bush has dropped his infernal references to slacker Americans when talking about illegal immigrants. In his speech Monday night, instead of 47 mentions of "jobs Americans won't do," Bush referred only once to "jobs Americans are not doing" -- which I take it means other than border enforcement and intelligence-gathering at the CIA. For the record, I'll volunteer right now to clean other people's apartments if I don't have to pay taxes on what I earn.

Ann Coulter
May 17, 2006

Fencing proposal passes Senate

Citizenship-offer hurdle may trip any immigration reform

By Mary M. Shaffrey
Winston-Salem Journal

WASHINGTON

The U.S. Senate continued debate on an immigration-reform package yesterday, passing provisions that would give illegal immigrants a chance at citizenship, create 370 miles of fence along the border with Mexico, and bar convicted felons from being eligible for citizenship.

Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C, said last night that as result of the citizenship option - one he considers an offer of amnesty - he was not optimistic about being able to support the final version.

"It's not a piece of legislation that I would support voting for," Burr said.

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

The results for the Isakson Amendment

From Laura Ingraham:

THE VOTES ARE IN: The result for the Isakson Amendment "to prohibit the granting of legal status, or adjustment of current status, to any individual who enters or entered the United States in violation of Federal law unless the border security measures authorized under Title I and section 233 are fully completed and fully operational" is a big NO...and we're not surprised at all which senators voted against it... Also, be sure to make your voices heard on this issue by calling the Senate switchboard at (202) 224-3121.
Kudos to Burr & Dole for voting for the Isakson Amendment.

John Edwards Returns To NC To Support Minimum Wage

WSJS.com

Raleigh (Associated Press) --
Former vice presidential candidate John Edwards returned to North Carolina Monday and demanded that state lawmakers lend a hand to struggling workers. The former U.S. senator came to the Legislative Building to support an increase in the state's minimum wage. Edwards called poverty "the great moral issue of our day," and he's been traveling the nation to draw attention to it. North Carolina is among more than 25 states that abide by the federal minimum wage of five-dollars-15 cents an hour. The rate was last increased in 1997. State Representative Alma Adams has led a charge during the past decade to raise the minimum pay, proposing a bill this session to raise the minimum by a dollar. Governor Mike Easley advocates for an 85-cent increase in his budget released last week. Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, says he prefers a higher minimum wage that's tied to inflation.

TV ads aim at climate change

Exxon, GM, Ford behind questioning of global warming

BLOOMBERG NEWS

WASHINGTON

A public-policy group financed by oil company Exxon Mobil Corp. and automakers General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. will present a U.S. advertising campaign today that questions the science behind global-warming concerns.

The Top One-hundredth of One Percent

The fifth in a series of Washington Post editorials lauding the political reshuffling of income begins on the wrong foot. "The quest for ways to reduce inequality," the editors wrote, "begins with taxation. Unlike spending programs, redistribution through taxation is administratively simple."

But collecting taxes is not as easy as it sounds. And taxes don't redistribute income -- they just reduce income. Means-tested federal transfer payments account for little more than 10 percent of federal spending, and more taxes won't change that because the poor don't lobby or contribute to campaigns and rarely vote.

Alan Reynolds

Wednesday Funnies :-)

David Letterman: "Top Surprises in ABC's Bird Flu Movie": Thanks to sponsorship deal, flu is cured by delicious taste of Dr. Pepper; Humans attacked by pigeons with tire irons; 20% of population comes down with less dangerous "bird hiccups"; Every time someone says, "chicken," all the characters chug a beer; Every single person in the world ends up at General Hospital; The big villain? Larry Bird; Hilarious scene where the guy playing President Bush actually solves the problem; Sole survivors Michael Jackson and Rosie O'Donnell are forced to repopulate the earth.

Jay Leno: I signed up for a great new calling plan today—that "NSA Friends and Family" plan. For $100 a month, they listen to all my friends and family. ... President Bush says this secret plan is strictly targeting terrorists. Forgot terrorists, how about targeting telemarketers? Then we would go along with it. ... President Bush is proposing sending 6,000 National Guard troops to bolster patrols along the U.S.-Mexican border. Or as his calling it, "No Juan Left Behind." ... In his speech, he outlined a plan to start patrolling the U.S.-Mexican border using members of the National Guard. He said this will give us the most secure border in the world one weekend a month and two full weeks in the summer. ... This will replace our old method of border control: the honor system. ... With these gas prices, I got smart. I'm driving the new Patrick Kennedy hybrid car. It runs on sleeping pills and when you get on the highway it runs on alcohol. ... The president of Iran has written a letter to President Bush. Among other things, the Iranian president attacked Bush's policies, said democracy was a failure, and claimed America is hated all over the world. He ended the letter by calling America the "Great Satan," but other than that it was a nice letter. At least they're talking and I think that's important. ... Turns out, [though,] it's a chain letter. Now Bush now has to send to ten other world leaders. Or there's some kind of curse.

9/11, the Pentagon, and our borders

Sitting on my home office desk is one of my most treasured possessions. It's a silver medallion inscribed "United in Memory: September 11, 2001," with a proud American eagle on one side. On the other side, the memento depicts workers at the Pentagon saluting as they unfurl a large U.S. flag from the Pentagon rooftop.

The medal was given to me by Debra Burlingame, sister of Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame III, the pilot of American Airlines Flight 77. Jihadi hijackers who exploited our joke of an immigration system crashed the plane into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, while screaming "Allahu Akbar!" I look at the keepsake every day before I write to be reminded of this nation's strength, courage and perseverance.

On Tuesday, the Pentagon released video images of American Airlines Flight 77 crashing into the military headquarters building. The Defense Department released the images, recorded by a Pentagon security camera, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by Washington, D.C.-based Judicial Watch.

I know the White House didn't intend it, but the Pentagon 9/11 video release underscores why President Bush's push for a massive "guest worker"/enforcement-later approach to border security is such a betrayal of the memory of those who died in the attacks.

Michelle Malkin
May 17, 2006

Restoring liberty in America

The Foundation for Economic Education, located in Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y., celebrated its 60th anniversary on May 6, 2006. On that occasion, the Foundation held its third annual Adam Smith Award Dinner, with ABC-TV award-winning correspondent John Stossel as master of ceremonies.

I'm pleased to report that I was the recipient of this year's Adam Smith Award for Excellence in Free Market Education, but I'm even more pleased that my co-recipient was Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus. The award honors were bestowed by Foundation for Economic Education's President Richard Ebeling before an audience of more than 300 liberty-oriented Americans decked out in formal attire.

The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) was founded in 1946 by Leonard E. Read and is the oldest free-market organization in the United States. Its mission is to study, educate and advance the first principles of freedom, principles that Americans have increasingly abandoned and attacked for most of the 20th, and now the 21st, centuries. Those first principles are: individual liberty, the sanctity of private property, the rule of law, free markets with peaceable, voluntary exchange, and choice and responsibility over government coercion.


Walter Williams

This from Dr. Williams is why he is so passionate about freedom:


We Americans face an awesome challenge and responsibility because if liberty dies here, it's probably dead for all places and all times.

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

More Pandering

I’m ashamed to follow Steve off into the weeds and so far away from the original topic, so I vow to try harder to resist the temptation next time.

I guess this is your way of apologizing for engaging in that silly argument that blamed telephone companies for worsening the language assimilation problem by following government regulations. Apology accepted.

It’s her simplemindedness and/or her BS pandering to those that think making English the official language of the US will solve our immigration problems.

You seem to be kind of stuck on that line, Strother. There doesn't seem to be anyone but you offering a suggestion that denoting an official language will, by itself, solve anything.

I don’t want anyone pandering to me.

Sure you do. It's part of being a liberal Democrat. Pandering is the party of asses' specialty.

Not necessarily. Are they squatting? Have they forcibly overtaken the apartment buildings and homes where they live and the commercial properties where they run businesses?

What does that have to do with anything, Strother? You claim they are assimilating. You didn't bother to offer any evidence of that (and it doesn't look like you intend to, either). I'm telling you that a horde of illegal invaders who take up space in a foreign country and refuse to adopt the culture and society of the country they invaded are occupiers, not assimilated immigrants. That's a simple matter of understanding the language, Strother. The fact that they didn't use force (in most cases) to get here doesn't change the fact that they are not assimilating, they are occupying.

No, I think you’ll find that the vast majority of them are paying their way and being hired by willing employers.

I think not, Strother. All you need to do is talk to an emergency room nurse or a social worker from any government social services agency. That's kind of what I meant when I said I had seen figures that indicate they are net consumers.

That’s not assimilation. That’s invasion.

My point, exactly. I'm hoping you will figure that out eventually.

Where’d you get those numbers? Just wondering. Over half the country is in favor of mass deportations? Defined as what?

They are rounded off from a Fox News poll from a few weeks ago. Mass deportation means locating, detaining, and sending them back to Mexico (or wherever). I don't actually think that's necessary. I think a few widespread public examples would send most of them running for the border, but I doubt we'll ever know the truth of that.

To date, no one has offered any feasible plan to round up and ship off 12 million people without mass chaos.

That's not true, Strother. A number of people have offered several potential solutions. Just because you, George Bush, and all the other liberals in the Senate choose to ignore them doesn't mean they haven't been offered.

You know better than that.

Actually I don't, Strother. That seems to be a favorite debate tactic of liberal graduates of that fine institution of...uh...learning...uh...or something.

I'm tired of playing defense. Let's hear your brilliant suggestions for solving the immigration problem, Strother. I mean you have no lack of negative opinions on the participation of those who are actually in the debate, you surely must have your own ideas on what to do. Let's hear them.

Charges against Ric Flair dismissed

Charlotte.com

Prosecutors on Monday dismissed misdemeanor charges against professional wrestler Ric Flair, who'd been accused of assaulting another driver on Interstate 485 last year.

Charles Keller, a Mecklenburg courts spokesman, said the charges were dismissed because witnesses did not show up for court on Monday.

In November, Flair was accused of getting out of his vehicle on I-485, grabbing another driver by his neck and then kicking the door of the man's Toyota 4Runner.

Flair denied the allegations.

RE: RE: Back To The Point: Foxx Panders

I’m ashamed to follow Steve off into the weeds and so far away from the original topic, so I vow to try harder to resist the temptation next time.

Admit it, Strother, it's not Virginia's pandering that bothers you.

You’re right. It’s her simplemindedness and/or her BS pandering to those that think making English the official language of the US will solve our immigration problems.

It's the fact that she's a Republican and she isn't pandering to you.

I don’t want anyone pandering to me.

I can show you large demographic segments of the population where Mexican immigrants are collected together in which American culture and language is completely absent… That's not assimilation, that's occupation.

Not necessarily. Are they squatting? Have they forcibly overtaken the apartment buildings and homes where they live and the commercial properties where they run businesses? Are they forcing business owners to hire them? No, I think you’ll find that the vast majority of them are paying their way and being hired by willing employers.

You might as well say the Marines are being assimilated into Iraqi society.

That’s not assimilation. That’s invasion.

80% of the population wants the border controlled and 60% of us favor mass deportations and 70% of us favor more stringent requirements for assimilation of immigrants

Where’d you get those numbers? Just wondering. Over half the country is in favor of mass deportations? Defined as what?

As an aside, I find it funny that people insist mass deportations are the solution. To date, no one has offered any feasible plan to round up and ship off 12 million people without mass chaos.

Do they teach a course in "Naked Assertion as Rhetoric" up at North Stokes?

Ha. You know better than that.

RE: Back To The Point: Foxx Panders

It's good to be able to depend on a target-rich environment from Strother.

By definition - like it or not, Steve — assimilation is happening. It's a process.

So what is that? If one naked assertion doesn't work, try it again?

I can show you large demographic segments of the population where Mexican immigrants are collected together in which American culture and language is completely absent. You won't even have to leave Winston-Salem, Strother, you just have to climb down off that ivory tower. That's not assimilation, that's occupation. You might as well say the Marines are being assimilated into Iraqi society.

Sounds like your company is part of the problem. Businesses like yours are encouraging non-English speaking residents to take their sweet time in learning to speak the language of the American majority.

That's pretty typical Strother. Did you stop to consider that the telecomm industry is regulated second only to the power generation industry? Did you stop to consider that we have to provide these services because your precious government mandates it? You know, the same bureaucracy you liberals love so much that mandates thirty handicapped parking spaces in front of every convenience store and ingredient labels on canned milk.

But I guess it's okay to profit from them, though?

What does profit have to do with assimilation, Strother? Did you ever play that game, one of these things is not like the other, in grade school?

That's a real problem here - no one really wants illegal immigrants or the differences between 'them and us' to go away — our businesses are making too much money from them!

I knew it! It's all capitalism's fault. Those rotten capitalists and their evil profits, they are ruining America. But wait, I'm confused, Strother. How can it be that 80% of the population wants the border controlled and 60% of us favor mass deportations and 70% of us favor more stringent requirements for assimilation of immigrants, yet you offer that "no one" really wants the problem to go away. We are talking about 21st century Earth, and not some fantasyland you just made up, right? As for the profit part, Strother, illegal immigrants' contribution to GDP is miniscule. Economically they represent competition for the very lowest economic tier of employment and I have seen estimates that show they are net consumers once social services are factored in. Trust me, if all eleven or twelve million illegal immigrants went home tomorrow, the economic chaos all you Bush liberals keep predicting would be embarrassingly absent.

That happens when you work long enough in a society dominated by a different language, different influences, etc.: assimilation.

Did your friend mention, by any chance, that Mexico requires aliens to learn Spanish if they are going to stay? Did you read the Fred Reed column I posted a while back? For the record, Mexico's immigration policies actively discourage assimilation on just about every other count.

Again, language has nothing to do with our immigration problem.

I don't suppose you care to offer any supporting evidence for that, do you? Where did you learn this technique, Strother? Do they teach a course in "Naked Assertion as Rhetoric" up at North Stokes?

For one thing, it goes a long way toward identification. If you're here and you don't speak English, there is strong probable cause for you to come under scrutiny. And before you start whining about tourists and new arrivals, I'm talking about practical situations here, not exceptions.

Addressing and fixing the immigration problem will eventually patch any language barriers that may currently exist...

And how, exactly will that happen? Magic? And of what, in your mind, does addressing and fixing the problem consist? Controlling the borders? Exactly how does that overcome language barriers?

...that is, unless companies like Steve's keep up what they're doing.

Right, I'm sure my company will go out tomorrow and incur the wrath of the FCC and the accompanying multi-million dollar fines. Get real, Strother.

"Mexican immigrants" use "gutter-speak"? All of them? Careful — that statement borders on sounding elitist, racist, and ignorant.

Only in your mind, Strother. Maybe while we're at it we should address your English language skills because I didn't say all Mexican immigrants anywhere. I'll be more specific, though, without exception, every Mexican immigrant I have encountered in the last ten years speaks the same non-Spanish when conversing with other Mexican immigrants. It is gutter-speak, just as the garbage that gangbangers in South Central LA use is gutter-speak.

That teacher isn't very good, huh? I assume that he/she only speaks euro-Spanish: not very effective for the job of an American ESL teacher.

Not at all, Strother. She just taught English and Spanish in Guatemala and Costa Rica for years and is considered on of the best ESL teachers in the area. She speaks several Central American dialects as well as fluent Latin. No, she's not very good at all.

Admit it, Strother, it's not Virginia's pandering that bothers you. It's the fact that she's a Republican and she isn't pandering to you. She isn't spouting some nonsense about multiculturalism and how it will magically cure all that ails us. She's not treating illegal aliens as a special victim class in need of liberal largesse, preferably funded by snatching profits from the hands of evil and degenerate capitalists.

Back To The Point: Foxx Panders

(Sigh)

Let me begin by restating my original point: Foxx is just pandering to her silly base, not addressing the immigration problem. Okay, on to Steve's rant.

By definition — like it or not, Steve — assimilation is happening. It's a process.

Well, let's see, I work for one of the largest telephone companies in the United States. We spend millions of dollars every year on Spanish language recordings and customer service representatives.

Sounds like your company is part of the problem. Businesses like yours are encouraging non-English speaking residents to take their sweet time in learning to speak the language of the American majority. But I guess it's okay to profit from them, though? That's a real problem here — no one really wants illegal immigrants or the differences between 'them and us' to go away — our businesses are making too much money from them!

As an aside, a close friend of mine from college now lives in Mexico. He didn't speak a lick of Spanish before he moved there. He now speaks conversational Spanish very well. That happens when you work long enough in a society dominated by a different language, different influences, etc.: assimilation.

But so what? Again, language has nothing to do with our immigration problem. Going back to the point here, Foxx is just playing politics, not looking for solutions. Addressing and fixing the immigration problem will eventually patch any language barriers that may currently exist... that is, unless companies like Steve's keep up what they're doing.

But let's go a step further. I do speak Spanish. Not as well as I once did, I used to be conversationally fluent, but I expect I could pick it up again if I needed it. I didn't just speak Castillan (European) Spanish either. I could handle a fair amount of Mexican idiom. The gutter-speak that Mexican immigrants use is virtually incomprehensible to me.

"Mexican immigrants" use "gutter-speak"? All of them? Careful — that statement borders on sounding elitist, racist, and ignorant.

Furthermore, I know a teacher who gives ESL (English as a Second Language) courses who can only get about half of the immigrants' conversation.

That teacher isn't very good, huh? I assume that he/she only speaks euro-Spanish: not very effective for the job of an American ESL teacher.

Some fast-talking Brits from certain regions of England are pretty darn hard for me to understand, too. So who speaks and understands the 'right' English? But I digress.

Back when Virginia was in the NC Senate and she was pandering to the education blob, all you libs thought she was the greatest thing since sliced bread. Back when she was pandering to the hippies and homos up in Boone, she was an "enlightened" Republican who was what every liberal hoped every Republican would become. Now that she is serving a right-leaning district and making right-leaning statements, she's simpleminded. You guys don't even realize what a bunch of clueless hypocrites you are, do you?

'All you libs,' 'You guys,' etc.? No hypocrisy here. I've always thought Foxx was simpleminded. Nothing's changed for me.