Fifteen years of an exemplary life in the U.S. only to get thrown into a detention center and left to die

this is so wrong...

He was 17 when he came to New York from Hong Kong in 1992 with his parents and younger sister, eyeing the skyline like any newcomer. Fifteen years later, Hiu Lui Ng was a New Yorker: a computer engineer with a job in the Empire State Building, a house in Queens, a wife who is a United States citizen and two American-born sons.

But when Mr. Ng, who had overstayed a visa years earlier, went to immigration headquarters in Manhattan last summer for his final interview for a green card, he was swept into immigration detention and shuttled through jails and detention centers in three New England states.

In April, Mr. Ng began complaining of excruciating back pain. By mid-July, he could no longer walk or stand. And last Wednesday, two days after his 34th birthday, he died in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in a Rhode Island hospital, his spine fractured and his body riddled with cancer that had gone undiagnosed and untreated for months.

On Tuesday, with an autopsy by the Rhode Island medical examiner under way, his lawyers demanded a criminal investigation in a letter to federal and state prosecutors in Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont, and the Department of Homeland Security, which runs the detention system.

detention watch network has put together this handy map...

Detention Map

Welcome to the world of immigration detention, where over 27,500 immigrants are detained on any given day across the country in a hodgepodge of federal detention facilities, county jails, and private for-profit prisons.

Are there immigrants detained near you?
Click on a state to zoom in; touch a dot and get more info.

The map includes contact information for:

• Facilities known to detain immigrants in removal proceedings (yellow dots on map)
• Immigration and Customs Enforcement district offices (black dots)
• Legal service organizations who provide representation or referrals to immigrants detained (blue dots)

just look at the number of yellow dots... just imagine how many detainees are collectively represented on this map... appalling...

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The deep shame of our treatment of illegal immigrants

notice: fair use violation, but too important not to post in full...

from today's nyt...

July 13, 2008

Editorial

The Shame of Postville, Iowa

Anyone who has doubts that this country is abusing and terrorizing undocumented immigrant workers should read an essay by Erik Camayd-Freixas, a professor and Spanish-language court interpreter who witnessed the aftermath of a huge immigration workplace raid at a meatpacking plant in Iowa.

The essay chillingly describes what Dr. Camayd-Freixas saw and heard as he translated for some of the nearly 400 undocumented workers who were seized by federal agents at the Agriprocessors kosher plant in Postville in May.

Under the old way of doing things, the workers, nearly all Guatemalans, would have been simply and swiftly deported. But in a twist of Dickensian cruelty, more than 260 were charged as serious criminals for using false Social Security numbers or residency papers, and most were sentenced to five months in prison.

What is worse, Dr. Camayd-Freixas wrote, is that the system was clearly rigged for the wholesale imposition of mass guilt. He said the court-appointed lawyers had little time in the raids’ hectic aftermath to meet with the workers, many of whom ended up waiving their rights and seemed not to understand the complicated charges against them.

Dr. Camayd-Freixas’s essay describes “the saddest procession I have ever witnessed, which the public would never see” — because cameras were forbidden.

“Driven single-file in groups of 10, shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles, chains dragging as they shuffled through, the slaughterhouse workers were brought in for arraignment, sat and listened through headsets to the interpreted initial appearance, before marching out again to be bused to different county jails, only to make room for the next row of 10.”

He wrote that they had waived their rights in hopes of being quickly deported, “since they had families to support back home.” He said that they did not understand the charges they faced, adding, “and, frankly, neither could I.”

No one is denying that the workers were on the wrong side of the law. But there is a profound difference between stealing people’s identities to rob them of money and property, and using false papers to merely get a job. It is a distinction that the Bush administration, goaded by immigration extremists, has willfully ignored. Deporting unauthorized workers is one thing; sending desperate breadwinners to prison, and their families deeper into poverty, is another.

Court interpreters are normally impartial participants and keep their opinions to themselves. But Dr. Camayd-Freixas, a professor of Spanish at Florida International University, said he was so offended by the cruelty of the prosecutions that he felt compelled to break his silence. “A line was crossed at Postville,” he wrote.

our so-called fairly-elected government has done nothing BUT cross lines for years and the shame of it all just keeps accumulating...

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"Papers, please" - getting people used to the idea of suprise law enforcement raids and "disappeared" people

news flash... it ain't just about immigration... first of all, note the first paragraph... that's right... it's now expanded to include identify theft and document fraud... you don't have the proper papers...? what a shame... it's off to the detention center for you... what's that you say...? your children are in daycare and there'll be no one to pick them up or care for them...? what a shame... it's off to the detention center for you...

Officials say more than 290 people have been arrested at Pilgrim's Pride poultry plants in five states on suspicion of identity theft, document fraud or immigration violations.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials announced the figures Wednesday, the day of the raids. Authorities say the raids were part of a long-term investigation. Pittsburg, Texas-based Pilgrim's Pride says it cooperated fully and faces no charges.

More than 100 people were arrested for immigration violations in both Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Moorefield, West Virginia.

In Mount Pleasant, Texas, 45 people were arrested for alleged false use of Social Security numbers.

In Live Oak, Florida, more than 25 people face administrative charges of immigration violations, and will also face identity theft or document fraud charges, officials say.

In Batesville, Arkansas, more than 20 were arrested on federal warrants for alleged document fraud or identity theft.

imagine the scenario... you're an employee of pilgrim's pride... the ice agents come swooping in, lock the place down, and start checking people off against a list... everyone has to produce identification... the person you've worked right next to for the past year, the one who invited your children to her son's birthday party, gets pulled out of line and taken away... you're distressed but also relieved that nothing happened to you...

just wait... your turn is coming...

the horror of the "disappeareds," a tactic pioneered and tested by the u.s. in latin america (see "los desaparecidos" and operation condor), is coming back home... i've posted on this many times before (see here), but it's important to realize that we are being slowly but surely led to an acceptance of such treachery in our very own country... make no mistake... it IS happening...!

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Posthumous citizenship for some of the 4000 dead in a war that was illegal in the first place

shameful...

The overall U.S. death toll in Iraq rose to 4,000 after four soldiers were killed in a roadside bombing in Baghdad, a grim milestone that is likely to fuel calls for the withdrawal of American forces as the war enters its sixth year.

to add to the boundless tragedy, we have this...

A young, ambitious immigrant from Guatemala who dreamed of becoming an architect. A Nigerian medic. A soldier from China who boasted he would one day become an American general. An Indian native whose headstone displays the first Khanda, emblem of the Sikh faith, to appear in Arlington National Cemetery.

These were among more than 100 foreign-born members of the U.S. military who earned American citizenship by dying in Iraq.

Jose Gutierrez was one of the first to fall, killed by friendly fire in the dust of Umm Qasr in the opening hours of the invasion.

[...]

And yet, his foster mother agonized as she accompanied his body back for burial in Guatemala City: Why did Jose have to die for America in order to truly belong?

[...]

Immigrant advocates have similar mixed feelings about military service. Non-citizens cannot become officers or serve in high-security jobs, they note, and yet the benefits of citizenship are regularly pitched by recruiters, and some recruitment programs specifically target colleges and high schools with predominantly Latino students.

"Immigrants are lured into service and then used as political pawns or cannon fodder," said Dan Kesselbrenner, executive director of the National Immigration Project, a program of the National Lawyers Guild. "It is sad thing to see people so desperate to get status in this country that they are prepared to die for it."

this is my country - let the most disadvantaged, the lowest rungs of the societal and income ladder, and often the most desperate go out and die for the benefit of the super-rich elites, and for what...? crumbs from their banquet table...

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T. Don Hutto, America's "family prison"

corrections corporation of america runs this delightful, resort-like facility just north of austin, texas...

Watch this short film on the T. Don Hutto "residential facility", the nation's for-profit family prison for non-criminal immigrant families. ... all » This prototype for privatized family detention is located just north of Austin, TX. As they get rich off our tax-dollars, corporations terrorize and traumatize families just trying to keep survive. A determined people stand in solidarity with the families inside Hutto and work to close this immoral prison.

(thanks to brasscheck tv...)

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A NYC business success built on the backs of low-wage illegal immigrants

fresh direct is an online, high-end, grocery company in nyc...

from the nyt...

The company has grown in five years from a dot-com dream to a $200 million business, and its Web site features “celebrity shopping lists” from quintessentially New York figures like Spike Lee, Edward I. Koch and Cynthia Nixon, a star of “Sex and the City.”

But now an eruption of low-tech troubles is drawing a spotlight to what lies behind the computer screen. Last week, the company abruptly lost more than 100 of the roughly 900 employees at its huge plant in Long Island City, Queens, including many of its most experienced workers, when they learned that federal officials planned to check their immigration status.

It is battling not one, but two unions that want to represent the workers, with the election to be held this weekend. City labor leaders and several elected officials rallied at City Hall on Friday to accuse the company and immigration authorities of trying to block the union drive.

And when Fresh Direct held a job fair this week, though hundreds of applicants lined up in the cold, many lost interest as soon as they learned about the low starting pay and low-temperature workplace: $7.85 an hour to pick and pack groceries at night, in 38-degree chill, often for more than eight hours at a stretch. “They said, ‘Dress as warm as you can,’” reported one disenchanted applicant, Joy Brewster, 22, as she emerged from a group job interview with a toss of her head. “I don’t think so. I’d be stiff as a board.”

Another applicant, Eibar Amaya, 47, an immigrant from Colombia who is now a United States citizen, gave his verdict in succinct, if imperfect English: “Pay too little, no good.”

a $200M business, catering to celebrities, and, no doubt, charging celebrity prices, pays $7.85 an hour for a night job, standing in the cold, in nyc, one of the most expensive cities in the country... just another fine story of fabled american entrepreneurial spirit...



told ya they weren't cheap...

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Kansas R's dumping abortion in favor of immigration (and the violence and hypocrisy that comes with it)

interesting...

from the la times...

[A]s the political season revs up, the executive director of the Kansas Republican Party has issued a stern warning to his fellow conservatives: Abortion is not a winning issue.

"This is not something that the Kansas GOP is going to go out and lead on," Christian Morgan said.

Morgan said that he and his party remain firmly opposed to abortion. Most Republican voters in Kansas feel the same, he said. But Morgan also believes that those voters are fed up with years of fruitless political and legal maneuvering aimed at driving abortion clinics out of business. They would much prefer to see an all-out focus on curbing illegal immigration or cutting taxes, he said.

In an e-mail rebuffing an antiabortion activist who asked for more GOP support, Morgan explained: "My job is to win elections. . . . Your agenda does not fit my agenda."

so, kansas r's are "fed up" with the "fruitless" campaign against abortion and its related violence, so they're choosing to put their money on the wedge issue of immigration and ITS violence instead, eh...? let's see how THAT'S working for them...

this is from the southern poverty law center in an introduction to a list of the more egregious physical and psychological violence waged against latinos in the past two and one-half years...

There's no doubt that the tone of the raging national debate over immigration is growing uglier by the day. Once limited to hard-core white supremacists and a handful of border-state extremists, vicious public denunciations of undocumented brown-skinned immigrants are increasingly common among supposedly mainstream anti-immigration activists, radio hosts and politicians. While their dehumanizing rhetoric typically stops short of openly sanctioning bloodshed, much of it implicitly encourages or even endorses violence by characterizing immigrants from Mexico and Central America as "invaders," "criminal aliens" and "cockroaches."

meanwhile, arguably one of the more vicious individuals to implicitly condone a violent response to immigration problems displays what has become the oh-so-predictable repub hypocrisy... ladies and gentlemen, i give you the odious tom tancredo...

from max blumenthal in alternet...

When Tancredo (presidential candidate and R-CO) hired a construction crew to transform his drab basement into a high-tech pleasure den in October 2001, however, he did not express concern that only two of its members spoke English. Nor did he bother to check the workers’ documentation to see if they were legal residents of the United States. Had Tancredo done so, he would have learned that most of the crew consisted of undocumented immigrants, or “criminal aliens” as he likes to call them. Instead, Tancredo paid the crew $60,000 for its labor and waited innocently for the completion of his elaborate entertainment complex.

During the renovation process, two illegal workers hired by Tancredo were alerted to his reputation for immigrant bashing. They went straight to the Denver Post to complain. Tancredo “doesn't want us here, but he'll take advantage of our sweat and our labor,” one of the workers complained to the Post on September 19, 2002. “It's just not right.”

The Post report momentarily threw Tancredo on the defensive. In a fiery speech soon after the story’s publication, Tancredo blamed his foibles on the INS. “I haven't the foggiest idea how many people I may have hired in the past as taxi drivers, as waiters, waitresses, home improvement people,” he boomed from the House floor. “I haven't the foggiest idea how many of those people may have been here illegally, and it is not my job to ask them.” Then defiance gave way to vitriol as the congressman dubbed undocumented immigrants, “the face of murder.”

Only days before the Post’s story appeared, Tancredo had personally reported an honor student profiled in the Denver Post to the INS because the 14-year-old was not a legal resident of the United States. The stunt forced the boy’s family to go into hiding.

now tell me that calling undocumented immigrants "the face of murder" isn't an implicit invitation to violence...

i've mentioned before that i had a one-degree of separation moment with tancredo when i was living in colorado in 2002... my friend, the vice consul at the mexican consulate in denver, was being seriously slimed by the vile tancredo for merely doing his job, helping his own country's citizens, one of whom was the honor student mentioned in the last paragraph of the excerpt above... i won't bore you with the details, but anyone who has followed tancredo's history of bile can easily fill in the blanks...

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Whoa! It looks like somebody forgot his tinfoil hat today!

ah, yes... what would monday be without tom tomorrow...?

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Tancredo won't run again

this is exceptionally good news... the three degrees of separation i experienced with him during my short sojourn in colorado in 2002 quite convinced me that he is one of the more hate-filled individuals i had ever run across... i simply could not get my head around the fact that he was actually representing ordinary citizens in the congress of the united states...

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We've created an environment of fear so intense that illegal immigrants are afraid to save themselves from fire?

great jumping jeebus on a ritz cracker...

Immigrants from south of the border, many illegal, provide the backbone of menial labor in San Diego, picking fruit, cleaning hotel rooms, sweeping walks and mowing lawns.

[...]

[F]our bodies were found in a burned area in southeastern San Diego County, a region known for intense illegal immigration.

[...]

Terri Trujillo, who helps the immigrants, checked on those in the canyons, urging them to leave, too, when she left her house in Rancho Peñasquitos ahead of the fires.

Ms. Trujillo and others who help the immigrants said they saw several out in the fields as the fires approached and ash fell on them. She said many were afraid to lose their jobs.

“There were Mercedeses and Jaguars pulling out, people evacuating, and the migrants were still working,” said Enrique Morones, who takes food and blankets to the immigrants’ camps. “It’s outrageous.”

Some of the illegal workers who sought help from the authorities were arrested and deported.

[...]

The Border Patrol also arrested scores of illegal immigrants made visible by the fires. Agent Fisher of the Border Patrol said 100 had been arrested since the fires started Sunday.

[...]

The American Civil Liberties Union said it had received reports that people had been denied help at shelters because they lacked proper identification. Officials have been checking identification to prevent people not affected by the fires from taking advantage of the free food, clothes and other services.

[...]

Wayne A. Cornelius, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego, who studies border questions, said that if the past was a guide there would be more friction over the fires and their effects on illegal immigrants.

“San Diego likes its illegal migrants as invisible as possible,” Mr. Cornelius said. “So whenever something happens that calls attention to their presence, it is fodder for the local anti-immigration forces.”

so much for a natural disaster bringing people closer together... why don't we just turn trained hunting dogs loose to go flush them out of the brush and chase them right into police wagons...?

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"ICE why did you take my mom? I want her back"

(see "oops" below...)

this is sad... it's also wrong...

Hundreds of Hispanics marched on Reno streets Wednesday in protest of a raid last week by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers at 11 McDonald's restaurants.

The crowd was filled with young people who skipped school and mothers pushing strollers.

Six-year-old Julio Rodriguez, a first-grader at Smithridge Elementary School, carried a sign that said: "ICE why did you take my mom? I want her back."



Other Hispanic and community leaders met at a different spot to talk about how to tame community tensions and formulate a plan to deal with the fallout of last week's raids, which led to the arrest of 54 illegal immigrants.

are they here to destroy the fabric of the united states...? no... they only want what all of us want - financial security and a better life...

What the Hispanics who have immigrated to Northern Nevada really want to do is work, said Erica Lopez of Reno.

"If it wasn't for us, they wouldn't eat," the 20-year-old said. "We make their food."

She shouted to the counter protesters, "You need us."

i've often said that if all the hispanics in this country, legal or otherwise, were to stop working at the exact same moment, the country would immediately have to shut down...

but here's the really tragic part...

Many young people in the crowd said they were concerned how the raids split up families and wanted to show their support. Some wore duct tape over their mouths -- to signify people they believe do not have a voice -- and handcuffs.



"That's pretty wrong that the raid destroyed the families," said Maritza Solis, a 13-year-old eighth-grader at Cold Springs Middle School. "We're only here to work, not to destroy the United States."

i've posted here before about my friend from mexico who, after three unsuccessful tries, managed to make it across the border to work construction with his brother in kansas, only to die in an automobile accident less than a year later, leaving a wife and daughter - my goddaughter - back in mexico without a husband or a father... these people are people, human beings, men and women who love and care for their families, not political pawns... this is absolutely not the way to handle the problem... meanwhile, mcdonald's business in the area takes a slight dip but will soon be back to business as usual... after all, the business of america is business...

[OOPS]

like a dummy, i forgot to cross-reference this post to the post i put up this past saturday about the immigration and customs enforcement office of detention and removal 2003-2012 strategy, titled ENDGAME [PDF], one of the more horrifying and orwellian documents i have ever run across...

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Tom DeLay and Zell Miller are both certifiable

ordinarily, i wouldn't give the teeniest, weeniest crap about what comes out of either tom delay's or zell miller's mouth, but these are two for the books...

flatulent idiocy number one...

"I contend [abortion] affects you in immigration," DeLay told the Washington-area [gathering of College Republicans]. "If we had those 40 million children that were killed over the last 30 years, we wouldn't need the illegal immigrants to fill the jobs that they are doing today. Think about it."

flatulent idiocy number two...

Former Georgia Democratic Senator Zell Miller gave a speech to an anti-abortion conference earlier in the year that linked abortion to illegal immigration. Miller also blamed abortion for other societal ills, such as the state of America's Social Security system and difficulty in recruiting soldiers for the Armed Forces.

the reason illegal immigration has been tolerated (and continues to be tolerated) is that it's a steady source of cheap labor for american business people who want to continue to keep profit margins and executive compensation soaring... it's the very same reason george bush was supporting the failed immigration bill, because it would have kept the labor supply flowing over our southern border...

even without those unborn children, there are more than enough bona-fide american citizens to fill all those jobs, but, since the pay is shit and the working conditions are shit, and it's impossible to keep body and soul together by working those jobs, they're left to the desperate folks who manage to make it across the border, usually leaving their families and all they've ever known behind for the chance to work for shit wages, which are still 3-4x more than they could earn back home...

as for social security, illegal immigrants are the best thing ever to happen to that program... many illegals register with a fake social security number so that they can be employed... all that money that goes in, they will never see again... this has provided a windfall to the social security fund in the billions...

delay and miller are both yapping, pandering fools who couldn't find their asses with both hands...

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Must See Interview With Ron Paul

This is an excellent interview, although a bit raw in it's presentation. Sort of like public access TV. However, I hope to see more of this kind of thing.
Lee Rogers talks with Ron Paul at Rogue Government.
Love him or hate him, Ron Paul has clearly defined opinions and even some good plans. He actually answers questions directly with no dodging.
He is dead on target about our constitutional crisis.
Very refreshing.
I think he is lame on the impeachment question in part 4.
Would I vote for him?
No.
Not because I disagree with him. I wouldn't vote for him because he is running as a Republican. As long as he participates in the two party machine, his ultimate loyalty to the people and the constitution are suspect.
I won't say anymore. Please watch the interview and give me some feedback.

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A sad, sad performance

as josh marshall points out, bush's on-camera performances are hitting new lows... watch his response to the defeat of the immigration bill...



i kept expecting someone to step forward, take his hand, and quietly lead him off the podium to a dark room where he can lie down and think things over in peace and quiet...

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"A system called 'democracy' now gives peasants something called 'the vote'”

newsweek's howard fineman on bush's suicide mission on immigration policy...

Though I’ve never heard him use the term, my guess is that George W. Bush sees himself as a hacendado, an estate owner in Old Mexico.

That would give him a sense of Southwestern noblesse, duty-bound not just to work “his” people, but to protect them as well.

His advisor, Carlo Rove, has explained that a system called “democracy” now gives peasants something called “the vote.” It would be shrewd, Rove said, for hacendados to grant their workers’ citizenship.

That’s the best explanation I have for why Bush is in the midst of what may be a suicide mission on immigration policy—embarrassing for him and ruinous for his party.

fineman nails it with the "us vs. them" thinking, but fails completely to point out just who has been pouring gasoline on that fire virtually every day since 9/11...

As always, conservatives, who thrive on alienation, are spoiling for a fight. Now they have found it. Among the branch of conservatism fixed on “Us v Them” thinking, the enemy for decades was Communism. After the fall of The Wall, the “neocons” found a replacement Them in jihadist Islam. The old America-Firsters—what we used to call “isolationists,” who distrust foreign commitments—now have a homeland Them, in the form of 12-20 million illegal immigrants, most from Mexico.

i would hope george would feel free to embark on as many of these "suicide missions" as he cares to... the sooner he succeeds, the better off the country and the rest of the world will be...

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A heartfelt tribute to someone I lost

when i read this article in today's nyt, it was like a kick to the stomach... my dear good friend, julian, whom i had met in mexico and who had honored me by making me the padrino to his daughter, was killed and his body returned to mexico precisely as the article states...


Gabriela Acevedo, at a memorial for her brother Héctor,
who was working illegally in Arkansas when he died in a
car crash with two other young men. His body, like those
of many Mexicans who die in the United States, was repatriated.

Last year, Mexican consulates across the United States recorded 10,622 shipments of bodies for burial back home, 7 percent more than in 2005 and 11 percent more than in 2004. The consulates, which do not track the immigration status of the deceased, spent $4 million in 2006 to help repatriate bodies to Mexico, up from $3.4 million in 2005.

julian tried three times to get over the border, each time paying money he couldn't afford to coyotes to smuggle him across... on the fourth try, he made it and joined his brother in kansas, working construction... in october 2004, he was killed in a car crash on a kansas highway... i miss him...

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This message paid for by the committee to keep all the others out.

mark fiore, one my my favorites, thanks to john at americablog and the sf chronicle online...



(click here to view)

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The White House resorts to blogging to save the immigration bill

well, well, well... just when you think you've seen EVERYTHING, along comes something like THIS......



thereisnospoon at daily kos, who pointed me to this interesting development, has a few thoughts of his own...

I never thought I would see the day when the White House would be so panicked at the derailment of a particular bill by its own base that it would feel the need to post about it on the front page of a conservative blog in its own name.

I also never thought I would see the day when a respected community blog would simply allow a White House official to post on its frontpage--not even a promoted article or quote from an email, mind, but an originally authored piece.

Finally, I never thought I would see the day that George Bush had to defend himself from Republicans on charges of letting terrorists into America unsupervised and uncontrolled.

i am waiting for the day when i can say i never thought i'd see the day when both the president and vice president resigned their offices in disgrace...

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I think Reid is already broke down.

Thanks to Erick at Redstate. Yes, I said Redstate.

Is Harry Reid Having A Mental Meltdown?
By Erick

This is from the Senate transcript of floor debate earlier. He gets the Attorney General's name wrong (you know, all hispanics all named Antonio) and he can't even get the name right for the second branch of government. Weird.

See below:

I HAVE A LOT TO SAY ABOUT THE FAILED ATTORNEY GENERALSHIP OF GONZALES BUT THIS IS NOT THE TIME TO DO THAT. I MAY NOT HAVE THAT OPPORTUNITY BECAUSE THE ONLY ISSUE THAT WOULD BE BEFORE THE SENATE IS A SIMPLE VOTE ON A MOTION TO PROCEED. IF THE MINORITY DOESN'T WISH TO PROCEED TO HAVE A VOTE OF CONFIDENCE ON HIM, IT WON'T HAPPEN. IF THERE WERE EVER AN OPPORTUNITY FOR A LEGISLATIVE BODY TO SPEAK ABOUT WHAT'S GOING ON IN THE ADMINISTRATIVE BRANCH OF GOVERNMENT, IT'S WITH WHAT'S NAPPING THAT JUSTICE DEPARTMENT. ALL YOU NEED TO DO IS READ THE NEWSPAPER TODAY TO FIND OUT WHAT HAS GONE ON IN THIS JUSTICE DEPARTMENT. SHOULD WE HAVE CONFIDENCE IN ANTONIO GONZALES? I DON'T THINK SO. BUT WE'RE ON IMMIGRATION. THIS IS A DAY FOR GETTING ALONG. I'M GOING TO DO THE BEST I CAN TO GET ALONG. I HOPE EVERYONE WILL DO THAT, CONTINUE TO WORK ON A BIPARTISAN BASIS TO MOVE FORWARD ON IMMIGRATION.

I smell a Big Rat. I bet my left..., well I just bet that there is a trade in the works. Dems lay off Gonzo if Repubs vote for a silly Immigration Reform Bill.
There is no excuse for letting Gonzo off the hook, unless he decides to roll on the big crooks.
Besides, the immigration bill assumes that everyone is an idiot and will behave as idiots. The new law assumes undocumented illegals will line up to pay huge fines and back taxes, rather than just continue on knowing existing laws aren't enforced. They may not have the education that the rest of us have, but that doesn't mean they're stupid. I understand they want to become legal, but the amount of money they would have to pay is prohibitive.
Here's an idea, make the employers pay fines and back taxes on the undocumented illegals they hired, then let those folks have a green card so they can get back to work.

The new law assumes big business will play by the rules of finding existing US residents for jobs first, then hire from a pool of guest workers. Employers know there is no way to monitor that system, so they likely won't play. They aren't that stupid, either. Besides, they want undocumented workers because it reduces their labor costs.
I don't even want to think about how much of our tax money was spent coming up with this bill.
All we really need to do is pass a law that anyone employed by anyone gets the same wage, benefit, taxes, fees, and worker protections under the law. No one can be exploited, citizen or not. Big Biz doesn't like that idea and so we get this foolishness they are debating in the Senate.
It would be even more insulting if Reid gives up Gonzo just to put this crazy bill through to law.
I think Erick may be correct, Harry is having a breakdown.
I think somebody should kick him in the ass to check and see.

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"This White House thinks its base is stupid." Now you know what it feels like, people.

the far-right, wingnut, ultra-conservative base wakes up to find out what the liberals and progressives have been subject to the past six and one-half years... and, of all people to point this out, peggy noonan, the crazed wsj op-ed writer...

The White House doesn't need its traditional supporters anymore, because its problems are way beyond being solved by the base. And the people in the administration don't even much like the base. Desperate straits have left them liberated, and they are acting out their disdain. Leading Democrats often think their base is slightly mad but at least their heart is in the right place. This White House thinks its base is stupid and that its heart is in the wrong place.

For almost three years, arguably longer, conservative Bush supporters have felt like sufferers of battered wife syndrome. You don't like endless gushing spending, the kind that assumes a high and unstoppable affluence will always exist, and the tax receipts will always flow in? Too bad! You don't like expanding governmental authority and power? Too bad. You think the war was wrong or is wrong? Too bad.

[...]

The president has taken to suggesting that opponents of his immigration bill are unpatriotic--they "don't want to do what's right for America." His ally Sen. Lindsey Graham has said, "We're gonna tell the bigots to shut up." On Fox last weekend he vowed to "push back." Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff suggested opponents would prefer illegal immigrants be killed; Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said those who oppose the bill want "mass deportation." Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson said those who oppose the bill are "anti-immigrant" and suggested they suffer from "rage" and "national chauvinism."

while ms. noonan may not have truly seen the light, she's at least screwed her head back on tight enough to be able to take some steps in that direction...

Now conservatives and Republicans are going to have to win back their party. They are going to have to break from those who have already broken from them. This will require courage, serious thinking and an ability to do what psychologists used to call letting go. This will be painful, but it's time. It's more than time.

the temptation is to indulge in schadenfreude... well, more than indulge, more like positively revel... but that would be to make light of the situation... bush and his criminal compadres have cynically wooed, used, and manipulated the conservative base, a base they have shown they don't even like or trust, and now the base is waking up, and it looks like the immigration bill is what finally tipped over the apple cart... too bad it took so long...

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