Saturday, September 30, 2006

Ok You Got Your 9 Billion Dollar Fence, Now How About You Get US Some Real Immigration Reform?

Over a year, hundreds of protests, thousands of phone calls and e-mails, a gazillion promises, and all you guys can come up with is a fence??? A nine billion dollar fence???? Am I missing something? Did all that action over the last year not get through. What part of Immigration reform do you guys not understand?? How many of you guys own stock in Boeing?

Oh I see, maybe you're all too busy sending inappropriate emails to congressional pages.  They had a Republican House, Republican Senate and the President not only is a Republican but he had a plan even the democrats couldn't argue with, and you still accomplished NOTHING, NADA, ZIPPO ZILCH!!!!

You guys couldn't muster the courage to do the right thing.  Now you have the gall to ask us to return you? Morons, all of you.

Let me restate the problem. You have 12 Million people who are living here without anyone knowing where they are. They are indespensible to our economy especially agriculture and travel. They can't pay taxes so they use services and our cities collect nothing from them. Fire, ambulance, Health and Education budgets are streched thin.  
Employers who should pay taxes on these folks don't which is bad for those businesses that play by the rules.

Then there are the humanitarian reasons to act. Such as families being split apart, relatives being unable to attend the funerals or to the health of others because they can't leave or they won't be allowed back in. Again a lot of these people have become the fabric or our society.

Worse yet some of these 12 million are dangerous, and you don't know where they are.

But we have a fence!! I feel much better now. I mean, they can't get in, and maybe someday we won't be able to get out. Can't you just hear the soul of Ronald Reagan saying "Mr. Bush, tear down this wall" Nations that believe in Freedom do not build containing walls!!

I am sorry, but it is really time to vote all of your sorry rear ends out of Congress.

Congress really disgusts me lately.

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Violence & Gun Crime Increase, As Overall Crime Rate Drops

Story here

The US Justice Dept. announced that the overall crime rate has dropped to a 32 year low. However the report contained the bad news that violent crimes Homicides and Gun related crime has risen over last year, confirming antedotal evidence.

Criminal Justice experts blame the increase on the Bush administration backing off gun control and with deep cuts in federal crime fighting aid. The fall off in aid is directly attributable to the increase funds the administration is giving localities for more Homeland Security, especially aid to cities.

Saturday, September 09, 2006

Nancy Reagan Tries To Honor The Gipper... Right Medicine, Wrong Dose

I worked in three campaigns for President Ronald Reagan. I had the chance to meet him once in New Hampshire in the '80 campaign. I was already a Conservative when I worked for President Reagan. Coming of age under him, was however an unbelievable experience. His belief in our Nation and our way of life and our people was so very strong. He focused on what was right about our country. He was fearless. The First Lady was the perfect First Lady. She was elegant and well spoken. Most of all she was fiercely loyal to her husband, and she did him proud in public and in private. I wish President Reagan had stayed well till the end of his life. Our nation lost a tremendous Statesman when he quietly succumbed to Alzheimer's disease.

There is a tough campaign for senate going on in Virginia. One of President Reagan's former administration members (Former Secretary of the Navy Jim Webb) has changed party affiliation and is running against a Reagan loyalist Senator George Allen.

Webb has an old video of the late President praising Webb and his war record. Webb was a hero in Vietnam. He loved the Navy and he was very protective of it. He so loved the Navy he retired as Secretary of the Navy rather than allow others to dismantle it piece by piece.

Allen's campaign complained to, probably Ed Meese... (by far the one guy I didn't like around the President but he loved him so...) and Messe, as Mrs. Reagan's lawyer wrote to Webb saying that Mrs. Reagan opposed his use of the President Reagan's image to support a campaign of a democrat. He said it might even be illegal (it's not, but being wrong about legal issues was something Messe was good at.)

Some (like Allen) say that Webb abandoned the President. He has "no right" to use the images. I do not see it that way, but it doesn't matter. I don't know if President Reagan would support the Webb candidacy against one of his favorite senators. I do know that the President would never walk away from his praise of Webb's military service. If I had to guess, the President would have been out campaigning for the Republican candidate and what he stands for, while never denigrating the contribution Webb made to his country.

Mrs. Reagan, campaign for George Allen. Don't however continue to call on Webb to walk away from the President or his memories of him. I have no doubt that the image Webb plays of President Reagan praising his war contributions was one of, if not, the proudest days of Webb's life. He earned the praise President Reagan gave him, and he has a right to let others know of it. Your support of Allen is fine. Do it in a way that honors President Reagan's memory.

One more thing while I am thinking of it, Mrs. Reagan. Get a new lawyer, may be one who knows the law.

Monday, September 04, 2006

Rummy Still Doesn't Get It: Anti-Rumsfeld & His Iraqi Adventure Does Not Mean Anti-War On Terror

I love to study international relations when I can rip myself away from the 1000's of legal blog posts and the 15 or so legal magazines I read each week. On this blog, which I treat as my voice in the Blogshere, I still try to keep to the issues of law that face us everyday, with a major focus on Civil Rights and Criminal Justice.

I have assiduously stayed away from speaking about the War on Terror abroad or the War in Iraq. As most of you know, just as the doves destroyed the word liberal(forcing it to mean appeaser and spineless) in the 1960's and early 1970's, the neoconservative (almost al of them) hawks are about to drive the word "Conservative" over an embankment and to a fiery death.

In the 1960's, one could not be "liberal" and support our troops or our work in Viet Nam. The "Doves" took over the Democrat party and drove out most of those who were patriotic and supportive of our military. They called you a "traitor to the cause". They would routinely commit hari-kari and run unelectable doves against more moderate but liberal Democrat candidates in primaries. They would kill any chance that the primary winner would have a shot in the general election by pushing the moderate so far left that he was unelectable in a general election. They would rather lose the base of the movement as a whole then have anything less than a purity of mission.

Let's get something straight from the beginning. A Neo-con IS NOT A CONSERVATIVE. In fact we should not use the word conservative in speaking about them. These guys are the old moderate liberals who got mugged by the Doves. They spend like money is water and feather their own nests just like the democrat/liberals of old. Just like those guys they cannot tolerate when someone disagrees with them. They will not tolerate anything less than purity in their message.

So now comes Donald "I wish I had thought of an exit strategy" Rumsfeld bitching and moaning that real conservatives are abandoning the reservation on Iraq. If we are against the Iraqi War, we're coddling terrorists. Next thing you know he will accuse us of out right treason. According to this Washington Post article Rummy accuses us of "moral and intellectual confusion." That translates into those that oppose us are immoral and stupid.

I have a word for Rummy: You need to go, now.

Tell the President that you resign, and will not accept his refusal to accept your resignation. You sir are confused. Yes, we cannot abandon Iraq now. Admit however that you were wrong to go in there until you defined a clear mission and one that was based on the right reason to be there. There were no WMD's there. Saddam was a bastard. He was killing people and torturing them. These conditions could lead to a breeding ground for terror. IF we understood the reasons we were going there, maybe we would have defined the conditions better. Maybe we would have stopped you. Maybe you would have had some semblance of credibility. Maybe you would not have to hide behind false patriotism.

For a second, Rummy, admit you screwed the pooch. You mistakenly thought that the immorality of the Saddam regime would bring the people to us the way they loved Patton in Sicily. You expected them to bring you Saddam dead, naked, and hung upside down in the town square ala Mussolini. You attacked the wrong regime for the wrong reason. You continue to tell us that you are fighting terror there when your war imported terrorists into the country. IF you wanted to find terrorists you could have by strategically attacking Iran and Syria. Hell there were less terrorists in prewar Iraq than there is oil in Israel.

Your war in Iraq is costing us a ton of money, prestige, and effort, not to mention life.

Come on Donald, admit the mistakes now, You and your boy need some credibility with those of us that understand there were mistakes made at the highest levels. Come clean and the real conservatives will stick it out in Iraq to stabilize things. What will cease to happen is the "democracy" building BS you've been hurling at us. We will fund and fight wars that make us safer and let the rest alone for a day when the concepts of Democracy win the hearts and minds of the people and they are not forced to accept the concept of freedom at the point of a gun.

NO Donald, we are not immoral or confused. We get that Freedom and Democracy is something you have to want and earn. We understand that we can't leave, we just want you to know, that this mission needs to end when stability is reached. Fighting for freedom and democracy is someone else's fight, a Iraqi Hamilton or Jefferson perhaps, not some old neo-con from Washington DC.