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John Fund on why more time is needed for comprehensive immigration reform:

... The new bill is set to pass with much less analysis in the Senate than the 1986 law, known as Simpson-Mazzoli, had. Senators did not even receive the bill draft until midnight Saturday. After a test vote scheduled for today, Majority Leader Harry Reid is planning a final vote on the bill this Thursday, only one week after the compromise was struck. Shouldn't senators have time to actually read the bill they're being asked to vote on?

Even a key supporter of the bill, Sen. Jon Kyl or Arizona, admitted to radio host Hugh Hewitt that "we don't have to rush the bill through the Senate in a week. . . . Hopefully, the majority leader would allow it to carry over beyond the Memorial Day recess so we could complete it."

... Why the rush? Because, to be blunt, the senators don't trust the American people to make sound judgments on such emotional issues as family reunification and national sovereignty.

This Des Moines Register poll shows Romney with a commanding lead in Iowa, and shows how in politics,  Money = Momentum:

“His success raising money seems to have aroused caucusgoers’ interest, prompting them to take a serious look at the candidate,” Selzer (the Pollster) said. “He’s helped by the top two qualifications Republican caucusgoers are looking for in a candidate — experience as a governor and as CEO.”

With so many Republican senators embracing the Kennedy immigration bill, it's going to take a monumental effort to slow the legislation down and defeat it.

Our chances improved greatly this week with the intellectual heft of Heritage declaring the the immigration reform is indeed amnesty -- something Americans are completely against.

Brian Darling writes "GOP Sellout":

Notwithstanding all you are going to hear to the contrary from President Bush, Sen. John McCain, and their new ideological partner, Sen. Ted Kennedy, Title VI of this bill is amnesty, plain and simple...

...In the name of bipartisanship, they have given away the farm to Ted Kennedy and the left wing of the Democrat party in the Senate. I can’t imagine any self-respecting conservative in America who would not hold this against McCain, Bush, and any other politician who supports this terrible idea.

I spent 11 years working in the Heritage Foundation building and I can't recall Heritage speaking so strongly against illegal immigration and amnesty proposals before.

Their efforts and influence on Capitol Hill are desperately needed in this fight.

Our very own Dennis Prager will be on the Fox News' 1/2 hour comedy hour this Sunday night.   "The Road to Surrender Commemorative Plate Series" will be on my Christmas wish list...  "assuming we're still around then."

h/t: allahpundit

  The most common and most powerful argument against comprehensive immigration reform involves the claim that providing illegals with a path to legalization amounts to rewarding bad behavior. If you reward bad behavior, doesn’t that always mean that you’ll get more of it?

This logic is unassailable, but the bi-partisan Senate bill makes a point of rewarding only good behavior. If an illegal immigrant comes forward, pays a fine for his illegal entry, registers with the government, gets verifiable ID, and goes through a background check, isn’t that a step in the right direction? The new system would only provide rewards – like the right to remain in the US – in return for such positive actions; without them, the immigrant would be subject to deportation.

Of course, sneaking across the border without authorization amounts to bad behavior – but the new bill devotes considerable resources to stopping such entries in the future. For those who have already crossed, who have already behaved badly, it provides a means to atone for your negative actions with positive steps – not automatic forgiveness. To earn full legal residency, you’d need to pay a total of $6,500 in fines and fees (per worker), wait for a minimum of eight years, learn English, pay back taxes, prove that you’re fully employed more than 90% of the time, and go back to your home country to apply for a visa. Then, after that, it would still take a minimum of five more years – a total of 13 years – for citizenship. This is not some “free pass,” that privileges rule breakers.

Do we want to encourage illegals to try to rectify their status – to come out of the shadows, play by the rules, pay all taxes due, learn English, and assimilate into our society? Or do we only want them to disappear – nursing the delusional fantasy that some 12 million human beings will somehow uproot themselves (in many cases after years of US residency) and return to their impoverished homelands simply because we want them to do so?

And speaking of rewarding good behavior, and punishing the bad: those courageous conservatives (Senators Kyl, Graham, Isakson and, yes, McCain) who have worked constructively and seriously on immigration reform deserve our support, not our rage, while those politicians and media figures who have demagogued this issue in a way that only makes it worse, in no way merit our encouragement.

The Democrats’ FY 2008 Budget Resolution, which was adopted yesterday, calls for a large increase in federal spending. If you compare the Democrat budget for discretionary spending to the President’s, the difference is roughly $23 billion. In other words, holding the line at the President’s lower spending level for discretionary spending, would mean a savings of $23 billion for taxpayers.

The Administration has already threatened to veto bills that spend more money than requested. House Republicans need to make sure that these vetoes can be sustained. And with $23 billion of taxpayer money at stake, this showdown may be the most consequential fight to restrain spending that will take place this year.

That is why Paul Ryan, Jeb Hensarling, Dave Weldon, and myself, are seeking signatures on a letter to the President stating that we will uphold his vetoes of spending bills that would contribute toward an overall spending level that exceeds the President’s request.

78 Members have so far signed this letter: Bachmann, Bachus, Barrett, Bartlett, Bilbray, Bishop (UT), Blackburn, Blunt, Boehner, Boozman, Boustany, Brady, Brown (SC), Burton, Buyer, Campbell, Cantor, Chabot, Conaway, David Davis, Mario Diaz-Balart, Doolittle, Dreier, Duncan, Fallin, Feeney, Flake, Garrett, Gingrey, Goode, Hensarling, Herger, Hoekstra, Hunter, Inglis, Issa, Johnson (TX), Jordan, King (NY), King (IA), Kingston, Kline, Lamborn, Lungren, Mack, Manzullo, Marchant, McCarthy (CA), McCotter, McHenry, Mica, Miller (CA), Musgrave, Myrick, Neugebauer, Nunes, Paul, Pearce, Pence, Pitts, Price (GA), Putnam, Rohrabacher, Roskam, Royce, Ryan, Sali, Sensenbrenner, Sessions, Schmidt, Shadegg, Smith (TX), Stearns, Tancredo, Walberg, Walden, Weldon, and Westmoreland.

146 votes are needed to sustain a veto. So we will keep working to get signatures until we have at least that many—right now we are slightly more than halfway there. Green Eyeshade Blog will update you to new signatures as they come in.

Hey, guys. I have to apologize again for not having a proper HamNation for you.

Katie's out of town for the week, so I had planned to clean up the audio on a video interview I did with J.R. Salzman, a wounded Iraq vet and blogger who talked to me about overcoming his injury, laboring back to a normal life, the cost of freedom, and the merits of fighting in Iraq. Good stuff, huh?

A helpful reader had volunteered to help me with the audio (thanks a million, David!), but we figured out, after much file-wrangling and sound-editing, that the quality was too shoddy to be helped, which saddens me because Salzman is more than worth listening to (much more than I usually am).  The unfortunate thing about writing/fliming/editing HamNation by myself is that, with my relatively limited skills, one technical bump in the road can throw off a week's worth of work.

This is, obviously, frustrating and personally and professionally embarrassing, as I'd like to have a good product for you every week. As I understand it, the company is working on a permanent solution to this problem, so I should have some help soon. Until then, Katie's back next week (and no longer a lowly intern, but full-time, baby!), so we should be able to handle things together for a few weeks until we get some help in here.

Thanks for your understanding, and sorry again.

Until then, I guess I could go all YouTubey and just rant about the immigration bill in front of my Mac's built-in camera without a script. I bet my boss would love that.

A few pundits here and there have expressed some shock at how upset the conservative Republican base is over this compromise bill.   Not us at Townhall.com -  We been seeing this for years.  Ever since President Bush announced his amnesty plan back on Jan. 7, 2004,  immigration has been the #1 issue for Townhall.com readers - without even a close runner-up.  

No other issue since we went online 12 years ago has touched the nerves of Townhall readers like this.   Sure there are other issues that matter to conservative readers - the right-to-life, government regulations and spending, culture and media issues, national security, etc but none approach the level of the immigration debate.

By my count, nearly 2,000 comments have been posted to various blog posts, news articles, and opeds in the last 24 hours or so.  A couple of individual posts pushed into the 200+ range.    I've only read about 200 of them but the interns we have here say they can't find more that a couple in favor of the immigration reform bill.

We want to know what you think of the Senate's compromise immigration reform bill.

Now is also the time to let your senators know how you feel about the compromise -- its amnesty provision, the cost on social security, pathways to legal status and citizenship, and national security implications.

The next few days are a crucial moment in this debate.  Decisions on how fast to ram this bill through the process will be made this weekend.  Decisions whether to let Senators have time to read the 1,000 page bill will be made this weekend.   Senators sitting on the fence will be forming their opinions this weekend and Senators who have already signed on to the bill have a couple of days to ponder their decision in light of the grassroots reaction. 

The Senate switchboard is 202-225-3121.  Always be polite but let them know where you stand.

Townhall.com wants to know where you stand on this important issue. Join the debate by posting your comments below.

Greetings from NYC, where several of us are attending the Personal Democracy Forum's conference. I attended this same conference in '05 and was, perhaps, the only conservative in the audience (okay, maybe there were 4 of us). The good news is that times have changed. I'm happy to report that I keep bumping into conservatives who are attending for the first time. This is very good news for the state of conservatives and technology.

My recent debate with Rob Bluey (over online activism vs. punditry) has also been popular. I've had several folks tell me they have enjoyed the debate. Granted, the only people in the world who are interested in this topic may well be attending this little conclave ...

Lastly, I just wanted to comment briefly on the Immigration bill ...

First, I don't buy the argument that McCain's campaign is over because of this. For one thing, he has too much of an institutional advantage to crumble over something like this. For another thing, pundits keep mistakenly predicting his demise. And besides, whatever your reason for disliking McCain is -- you can probably make the same case against all of his opponents. In other words, there is no clear contrast. Rudy, Romney, and Thompson aren't 100 percent pure on any of the issues (neither is George W. Bush, whom conservatives supported, twice).

Still, I think the fact that McCain is a sitting U.S. Senator is a major problem. Regardless of where Romney, Rudy, or Thompson stand on the issues, the fact is, they aren't going to name any bills Romney - Kennedy -- or Rudy-Feingold.

There is a reason that Senators lose and Governors win. One of the reasons is that the Senate is a place where things are compromised. You've got to get a "buy in" to get things done. McCain would probably argue that this bill isn't perfect, but that it is an improvement. Well, conservative primary voters don't want an improvement or compromise -- they want things fixed.

If you're John McCain, I can't imagine how having your picture taken with Ted Kennedy and Arlen Specter helps your chances in a Primary. Being a Senator is no way to campaign for President ...

Factcheck.org has posted their summary of the second GOP debate:

Claims, facts and figures flew at the second GOP presidential debate of 2008. Not all were true. For example:

• Mitt Romney claimed he didn’t raise taxes when he was governor of Massachusetts, failing to note that he increased government fees by hundreds of millions of dollars and shifted some of the state tax burden to the local level.
• Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado claimed scientific reports on whether humans are responsible for global warming are split 50-50, which isn’t close to being true.
• Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee praised a "fair tax" but failed to note that it would ease the burden on the richest Americans while imposing a stiff retail sales tax of perhaps 34 percent.
• Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani used more statistical dexterity to manipulate statistics, claiming adoptions increased 133 percent when he was mayor. Actually, they peaked and started a continuing decline.

 

My column on commencement addresses, both tacky and tactful:

Giving a commencement address is not an easy charge, but betweenboredom and blatant politics, there is a balance. Between self-servingtripe and the stale and trite, there is room for inspiration,entertainment and consideration.

For four years of work,college students deserve speakers who are willing to find that balance.For John Edwards, however, it’s the four years in the White House thatis much more important.

For those of you who didn't notice, Edwards used a commencement address last weekend to tell new England College students to go forth and...protest the war! As if 20-somethings at a Northeastern liberal arts school haven't already been doing that for four years.