Our efforts to end the illegal alien invasion occasionally need a good shot in the arm. The best shot we have received in the past two years was in March 2006 when more than 500,000 illegal aliens and/or illegal alien supporters marched through the streets of Los Angeles carrying flags of other nations, yelling chants in other languages, and demanding that the American people provide immediate amnesty (complete with all of the taxpayer-funded benefits they could DREAM up). Since then, Congress attempted amnesty (twice), and New York Governor Eliot Spitzer attempted to provide driver’s licenses to illegal aliens in his State – and darn near turned the Hillary Clinton campaign upside down in the process!

Not to be outdone by Spitzer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-North Korea) succeeded (at least temporarily) in keeping life difficult for employers, particularly small businesses. Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) had drafted a short but sweet amendment to a budget bill which would have prohibited the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) -- the federal government’s civil rights watchdog – from using funds appropriated by the bill to finance lawsuits against businesses which require employees to speak English on the job.

Senator Alexander is considered by many to be a “moderate” Republican, and his amendment did not exactly reach for the stars. The EEOC could still sue companies with English-only rules; the amendment only prohibited the EEOC from using certain monies to finance the suits. The amendment would only apply to lawsuits filed in the future, cold comfort to businesses which have already been haled into court. The amendment would only protect a business “entity,” meaning that self-employed individuals and informal businesses would not be protected.

Still, the amendment was certainly a step in the right direction, and both houses of Congress knew it. The budget bill, with Senator Alexander’s amendment, passed the Senate on a vote of 75 to 19. The House concurred in the amendment by a vote of 218 to 186. What could possibly stand in the way of a common sense reform with substantial majorities on both sides of Capitol Hill?

Madame Pelosi, of course.

Now, the last time I checked the Constitution, the Speaker of the House cannot veto legislation. Only the person who works in the Oval Office has a veto pen (although, until recently, he appeared to have lost it in the cushions of the decorative Oval Office couches). But that’s what The Gentlewoman From San Francisco effectively did in early November, agreeing to requests from Representatives Joe Baca (D-CA) (Chair, Hispanic Caucus) and Charles Gonzalez (D-TX) and other pro-amnesty Democrats to block the amendment.

Good job, Nancy! Thank you for spending your political capital to kill a bill with majority support in both houses. Keep it up, Mrs. P. The voters are learning of your arrogance. With a few more stunts like this, you will be self-deporting from the Speaker’s Office.

Meanwhile, in Connecticut, five Spanish-speaking immigrants (who are in the country legally, according to news reports) filed suit against their employer for requiring that they speak English on the job. During work breaks and lunch hours and on their own time, the employees were free to speak Spanish or Vietnamese or a remote dialect of Chinese for all their employer cared, but, on the job – in the potentially dangerous confines of a sheet metal manufacturing and finishing plant – employees had to speak English. Continued...