Nothing like starting off your day with a little Shakespearean junk-talking.
The Senate was hard at work while I was not last night (which can mean nothing but trouble). They dealt with two more amendments to the immigration bill after I left the office.
Here they are.
One was a Kyl amendment that would have prevented guest-worker visas from becoming permanent visas. It was killed, making a guest-worker program seem distinctly less guesty.
The other was a Cornyn amendment, which seems to take some financial pressure off of states that are bearing the brunt of the federal government's inability to enforce immigration law. That one passed.
And, PowerLine writes on the Inhofe amendment-- which makes English the official language of this country-- and the Salazar alternative to the Inhofe amendment, both of which were adopted yesterday:
No one will benefit more from an insistence on English as the country's language than those who come here speaking other languages, and--above all--their sons and daughters. But Reid, as always, focuses on politics, not principle. Right next door, in Canada, we have the starkest possible evidence of the catastrophic consequences of bilingualism.
As I said the other day, I don't know what the answer to the illegal immigration issue, but I have some gut feelings, and some of these amendments are just no-brainers. I told a couple of apolitical friends about the Social Security amendment last night and they thought I was joking. These are people who have no particular interest in politics and no particularly strong stand on immigration, but they knew that was wrong.
"No," they said, "That cannot have happened. Seriously? In the Senate?"
Because they don't watch the Senate as intently as some of us do, I suppose they can be forgiven for thinking a majority of these guys and gals are serious about this issue. Now they know different.
UPDATE: Darleen has more on importance of English and assimilation.