June 9-12, 2007
Jun 09 10:26 The DFL's Excellent Adventure Jun 09 11:50 The Thompson Momentum Builds Jun 09 14:52 Carey Re-Elected as Republican Chair Jun 10 01:45 Immigration 'Reform' Unpopular With Law Enforcement Jun 10 09:32 NY Times: The Paper of Lunatics Jun 11 01:12 They Just Won't Let It Go Jun 11 09:49 Smoke & Mirrors, DFL Style Jun 12 07:43 CAIR's Sinking Ship Jun 12 11:08 Sen. Coleman Responds
Prior Months: Jan Feb Mar Apr May
Prior Years: 2006
The DFL's Excellent Adventure
I just read a totally delightful account of 4 DFL senators who decided to take a nature trip. Many thanks to Brad Swenson of the Bemidji Pioneer for writing the article. It's also important to thank Sandy Pappas for providing the humor for the story:
In the morning, Pappas was chased around a car by a young otter, she added. "I've never seen anything like it. The DNR never had either, but we have a picture to prove that it happened."Perhaps the otter was trained by an Education Minnesota lobbyist after learning that Pappas didn't deliver on dramatically increasing the Higher Education budget. Or perhaps the otter was conservative & just didn't like all the tax increases that Sen. Pappas voted for.
Included were members of their families, as well as local guides, most from a new group, the Mississippi Headwaters Protection Alliance.I'd never heard of the group before so I read on:
The Mississippi Headwaters Protection Alliance was formed in January with a goal of seeing motorized vehicles prohibited from the Mississippi Headwaters State Forest, which borders the river through several counties.Call it a hunch but I don't think that the members of the Alliance vote Republican very often. I'm betting that they felt right at home with a bunch of city slicker liberals. Their adventure didn't end there, though:
Once out, they hit the Becida Bar where the senators discussed issues with several local loggers. "It was a lot of fun to mix business with learning about northern Minnesota, particularly its natural resources," said Chaudhary, who took rein of the Senate's major environment committee this session. "We were very successful doing that."I would've paid big money to hear the conversation between a group of tree-hugger liberals & some loggers. That would've been priceless.
Speaking seriously, the Alliance's goal is troubling:
We have joined together to urge the State of Minnesota and Beltrami, Clearwater and Hubbard counties to keep the public lands in the Mississippi Headwaters State Forest non-motorized.I'm quite familiar with that area, having hunted & fished the area for more than 30 years. The state forest in question is about 7 miles from Itasca State Park, which has one of the best sets of snowmobiling trails in the state. I'm more than a little skeptical that this organization just wants the State Forest put offlimits to vehicular use, though I admit that I don't know what their goal is. Let's just say that it wouldn't surprise me to hear that they want the State Park shut down, too.
Suffice it to say that I doubt that this was just a relaxing getaway for a bunch of city slicker liberals. I suspect that it was a way to make promises to the MHPA.
Posted Saturday, June 9, 2007 10:26 AM
Comment 1 by The Lady Logician at 09-Jun-07 10:43 PM
Ohmigosh Gary....that is priceless. Thanks for the laugh!
LL
The Thompson Momentum Builds
If you haven't been reading Stephen Hayes lately, you've been missing the best reporting on the Fred Thompson campaign. This article talks about the genuine groundswell of support that's propelling his campaign. If this continues, it won't take long for Fred Thompson to achieve frontrunner status. Here's what I'm basing that opinion on:
Thompson's wife Jeri, a savvy Republican strategist with Capitol Hill experience, asked Mark Corallo, an old friend and public relations guru, to see what he might do to raise her husband's profile in Washington. Thompson had not altogether retired from politics when he left the Senate in January 2003: He was serving as chairman of the State Department's International Security Advisory Board. He was a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a member of the U.S.-China Economic Security Review Commission, and a commentator for ABC Radio.As you can see, legislators are flocking to Thompson without Fred Thompson courting them the way that other presidential candidates have done. That said, the Thompson noncampaign campaign hasn't been sitting idle either:
Corallo had left his job as spokesman at the Justice Department to open a media consulting firm and agreed to take on the low-intensity work as a favor and without pay. He quietly began to highlight Thompson's activities, in particular calling attention to Thompson's radio work. When the provocative radio commentaries were published on National Review's popular website beginning in January 2007, other conservative websites began to link to them with some regularity, viral marketing, as they say in the online world, and arguably the informal beginning of Thompson's campaign.
In early March, when Thompson acknowledged on Fox News Sunday that he was seriously considering a presidential run, support for a potential bid exploded. Thompson and his friends were flooded with phone calls from would-be supporters eager to start raising money. Public officials began to endorse Thompson without any promise that he would become a candidate, a risk in the trade-and-barter world of politics.
On April 7, Carl Bearden, the speaker pro tem of the Missouri House of Representatives, sent an email to colleagues expressing his support for Thompson and encouraging them to do the same. In time, 60 of the 92 Republicans in the Missouri House signed a petition backing a Thompson run. The lawmakers did so despite the fact that two of the state's leading Republicans, Governor Matt Blunt and Missouri House speaker Rod Jetton, had endorsed Mitt Romney. (So confident is Bearden that he offered some good-natured smack-talk to Blunt and Jetton. "I told them to enjoy it while it lasts, because when Fred gets in, it'll be over.")
In Texas, Jerry Patterson, the colorful commissioner of the General Land Office (a statewide elected office that is more powerful than it sounds), began to circulate a petition encouraging Thompson to run. By late April, he had gotten the signatures of 58 Texas Republican lawmakers. "No other presidential hopeful from either party is close," reported the Houston Chronicle. According to Patterson, that number now stands at 67, and includes 59 of the 81 Republicans in the Texas House.
Behind the scenes too, the activity was picking up. Thompson's top advisers gathered more frequently for planning meetings around the banquet-sized dining room table at his home in McLean, Virginia. On Saturday, May 12, as Thompson won the Wisconsin GOP poll, he met there with two men he does not know well but who will nevertheless play a major role in his bid to become president. David McIntosh, a former congressman from Indiana, and Lawrence Lindsey, President Bush's top economic adviser in his first term, came expecting to discuss tax reform, or social issues, or perhaps the long-term stability of Medicare. They would get to that, eventually.David McIntosh is a very bright man. Him joining the Thompson campaign's staff is a signal to movement conservatives that Thompson is what might best be described as a closet movement conservative. McIntosh's presence says "Fred's one of us" to movement conservatives. If that message gets out, the resulting momentum would be a difficult thing for people like Rudy and Mitt Romney to deal with. Here's some background on Rep. McIntosh:
McIntosh, who in 1982 helped start the Federalist Society , the well-known national organization for conservative lawyers and students, is widely regarded as a serious conservative thinker and someone who is in touch with the ideas that animate movement conservatives. McIntosh says Thompson is a conservative's conservative. "When I first talked to Fred, I thought either he's a better actor than anyone I've ever met, or this is really him. Having spent more time, I know he's a real conservative."That's a vote of confidence with some punch to it. The Federalist Society, you'll remember, is the organization that Ted Kennedy and other liberals tried tarring John Roberts with. Here's what the Federalist Society says about themselves:
- Law schools and the legal profession are currently strongly dominated by a form of orthodox liberal ideology which advocates a centralized and uniform society. While some members of the academic community have dissented from these views, by and large they are taught simultaneously with (and indeed as if they were) the law.
- The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies is a group of conservatives and libertarians interested in the current state of the legal order. It is founded on the principles that the state exists to preserve freedom, that the separation of governmental powers is central to our Constitution, and that it is emphatically the province and duty of the judiciary to say what the law is, not what it should be. The Society seeks both to promote an awareness of these principles and to further their application through its activities.
- This entails reordering priorities within the legal system to place a premium on individual liberty, traditional values, and the rule of law. It also requires restoring the recognition of the importance of these norms among lawyers, judges, law students and professors. In working to achieve these goals, the Society has created a conservative and libertarian intellectual network that extends to all levels of the legal community.
As impressive as that is, that isn't all there is to Thompson's groundswell:
Thompson last week also picked up the endorsement of the third-ranking Republican in the House, Rep. Adam Putnam of Florida. Putnam is the highest-ranking House Republican to endorse a candidate. "I see in him an ability to create an excitement in our grassroots that none of the other candidates have been able to do thus far," Putnam said in a phone interview.In other words, the Thompson campaign is putting together a team of truly conservative supporters that reads like a 'Who's Who' of the conservative movement. If this trend continues, he'll have conservatives chomping at the bit to work for him. If that happens, he'll be almost impossible to beat in the GOP primaries.
The 33-year-old Putnam is widely regarded as one of the rising stars among conservatives in the House. He was first elected in 2000, the first cycle he was old enough to run. Six years later, his colleagues chose Putnam as chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee, making him the fourth-ranking member. He has served as chairman of the House Republican Conference since the beginning of the current session.
As important to the Thompson campaign as Putnam's congressional chops are his extensive ties among Florida Republicans; he served for four years in the state legislature before being elected to Congress. Putnam says the phone lines in his campaign office have been "flooded" since his endorsement of Thompson was first reported. He has heard from voters as well as lawmakers. "All the worker bees have been calling in to ask what they can do to help," he says. "And several of my former colleagues have been shooting me emails asking how they can sign up."That sounds like a true groundswell of grassroots support, something that every campaign would love to have. Thus far, only one candidate has that going for him.
His name is Fred Thompson.
Posted Saturday, June 9, 2007 11:51 AM
Comment 1 by Devil\'s Advocate at 09-Jun-07 08:57 PM
Excellent Post!! I like the block quotes. It really made for an enjoyable read.
Check out a Pro- Fred Thompson article I wrote titled, "We Need a Lazy Politician."
http://copiousdissent.blogspot.com/2007/06/we-need-lazy-politician.html
Devil's Advocate
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So, Don't forget to link/ blogroll to our site.
Carey Re-Elected as Republican Chair
Check out Leo's live-blogging for all the details.
Posted Saturday, June 9, 2007 2:52 PM
No comments.
Immigration 'Reform' Unpopular With Law Enforcement
Based on the quotes from this Washington Times article, it's apparent that law enforcement people didn't like the Kennedy-McCain immigration legislation. Here's a lawman that didn't hate seeing McCain-Kennedy go down the drain:
"It seems that maybe the 'silent majority' was heard after all by federal legislators," said Richard K. Jones, the sheriff of Butler County, Ohio. "No one I spoke with liked the feds' idea of watered-down immigration reform." Sheriff Jones, who called on state officials last week to issue a "resolution of nonsupport" for the federal reform proposal, said the bill's demise means that Ohio, and other states, should enact legislation to deal with what he called a "continuing illegal-immigration crisis."Most senators heard more than they wanted to about McCain-Kennedy:
"Let's create stricter state laws to go after employers who hire persons who are in this state illegally," he said. "Also, let's make English the official language of the state. Those who live in Ohio should know our language. Taxpayers should not have to pay for interpreters in schools, and U.S. citizens living here shouldn't have to learn another language."
"We had way more response than we could handle," said Stephen Elliott, president of Grassfire.org, a conservative Internet group that called for volunteers for a petition drive and instructed people how to barrage lawmakers with telephone calls and e-mail. The group gathered more than 700,000 signatures on petitions opposing the bill, delivering them this week to senators in Washington and in their home states.The grassroots' passion was obvious. The cloture votes failing were a testament to the power of the grassroots' online lobbying campaign, too. The message got sent loud and clear that we demanded to be listened to.
Lawmakers in other states have sought to make illegal aliens subject to arrest under state and local criminal-trespassing laws since U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)[...] generally does not respond to pick up illegals unless they have committed a crime.Think about that paragraph. Then get irate. ICE won't enforce the laws already on the books. Then Ted Kennedy and John McCain ask us to take them seriously when they say that their bill is about enforcement? That's insulting. Actually, insulting is understatement.
Posted Sunday, June 10, 2007 1:45 AM
No comments.
NY Times: The Paper of Lunatics
In its zeal to criticize conservatives, this NY Times editorial lashes out at "hard-line foes" whose "glee is vindictive and hollow." I'm guessing that they're referring to me and millions of others who contacted our senators and 'got involved' in the political process. As usual, the NY Times' tone is way off, as is their analysis.
The immigration compromise collapsed on the floor of the Senate Thursday night. Many of its hard-line foes are celebrating, but their glee is vindictive and hollow. They have blocked one avenue to an immigration overhaul while offering nothing better, thwarting bipartisanship to satisfy their reflexive loathing for amnesty, which they define as anything that helps illegal immigrants get right with the law.The NY Times' wrath is unfounded and paranoid-sounding. Saying that opponents didn't offer anything better is utter nonsense. Captain Ed debunks the myth that we're a vindictive bunch here, explaining that cobbling the bill together in secrecy doomed the bill. To argue against the NY Times' statement that we didn't offer anything better, I give them this Hugh Hewitt outline for future immigration reform attempts:
I don't see why more of the fence can't be built before Z visas start to issue, why illegals from Saudi Arabia, Iran, Jordan and other countries with jihadist networks of long standing should be treated the same as illegals from Mexico and Central America, and why the law can't be written to make express the determination of the Congress that due process rights will not attach to probationary benefits under old Section 601(h). Senator Kyl conceded that the conservatives have seen their leverage increase in the past few days, and that Senators DeMint and Sessions are crucial to the fashioning of a package of amendments the full consideration of which will be a precondition to resuming debate.That sounds like something much better than the McCain-Kennedy disaster. Notice that Hugh didn't scream 'Amnesty' or sound gleeful in proposing this step forward. He calmly and rationally set out the groundwork to get immigration reform accomplished.
What's hilarious to me is this line in their editorial:
The bill was badly flawed but fixable, as long as there was the possibility of leadership and courage in Congress.No sooner did they admit the bill was "badly flawed" than they launched into an anti-Republican diatribe:
Jeff Sessions wanted to deprive legalized immigrants - yes, legal residents - of the earned income tax credit, a path out of poverty for millions.That's an intellectually dishonest diatribe, to say the least. First, let's understand that the bill failed because it didn't take the usual course to passage. Sens. Kennedy, McCain, Specter and others shortcircuited the process by secretly negotiating the bill in an ad hoc 'committee'. Because they didn't let the bill take its natural course, the flaws in the bill weren't ironed out, making the bill an easy target.
John Cornyn wanted to strip confidentiality protections for immigrants who apply for legal status, making them too frightened to leave the shadows.
Jim DeMint just wanted to kill the bill, so he voted for a volatile amendment whose substance he disagreed with. "If it hurts the bill, I'm for it," he said.
Leadership was desperately needed to stop Republicans from dragging the bill off one of its pillars, the one that would put 12 million people on a path to legal status. It didn't show up. Republicans who should have been holding their party and the deal together, President Bush, minority leader Mitch McConnell, Senator John Kyl, failed utterly.
Secondly, let's admit that Harry Reid pulled the bill rather than let serious Republican amendments pass. Does the NY Times recognize that in its editorial? Of course it doesn't. Instead of pointing out Reid's lack of leadership it launches into another paranoid diatribe:
The anti-immigrant hard-core, no amnesty today, no amnesty tomorrow, no amnesty forever, must not be allowed to hold the nation hostage. Like nativists of generations past, they think the country is being Latinized, and they fear it. The country is changing, but the way it always has, absorbing newcomers, shaping and being shaped by them, inexorably turning them, their children and grandchildren into Americans. Globalization has accelerated and complicated that upheaval, and decades of federal dithering have made things messy and chaotic.Comparing Ed's and Hugh's critiques with the NY Times' diatribe and it's easy to conclude which media organization is paranoid and which people are rationally and calmly working to fix this crisis.
Pointing out the Times' paranoid and lunatic diatribes won't cause it to stop writing such garbage. It merely tells people that they aren't a voice of reason.
Posted Sunday, June 10, 2007 9:33 AM
Comment 1 by jroosh at 10-Jun-07 07:14 PM
Nice synopsis. Well done.
They Just Won't Let It Go
The St. Cloud Times ran an editorial in Sunday's paper from Rebecca Otto, Minnesota's Auditor. She attempted to justify factoring in inflation in the budget forecast for revenues & expenses. Suffice it to say that her attempt was feeble. Frankly, I can't wait to see King carve her editorial up. Until King's post appears, let me take a stab at it.
Minnesota has performed very well over the years because we lived by a guiding principle regardless of which party was in control. That principle was that we allowed fiscal experts to create a budget forecast that gave a straightforward, honest picture of our state finances. This gave us as a baseline snapshot of where we were headed if nothing changed.In my opinion, the key to that paragraph was the phrase "baseline snapshot" because Ms. Otto is assuming that we should use a baseline budgeting system. As anyone who's read my posts on this subject knows, I regard the baseline budgeting system to be an inefficient budgeting system to the zero-based budgeting system. Here's why:
Baseline budgeting assumes as fact that the money spent this budget period is the starting point for the next budget period. Zero-based budgeting assumes nothing of the sort. Zero-based budgeting demands that each line item be justified in each budget.
The ramifications between the systems is significant. Zero-based budgeting is the system that best protects taxpayers' pocketbooks because it demands that expenses be justified year after year. Baseline budgeting doesn't demand annual justification of spending. In fact, it assumes that once an expenditure is justified, it's forever justified . That's bad enough but that's before you include inflation on top of the 'forever justified' budget.
Then the governor, the House and the Senate would each craft their own budgets using that snapshot as the starting point. These budgets reflected their particular priorities. For example, some areas might get inflationary increases, while others were cut back or eliminated. The beauty of this system was that it allowed the fiscal experts to give Minnesotans, lawmakers and the media an honest assessment of our financial picture.What's so honest about a system that assumes spending increases? I've talked with people who've put budgets together for their departments in private industry. Without exception, these people told me that they've had to justify every penny of every budget. Without exception, they weren't guaranteed an annual budget increase.
We include inflation in forecasting for revenues but not expenditures. This tends to create a rosier picture than our real financial condition. The federal government does not do this. I do not know of other states doing this, and I know that business does not do this either.It's true that the federal budget factors in inflation. Think of how much better off we'd be if they didn't. As for her argument that other states factor in inflation on the spending side, that just tells me that other states are as wasteful spending-wise as Minnesota. That's hardly a ringing endorsement of the baseline budgeting system.
Ms. Otto's statement that "I know that business does not do this either" is just plain false. In fact, when I supervised the spare parts inventory for a private company's laser printers, I remember several years where we had goals of reducing the spare parts budget. Management's explanation for this was that we should always be looking for 'cost collapses'.
The principle that should be applied to the government is that we should always be looking for more efficient & less costly ways of providing the products & services that taxpayers need. Part of that process is holding oversight hearings aimed at identifying the wasteful spending in our budget. That's something that Tarryl promised Leo & I at a January townhall meeting. It's a promise that wasn't fulfilled.
What that broken promise tells me is that (a) the DFL isn't interested in identifying wasteful spending & (b) they aren't interested in that because the state budget is how they pay off their political allies, whether they're government bureaucrats or Education Minnesota. Eliminating wasteful spending from the state budget wouldn't leave any money to pay off their political allies.
It's important to understand that Rebecca Otto's editorial is itself a political statement. It's important that we expose her editorial as her putting in writing her political philosophy. Ms. Otto's editorial shouldn't be seen as an explanation of the considerations real budget forecasters routinely take into account.
Finally, let's understand that this is simply another plea by the DFL to spend more of the taxpayers' money. Isn't that reason enough to reject that plea?
Posted Monday, June 11, 2007 1:12 AM
Comment 1 by kb at 11-Jun-07 11:01 AM
Your request has been granted. Click the site URL.
Comment 2 by The Lady Logician at 11-Jun-07 11:08 AM
Gary - Charlie Weaver had a guest commentary in the Star Tribune this week-end on the reasons why factoring in inflation is WRONG! Go check it out.
LL
Smoke & Mirrors, DFL Style
The Pi-Press's Rachel Stassen-Berger has written a great article about the Minnesota Trial Lawyers Association's name change. She's been assured that the change has nothing to do with the negative image most people have of lawyers. It's obvious that she hasn't bought into those assurances:
The Minnesota Trial Lawyers Association recently changed its name to the Minnesota Association for Justice.No amount of spin will make people think highly of lawyers. Changing their name from the Minnesota Trial Lawyers Association to the Association for Justice won't change public opinion of trial attorneys. For public opinion to change, they'll need to change what they do & how they act.
The decision had nothing to do with the fact that lawyers, in general, tend not to be beloved, said Chris Messerly, president of the Association for Justice. "It's basic recognition, by me and many others, that what we do is far more important than who we are," he said. "We are always going to be trial lawyers. I am very proud to be a trial lawyer."
But the new name has a certain ring to it, one that should be familiar to those who watch politics or Capitol action where perception hardily influences outcomes. The choice of names can be key to controlling that influence. And who, after all, is against justice?
Not the Civil Justice Reform Coalition, which seeks tort reform; the Institute for Justice Minnesota Chapter, which has been active for eminent domain reform; Minnesota Citizens for Tax Justice, a union-backed economic group; or Growth & Justice, a progressive, pro-tax think tank. They all are registered to lobby at the Minnesota state Capitol.Smith's analogy misses the mark. Badly. The Taxpayers League isn't called 'Down With Government' because they hate government. They hate the frivolous spending of money. They recognize the fact that government has a role to play in orderly society but they also recognize the fact that the private sector should play a bigger role than it currently does. On the other hand, changing Growth & Justice's name to 'Minnesotans for Higher Taxes' would simply tell people what their agenda is.
"It is a great word," said Dane Smith, president of Growth & Justice. "It is one of the loftiest words in the language." And, Smith admits, "Growth & Justice" falls a lot more gracefully on the ear than other names the organization could have picked.
"I guess we didn't call ourselves 'Minnesotans for Higher Taxes' for the same reason that the Taxpayers League doesn't call itself 'Down With Government,'" Smith said. "The reason is: You try to focus on the glorious goal."
The bigger point to this is that most of the groups listed in the article are DFL lobbying groups. Think of the impact they tried to have on this session's legislature. Clearly, the DFL bought into their every suggestion this session. Because Gov. Pawlenty & the House GOP steadfastly stood against these lobbyists, taxpayers' wallets were protected.
Let's also realize that the DFL & these lobbyists don't want to protect taxpayers' wallets. Their mission is to spend, spend, spend. Their goal is to sell wants by telling legislators & other taxpayers that wants are really needs.
It's time for voters to tell these lobbyists that they'll be ignored. The only way to do that is to elect a GOP majority in the Minnesota House in 2008.
Posted Monday, June 11, 2007 9:49 AM
No comments.
CAIR's Sinking Ship
Based on this Washington Times article, CAIR's ship is sinking. I don't know how much more water it can take before sinking totally of of sight:
The number of reported members spiraled down from more than 29,000 in 2000 to fewer than 1,700 in 2006. As a result, the Muslim rights group's annual income from dues dropped from $732,765 in 2000, when yearly dues cost $25, to $58,750 last year, when the group charged $35. The organization instead is relying on about two dozen donors a year to contribute the majority of the money for CAIR's budget, which reached nearly $3 million last year.I had hoped that we'd find out who those donors were but the IRS redacted the names. Nonetheless, it paints a bleak picture of CAIR, which touts itself as a bigtime operation. That's the picture that Parvez Ahmed tried painting here:
"We are proud that our grass-roots support in the American Muslim community has allowed CAIR to grow from having eight chapters and offices in 2001 to having 33 today," Mr. Ahmed said. The self-described civil liberties organization for Muslims seeks to portray "a positive image of Islam" through public relations and the press, but instead has alienated some by defending questionable accusations of discrimination.That isn't an image that Dr. Zuhdi Jasser buys into:
M. Zuhdi Jasser, director of American Islamic Forum for Democracy, says the sharp decline in membership calls into question whether the organization speaks for American Muslims, as the group has claimed. "This is the untold story in the myth that CAIR represents the American Muslim population. They only represent their membership and donors," Mr. Jasser said. "Post-9/11, they have marginalized themselves by their tired exploitation of media attention for victimization issues at the expense of representing the priorities of the American Muslim population," Mr. Jasser said.Dr. Jasser is the man that stepped forward after CAIR filed a discrimination lawsuit against US Airways on behalf of the Flying Imams. Based on the numbers, I'd say that Dr. Jasser's assessment of CAIR is the more accurate perspective of the organization. Here's what Dr. Jasser said in his initial press release:
The constant exploitation of America's culture of political correctness especially in this setting of what is the most dangerous environment of air travel is out of touch with America's priorities. Such misguided priorities by Muslim activist organizations like CAIR will make the legitimate defense of our civil rights far more difficult when more serious complaints of racism and discrimination are involved. America is quickly becoming numb to their constant refrains and the polls demonstrate the profound ineffectiveness of their tiring campaigns.CAIR has a reputation of being the whiniest special interest group in Washington, DC, not as the nation's largest Muslim civil rights group. I can't wait until they're shut down because they're an SDGT group.
Posted Tuesday, June 12, 2007 7:44 AM
No comments.
Sen. Coleman Responds
Last Thursday, I sent an email to Sen. Coleman's office, urging him to vote against cloture. Today, I received Sen. Coleman's response. I was heartened by the detail he provided in his response. Here's that response in full:
Dear Mr. Gross:
Thank you for taking the time to share your concerns regarding immigration reform. I believe the current immigration system is broken and needs to be fixed. I look forward to voting for a bill which would have provided for real border security, would have eliminated the lure of continued job opportunities for illegal immigrants, and would have provided a program that would have helped identify illegal immigrants in this country with their continued presence conditioned on learning English, paying taxes and being employed.
I could not, however, support the Secure Borders, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Reform Act of 2007 (S. 1348) in its current form. S. 1348 was never considered by a Senate Committee and was brought directly to the floor before most of us had a chance to fully review it. Senate leadership blocked many amendments, including my own, that would have improved the bill. The repercussions of this bill are too great, and I could not in good conscience support moving forward with legislation that is incomplete and unfinished. For this reason, I voted against a procedural motion on June 7, 2007 that would have pushed the bill forward without further debate.
I believe that improving our border enforcement capabilities must be central to any immigration reform legislation. Our unprotected borders are unacceptable and represent a crisis which must be dealt with decisively and without delay. I am pleased that S. 1348 would require hiring more Border Patrol officers, constructing vehicle barriers and fences on the Southern border, monitoring the entire border electronically and ending the catch-and-release system that leads to many illegal aliens remaining in the United States, and that such improvements would have to be enacted before any permanent benefits would be given to the current illegal population and before any new guest worker program would start. This bill would also increase the penalties for many immigration violations.
I strongly oppose amnesty for illegal immigrants. Any legalized status for people already here must not be a blank check that will encourage more people to enter this country illegally. In order to be here, I believe that immigrants must undergo background checks, demonstrate proof of employment, possess English proficiency and an understanding of civics, and pay a monetary penalty if they entered illegally. S. 1348 would do much of this, but I would have preferred more stringent policies in some of these areas. I would have supported more rigorous background checks than currently in the bill and stricter workplace enforcement if given the opportunity to amend the bill. I am pleased that under S. 1348 illegal immigrants would not be eligible for Social Security benefits accrued using a false number.
You may also be interested to know that I introduced amendments that would have ended the policy of sanctuary cities. Sanctuary cities are cities where local law enforcement is barred from so much as asking the people they come into contact with about their immigration status. As a consequence, these cities are able to evade their legal responsibilities to share such information with federal authorities. This is a gag order, and it essentially means the rule of law does not apply in these cities. My amendments (S. Amdt . 1158 and S. Amdt . 1473) would lift that gag order and allow law enforcement officers in these cities to inquire about an individual's immigration status and share their findings with the Department of Homeland Security.
While immigration reform must reflect the American values of fairness and opportunity, it must also show respect for the rule of the law. It is my hope that proper debate on a border security and comprehensive immigration reform can be held in the Senate, and the result will be legislation that provides for a safer, more secure and prosperous America.
Thank you once again for taking the time to contact me. I appreciate hearing from you and I value your advice.
Sincerely,
Norm Coleman
United States Senate
Posted Tuesday, June 12, 2007 11:08 AM
Comment 1 by jroosh at 12-Jun-07 12:05 PM
Excellent response. Why can't that be President Bush?
Comment 2 by FRJ at 12-Jun-07 02:08 PM
I sure hope Norm doesn't waiver on his comments.
I want to see the Cornyn amendment relating to felons not being eligible for any chance at legalization brought back.
I am disappointed that Kyl has jumped into Kennedy's back pocket on this. I have admired him for quite a while.
Comment 3 by Jackie at 12-Jun-07 06:19 PM
I just got the same email from Senator Coleman.
Last year, I got a similar response concerning illegal immigration, then he voted for the McCain/Kennedy amnesty bill. So don't expect him to vote against the Bush/Kyl/McCain/Kennedy amnesty bill.
Comment 4 by The Lady Logician at 13-Jun-07 11:34 AM
I got the same response to my email on the issue. We still need to stay on this. Senator Coleman is one of 15 GOP senators that are being targeted by both sides of this debate. The President will be leaning on him hard, so we have to lean HARDER on him.
LL
