Free Republic

Washington (CNN)On Sunday, Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush once again went after Donald Trump head on, taking aim at the front-runner's policy proposals for dealing with immigration. "He wants everyone deported, which would tear family lives asunder," Bush told New York radio talk show host John Catsimatidis, later calling Trump's plans "unconstitutional."

In a lengthy interview on Friday afternoon, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) exposed how House Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Majority Whip Steve Scalise strengthened President Barack Obama’s executive amnesty with procedural trickery former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber would envy—and they did it all in the name of pushing a bill that they told Republicans would block Obama’s executive amnesty. What’s more is that a series of interviews and recent developments indicate that Boehner’s gambit here is placing several of his top lieutenants—including at least two committee chairmen—at political risk of serious primary challenges...

A group of pro-immigrant activists in Chicago on Tuesday released an informational video warning about the possible dangers of deferred action, which on Wednesday will begin to register undocumented young people who want to try and postpone deportation. The video, “Defer the Bulls—t,” may be seen online at www.moratoriumondeportations.org and is an effort to resist the government’s alleged disinformation campaign about the program. “While some youth may have a chance at relief, Deferred Action is at best insufficient, and at worst misleading, dangerous and deliberately deceptive,” said Jose Herrera of the Moratorium on Deportations Campaign on Tuesday. Some 20 members...

Giving amnesty to illegal immigrants will greatly increase long-term costs to the taxpayer. Granting amnesty to illegal immigrants would, over time, increase their use of means-tested welfare, Social Security, and Medicare. Fiscal costs would rise in the intermediate term and increase dramatically when amnesty recipients reach retirement. Although it is difficult to provide a precise estimate, it seems likely that if 10 million adult illegal immigrants currently in the U.S. were granted amnesty, the net retirement cost to government (benefits minus taxes) could be over $2.6 trillion.

President Obama thinks that by recently signing a new bill spending $600 million to beef up border enforcement he will look tough on illegal aliens. But decisions such as today’s lawsuit by the Justice Department against Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio to stop his policies regarding illegal aliens shows where the administration’s policies are really headed. The bill Obama signed, which authorizes the hiring 1,500 new border personnel, the deployment of a pair of unmanned reconnaissance drones, and replacing some bases along the border is valuable, but it hardly undoes what the president has done up to this point. With...

By 2008 Agriprocessors, which was being run in Iowa by Mr. Rubashkin's son Sholom, was processing 60,000 chickens and buying 500 cattle a day from area livestock producers. It was the largest kosher meatpacker in the country, employing about 1,000 people. Agriprocessors hired Jewish rabbis to kill each animal to kosher standards. Further processing was conducted by local hires, and when that pool was tapped out, the company turned to immigrants from Ukraine, Russia, Somalia, Mexico, Israel, and most notably Guatemala. An area first settled by German and other European immigrants (Czech composer Anton Dvorak and his family spent summers...

Mexican troops have detained the police chief and 36 other officers in the resort of Cancun in connection with the murder last week of an ex-army general. Soldiers swooped on the police HQ and took police chief Francisco Velasco to Mexico City for questioning. Former general Mauro Enrique Tello, who had just taken command of an elite squad to tackle in Cancun, was tortured and shot by suspected traffickers. Some 5,400 people were killed in drug-related violence in Mexico in 2008. In a surprise operation, dozens of heavily armed soldiers swarmed on the police station in the municipality of Benito...

SAN DIEGO – Presidential candidate Barack Obama will travel to San Diego next month to join opponent John McCain in speaking at the annual convention of the National Council of La Raza, the nation's largest Latino civil rights and advocacy organization. Both senators are expected to address immigration and other issues pertinent to Latino voters, NCLR President Janet Murguía said during a visit to San Diego promoting the convention. Obama's plans were announced yesterday; McCain had agreed earlier to address the convention. The fact that both candidates will attend “speaks to a number of things, not only to the importance...

In the current debate on the future of Kosovo, it is often overlooked that hundreds of thousands of Serbs and other non-Albanians had fled the province under Albanian pressure well before the KLA terror campaign of 1996-1998. Under Tito, the Albanians’ share of the population thus rose from 64 percent in 1953 to 77 percent immediately following his death in 1980. To understand the conditions that prompted the exodus of non-Albanians from Kosovo even in peacetime, we don’t need to look further than Cherry Hill, NJ. This prosperous Philadelphia suburb known for good schools is the home to the Duka...

Approximately 50 Collin County students, some as young as 12 years old, took to the downtown streets Wednesday to protest an immigration bill authored by State Rep. Ken Paxton, R-McKinney. House Bill 39, authored by Paxton and State Rep. Dennis Bonnen, R-Angleton, would require students entering college to provide information that would establish their residential status and allow colleges to “reclassify” current students as nonresidents. The bill is currently pending in the House Committee on State Affairs, of which Paxton is vice chairman, according to state legislative records. The middle school, high school and college students marched down Chestnut and...

Kathryn, that Cornyn amendment is a good example of the kind of final "bipartisan compromise" Congress may settle for: The 12-20 million illegal immigrants will get legal residency in the United States by the end of the next business day (and, incidentally, I'd love to see a list of other US agencies which guarantee full service within 24 hours - or is the express line only available to lawbreaking foreigners?), but terrorists will have to be subjected to what Sheila Jackson-Lee described to me as an "ongoing background check". The more you look at this bill the more it seems...

Watching Rep. Dana Rohrabacher on C-Span right now. Man, he just ripped the pro-amnesty folks a new one. Said that Americans should darn well show some righteous indignation over this immigration deal that's being cooked up. Hope it runs again this evening.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) hasn't spent much time in the Capitol this year as he seeks the GOP presidential nomination. But one of his rare appearances this week provided a pretty salty exchange with a fellow Republican. During a meeting Thursday on immigration legislation, McCain and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) got into a shouting match when Cornyn started voicing concerns about the number of judicial appeals that illegal immigrants could receive, according to multiple sources -- both Democrats and Republicans -- who heard firsthand accounts of the exchange from lawmakers who were in the room. At a bipartisan gathering in...

Yesterday, the two Cabinet secretaries -- both of whom have been subjects of Kennedy broadsides in the past -- lauded the Democrats' aging lion as the one indispensable player in the negotiating process. "He's awesome," gushed Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff , as he left a news conference announcing the bipartisan agreement. "I'd say he was one of the critical leaders in putting together this deal." Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez called it "a real privilege" to work with Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat and liberal stalwart who spends much of his time trying to thwart or undo Bush administration policies.

(Geneva) -- As the UN Human Rights Council (the Council) convenes in its first ever Special Session to consider the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Amnesty International today reiterated its call on the UN to assemble and deploy a team of authoritative international experts to Israel and the Occupied Territories, with a mandate to carry out an independent and thorough investigation into the deteriorating human rights situation in the Gaza Strip (see http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGMDE150542006). Such experts should investigate the growing number of killings of Palestinians by Israeli forces and the deliberate and disproportionate attacks by Israeli forces against civilian property...

Right now the leader of Monday's boycott is on CSPAN. I heard it on CSPAN radion, not sure which channel.

Thousands of immigrant rights supporters filled a major Phoenix thoroughfare Friday morning as they marched toward the office of U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl in a rally call for a more humane reform of immigration laws. "They're here for the American Dream," said Malissa Greer, 29, who joined the crowd estimate by police to be at least 10,000 strong. "God created all of us. He's not a God of the United States, he's a God of the world." On Thursday, more than 10,000 people filled the streets of Milwaukee in what was billed as "A Day Without Latinos" to protest efforts...

"AFL-CIO leaders on Tuesday said they would reject guest worker proposals now in Congress, saying that all foreign workers who come to the United States to fill labor shortages should come as permanent residents. In a comprehensive policy on an immigration issue that has divided labor as well as Republican lawmakers, leaders of the 54-union federation ditched the idea that a temporary guest worker program could be made acceptable," Reuters reports. "The AFL-CIO, the larger of two U.S. labor federations, continues to support the legalization of more than 11 million illegal foreign workers in the country as it has since...