Free Republic

As many U.S. cities and states arrest illegal immigrants in raids and toughen laws against them, a Connecticut city is offering to validate them under a controversial, first-in-the-nation ID card program. Starting Tuesday, New Haven will offer illegal immigrants municipal identification cards that allow access to city services such as libraries and a chance to open bank accounts. Supporters say the cards will improve public safety and give undocumented workers protections now afforded legal residents. Critics contend it will unleash a flood of illegal immigration, straining services and wasting taxpayer money. New Haven officials overwhelmingly approved the program last month...

The GOP leadership is waking up to a persistent reality, and it's one that has fundraisers and strategists at the RNC up at night. Conservatives, the core constituency of the Republican Party, are irate. Far from a passing hobbyhorse, the illegal immigration issue has galvanized Republican voters like no single issue in recent memory, and conservatives are refusing to let it go. The Senate's comprehensive immigration bill, backed by the President and pushed by the GOP establishment, was more than a mere legislative miscalculation, is was the straw that broke the conservatives' back. Moreover, to listen to conservatives, it wasn't...

Construction on the wall already has begun in Arizona, Chertoff said. Washington aims to have "operational control" of the border by 2013 by building the 700-mile (1,120-km) wall along parts of the frontier and creating a "virtual fence" in desert areas with drones, sensors, cameras, satellite technology and vehicle barriers.

My fellow Americans, we have a problem. We spend billions of dollars on homeland security, but our government can't even track and deport convicted criminal aliens. These are not the well-meaning "newcomers" who just want to "pursue economic opportunities" by "doing the jobs no one else will do." These are foreign-born thugs, sex offenders, murderers and repeat drunk drivers who are destroying the American Dream. If our immigration and entrance system cannot effectively monitor, detain and kick out convicted criminal aliens -- including illegal border-crossers, illegal visa overstayers, fugitive deportees, and green card holders who have committed serious crimes and...

No matter where my colleagues came down in 2003 about the centrality of Iraq to the war on terror, there can simply be no debate that our efforts in Iraq today are critical to the wider struggle against violent Islamic extremism. Already, the terrorists are emboldened, excited that America is talking not about winning in Iraq, but is rather debating when we should lose. Last week, Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s deputy chief, said that the United States is merely delaying our “inevitable” defeat in Iraq, and that “the Mujahideen of Islam in Iraq of the caliphate and jihad are advancing with...

FReep This Poll! Here is the actual wording of the poll question... Do you think the 'Minuteman' movement deserves some credit for the defeat of last month's immigration bill? Yes No Not sure

The alliance of talk radio, blogs and grassroots efforts was a winner when it came to defeating the "shamnesty" bill. Conservatives were enraged and showed just how much power we possess: A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of 15,000 adults in June found that just 32.0% now say they're Republicans. That's up more than a full percentage point from a month ago and is within a tenth-of-a-point of the GOP's best showing in ten months. This is purely because of the efforts put forth to defeat a bill that would've rewarded those who broke our laws. The Bush administration suffered...

A Pennsylvania district attorney who has drawn national attention for his raids on businesses that employ illegal aliens is considering a run for state attorney general to broaden his effort to secure the nation's borders. Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli, however, has had to scramble to bury a report – from his own camp – that he will make a third bid for state attorney general in 2008. An e-mail from Morganelli's political action committee, Us Securing America, announced the veteran prosecutor's intentions and asked for grassroots and financial support. ''I have decided to seek the office of Attorney...

Less than two weeks after a controversial immigration measure died in the Senate, a conservative group Monday announced a nationwide broadcast campaign "defending the Bush administration's approach to comprehensive immigration reform" - and even supporting the notion of amnesty for illegal aliens. The new campaign drew criticism from other conservative organizations, including some who were instrumental in the June 28 defeat of the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act. One activist told Cybercast News Service that the group behind the new effort is "terribly misguided." "The Senate's failure to pass S. 1639 most obviously affects border security," said Richard Nadler, president of...

I guess the Straight Talk Express is finally melting down. After returning from a trip to Iraq — something hardly likely to have lifted his spirits — John McCain apparently blew up at campaign manager Terry Nelson and chief strategist John Weaver over their out-of-control spending. In the end, he fired Nelson and Weaver then resigned: Weaver's resignation was the most surprising. He has been McCain's chief strategist and confidant for many years, playing a role as central to the Arizonan's political operations as White House senior adviser Karl Rove has played in President Bush's. The only other person in...

Rocio, a Mexican woman living in Norristown, is scheduled to have her second baby, a boy, by cesarean section next Sunday at Montgomery Hospital. At that point, Medicaid, the federal and state insurance program for the poor, will pay for her hospital care and that of her baby, who will be an American citizen. --snip-- There is a problem with underreporting of how many undocumented women there really are, and they're putting a huge strain on all of the safety-net systems," said Natalie Levkovich, executive director of the Health Federation of Philadelphia. "We're all in the same miserable, leaky boat

In the war of words the immigration reform debate has degenerated into lately, a few terms have taken on lightning-bolt authority - a kind of "we know which side you are on" usage. Do you say "illegal alien" or "undocumented worker?" Path to earned "citizenship" or "amnesty?" A favorite phrase, increasingly heard in dialogues both heated and mild, is "rule of law." Now, this principle has an important place historically in legal and political theory, but you wouldn't know it listening to the patriots fulminating against illegal immigrants. To them, "rule of law" is a way simply to call out...

Due to copyright cannot post story here: http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070707/GPG0101/707070567

Now that the immigration bill has finally died its slow and much-deserved death, it's an appropriate time to consider what lessons can be learned and what the episode portends for a Republican Party in disarray. Above all, the defeat of the Senate's immigration bill-a de facto amnesty for illegal immigrants that did virtually nothing to address the threats to our national security that our porous borders have created-was a victory for average Americans over the Washington, D.C. establishment. The details of the bill's collapse are telling. Between Tuesday and Thursday of last week, 14 senators changed their minds and voted...

Former Sen. Fred Thompson has begun his unannounced quest for the Republican presidential nomination by telling audiences in New Hampshire that Washington is badly out of touch with the country. As a senior campaign adviser put it to The Washington Post's Michael Shear, Thompson believes that "the politicians have lost their connection with what people really want and what they really expect." Few if any of the other 17 men and one woman vying for the presidency would be bold enough to challenge Thompson's claim. The belief that official Washington is deaf to the people's wishes is a staple of...

A funny thing happened to a pro-illegal immigrant activist this week in Dallas, Texas. The activist, a League of United Latin American Citizens representative named Jesse Diaz, was carjacked. Obviously there’s nothing funny about someone sticking a gun in another person’s face and stealing his car. This isn’t funny as in hardy-har-har. And everyone is relieved that Mr. Diaz wasn’t hurt by the punk who threatened his life and stole his vehicle in broad daylight. But the amusing part of this crime is what happened afterward. It seems that Mr. Diaz is plenty steamed that it took the Dallas Police...

What a Waste. Steve Sailer said it all. [L]et's stop and think about what an enormous waste of six years it has been for the President, aided and abetted by the almost the entire American Establishment, to pursue his delusion of imposing his immigration obsession on the citizenry. Even leaving aside how much better the immigration situation would be if Bush had followed his oath and simply enforced the damn laws, imagine what he would have been able to accomplish legislatively in other areas without wasting time, energy, and political capital on a losing proposition like this. Well, why...

With the White House, the leaders of both political parties, and the media all solidly behind the “comprehensive” immigration “reform” bill, how could it be stopped in the Senate, as it was last week? The people stopped it. That is what democracy is all about. When members of Congress began to be deluged with angry letters, phone calls, and e-mails from their constituents, they knew the game was over — and that their careers could be over if they didn’t pay attention to what the voters were saying. This bill was an insult to people’s intelligence from start to finish,...

What part of CLOSE THE BORDER do you not understand? By Guest: Betsy Reed on Jul 02, 07 Recently I heard Ted Kennedy say, “We know what they don’t want, so what DO they want?” (Speaking of us, the American people). This is just a classic example of our politicians not listening to the American public. They sit up on Capital Hill in Washington DC and only mingle with either their yes men or other Senators and have no earthly idea what the American people think or feel. They lose all perspective of what the working men and women are...

For Sen. Ted Kennedy, the fight to reform America's immigration laws is just like those legendary civil rights battles of the 1960s or the battle over rights for the disabled. Change doesn't come easy, but it's inevitable. Yes, the latest attempt at comprehensive immigration reform--enhancing border security, putting the millions of illegal immigrants in the U.S. on a path to citizenship, setting up a larger guest-worker program, increasing the number of visas for skilled workers, and so forth--collapsed in the Senate. And no, there aren't many signs that lawmakers want to resuscitate it before the next president takes office in...