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Senate Democrats yesterday defeated a Republican effort The piecemeal approach is favored by some members of both parties, including several of those who fought hardest for the earlier bill, including Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican. The two top Democratic 2008 presidential candidates, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois, told the National Council of La Raza earlier that they would be "open" to voting for piecemeal legislation.... Democrats tried to get an agreement yesterday to pass an agriculture worker bill that would create a program for future agriculture workers and offer a path to citizenship...

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...

WASHINGTON - These are tough times for Mel Martinez. In the past month, the Republican U.S. senator from Orlando has seen the collapse of an immigration-reform bill he helped craft. As chairman of the Republican National Committee, he has struggled to defend an unpopular president and an increasingly unpopular war, even as party fundraising lags. And now a new Quinnipiac University poll shows him plunging to new lows in his home state. Indeed, more Florida voters -- 38 percent -- said they disapproved of Martinez's performance than the 36 percent who said they approved of it. It's clear that fallout...

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...

Frustration over green-card flip-flop

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

I just heard about this from the Kevin James radio show. they are sneaking this into the Agriculture bill. as predicted, they will cut up the shamnesty bill and insert pieces of it into other bills.

Watching a steady stream of Democrats like Harry Reid, Dick Durbin, and Chuck Schumer each take their turn delightedly pummeling President Bush over the war in Iraq today, I couldn’t help but think of fellow conservatives who are starting to give aid and comfort to these Democrat Party loyal oppositionists. According to Byron York of the National Review, the Republican Party base has simply decided to throw Mr. Bush under the wheels of the bus. Since so many of us disagree with him on things like illegal immigration and Scooter Libby, York opines that a whole bunch of Republican loyalists...

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...

The world outside the newspaper publishing industry and the McCain for President Campaign Headquarters pretty much agrees that the Senate Immigration Fiasco put John McCain’s White House aspirations in the hurt locker. The media will tell us otherwise. They see the world as the world is not and broadcast that misinformation far and wide. The Inside the Beltway version of McCain’s demise blames his catastrophic decline on his support of the Iraq Surge. If a politician says too many nice things about a general who won Senate confirmation by over 80 votes, that campaign is clearly headed for the toilet...

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...

The cause behind the Senate's failed immigration reform bill was an Achilles' heel that its advocates ignored but opponents instinctively understood — you can't hold a right hostage to an ultimatum. The architects behind the bill insisted that before we Americans could have our constitutionally entitled protection from invasion, we first had to accept legalizing the invaders as the condition for that protection. You might as well try to convince a poker player to use cash while his opponent gets to toss around IOU's.

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...

The goal was to work within the halls of Congress. Now, immigrant-rights groups want to replace the lawmakers who walk them. Labor unions, immigrant advocates and Democratic activists have spent the two weeks since the Senate squashed a comprehensive immigration overhaul bill constructing the early framework of a political payback plan. Capitalizing on the Latino voting bloc and its disaffection with the Republican Party, the groups intend to use the recent debate as a rallying shriek in the 2008 election. "We are the fastest-growing sector of the electorate, and we have shown a capacity to show up when we are...

Before he falls out of the top tier of GOP White House hopefuls, chief advisers to Sen. John McCain are urging him to quit his day job and become a full-time presidential candidate. "Just resign," one says he told McCain. "Show you're all in." Advisers say being a senator is a drag. He doesn't have enough time to campaign and raise money. Worse: The issues he has to vote on, like immigration reform, are killers. If McCain takes that advice, here's the game plan. "Pick three issues conservatives care about and nail them," says one adviser, "and attack [Sen.] Hillary...

Hours after the immigration reform bill he had championed went down to defeat, Sen. John McCain told me what he thought would happen next. "You will see the states and cities scrambling to pass their own laws and regulations," he said, "and you're going to get a completely contradictory set of policies." It did not take long for McCain's prediction to be confirmed -- right in his home state of Arizona. Four days after the Senate killed the comprehensive immigration bill supported by President Bush, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, a Democrat, signed a bill that the state's Republican Legislature had...

NATICK, MA - The immigration bill is out of the headlines, but Natick resident Bettie Magee wants to make sure the subject stays alive. "I don't know what I am going to do next, but I know I won't give up," Magee wrote in a recent e-mail. "We may have lost two battles, but we will win the war - eventually. We can't have chaos forever." Magee is a senior citizen who keeps busy writing representatives and journalists while encouraging everyone to get involved in the political process. She watched all of the debates of the immigration bill on CSPAN2....

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...

After the utter collapse in the Senate last week of a comprehensive immigration bill, Washington insiders are blaming everyone and everything. Supposedly, talk-radio hysteria killed the bill. Or was it the purported racism of yokels? Or did most of us fail to appreciate the hidden benefits of open borders so clear only to those in Washington? In reality, the 1,000-page bill failed because millions of Americans opposed it, believing, among other things, that it provided virtual amnesty to illegal aliens. Through the "Z visa," the bill offered illegal aliens legal worker status - along with a ticket to eventual citizenship...

For much of the past month, the Senate has been considering a comprehensive immigration reform bill. The debate has been a contentious one, and this week the Senate decided that it would not move ahead with the bill in its current form by a bipartisan vote of 46-53. I opposed the bill because it would have provided nearly immediate legal status to between 12 and 20 million illegal immigrants. I believe that, before we deal with those illegal immigrants already here, we must first secure the borders of our country to effectively cut off the flood of illegal immigrants. Otherwise,...

In the aftermath of the immigration bill’s defeat, supporters on both the left and the right have wondered how compromise legislation, containing so many proposals that Americans seemed to back in polls, could have won so little public support. Many of the bill’s backers seem to be missing the point: what killed it was not opposition to any single proposal, but rather the public’s overall cynicism on immigration. Ordinary citizens simply don’t trust our leaders on this subject any longer, and until the president—some president—and the Congress gain back their trust, it’s unlikely that we’ll have any “comprehensive” reform.

July 05, 2007, 0:00 a.m. ThatÂ’s ComprehensiveThe opposition to the immigration bill had the right idea. By Victor Davis Hanson After the utter collapse in the Senate last week of a comprehensive immigration bill, Washington insiders are blaming everyone and everything. Supposedly, talk-radio hysteria killed the bill. Or was it the purported racism of yokels? Or did most of us fail to appreciate the hidden benefits of open borders so clear only to those in Washington? In reality, the 1,000-page bill failed because millions of Americans opposed it, believing, among other things, that it provided virtual amnesty to illegal...

SAN FRANCISCO -- Even as most of the nation wolfed down burgers at backyard barbecues, about 35 students around the state refused to eat in hopes of bringing back a federal proposal that would help illegal immigrants go to college and become legal. In San Jose, five students spent Wednesday -- their third day without food -- amid banners and dozens of supporters in front of U.S. Rep. Zoe Lofgren's office to ask their representative to bring back the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act. The DREAM Act, as it is known, had been folded into the immigration...

Home isn't always so sweet for Republican presidential hopeful John McCain, thanks to a small but vocal group of conservatives who feel the Arizona senator deserted them long ago. Critics in the Grand Canyon state have been angry since McCain first ran for president in 2000 and cast himself as a middle-of-the-road alternative to President Bush. Related Stories The Note: Can a Broke Candidate Recapture the Magic? Top Politics stories Clintons and Romneys Collide in IowaBush Defends War in Fourth of July SpeechInconvenient Truth? Al Gore's Son Arrested Again on Drug Charges They feel abandoned on a host of concerns...

Although Yates County farmer Maureen Marshall hires her immigrant workers through the state's Department of Labor, her farm has been raided by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement twice in the past 10 years. “We document everyone and do everything above the law but we have a system that's broken,” Marshall said. Marshall and other members of the Agriculture Coalition for Immigrant Reform have been pushing for a guest worker program reform for more than a decade. This year, she thought that at last the U.S. Congress was close to passing legislation that could help farmers across the nation. “We've been working...

Graham Statement on Immigration Reform Bill WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) today made this statement on the Senate immigration bill.“Several months ago, I met with President Bush at the White House to discuss our out-of-control problems with illegal immigration.  He asked me if I would help him push immigration reform through Congress and I gave him my word I would.  I support President Bush and admire his leadership.  I will be forever grateful for his work to try and solve this difficult problem.“President Bush and I made it clear we would not compromise on our guiding principle...

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...

MIDDLETOWN — An "admitted illegal alien from Mexico" was arrested Wednesday for producing a half-dozen fake identification, Social Security and permanent residency cards and selling them to undercover police officers, the Butler County Sheriff's Office said Thursday. Abel Gaston Gudino-Arenas, 33, of Middletown, was charged with six counts of forgery — a fifth-degree felony — and no operator's license — a misdemeanor — for manufacturing fake documents, according to a news release from the sheriff's office. Deputies said the man admitted to manufacturing the cards for more than three months. Gudino-Arenas was arrested after he allegedly delivered a fake ID...

Republican presidential contender Tom Tancredo on Monday said "it's not impossible" to deport the estimated 12 million immigrants living in the United States illegally. Such action would take years and would be difficult but could be accomplished, he said. The Colorado congressman, however, argued that tougher border security and a crackdown on employers would reduce the need for mass deportations and encourage such immigrants to return to their native countries willingly. "It's attrition through enforcement," he said. Tancredo described his views on illegal immigration and other issues during a meeting with Des Moines Register editors and reporters. Illegal immigration is...

A supposed letter to the editor making the rounds of the Internet (credited to various authors at different Web sites, including "Albert V. Burns," "Rosemary LaBonte" and "Ann Marie Coviello") compares today's immigrants (bad) with the immigrants of yesteryear (good)SnipIt explains why a poster at FreeRepublic.com inserted the face of Rudy Giuliani in what looks to be an old movie still of a sombrero-wearing bandito and added the caption "Borders? Borders? We don' need no steenking borders." It explains why Giuliani has backed off the pro-immigrant stance he had when mayor of New York City. And it explains why even...

Left-Wing Extremists Want to 'Reconquista' SouthwestBy Jeff Golimowski and Katherine Poythress CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer and CorrespondentJuly 03, 2007 (CNSNews.com) - A webpage featuring pictures of Uncle Sam in a 15th century suit of armor with the words "I want you to come back to Europe!" is one of the worst nightmares of the anti-immigrant movement. "We're angry enough to say the problem is that Europeans forced their way into our continent, maybe they should go home," said Olin Tezcatlitoca, who runs the site. "This is outrageous for us who are indigenous people to be told we cannot migrate on...

There are two “I’s” that are a resounding theme in any political campaign for federal office and such was the case when GOP presidential hopeful Tom Tancredo visited Marshalltown Friday. Immigration and Iraq dominated the discussion with a group of veterans at the Iowa Veterans Home. The Colorado congressman praised the defeat of a comprehensive immigration reform bill in the Senate this week and said his plan for fixing the illegal immigration situation in the United States is bold and controversial. “Enforce the law,” he said. “The issue is this: Is there a solution to the problem and is that...

In a classic application of bottom-up management denizens of small towns let their elected representatives in Washington D.C. know exactly how they expected them to handle the compromised immigration compromise bill that neither secured our borders, nor was any more enforceable than previous legislation it was meant to "fix."Earlier waves of immigrants – legal and illegal – flocked to CA, , FL, IL, NJ, NY and TX ("gateway" states) but have been dispersing across a wider swath of the U.S. since 2000. The foreign-born, non-English speaking populations of DE, GA, IN, NE, NV and SC have exploded, say demographers, with...

Hours after the Senate voted against advancing the immigration reform project, the Mexican activist Elvira Arellano announced a campaign of resistance against the U.S. government. In a written statement, the leader of the movement Familia Unida (United Family) said that “if the Democrats and the Republicans cannot summon the courage to fix the broken law we will not sit quietly and see our families and our children cut to pieces on the broken pieces of that broken law.” She demanded an immediate moratorium on all raids and deportations. Arellano, who has remained in a Northwest Side church since August 15...

The governor of the US state of Arizona, Janet Napolitano, has signed into law legislation designed to deter illegal immigrant workers. The law requires businesses to verify that all their employees are legally entitled to work in the US, or face the prospect of being closed down. The tougher penalties were introduced days after President Bush's immigration reform bill failed in the Senate. Arizona is one of the main gateways for illegal migration into the US. Federal failure Under the new legislation, an employer's first offence would be punished by a temporary licence suspension. Congress finds itself incapable of coping...

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,...

Friday, June 29, 2007 Meditations on Immigration Reform In 1986 the Congress of the United States of America passed a comprehensive immigration law, otherwise known as the Simpson-Mazzoli Act. In 1986, the Senators of these United States and the Representatives of these United States stood in front of the people of the United States and declared that this new law was guaranteed to control our borders. In 1986, these Congress-critters stood in front of the citizens of the United States who had put them in office, and whom they were sworn to serve, and they solemnly promised that this new...

Tuesday, July 3, 2007 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...

Immigration bill's demise not a reason to cheer Our view: Senate's failure to act will not make our borders any safer, or make the 12 million illegal residents go away Tucson, Arizona | Published: 07.01.2007 By the end of last week, every politician who could get to a phone or a computer was eager to let the world know how disappointed he or she was over the death of the immigration bill. Those were the people, like Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., who had made a valiant but unsuccessful effort to create an immigration bill that would lure hard-liners from the...

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...

They're both conservative Republicans running longshot campaigns for President and they're both in Congress, but Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado and Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas have decidedly different platforms. Tancredo is the anti-immigration candidate and Brownback is the anti-abortion candidate. And they're arguing about it. Each hopes that primary voters in Iowa care more about his issue than the other's. Attacked by Tancredo in Iowa on immigration this weekend, Brownback pointed the finger today at Tancredo on abortion. Tancredo is the national voice against amnesty, leading the conservative charge against the bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill defeated last week...

Sen. John McCain, once assumed to be the front-runner for the Republican nomination for president, announced disappointing second quarter fund-raising figures on Monday and will be cutting staff in an effort to stay afloat.

Random tax audtis are coming back. Beginning this fall, the IRS plans to revive a once controversial practice of randomly targeting thousands of taxpayers for audits, even when the agency has no reason to suspect them of wrong doing. IRS officials expect the tax probes to provide fresh data to update the top sccret formulas the agency uses to help select which returns to audit and thus enable it to do a better job. The first wave of random audits will start in October and target about 13,000 income tax returns for the 2006 tax year, selected from various income...

Republican U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham is in deep trouble with hard-core conservative members of his own party because of his support of President Bush's presumably failed immigration reform package. Some even are threatening to run a candidate against him in next June's GOP primary. So far, no one has stepped forward. "Lindsey will get an opponent," predicted Francis Marion University political scientist Neal Thigpen, a Republican activist. "The only question is will the candidate be any one of stature." (snip) Robert Botsch, a University of South Carolina-Aiken professor, said if Graham has a problem it's likely to be in the...

On the morning the immigration bill died — again — the ideological Washington Times exposed a supposed plot on Page One: A photo of Sen. Charles E. Schumer, the liberal Democrat from New York, conspiring with a Republican “traitor” from South Carolina, Sen. Lindsey Graham, to put something over on the American people. In reality, they could have been checking a takeout menu. That Thursday morning, however, Schumer and Graham were in agreement that the Senate should keep talking and voting on revising laws on illegal immigration. To the conservative media, Schumer and Graham symbolized the enemy. Hours later, the...

John McCain’s faltering presidential campaign yesterday appeared down - if not yet out - as a cash crisis forced him to cut his staff numbers by more than a third. The Republican senator, once considered the frontrunner for his party’s presidential nomination, released figures showing he had raised just $11.2 million in the last three months. Aides acknowledged he would now fall far short of his target income of $100 million this year and it is believed he now has just $2 million cash-in-hand to pay for a top-heavy campaign organisation which once numbered 150 staff members. The financial difficulties...

I asked one of the few conservative Republican senators who stuck with President Bush on immigration to assess how Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell handled the issue. Asking not to be quoted by name, he replied: "If this were a war, Sen. McConnell should be relieved of command for dereliction of duty." Not only did the minority leader end up voting against an immigration bill that he said was better than the 2006 version that he supported. He abandoned his post, staying off the floor during final stages of Senate debate. Although I never before had seen a Senate party...

I would like to compile a list of all the companies that are lobbying for amnesty for illegal aliens. It seems to me that there are a lot of interests working behind the scenes and under the radar of the American people. If you know of any company that paid money to our representatives to support the amnesty bill, please post it.

MASSET: REPUBLICAN EXCEPTIONALISM IS DEAD -- 1980-2006 RIP Long time RPT political director, Royal Masset mourns the death of the Party of Reagan and the dangerous future it portends The world is a better place because of those who made the Republican Party of Texas one of the finest institutions on the face on the earth. We Texan Republicans revived the national Republican Party after Nixon. But we now have to face one great truth. The party whose philosophy, articulated by Ronald Reagan, won the cold war and changed world history by promoting economic liberty and led the Unites Sates...

WASHINGTON - John McCain's campaign, trailing top Republican rivals in money and polls, is undergoing a significant reorganization with staff cuts in every department, officials with knowledge of the shake-up said Monday. Some 50 staffers or more are being let go, and senior aides will be subject to pay cuts as the Arizona senator's campaign bows to the reality of six months of subpar fundraising, these officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the plans have not been made public. An afternoon conference call was scheduled to announce the results of second-quarter fundraising.