Of particular note is the following . . .
Barely two months after the September 11 attacks, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg stated his commitment to preserve the Big Apple as a formal sanctuary for illegal aliens. "People who are undocumented do not have to worry about city government going to the federal government," Bloomberg vowed. This assurance was stunning coming from the new mayor of a city still covered in rubble as a result of foreign terrorists who exploited our lax immigration policies at every turn.
But Bloomberg was simply following in the bipartisan footsteps of his predecessors. New York City's sanctuary policy was created in 1989 by Mayor Ed Koch and upheld by every mayor succeeding him. When Congress enacted immigration reform laws that forbade local governments from barring employees from cooperating with the INS, Mayor Rudy Giuliani filed suit against the feds in 1997. He was rebuffed by two lower courts, which ruled that the sanctuary order amounted to special treatment for illegal aliens and were nothing more than an unlawful effort to flaunt federal enforcement efforts against illegal aliens. In January 2000, the Supreme Court rejected his appeal, but Giuliani vowed to ignore the law.
Stick a fork in him -- he's done. This is precisely the kind of information that is going to get a lot of scrutiny during the GOP primaries and/or the general campaign in 2008 -- and it's just one thing among many that's going to lead him to a defeat of embarassing proportions.
ACTUALLY HE'S NOT DONE!:
New York City's Republican Mayor Rudolph Giuliani used the platform of a March 30 luncheon to appeal to federal and state governments and the courts to roll back unfunded mandates, leaving fund allocations to local discretion. Giuliani ticked off a string of his city's funding horror stories including one he suspected ought not be raised in a press club: New York is required by mandate to spend $175,000 a year for newspapers for the inmates of city jails. Another $400,000 is mandated to wash jail windows four times a year. As Mayor, Giuliani interjected, he has yet to see anyone dusting the panes at City Hall. Courts, said the Mayor, determined that jail meals were insufficiently warm: so there is now an order on the books to spend $300 million to rectify that. The same money, the Mayor protested, could build 15 schools, remodel playgrounds or expand the police force. Rounding out his list, Giuliani spoke of a new mandated water filtration plant in a city "whose water is already good enough to bottle, and better than the water of other cities here, in Europe or Asia." Giuliani said the federal government should stick to what it alone can do, sealing borders against illegal immigrants, deporting criminal aliens and negotiating international drug control agreements. Far from accomplishing that, he said, New York City now harbors an estimated 400,00 illegal aliens while only 772 were deported from the New York area in the past year. Feisty and smiling, Giuliani was asked whether he would accept the No. 2 spot on a 1996 Republican Ticket. The New York Mayor laughed in reply that there might be some doubts about the political savvy of one who backed Democrat Mario Cuomo in his unsuccessful bid for re-election as Governor of New York. Then, more seriously, he added that his desire for now is to concentrate on helping American urban areas. The National Press Club Record Volume XLV, No. 13. April 6, 1995.
The legal case that you refer to is entitled The City of New York v, The United States of America, 179 F.3d 29 (2nd Cir. 1999). While the case did involve an long standing NYC policy regarding the disclosure of immigrant status, in its generic form, the case addressed a constituional issue that is very dear to the heart of many conservatives, and that is the 10th Amendment of the Constitution and the power of the Federal Government to regulate state and local concerns.
But even if Giuliani does support illegal immigration as you contend, then how does that make him any different than Presidient Bush and the significant plurality if not majority of Republicans in Congress who are willing to give legal status to illegal aliens. Indeed, if one sets aside President Bush's war on terror (for which he earns an A+) and his judical appointments (also an A+), he earns an F- in areas like fiscal restraint and shrinking the size of the Federal Government, as well as domestic leadership in the area of energy independence, tax reform, and social security reform.
My big beef with Rudy is with his abortion position, but that is only one of many issues that we have to weigh in deciding to elect a candidate. His position on homosexuality is in nothing more than political posturing to get elected mayor of a city full of democrates and homos. He is certainly not the first person to pander for votes, and there is not a candidate on the national sceen who hasn't done the same thing. I do know that the extremely liberal NYC press hated him (that's a good sign); Rudy thinks Pataki is an idiot and didn't endorse him for govenor (that's another good sign); under his stewardship, crime in NYC plunged to near record lows (another good sign), the welfare roles were purged of hundreds of thousands of deadbeats (another good sign); and NYC regained fiscal integrity (another good sign). Giuliani's divorce from psycholady, Donna Hanover is nor more relevant than Ronald Regan's divorce or Rush's two (or is it three) divorces. And while Rudy's relationship with Bernard Kerick is troublesome, there is not a politician in the world who doesn't wish they had a mulligan or two.