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You are correct about the Amnesty in the Reagan admin.
But enforcement by Govt agencies has been conspicuously absent, and Rs have been in charge of Oversight of said Govt agencies since 1994.

True, but there's no question over the problems conservatives have trying to clean up these agencies. You can't just fire bad people and the left has entrenched themselves in a bunch of them. Energy and Justice come to mind as two of the worst, but CIA and FBI too.

enforcement by Govt agencies has been conspicuously absent, and Rs have been in charge of Oversight of said Govt agencies since 1994.

I agree with the point about oversight, but I'm also a realist. They won in 94, took over the Congress in 95, but they have yet to "take over" the bureaucracy. Klinton was still in charge of the Executive branch so there was little they could do down in the guts of those organizations. Anyway, that takes a generation, since you can't fire most of these people.

Rummy has finally done a good job at the Pentagon, which is why political officers who owed their careers to Klinton have been attacking him. Powell failed miserably at state. Tenant never even tried since he was on the Klinton team. Goss made a good start at CIA, but it was probably the most dangerous snake pit to deal with (they actully kill people as part of their bag of tricks, so every tactic was on the table).

Bringing the Border Patrol up under DHS would offer a chance to fix that, but there have been and continue to be just a few higher priorities. That's one of the reasons why I'd like to see it moved over under the Coast Guard. There's an institution that has the "right stuff" to take on the job. The Coast Guard is already part of DHS, so it may even be an internal matter, not requiring legislation.

Could that be what Bush is going to suggest tomorrow? Use the NG as a bridge force until an expanded Coast Guard can take over? Yeah, that's it... Tony read my posts about this on FR and took the idea to the President when he moved into his new job. The President will mention "a poster on that great American resource, FreeRepublic, has given us this brilliant suggestion...."

Probably (!) not, but I can dream.... <g>