I think it's feeding time for the congregation again.
Enjoy.
There's more where this comes from.
2001-01-24: Bush Amnesty Plan Threatens U.S. Economy (Fox News)
Three weeks ago there was no one among Republican voters who would have said that fixing the problem of illegal immigration to the U.S. meant granting amnesty to an estimated eight million illegal aliens, the majority of whom have entered the U.S. without a visa by walking across our border with Mexico.
But that is precisely what President Bush said last week he intends to do, as he posed for pictures before a Mexican flag in Monterrey, Mexico. To his left was Mexican President Vicente Fox, who -- in an even more alarming image -- was framed by the Stars and Stripes as he smiled for the cameras.
Americans should get used to scenes like this, and all they portend. Despite an enormous backlash from core Republican voters, conservative groups and a growing number of Congressional Republicans, the Bush administration seems determined to curry favor with Hispanic voters, and has chosen an immigration amnesty as the means to achieve that.
2004-02-19: Bush Amnesty Sparks Surge in Border Crossings (Fox News)
On Jan. 27, the Copley News Service reported that shortly after President Bush announced his plans to amnesty millions of illegal aliens in the U.S., more than half of the Mexicans trying to sneak into the U.S. through San Ysidro (search) told authorities they were doing so to position themselves for the amnesty.
As one member of the U.S. Border Patrol (search) told me, “They believe that they are only responding to an invitation.”
2006-12-02: DUI illegal kills Marine home on leave from Iraq (WND)
One week after he slammed his Nissan Sentra into a car waiting at a stoplight, killing a U.S. Marine and his female passenger, Eduardo Raul Morales-Soriano, whose blood alcohol level was measured at .32 – four times the legal level in Maryland for intoxication – has been identified as an illegal immigrant by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office in Baltimore.
Marine Cpl. Brian Mathews, 21, of Columbia and his date, Jennifer Bower, 24, of Montgomery Village were killed Thanksgiving night, shortly after 10:00 p.m. when Bower's Toyota Corolla was hit from behind by Morales-Soriano, 25, of Mexico. Mathews and Bower were on their second date and were planning to take part in the June wedding of friends who had introduced them to each other.
Mathews had served 8 months in Iraq and completed another tour of duty in the Pacific. He was stationed at Camp Pendleton, Calif., and had come home to Maryland for the holidays. He was scheduled to leave the Corps in June 2007.
Mathews' fellow Marines are upset over his death.
"It's more anger than anything," Cpl. Garrett Farris, 21, of Texas, told the Baltimore Examiner. "A guy goes to war and has no problems with that. He comes back to the States, and it's supposed to be our safe place."
2009-01-09: Bush Praises Results of 'No Child' Law; President Cites a 'Closing' Achievement Gap, Increased School Accountability (The Washington Post)
Bush argued that No Child Left Behind has "forever changed America's school systems" for the better, forcing accountability on failing public schools and leading to measurable improvements among poor and minority students.
. . . . .
With No Child Left Behind, Bush clearly left his mark. Passed with bipartisan support and signed into law seven years ago yesterday, it marked an unprecedented federal foray into locally controlled public schools and transformed the education system for teachers, administrators and nearly 50 million public school children.
2006-10-05: Bush: No Child Left Behind Closing Achievement Gap (The Washington Post)
"How do you solve the problem until you measure the problem," Bush said, touting the merits of annual testing. "The No Child Left Behind Act demands results for every child."
2000-11-01: “My concern about the role of the federal government is that an intrusive government, a government that says, ‘Don’t worry, we will solve your problems’ is a government that tends to crowd compassion out of the marketplace” (The New York Times via OnTheIssues.org)
2009-09-15: GW Bush: "There is no [conservative] movement...I redefined the Republican Party" (The Washington Examiner via FR)
2006-03-27: Counterfeit Conservative (American Conservative)
President George W. Bush took office to the sustained applause of America’s conservative movement. In 2000, he defeated the liberal environmentalist Al Gore, abruptly terminated the legacy of the even more hated Bill Clinton, and gave Republicans control of both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. A few cynics were suspicious of Bush’s understanding of and commitment to conservative principles, but most on the Right welcomed his inauguration.
Five years later, the traditional conservative agenda lies in ruins. Government is bigger, spending is higher, and Washington is more powerful. The national government has intruded further into state and local concerns. Federal officials have sacrificed civil liberties and constitutional rights while airily demanding that the public trust them not to abuse their power.
The U.S. has engaged in aggressive war to promote democracy and undertaken an expensive foreign-aid program. The administration and its supporters routinely denounce critics as partisans and even traitors. Indeed, the White House defenestrates anyone who acknowledges that reality sometimes conflicts with official fantasies.
In short, it is precisely the sort of government that conservatives once feared would result from liberal control in Washington.
. . . . .
Although modest in scope, Impostor is a critically important book. Bartlett demonstrates that Bush is no conservative. He notes: “I write as a Reaganite, by which I mean someone who believes in the historical conservative philosophy of small government, federalism, free trade, and the Constitution as originally understood by the Founding Fathers.”
Bush believes in none of these things. His conservatism, such as it is, is cultural rather than political. Writes Bartlett, “Philosophically, he has more in common with liberals, who see no limits to state power as long as it is used to advance what they think is right.” Until now, big-government conservatism was widely understood to be an oxymoron.
. . . . .
However, it is on spending that the Bush administration has most obviously and most dramatically failed. Bartlett entitles one chapter “On the Budget, Clinton was Better.” Not just Clinton but George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Richard Nixon, and even Lyndon Johnson, depending on the measure used.
. . . . .
Like the typical Democratic demagogue, Bush has used spending to buy votes whenever possible. In this, of course, he has been joined by the Republican Congress. But his lack of commitment is evident from just one statistic: Bush has yet to veto a single bill. One has to go back almost two centuries to find another full-term president who did not veto even one measure.
In fact, the Republican president and Republican Congress have been full partners in bankrupting the nation. The low point was undoubtedly passage of the Medicare drug benefit, to which Bartlett devotes one chapter. The GOP majority misused House rules and employed a dubious set of carrots and sticks to turn around an apparent 216 to 218 loss. Worse was the administration’s conduct. The administration shamelessly lied about the program’s costs, covered up the truth, and threatened to fire Medicare’s chief actuary if he talked to Congress. The bill is badly drafted and, more importantly, adds $18 trillion to Medicare’s unfunded liability.
In Bartlett’s view, this might be the worst single piece of legislation in U.S. history, which would be quite a legacy. Writes Bartlett, “It will cost vast sums the nation cannot afford, even if its initial budgetary projections prove to be accurate, which is highly doubtful. It will inevitably lead to higher taxes and price controls that will reduce the supply of new lifesaving drugs.” In short, an allegedly conservative president inaugurated the biggest expansion of the welfare state in four decades.
2005-05-03: The Grand Old Spending Party: How Republicans Became Big Spenders (CATO)
2009-01-26: Bush Was a Big-Government Disaster; He expanded the state, and the idea that the state is incompetent (Reason)
2003-08-15: A 'Big Government Conservatism'; George Bush hasn't put a name to his political philosophy, but we can. (The Wall Street Journal)
The White House needn't have bothered. The case for Mr. Bush's conservatism is strong. Sure, some conservatives are upset because he has tolerated a surge in federal spending, downplayed swollen deficits, failed to use his veto, created a vast Department of Homeland Security, and fashioned an alliance of sorts with Teddy Kennedy on education and Medicare. But the real gripe is that Mr. Bush isn't their kind of conventional conservative. Rather, he's a big government conservative. This isn't a description he or other prominent conservatives willingly embrace. It makes them sound as if they aren't conservatives at all. But they are. They simply believe in using what would normally be seen as liberal means--activist government--for conservative ends. And they're willing to spend more and increase the size of government in the process.
2004-09-13: New Era of Big Government (American Conservative)
Each administration, it seems, must have a central theme around which its policies and actions revolve, and which provides a constant excuse for or explanation of why it does what it does. Who can forget the constant invocations by the Clintons that whatever the former president or his administration did, it was “for the children”? For the current administration of George W. Bush, any program, policy, or power grab—domestic or foreign—is justified because it furthers the War on Terror. Both the current and the immediately past administrations have fallen back on this ploy whenever criticized or attacked for their actions. After all, rather than bother to defend their actions as consistent with a core philosophy, it is much easier simply to label critics as “extreme” by claiming that if they are opposed to something the president or his employees are doing or have done, then by definition those critics must be against children or don’t support fighting terrorism.