Oh...yeah, that's right. I remember now! You're right: Arnie never came back and said "I oppose driver's licenses for illegals". He always said, "I oppose driver's licenses for illegals if they haven't had a thourough, comprehensive background check by the Mexican goberment to determine if they are breaking any law, or have ever in de past".
Well, I stand chastized! The Dual National from Oesterreich has my renewed respect! Why, he won't give a foreign national "not completely where they are supposed to be" (to use Ms. Pelosi's tortured words) the benefits of U.S. Citizenship until he and the Inspector Clouseau Memorial Background Check Unit try to determine if this person in the United States Illegally is a criminal....hmmm...wait...illegal...Mon Dieu! We have it, Governor Arnold! We suspect that they may be a criminal because...because...they are here illegally!! Whew, that was hard...
Hey, Junky, buzz off. The whole Background Check thing is a sham that's as ludicrous as the Mexican Matricula Consular. It was dreamed up by the Mexican government and their fifth column in this country to try and stave off citizen anger after 9/11, when they realized that their 30 year initiative to subvert the laws of the U.S. and legitimize their colonization was gonna get derailed. That's all. There won't be any "background check" because a) The people in the country illegally don't have any "background" here to check, b) Mexico can't, won't and never would agree to any such thing, and if they did, they'd lie about every single one, and c) As soon as you do the "background check" you will find yourself confronted with one uncontrovertible fact: the person you are investigating is a deportable criminal by definition. PERIOD.
Take your staged indignation and save it for a Mime Troop event. That's about your speed.
Your "fine print" whisperings explaining "oh, I thought you all wanted drivers' licenses for illegal aliens who break the laws and sneak into your country and try to work for less than you so they can then send that money back to their families in foreign lands" was what Arnold really meant.
To be fair to newjunkie, he has repeatedly posted that this was Arnold's position all along. And when you go back and look, you will find that Arnold deliberately tried to IMPLY he opposed the principle of giving drivers' licenses to illegals, but whenever he went on at length he did give that 'because of technical reasons' answer.
The whole situation is a shame. That's very politician-disengenous-like for a man whose greatest attribute is that he isn't a politician.