Thanks. I'm not a lawyer, so I wasn't sure.
Otherwise, this whole business is simply academic; the re-writing existing laws.
Heck, give me more enforcement of existing law before you write a whole slew of new ones, in any case.
Last week Sen. Hillary Clinton picked up the cardinal's theme, saying the Sensenbrenner-King bill would "literally criminalize the Good Samaritan and probably even Jesus himself."
King fired back on Sunday, telling WABC: "I'd actually be curious to know what Jesus's position - how close that would be to Hillary's on abortion. But that's another story."
King blamed Democrats for another explosive aspect of the bill - a measure that would ratchet up the crime of illegal immigration from misdemeanor to felony status. "There is a provision in the bill that makes it a felony to overstay your visa. But the reason for that is, 191 [House] Democrats voted to keep it that way.
Jim Sensenbrenner and I introduced an amendment on the House floor to make it a misdemeanor," King explained. "And the Democrats - I assume for political reasons, so they could claim later on that we wanted call these people to be felons - they voted to keep it a felony."
King said that only 60 House Republicans voted with the nearly 200 Democrats to keep the felony provision. Just 20 Democrats voted with 165 Republicans to reduce the crime to misdemeanor status.