There are so many issues to be dealt with here is another.
This year, I'm particularly thinking a lot about welfare reform and how measures over the last few years have helped create a better life for those once dependent on the government for their very existence. Thankfully, when the welfare reform law that was passed in 1996 came up for renewal about two months ago, lawmakers didn't heed the advice of liberal critics who wanted to see it dismantled. They refused to jettison the formula that has enabled thousands of Americans to leave the welfare rolls over the last six years – namely, work in exchange for aid. Liberals insisted that it would doom millions of children to a life of poverty. Yet there are 2.8 million fewer poor children today than there were in 1996.
Across the nation, welfare caseloads have been cut in half. And for the best reason imaginable: because the people who used to get the aid are working. Indeed, employment among poor single mothers has risen by at least 50 percent. (And this in the midst of an economy that is still experiencing sluggish growth.) Meanwhile, the poverty rate of the single mothers who make up such a disproportionate number of welfare recipients has dropped by nearly a third and is now at the lowest point in U.S. history. The poverty rate for black children has fallen at a similar rate and also is at the lowest point in U.S. history. Why would we ever want to go back to the way things used to be?
Lawmakers, who could be passing more reform measures, seem to be at a standstill. Instead of forging ahead with more welfare reform, they've merely extended the law as it's written until early next year. In short, they're acting like so many of us do when faced with a difficult decision to make: They're procrastinating. Yet it is possible to make the law better – by emphasizing marriage. Research by Heritage Foundation analysts Patrick Fagan, Robert Patterson and Robert Rector (the primary architect of the 1996 law) shows why marriage education is the next logical step in federal welfare reform.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=30248
And this rant has what to do with the topic of this thread? Alberto Gonzales? enlighten us