Free Republic

Washington is abuzz with talk that the Senate Republicans will deploy the so-called "nuclear option" -- in essence, violating the rules of the Senate to eliminate the possibility of mounting a filibuster against a presidential nominee -- in order to obtain the confirmation of a handful of President George W. Bush's appointments to the federal judiciary. Senate Democrats, naturally enough, are plotting a second strike: Through various manipulations of the Senate rules, they will bring the entire legislative process to a grinding halt. And rightly so. There's no particular reason why filibusters should be banned just for nomination votes, and...

Immigration conundrums. Well, it looks like I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue. I'm going to say something that I know is going to make my life more complicated: "I'm not outraged by Bush's immigration proposal." There you have it. For two days it's been like doing the belly crawl through a barbed-wire field in the Corner (our blog, for those of you who are painfully ignorant of the goings-on around here). NR's mighty angry, and so are the vast majority of our readers. The cover story of the issue is dedicated to a classic, and very well...

<p>Friday, January 9, 2004 12:01 a.m.</p> <p>The debate over President Bush's new immigration reform has so far been mainly about election-year politics. But what we believe most commends it is that it recognizes the world as it exists.</p> <p>Like it or not, the U.S. is part of an integrating regional and world economy in which the movement of people across borders is inevitable. Despite nearly 20 years of efforts to "crack down on the borders," the immigrants keep coming--an estimated eight million without legal U.S. documents today. As long as the per capita income differential between the U.S. (nearly $32,000) and Mexico ($3,679) continues to be so wide, we can't stop immigrants short of means that will violate our traditions, our conscience, and our national interest.</p>

Surely he knows this. Which is why I believe Bush and his War Cabinet may have another strategy in mind, which is this. The president intends to draw down U.S. forces to a hard core of fighters, perhaps 90,000, backed by U.S. air power, a force 15 times as large as the mobile U.S. force in Afghanistan. This force will carry the brunt of battle in a new war against the guerrillas and terrorists, and be less concerned with winning hearts and minds in the Sunni Triangle than killing enemy fighters. Operation Iron Hammer is the dress rehearsal for the...

Last week, Senate Democrats effectively defeated the nomination of Charles Pickering to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals through abuse of the filibuster. No doubt liberal ringleaders against the judge — Sens. Ted Kennedy (D., Mass.), Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.), and Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) — were pleased to add another Bush nominee's scalp to their collection, but with Tuesday night's Republican victory in the Mississippi gubernatorial race, as well as vulnerable Senate seats across the south and midwest in 2004, it may be Pickering who ultimately has the last laugh.