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White House spokeswoman Dana Perino defended President Bush on Thursday from attacks leveled by his party's presidential candidate, John McCain. In an interview with the Washington Times, McCain attacked Bush and fellow Republicans on a variety of policies the Arizona senator said he would have handled differently. “We just let things get completely out of hand,” McCain said. Asked about the comments during the daily press briefing, Perino said, “the president stands by his policies. The president believes that Republican Congresses got a lot more done than the current Democrat-led Congress. He supports John McCain, and he still believes that...

Last week Customs and Border Protection officials reported that two months after Homeland Security Secretary, Michael Chertoff, approved a $20 million virtual fence along a 28-mile stretch in Arizona (called Project 28), the fence was scrapped as impractical and ineffective. Is anyone really shocked by this security fence fiasco? Another government solution bites the dust. Our government has failed to produce a suitable resolution to the illegal immigrant crisis. Amnesty is not the answer. And immigration laws aren't effective if we continue to dodge or ignore them. Furthermore, globalization efforts have only confused security matters, endangering our borders as well...

In the coming months, the U.S. Supreme Court will consider the constitutionality of Washington, D.C.’s ban on handgun ownership and self-defense in law-abiding residents’ homes. The Court will first address the question of whether the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as embodied in the Bill of Rights, protects the rights of individuals or a right of the government. If the Court agrees that this is an individual right, they will then determine if D.C.’s self-defense and handgun bans are constitutional.

In several speeches he gave across the country, former US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton revealed that President George W. Bush and his administration are buckling under pressure from this nation's Internationalists in the current controversy over Mexico and the International Court of Justice. The Mexican government is attempting to save an illegal alien convicted of participating in the savage rape and murder two teenage girls from being executed in Texas for his crimes. Death penalty opponents in both the US and Mexico are trying to place this nation under the control of a world court, according to...

Hillary Clinton -- and the other Democrats running for president -- couldn't possibly have assumed that they would forever skate around the issue of illegal immigration. That notion came to an end in the most recent debate, when the New York senator badly slipped over a question about her state's controversial plan to issue driver's licenses to illegal aliens. Did she think no one would ask? Democrats had better start dealing with this. Polls show a large majority of Americans, including Democrats, opposed to illegal immigration. They also find that most Americans favor some sort of amnesty for many illegals....

The Senate rejected Wednesday an attempt to move ahead with a bill to allow illegal immigrants under age 30 to remain in the United States and gain legal status if they attend college or join the military. The vote to move ahead on the Dream Act (the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act), got 52 votes, eight short of the 60 needed. Among those voting against moving ahead with the bill were eight Democrats, even though Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid appealed to his majority to back him. But this was yet another case when the Democratic majority...

Republican presidential candidate Rep. Tom Tancredo, of Colorado, said President Bush's failure to enforce existing immigration laws is "despicable" and leading to a domestic crisis. If elected, Tancredo, 61, said he'd ask Congress to require the withdrawal of Social Security taxes from all employee wages to make it easier for the federal government to track and deport illegal aliens. "If we don't like our immigration laws, if we think they are wrong, repeal them. If we don't think they are wrong, enforce them," Tancredo said during an interview with The Telegraph editorial board at Nashua High School South. "Don't keep...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House on Wednesday approved a move by conservative Republicans to try to set free two Border Patrol agents convicted of shooting a Mexican drug dealer. After a long, emotional debate, the House voted by voice to block the Bureau of Prisons from keeping former agents Ignacio Ramos and Alonso Compean in federal prison. Ramos and Compean are serving 11- and 12-year federal prison sentences, respectively, for the 2005 shooting of Osvaldo Aldrete Davila on the Texas border near El Paso. Ramos is serving time at Yazoo City Federal Correctional Complex about 40 miles northeast of Jackson,...

Former Sen. Fred Thompson has begun his unannounced quest for the Republican presidential nomination by telling audiences in New Hampshire that Washington is badly out of touch with the country. As a senior campaign adviser put it to The Washington Post's Michael Shear, Thompson believes that "the politicians have lost their connection with what people really want and what they really expect." Few if any of the other 17 men and one woman vying for the presidency would be bold enough to challenge Thompson's claim. The belief that official Washington is deaf to the people's wishes is a staple of...

A Republican senator from Kentucky says the so-called "comprehensive immigration reform" bill is completely unnecessary because there are already laws on the books the government has yet to enforce that will stop illegal aliens at the border. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) is reportedly unsure whether he will support the immigration bill that would grant amnesty to millions of illegal aliens. McConnell tells Associated Press, "the bill on the merits is a mixed bag," and he won't decide how to vote on the measure until a series of amendments have been considered. But fellow Kentucky Senator Jim Bunning is...

Last week, the White House Council of Economic Advisers issued a report entitled "Immigration's Economic Impact" which defended the President's promotion of the Senate's "comprehensive" immigration legislation (S.1348).[1] On June 25, the White House issued a follow-up editorial elaborating on the points made in the CEA report.[2] These publications criticized Heritage Foundation research on the fiscal costs of low skill immigration and amnesty. The Heritage research criticized by the White House made the following basic points about immigration and its costs: 1. Individuals without a high school degree impose significant net costs (the extent to which benefits and services received...

STATEMENT BY THE PRESS SECRETARY Earlier today, in speaking about comprehensive immigration reform, President Bush misspoke. He told a group, "You know, I've heard all the rhetoric - you've heard it, too - about how this is amnesty. Amnesty means that you've got to pay a price for having been here illegally, and this bill does that." This has been construed as an assertion that comprehensive immigration reform legislation before the Senate offers amnesty to immigrants who came here illegally. That is the exact opposite of the president's long-held and often-stated position. President Bush has noted repeatedly that the comprehensive...

The top Senate Republican negotiator on immigration said he has heard the complaints of conservative talk-radio show hosts and bloggers, and will try to change the immigration bill to accommodate them. Sen. Jon Kyl, the Arizona Republican who wrote the bill with Democrats and the Bush administration, said he is making moves to stiffen immigration law enforcement when the Senate bill returns to the floor next week. "All of the concerns from our constituents and some in the media have been listened to, and incorporated," said Mr. Kyl, who is drafting new provisions in an amendment he hopes to offer....

Procedural snares and ``killer'' amendments threaten to disrupt the fragile coalition in the Senate that's holding together the most sweeping overhaul of U.S. immigration policy since 1986. Supporters are scrambling to address the legislative obstacles before debate resumes next week. Opponents plan to try to derail the legislation by using procedural delays and offering poison-pill amendments that may split the coalition that sustains the measure. Passage of the legislation would give 12 million undocumented immigrants a chance at legal status while handing President George W. Bush a victory on his top domestic priority. ``This is a delicate balance. The wheels...

President Bush’s latest attempt to salvage the Immigration Bill has made it crystal clear that there is indeed a political class of those we elect, who blatantly ignore the wishes of the electorate. Despite the overwhelming outcry against the bill in its present form, the president and many members of Congress seem determined to pass a collection of glued-together agendas, which are far from being a comprehensive solution. The Senate responded to the outcry by voting to not end debate, which prompted Senator Harry Reid, the Majority Leader, to pull the bill from the floor for the time being. That...

The immigration bill may be dead for now, but the political forces behind it have not gone away. Those will continue to impact both major political parties for many years to come. The basic force is that Hispanics are increasing as a share of the population. According to the latest data from the Census Bureau, there were 44.3 million Hispanics in the United States as of July 1, 2006, constituting 14.8 percent of the population. And they are the fastest growing ethnic group, accounting for about half the growth of population during the previous year—1.4 million out of a total...

There has been a sharp decline in contributions from RNC phone solicitations, another fired staffer said, reporting that many former donors flatly refuse to give more money to the national party if Mr. Bush and the Senate Republicans insist on supporting what these angry contributors call "amnesty" for illegal aliens. "Everyone donor in 50 states we reached has been angry, especially in the last month and a half, and for 99 percent of them immigration is the No. 1 issue," said the former employee.

SCHIEFFER: Let's go to a new question, Mr. President. I got more e-mail this week on this question than any other question. And it is about immigration. I'm told that at least 8,000 people cross our borders illegally every day. Some people believe this is a security issue, as you know. Some believe it's an economic issue. Some see it as a human-rights issue. How do you see it? And what we need to do about it? BUSH: I see it as a serious problem. I see it as a security issue, I see it as an economic issue, and I see it as a human-rights issue. We're increasing the...