So far from the mainstream they need a telescope, the Republican Party as we now know it simply can’t help itself when it comes to hiring Elton John and then decrying those darn homosexuals. In the case of Elena Kagan, the next Associate Supreme Court Justice, the bloviators of the Grand Old Party are counting on a good old heterosexual haymaker to knock the Kagan nomination into next week.
Not that the GOP is going to come right out and say she’s gay. They already tried to slip that nugget into the mainstream of American political discourse, generating little more than a hiccup among the succubus. The problem is that Kagan—though 50 years old and unmarried—is also from all accounts (including her own) simply not gay.
No matter. In the confirmation hearings now underway like a runaway buss, the GOP Senators have decided to focus on homosexuality of all things. It seems that Solicitor General Kagan, as Dean of Harvard Law School, once banned military recruiters from campus because of the open-sore “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy governing gays in the military.
Dean Kagan bravely stuck to her guns, but she also allowed military recruiters access to Harvard law school students under the aegis of the Harvard Law School Veterans Association. One such law school email at the time read: “U.S. Army JAG Interviews in Cambridge … The United States Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps is interviewing interested 1Ls for 2005 summer internships and 3Ls for full-time active duty positions. Please contact Captain Fansu Ku — who will be available Feb 14-18 locally … Sponsored by the Harvard Law School Veterans Association.”
As a White House official opined: “These Department of Defense documents further undermine the false Republican attacks about Kagan’s efforts to accommodate military recruiters at Harvard. In fact, these newly released letters indicate that she assiduously followed the law and ensured that Harvard law students could choose a career in military service. The fact that the number of Harvard law students entering military service increased under Dean Kagan didn’t shut down the Republican smear machine — but the truth revealed in these DoD memos should.”
“The unfair charge made by some that Elena Kagan broke the law as Dean,” said Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, “continues to have no basis in law or fact.”
A senior GOP honcho called the gambit “desperate spin”—off-the-record, of course.
“Instead of welcoming the military recruiters on campus,” said Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, “she punished them and relegated them to second-class status.”
Well, not exactly. That hissing you hear is the hot air leaking from the business end of the opposition to Elena Kagan. The Republicans were so desperate, in fact, that they had lined up retired Lt. General Jerry Boykin to testify against General Kagan on the subject of military recruitment. Unfortunately for the GOP, General Boykin is the same Jethro who told church-goers in Florida that “his” God was bigger and badder-assed than the Muslim version, Allah be damned. To their credit, the Republican Senators boinked Boykin before he could be called to testify.
At best, the General testimony by the military gave the GOP one last chance to claim that Kagan, who is not gay, fought “don’t ask, don’t tell” in support of gay rights. From their perspective, the only thing better would have been if Kagan was actually gay. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
I watched the Republican charade on the Kagan nomination with somewhat bemused interest. I kept thinking that the GOP Minority leader John Boehner is actually darker than Kagan’s Mentor Thurgood Marshall. btw, that’s pronounced baynor not the triple X way.
They have so little to be outraged about that it must be upsetting and unsettling. To be against EVERYTHING you have to depend on SOMETHING to register every time you hit the outrage button. But the outrage depends on external sources, so when nothing particularly terrible is happening–ie, the Kagan nomination–the outrage has to be manufactured out of whole froth.
So glad I’m not a Conservative.
Best, MC!
Well Im not left or right, but im with the other 91% thats sick of these criminals up in DC and the 60% sick of cess-pool-barry the president born in Kenya.
why dont we start with this? this is what we are sick of.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsBP2sbhjCA
=
The cost of harboring illegal immigrants in the United States is a staggering $113 billion a year — an average of $1,117 for every “native-headed” household in America — according to a study conducted by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).
The study, a copy of which was provided to FoxNews.com, “is the first and most detailed look at the costs of illegal immigration ever done,” says Bob Dane, director of communications at FAIR, a conservative organization that seeks to end almost all immigration to the U.S.
FAIR’s opponents in the bitter immigration debate describe the organization as “extremist,” though it is regularly called upon to testify before Congress.
Groups that support immigration reform immediately attacked FAIR’s report and pointed out that it is the polar opposite of the Perryman Report, a 2008 study that found illegal immigration was actually a boon to the American economy. It estimated that illegal immigrants add $245 billion in Gross Domestic Product to the economy and account for 2.8 million jobs.
The FAIR report comes as President Obama moves immigration reform to the top of his agenda, and it is likely to be a rallying point for those who oppose the president. At a speech Thursday at American University in Washington, D.C., Obama argued that the entire immigration system is broken and needs sweeping reforms. Among the changes he said are needed is “a path for [farm] workers to earn legal status,” which the president’s critics called an opening for a new amnesty program.
FAIR’s report argues that there are two choices in the immigration debate: “One choice is pursuing a strategy that discourages future illegal migration and increasingly diminishes the current illegal alien population through denial of job opportunities and deportations. The other choice,” it says, “would repeat the unfortunate decision made in 1986 to adopt an amnesty that invited continued illegal migration.”
Click here to read FAIR’s Executive Summary
The report states that an amnesty program wouldn’t appreciably increase tax revenue and would cost massive amounts in Social Security and public assistance expenses. An amnesty “would therefore be an accentuation of the already enormous fiscal burden,” the report concludes.
The single largest cost to the government of illegal immigration, according to the report, is an estimated $52 billion spent on schooling the children of illegals. “Nearly all those costs are absorbed by state and local governments,’ the report states.
Moreover, the study’s breakdown of costs on a state-by-state basis shows that in states with the largest number of illegals, the costs of illegal immigration are often greater than current, crippling budget deficits. In Texas, for example, the additional cost of immigration, $16.4 billion, is equal to the state’s current budget deficit; in California the additional cost of illegal immigration, $21.8 billion, is $8 billion more than the state’s current budget deficit of $13.8 billion; and in New York, the $6.8 billion deficit is roughly two-thirds the $9.5 billion yearly cost of its illegal population, according to Jack Martin, the researcher who completed the study.
Click here to see FAIR’s state by state costs.
“The most important finding of the study is the enormous cost to state and local governments due to lack of enforcement of our immigration laws,” Martin wrote.
The report found that the federal government paid $28.6 billion in illegal related costs, and state and local governments paid $84.2 billion on an estimated 13 million undocumented residents. In his speech, Obama estimated that there are 11 million.
But FAIR’s critics said the report wrongly included American-born children of undocumented workers in its study.
“The single biggest ‘expense’ it attributes to unauthorized immigrants is the education of their children, yet most of these children are native-born, U.S. citizens who will grow up to be taxpaying adults,” said Walter Ewing, a senior researcher at the American Immigration Council. “It is disingenuous to count the cost of investing in the education of these children, so that they will earn higher incomes and pay more in taxes when they are adults, as if it were nothing more than a cost incurred by their parents.”
He added that “the report fails to account for the purchasing power of unauthorized consumers, which supports U.S. businesses and U.S. jobs” and that it “ignores the value added to the U.S. economy by unauthorized workers, particularly in the service sector.”
Martin said FAIR expected that criticism, but that because the children are a direct result of illegal
+
are you starting to get it conman?
See, it doesnt matter if your Liberal or Conservative. on the issue of ILLEGALS. BOTH Barry born in Kenya and the Blue Blooded Cowboy Bush wink wink HAVE FU%^ED US.
But it dont matter, the conman will still lick the boots of barrry the Kenyan
Boasting a population that is 97% Hispanic, more than half foreign born, and 40% illegal, the Los Angeles County, Calif., incorporated city of Maywood has achieved the Reconquista goal. It is now as lawless and chaotic as any place in Mexico. Maywood is a warning to every city and town in America.
The Maywood City Council announced this week that after years of radical policies, corruption and scandal, the city was broke and all city employees would be laid off and essential city services contracted out to neighboring cities or to L.A. County government.
How did this happen? Until recently, Maywood was the model for “brown power” politics.
Maywood was the first California city with an elected Hispanic City Council, one of the first “sanctuary” cities for illegal aliens, the first city to pass a resolution calling for a boycott of Arizona after that state passed a law to enforce federal immigration laws, the first California city to order its police department not to enforce state laws requiring drivers to have licenses to drive, the first American city to call on Congress to grant amnesty to all illegals.
Council meetings were conducted in Spanish. Maywood was the leader in the peaceful, democratic achievement of the La Raza goal to take power in the U.S.
The City of Maywood started out quite differently. Back after World War II, Maywood was a booming blue-collar town with good jobs, a multi-ethnic suburb of Los Angeles.
On the 25th anniversary in 1949 of Maywood’s incorporation as a city, the town celebrated with a beard-growing contest, a rodeo, and wrestling matches in City Park. Chrysler operated an assembly plant there until 1971.
But the early 1970s saw these industrial jobs in aerospace, auto and furniture manufacturing, and food processing evaporate under the pressure of higher taxes, increased local and state regulation, and the attraction of cheaper land and cheaper labor elsewhere.
The multi-ethnic Maywood of the post-war years was transformed in the ’80s and ’90s by wave after wave of Hispanic immigrants, many of them illegal.
In August 2006, a “Save Our State” anti-illegal immigration rally in Maywood drew hundreds of protesters—but a larger number of defenders of illegal immigration. The pro-illegal protesters carried signs which read “We are Indigenous ! The ONLY owners of this Continent!” and “Racist Pilgrims Go Home” and “All Europeans are Illegal Here.”
According to newspaper reports at the time, objectors to illegal aliens were subject to physical attacks. A 70-year-old man was “slashed,” a woman attacked, and cars vandalized. Pro-illegal demonstrators raised the Mexican flag at the U.S. Post Office.
The illegal population and their sympathizers became increasingly radicalized. Elections to the City Council saw “assimilationist” incumbent Hispanic council members ousted by La Raza supporting radical challengers.
For years, the Maywood City Council authorized police checkpoints to stop drunk driving. Drivers without licenses had their cars impounded. Illegals in California cannot get drivers licenses. By 2005, the number of such impounds were in the hundreds. A community campaign was launched forcing the City Council to suspend the checkpoints.
Cars were still being impounded whenever a police traffic-violation stop resulted in a driver without a license.
Felipe Aguirre, a community activist with Comite Pro-Uno, an “immigration service center,” coordinated a new campaign against any impounds. He was elected in 2005 to the City Council. He is the mayor of Maywood today.
Aguirre and a new majority of the council dismantled the Traffic Department. Illegals were given overnight-parking permits and impounds stopped. You didn’t need a license to drive in Maywood. The Los Angeles Times wrote glowingly of this “progress” in a story entitled “Welcome to Maywood, Where Roads Open Up For Immigrants”.
The Maywood Police Department was restructured by the new council. A new chief and new officers were hired. Later it turned out that many of the new officers had previously been fired from other law enforcement agencies for a variety of infractions. The Maywood P.D. was known as the “Department of Second Chances.”
Among those hired was a former L.A. Sheriff’s deputy terminated for abusing jail inmates; a former LAPD officer fired for intimidating a witness; and an ex-Huntington Park officer charged with negligently discharging a handgun and driving drunk.
Even the L.A. Times called the Maywood Police Department a “haven for misfit cops.” Their story alleged that a veteran officer was extorting sex from relatives of a criminal fugitive; that another officer tried to run over the president of the Maywood Police Commission; and that another officer has impregnated a teenage police-explorer scout.
Charges of corruption and favoritism led to one recall of city council members and threats of more recalls are heard to this day.
Maywood is represented in the state Senate by Democrat “One Bill” Gil Cedillo. He earned the nickname by introducing every year in the state legislature a bill to grant drivers licenses to illegals. Maywood is represented in Congress by Democrat Lucille Roybal-Allard, a staunch advocate of amnesty for illegals.
Today, Maywood is broke. Its police department dismantled along with all other city departments and personnel. Only the city council remains and a city manager to manage the contracts with other agencies for city services in Maywood.
Maywood is the warning of what happens when illegal immigrants, resisting assimilation as Americans, bring with their growing numbers the corruption and the radical politics of their home countries. Add the radical home-grown anti-Americanism of Hispanic “leaders” and groups like La Raza and you get schools where learning is replaced with indoctrination, business and jobs replaced by welfare and gangs, and a poisonous stew of entitlement politics.
In too many American communities, this sad tale is all too familiar.