Good news. Perhaps both sides are getting the message loud and clear while Bush holds hands and sing Kumbyah with humanity.

I read this morning that Hillary Clinton was expressing in increasingly bolder terms her interest in immigration reform, most likely a part of her platform should she run.

It may just be pandering to the red stated for support. If she in fact has her eyes on the White House, I would even vote for her despite her radical past and disgraceful performance with co-president Bill, if she convinced me she would put electric fences, attack dogs, land mines and watch towers up on both our borders.

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2004/11/21/233417.shtml

To achieve Mr. Auster’s hopeful scenario, conservative Republican backbenchers in the Congress need to unite sufficiently to defy their leaders, who are fully aligned with President Bush, or replace them. Hastert and Frist are useless for conservatism, and offer no principled opposition to the president. Of course, if Hastert, Frist, et al., come to see their fellow GOP Congressmen as a greater threat to their power than the president, they may start singing a different tune.

Immigration may be the issue that catalyzes the revolt; I certainly hope so. The pressure on America from mass immigration and illegal alien invasion combined with President Bush’s increasingly evident extremism in favor of illegal aliens and yet more immigration may be too much for GOP regulars; again I hope so, although I am doubtful. When Bush wraps himself in the flag as Our Wartime President, the Republican rank and file generally come to heel. The rejection of the Senate’s bowdlerized version of HR10 is a hopeful sign, however. It has been outrageously mis-reported by the mainstream press as being a turf fight over intelligence agency reporting lines, but it was an immigration reform revolt, at long last.

While I am hoping, I’ll hope for one more development, this one constitutional. If GOP Congressmen find themselves in conflict with a Republican president over, say, immigration, perhaps they will remember that the Congress is the only federal legislative branch. The Congress does not exist to pass any president’s “agenda.” The president should not have an agenda other than to uphold the Constitution (the real one, not the Supreme Court’s creative-writing version) and execute the laws the Congress passes faithfully and efficiently. HRS

Senator Clinton is doing what intelligent pols do: responding to pressure from angry constituents. What she says in the NewsMax quote is true. To travel around New York City and the suburban counties of downstate New York (suburban New Jersey and Connecticut too, no doubt) is to see a country under siege. For those not familiar with the New York area, there are vast swathes now that are like Latin American barrios. I am not talking about Puerto Rican neighborhoods, either!

If Clinton can push Republicans to the right about illegal immigration, that would of course be good. I do not think we can look to her, or any major Democrat, for help in the fight to reduce (or better, reverse) the flood of legal immigration. Diversity orthodoxy forbids it, unless black Americans rise in armed revolt against the Latin American invasion. Then the Democrats would have to choose between black and brown. HRS

Mr. Sutherland writes:

“The Congress does not exist to pass any president’s “agenda.” The president should not have an agenda other than to uphold the Constitution (the real one, not the Supreme Court’s creative-writing version) and execute the laws the Congress passes faithfully and efficiently.”

This is not correct. Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution says:

“[The President] shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.”

Thus the president is the only federal officer who is specifically charged by the Constitution with proposing legislation.

Mr. Sutherland forgets that a key purpose of the founders, inspired by Washington (who, from his 8 1/2 years experience leading the army under a weak Congress, knew what hell it was to have a government that lacked the ability to act), was to create a government in which the executive would have “energy,” the ability to act and guide events. The president was conceived as much more than a guardian of the Constitution.

“Shall from time to time” implies that the president should recommend to the Congress’s consideration (which implies no power to direct) measures on an exceptional basis. That is very different from what we have today, when presidential candidates run on explicitly legislative programs, routinely present legislative demands to the Congress and exert as much power as the administration can muster to have them passed. The president’s primary constitutional check on an overweening Congress is the veto power, not functioning as super-legislating overseer.

What Mr. Auster says about the founding fathers’ perception of a need for energy in the executive is true. But it is just that: an energetic chief executive of the administration of government, not a one-man alternate legislature. The president should be energetic in executing policy. It should be the Congress that primarily sets the policies he executes. Today, more often that not, it is the federal courts, if not the president himself. I think we can all agree that our constitutional order, both between the states and the federal government and among the federal branches, has become badly disordered. HRS

New York City is a utopia compared to LA, but that is a function of geography as illegals and Third Worlder migration from Mexico naturally enters through Mexico in California and other far away Border States. Tancredo has his work cut out.

I actually saw my old NY neighborhood go from Black, Puerto Rican, Italian and Irish become almost EXCLUSIVELY Mexican within ten years. The transformation included Mexican flags everywhere, signs in Spanish, church services offered primarily in Spanish, etc. The Mexican people it should be said exhibited no assimilation at all. I always found them INDIVIDUALLY to be nice, not threatening and very hard workers even when severely hung over, as some were extremely capable drinkers. But the society they form is a disaster.

The neighborhood is now a Mexican/Black ghetto, off limits to normal citizens, with a high crime rate and the few remaining whites fleeing. I don’t see how this has enriched this former area which was known for doctors, dentists (some homes here are from the 19th century and are simply beautiful) and was firmly once part of the white middle class.

I wonder if a class action lawsuit could be brought against the government for allowing peoples lives, their homes, and their safety to be destroyed by the allowed importation of third worlders.

Peripherally related to Mr. Sutherland’s comment above, here are some more of the joys of diversity on display in the day’s news. It seems the hunter massacre “rednecks gone wild” story may be at least partially a consequence of “immigrant populations gone wild”:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,139338,00.html

Money quote:
“There have been previous clashes between Southeast Asian and white hunters in the region. Locals in the Birchwood area, about 120 miles northeast of the Twin Cities, have complained that the Hmong, refugees from Laos (search), do not understand the concept of private property and hunt wherever they see fit.”

Mr. Sutherland made a basic error about the president’s powers under the Constitution, I pointed it out to him, and instead of admitting the point, he shifts the subject to different terrain: the contemporary excesses of presidential power. I wasn’t defending the contemporary excesses of presidential power. I was saying that the president is intended by the Constitution to be a proposer of legislation, not just a carrier-out of legislation. Does Mr. Sutherland admit the point or not?

Mr. Sutherland also interprets the “from time to time” schedule for the president’s proposing of legislation as meaning only “exceptional” occurences. This is quite wrong. Does Mr. Sutherland believe that the State of the Union, which for a long time has been given once a year, is an “exceptional” event, or a routine event?

Here’s further proof that Mr. Sutherland’s interpretation of “from time to time” as “exceptional” is incorrect. Article II, Section 3, continues:

“[The President] may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them … “

Now this is truly an extraordinary occasion that’s being spoken of, for example, when the United States is attacked and the president wants to address the Congress. The fact that the Constitution specifically differentiates “extraordinary Occasions” from the “from time to time” schedule of the State of the Union address indicates the “from time to time” is more frequent and routine, not exceptional, as Mr. Sutherland claims.

Let’s search our memory banks for past potential presidential candidates that successfully abandoned a key constituency in order to gather the support of a much larger constituency. Heck, if Hillary became an immigration reformer, I just might vote for her in the next election, though this would not be necessary because by then, the Republicans would have abandoned the Hispanics also.

Bill Clinton most certainly abandoned the homosexual lobby (in regards to gays in the military.) He also signed onto the 1994 Congress’s welfare reform bill, and he agreed to cut capital gains taxes (thus selling out the Naderite left). I am of the opinion that this helped him absorb the “conservative backlash” of the 1994 congressional and gubernatorial elections and made him more appealing to moderate voters.

Of course, I am not sure whether Hillary Clinton is as pragmatic as her husband. She definitely seems to be a leftist of the “true believer” caliber, but I wouldn’t put immigration reform past her. She has her eye on 2008 and she is no fool.

It’s long been a truism among some conservatives that Clinton abandoned or betrayed the homosexual lobby on the military issue. This is quite wrong. Clinton pushed for gays in the military as hard as he could. He didn’t have the support to push it though without having a revolution on his hands, and he finally compromised on it. He didn’t abandon anyone. He simply failed to get through what he tried very hard to get through.

Re Mr. Auster’s post of 1649:

I do not admit the point, although I will say that it is subject to reasonable interpretation; that is in the nature of a phrase such as “from time to time.” I also don’t agree that I didn’t address it, but here is some more on the topic. In addition, discussing excesses of presidential power is not shifting the debate; it is the essence of what our sidebar is about. If Mr. Auster’s hopeful scenario is to happen, Congressional Republicans will have to rein in President Bush, who has abandoned all restraint in his mission to mexicanize America.

I do not agree that the Constitution’s drafters and ratifiers intended that the president should be a routine proposer of legislation to the Congress. Had they intended that they would have included such language in Art. I, s. 7, cl. 2, which clearly states the legislative process, including the presidential veto power (and the Congressional override). “From time to time … recommend to their Consideration” is a very weakly worded power; read as written it denotes a discretionary advisory function. The president has no obligation to propose legislation at any time. The president’s mandated and routine role in legislation is at the other end of the process: when he must either sign bills or veto them. Mr. Auster thinks I understate the president’s constitutional powers re legislation; I think he overstates them.

Giving a state of the union message annually is one reasonable interpretation that has become custom. Early presidents did not feel obliged to do it annually, and I believe it is only since the mid-20th century that they have done it as a personal appearance before a joint session of the Congress. They used to send a letter.

As for the “extraordinary Occasions” language, it does not add much, as it is clearly intended for national emergencies when the president is likely to be better informed about the true situation than the diffuse Congress. The drafters were capable of nuance, as they were of precision. If they had intended that proposing legislation should be as routine a duty of the presidency as signing or vetoing it, they would have written the constitution that way, as they did for the veto power (which, of course, they limited through the mechanism of the Congressional override).

On another subject, it will be interesting to see how the murders in Wisconsin (Mr. Auster’s home state?) affect attitudes about immigration. It is truly aliens in our midst - in our deep woods. Of course, the evil 19 of September 11th were aliens in our midst also, and a lot of people, including the president, have been militantly missing the point ever since. HRS

Mr. Auster wrote: “It’s long been a truism among some conservatives that Clinton abandoned or betrayed the homosexual lobby on the military issue. This is quite wrong. Clinton pushed for gays in the military as hard as he could. He didn’t have the support to push it though without having a revolution on his hands, and he finally compromised on it. He didn’t abandon anyone. He simply failed to get through what he tried very hard to get through.”

It’s certainly a truism in the gay lobby. They thought it would work like Truman’s integration of the Army 40 years earlier. Truman didn’t “push” or “try very hard” and he certainly didn’t “compromise”. He was the Commander in Chief. He ordered. The soldiers obeyed. End of story.

The gays expected Clinton to do the same and they count what he did instead (Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell) as a betrayal. Remember that unlike blacks in the 1940s, the gays’ goal wasn’t really the ability to pursue military careers without restriction, it was social validation. Clinton understood what they really wanted but didn’t deliver it.

The trick will be take advantage of this bit of rightward momentum without splintering the hard won working majority. Leave the left free to do the splintering as they show hopeful signs of doing.

If Hillary gets serious about immigration reform in the coming years, and I have my doubts about this; then she will force the Republican party to take notice of the invasion, and the GOP would most likely have to run an immigration reformer in 08. She is too smart to get trapped like this….I think her immigration talk is nothing but boob bait for the bubbas:) The shame is her hubby Bill was on his way to real immigration reform with the Jordan commision results until Mrs Jordan’s sudden passing.

Hillary is no doubt as ruthless as Bill, and she is at least as ambitious, if not more so. It follows that she would do anything to get elected in 08, if she thought success were a reasonable possibility. I have no reason to believe anything she says; indeed, the exact opposite is true. I have every reason to believe nothing she says. The decision rests with her, and no one knows what she will do, least of all her.

To be balanced, I have every reason to believe nothing Bush says about immigration. His actions are so contradictory, if not traitorous, he has no credibility on the immigration issue. Increasing funding for a few aspects of border control, but cutting other aspects and encouraging illegal immigration, is just one example. If he were a junior executive in charge of immigration policy in the Kingdom of Truth, he would have not have been hired or at least have been fired after 60 days on the job. He rolls on only because he has connections.

“His actions are so contradictory, if not traitorous, he has no credibility on the immigration issue.”

Hear, hear.

Just remember, in his speech last January 7, Bush spoke of a great problem with immigration that had to be solved. An dwhat was this great problem? It was that ILLEGAL ALIENS WERE HAVING A TOUGH TIME.

_That’s_ the “immigration problem” that Bush is talking about, when he says that the “immigration problem” must be solved. The combination of blank ignorance and insouciant arrogance is unprecedented.

Andrew, in his Nov. 23, 4:21 PM post, states that

Actually, illegals from Mexico—save for some who are currently sneaking in from ships/boats past our Coast Guard (likely very few)—are getting into our formerly fair state (CA) thru Nevada and AZ—entering our country thru what is known as The Tuscon Sector. Some are also breaking into the U.S. from Texas and New Mexico. THEN they make their way in to CA and other states. As more press coverage on the news of the problem in The Tuscon Sector and with the Border Patrol’s recent sucesses in catching border jumpers, the coyotes and other human smugglers going to the New Mexico and Texas border areas to break into our country. But the CA border is very solid and has an excellent recent record in keeping illegals out, especially since the wall was constructed in he San Diego border area.

My oh my. Another compliment from our fearless leader, Mr. Auster. I shall bask for awhile.

I noticed that Rush spent the better part of an hour today on illegal immigration. That is unheard of for him. He has avoided this topic like the plague for over 15 years. This is good news in the sense that about 22 million Americans a-day listen to him.

Another reason for hope (if I may respond to the original posting!) is that Bill Frist is probably planning to run for president in 2008. When Bob Dole planned his 1996 run he shifted so far to the right that he was a moderate liberal.