Quick Hits

Hoo-boy, where to even start. Today's festivities have certainly opened a can of...well, you know. I can't really pick a single topic for tonight's update, so I'll just hit some short, quick thoughts. Hopefully they'll all make sense in the context of the day.

Thought #1: It's far from over. The Republicans in the House overwhelmingly passed a resolution (114-23) condemning the Senate's actions. This shamnesty bill will be a fight all the way to the President's desk.
Thought #2: Hypocrisy run amuck. "The Senate conducts most of its business by cooperation and consent. The minority provides that consent with the expectation that the courtesies it extends to the majority will be met with respect for minority rights. And no Senate right is more fundamental than the right to debate." - Senator Harry Reid, March 15, 2005, in a letter to then Majority Leader Bill Frist. [Based on what Reid did today, the rights of the minority to hold debate apparently only apply when the minority is the Democrats.]
Thought #3: Process violations. Stanley Kurtz (NRO) writes that despite our political differences -- which can sometimes get vicious -- there's always the feeling of government following public opinion. In this bill, however, the situation is completely opposite - there isn't anyone who likes this bill or wants it to pass...except the Senate and the White House. This is reflected in the repeated process violations and secret meetings by the 'deal-makers' to get this thing thrown into law despite the literally overwhelming opposition by almost everyone else in America. There were no committee hearings. Debate was cut off before it truly began. It stinks. It stunk from the very shadows of its beginning, and it stinks even worse today as it oozes its slimy way through the Senate.
Thought #4: More government incompetence. The Houston Chronicle reports that a small portion of the border fence that has been built is actually on Mexican soil, and has to be removed. This is the same government that is promising to spend $4.4 billion to construct a 'high-tech' fence that will 'secure our borders'. Yeah, right.
Thought #5: Reid now controls the entire Senate. Yep, he did something that has never before been done in the history of the US Senate - he has used procedural trickery to render the other 99 Senators completely irrelevant. As Sen. Jeff Sessions puts it, "Senator Reid has been trying to portray this immigration nightmare as solely the responsibility of President Bush, but today we saw just how bad Reid wants it. He used his power as Majority Leader to manipulate and abuse the rules of the Senate to ram this bill down our throats. He has set up a process that guarantees votes on a few amendments while blocking all others. This has never been done before, and it’s the most heavy-handed and rigged thing I have ever seen. This bill may have Ted Kennedy’s name on it but it belongs to Harry Reid now." Senator Jim DeMint continues with an extremely important point: "Republicans need to take a step back and realize what happened today. Senator Reid turned the Senate into the House and fundamentally undermined minority rights," said Senator DeMint. "I was always told the Senate was the saucer that cooled the pot, but Senator Reid is forcing us to drink straight from the spout. Republicans better wake up soon or they can expect Senator Reid to use this tactic in the future to raise taxes, increase spending, and weaken our national security." Why do we have a system of checks and balances? To prevent exactly this sort of thing from happening. Reid has way overstepped his bounds in the ultimate show of gall and disregard for his peers and the American people.
Thought #6: Just wait until you see the amendments! Remember how people have been predicting that once the first cloture vote was passed, the 'deal-makers' would get exactly what they wanted? They were able to pull just enough support from fence-sitters to gain their cloture vote based on the promises of some amendments that would make the opposition happy, but let's wait and see what Reid selects as his amendments of choice...

I'll post some commentary on those amendments as soon as I start seeing some information come out on them. For now, just keep up the pressure on your Senators to vote NO to the next cloture vote. Don't let them away with playing both sides of the issue.

There's my two cents.