#rsrh Does Dick Durbin LIKE tormenting kids?

I mean, it’s kind of cruel to lie and tell a bunch of foreign-born young people (illegal aliens, to be precise) that they, too could be President some day.

Because, well, they can’t.  They’re not native born citizens.  Which Dick knows; indeed, he probably has that portion of the Constitution freaking memorized by now, given how often his party has been screaming about the Dread Birther Menace since 2008. There’s really no excuse to get that wrong if you’re a sitting Senator, in other words.  Continue reading #rsrh Does Dick Durbin LIKE tormenting kids?

Illinois DREAM Act passes Illinois Senate…

…thanks to Illinois Combine.

The Illinois Combine, for those unfamiliar with the term of art, refers to an unfortunate reality in Illinois politics: to wit, Illinois is not precisely a two-party state.  There is a Republican Party of Illinois, and there is a Democratic Party of Illinois – but the party bosses of both more or less ignore everybody else and run the state to suit themselves.

Case in point: the Illinois DREAM Act.  This law sets up a private* college scholarship fund for illegal aliens – which, speaking as a pro-amnesty squish, is a bad idea.  Not because kids who were brought here illegally shouldn’t get an education (although many of the people currently going ecstatic over the bill will happily accuse their opponents of thinking precisely that); but because rewarding behavior encourages it, and official scholarship funds for illegal immigrants rewards the original illegal immigration**.  And it’s not even as bad a bill as it could have been: an earlier version of the bill included handing out driver’s certificates – or, as we in the political business like to call ’em, ‘pre-made voter fraud coupons.***’ Continue reading Illinois DREAM Act passes Illinois Senate…

BREAKING: ThinkProgress pig-ignorant about military.

Legal Insurrection tipped me to this one: apparently, ThinkProgress (link available via Legal Insurrection) got itself in a bit of a tizzy over a story in the Mexican press that one of the Navy SEALs that killed Osama bin Laden was the son of Mexican immigrants, which apparently means (according to TP) that we need to pass the DREAM Act* and that the military is by the way keeping Latinos down.  Now, let’s establish something right off of the bat; I don’t know who was on that SEAL team, and it would not surprise me in the slightest to hear that one or more of them were of Latino ancestry.  Or any other ancestry, frankly.  That’s not the point: the point is that when you’re a hardcore partisan ideologue using a story for agitprop, you should probably check the story first to make sure that you don’t get burned.

ThinkProgress did not check the story first.

Quick: read this sentence (from the original Mexican newspaper article that sent TP into a tizzy) and tell me what’s wrong with it.  It’s OK if you don’t speak Spanish: neither do I, really – and I still can pick out the howler, so you should be able to, too.

El soldado Rubén Mejía, nacido en este país y de padres guanajuatenses, ha sido ascendido a sargento por el operativo en que un equipo enfrentó y dio muerte a Bin Laden.

“Sargento.”

Continue reading BREAKING: ThinkProgress pig-ignorant about military.

#rsrh Mickey Kaus half-retreats into a happy world…

…where the Democratic party takes the hint from the recent bipartisan defeat of the DREAM Act and does something sensible, like abandon the professional activists who largely make their living from inflaming racial/cultural bigotry among Latinos. Unfortunately, the program that Mickey suggests is… well, it’s pretty much the Republican program, so you know that it’s both sensible, and exceedingly unlikely to be adopted by the Other Side.  This is the way it is.

In some ways, I’m sympathetic: I was a Democrat once, too – so I know what it’s like to not want to face that the party that you grew up in is sick, and isn’t going to be getting any better.  In other ways, I’m not sympathetic: sometimes you just have to cut your losses and move on.  Mickey hasn’t reached that point yet.

He should get on with it, then.

Moe Lane

PS: Via Instapundit.

5 (or 6) Democrats kill DREAM Act in Senate.

Which is fine by me – but before the Left starts screaming, maybe they should talk to their own side. The final cloture vote was 55 to 41, with the following Democratic Senators voting against the DREAM Act:

Mark Pryor
Jon Tester
Max Baucus
Kay Hagan
Ben Nelson

Where I come from, 55 + 5 = 60, or enough to pass a cloture vote.  Three Republicans voted for cloture, so there was enough of a margin for Democrats.  Guess Harry Reid didn’t want this bill badly enough…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: Hot Air says add Joe Manchin to the list.