Moe Lane

Yeah, I know, I know: merely asking this question feeds into the entire weird (and sometimes sewage-tinged) false narrative that the Koch brothers run the Tea Party.  Blame Mitt Romney for that: after all, if this Examiner article is correct (via Ben Domenech’s Transom) then Mitt Romney seems to believe that the Koch brothers run the Tea Party, and he’s acting accordingly.  You tell me how to ignore a conspiracy theory when a Presidential candidate refuses to.

Seriously.  I spent a good part of the morning trying to come up with a way to do that, and failing.

But let’s backtrack a little and go over the background.  As you’ve probably heard, Team Romney is going gangbusters over Governor Rick Perry’s supposed weaknesses on immigration, particularly his opposition to a national E-Verify system.  See Ramparts 360 and RightWing News for Perry’s actual views on the subject (and immigration in general): to summarize, Perry is as about as impressed at the federal government’s current ability to run a country-wide identification database as he’s impressed at its ability to run pretty much anything else; which is to say, Perry is not particularly impressed.  Meanwhile, Mitt Romney is actually pretty hardline on E-Verify.

For the moment, at least.  Whether this survives the weekend may be an open question.  Because, again, comes this news that Mitt Romney – everybody put down their coffee cups, by the way – is planning to court the Tea Party – and the Koch brothers. (more…)

This post by Mickey Kaus, on how the Texan mindset colors Texan attitudes towards certain aspect of illegal immigration?  From what I’ve seen from working with and talking to Texans, there is indeed a certain point there.  While I consider actual secession fears to be insanely overblown monster-under-the-bed walking nightmares at best and cynical attempts to go after conservatives at worst, the truth is that Texans have an extremely strong regional self-identity.

It’s also kind of infectious, which possibly Mickey should have gotten into more.  Although I don’t know how easy it is to get other Texans to agree that you’ve become one…

Moe Lane

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.

Pew surveyed Latino voters on illegal immigration issues: the report isn’t available yet at the site, but this article reports that Latino attitudes towards illegal immigration has taken a seriously negative turn.  The most important finding? 31% consider illegal immigration a net negative for the Latino community, with 29% considering it positive, and 20% considering it neither.  In 2007, 50% considered illegal immigration to be a net positive.

Oddly, I sort of agree with both sets of spin from the article on why this would be so: the right’s argument that this reflects heightened public awareness on the issue makes a good deal of sense.  After all, people are more than a set of survey questions: having a last name like Herrera or Sandoval or Martinez does not automatically require you to take a hardcore liberal line on immigration policy.  But this means that I also sort of take the left’s argument that much of this new attitude comes from our miserable economy.  Indeed, it does: the economy’s bad, thanks largely to the inability of the Democratic party to focus on job creation.  Instead, they do things like waste valuable legislative time pandering to the ultra-far left splinter of the Latino community…

Via Mickey Kaus (who is watching in horror as his Democratic party acts like, well, the Democratic party on the DREAM Act*), via Instapundit.

Moe Lane

*:shrug: Elections have consequences.

There was a Mickey Kaus / Dave Weigel twitter exchange on the likelihood of an amnesty gambit lame-duck session: Mickey thinks it’s likely, Weigel not so much.  Personally, I think that it’s not, for one specific reason: there are a lot of Democratic Senators who will be sweating 2012 as it is, because they aren’t precisely in a position where any remaining, lingering popularity of the President’s will necessarily rub off on them (hi, Senator Webb!).  You think that conservative activists can hold a grudge for two years?

Yeah: fortunately or unfortunately, so do those Senators.

But I could be wrong.

I understand that it was, well, accurate?

Recent news reports that Democratic leaders promised Hispanic Caucus members that provisions inserted in the healthcare to win the votes of others would be removed later suggest that South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson’s (R) charge that President Obama’s denial that the healthcare bill would cover illegal aliens was a lie was dead on.

The healthcare bill as passed and signed into law prohibits illegals from buying into the so-called healthcare exchanges that will be established under the law and denies even temporary legal immigrants access to Medicaid unless they’ve been here for five years. Hispanic Caucus leaders are now charging that the administration specifically promised to eliminate these and other restrictions and are vowing to hold the president and congressional Democratic leaders to that promise.

More on that promise here.  It certainly sounds as if Hispanic Caucus legislators were led to believe that they would have the access to exchanges resolved in illegal immigrants’ favor… which leads to the question, “When will people start apologizing to Joe Wilson?”

Ha! Yes, I know: I’m quite the comedian.

Let me put it a different way: Gov. Jan Brewer (R, AZ-GOV) removes AG Terry Goddard (D-CAND, AZ-GOV) from the defense of the illegal immigration law that the former supports and the latter opposes.

Late Friday night as the Memorial Day weekend began, Arizona’s Republican Gov. Jan Brewer, in effect, suspended the state’s Democratic attorney general from defending the new law in upcoming legal challenges. The measure, known as S.B. 1070, is due to take effect this summer and, among other things, allows local police under federal guidelines to check the immigration status of people they stop.

[snip]

The governor’s abrupt action against Terry Goddard, her likely Democratic opponent in this fall’s gubernatorial election, came after months of disputes between the two and at the end of a long day of legal maneuvering in both Arizona and the nation’s capital.

(more…)

Ain’t a ‘misunderstanding,’ by the way.  Arizonans got the message loud and clear. Louder and clearer than desired, in fact.

UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers.

“…doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t visit:”

San Diego tourism leaders and hoteliers fear they could lose a sizable chunk of business this summer from valued “Zonies” who are so angered by elected leaders’ recent censure of Arizona for its illegal-immigration law that they’re mounting an informal boycott of their own.

The San Diego Convention & Visitors Bureau and several hotels report receiving e-mails and letters from Arizona visitors saying they intend to change their plans to travel here in light of local outcry over their home state’s anti-illegal-immigration stance.

Tourism officials are striking back. In an open letter, they urge Arizona residents to overlook local politics and come to San Diego just as they always have for its mild climate, beaches and attractions.

Read the whole thing, especially the parts where the Democratic legislators involved are stammering over the alarming revelation that their act of political … ah, ‘auto-eroticism’… actually had adverse consequences in Big-Person Land.  I encourage the San Diego hospitality industry to contemplate the implications of this; and to further contemplate that the solution to their problems with an insulted customer base lies with dealing with the insulters, not the insultees…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

A. I’ve read Arizona’s immigration bill:

REPRESENTATIVE TED POE, (R-TEXAS): …Have you read the Arizona law?

ERIC HOLDER, ATTORNEY GENERAL: I have not had a chance to, I’ve glanced at it. I have not read it.

POE: It’s ten pages. It’s a lot shorter than the healthcare bill which was 2,000 pages long. I’ll give you my copy of it if you would like to have a copy. Even though you haven’t read the law, do you have an opinion as to whether it’s Constitutional?

HOLDER: I have not really, I have not been briefed yet.

And AG Holder is being paid to do that, too.  He’s not being paid to opine on it as a top administration official without thoroughly researching it first.

[pause]

Or is he?

Via Newsbusters; see also The Corner, Hot Air, Moonbattery, Instapundit, and just about everybody else at this point.

Moe Lane

PS: Rep. Ted Poe just wasn’t having any of that, was he?

As you’ve no doubt read by now, several people have been arrested, likely in connection with the Faisal Shahzad case. There’s something about this case that I don’t particularly want to highlight – in the sense that I don’t want it to be an issue – but that I sort of have to:

One of the men arrested near Boston on Thursday has been charged with overstaying his visa, and the other, identified as Pir Khan, was already the subject of proceedings to remove him from the country, according to one source.

The third man was arrested in Maine, also allegedly for overstaying his visa, a source said.

Folks, that right there is an example of why the Arizona legislature decided to explicitly implement federal immigration law on the state level; it’s not being enforced on the federal one.  Do as many boycotts, protests, and/or primal screams as you like, but immigration control is a national-security issue.  Yes, I’m being a big meanie by bringing up what appears to be an illegal-immigrant shadow economy that’s independent of the one that Mexican illegals use; the point is that these networks exist, and even if these three guys were merely part of a system to avoid showing up on the radar they were still apparently used by a terrorist to launder money.  Sort of like how drug smugglers are doing the same thing, yes?

Sorry, but that’s what’s happening.

Moe Lane

Like a large section of the right-blogosphere, I like Jake Tapper while being slightly resentful that I have to.  It’s nothing against the man; Jake’s a good guy who will do things like this.

TAPPER:  You’ve said we’re a nation of cowards because we don’t talk
freely and openly about race.  So in that spirit, let me give it a
shot.  Do you think the Arizona immigration law is racist?

HOLDER:  Well, I don’t think it’s necessarily a good idea…

[snip*]

TAPPER:  Do you think it’s racist?

HOLDER:  I don’t think it’s racist in its motivation…

What’s annoying is that he’s so bloody rare for doing this. (more…)

Radical Left-anarchist stripe, of course.

A large group of protesters demonstrating at a May Day rally for worker’s and immigrant rights downtown broke off into a riot vandalizing about a dozen businesses around 10:30 p.m. Saturday, police said.

Many in the group were carrying makeshift torches as they marched, breaking storefront windows and writing “anarchist graffiti” on buildings, according to Capt. Steve Clark. Many businesses sustained multiple broken windows including very large storefront windows at Urban Outfitters and The Rittenhouse building. Police believe at least 15 businesses suffered damage.

Via Ed Driscoll.  Blackshirts probably do more than any other faction of the Progressive Left to embarrass and marginalize the Progressive Left, bless their hearts: put enough of them in a crowd and you are absolutely guaranteed rioting, property damage, and – when the odds are at least six-to-one in their favor – maybe even a little assault and battery.  They are one major reason why the antiwar movement went precisely nowhere in the last decade, and if they’re metastasizing in ‘illegal immigrants’ rights’ groups, well, that’s good news for the people opposing those groups…