U.S. Senate
See Full Big Line
(D) J. Hickenlooper*
(R) Somebody
80%
20%
Governor
See Full Big Line
(D) Joe Neguse
(D) Phil Weiser
(D) Jena Griswold
60%
60%
40%↓
Att. General
See Full Big Line
(D) M. Dougherty
(D) Alexis King
(D) Brian Mason
40%
40%
30%
Sec. of State
See Full Big Line
(D) George Stern
(D) A. Gonzalez
(R) Sheri Davis
40%
40%
30%
State Treasurer
See Full Big Line
(D) Brianna Titone
(R) Kevin Grantham
(D) Jerry DiTullio
60%
30%
20%
CO-01 (Denver)
See Full Big Line
(D) Diana DeGette*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
CO-02 (Boulder-ish)
See Full Big Line
(D) Joe Neguse*
(R) Somebody
90%
2%
CO-03 (West & Southern CO)
See Full Big Line
(R) Jeff Hurd*
(D) Somebody
80%
40%
CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado)
See Full Big Line
(R) Lauren Boebert*
(D) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-05 (Colorado Springs)
See Full Big Line
(R) Jeff Crank*
(D) Somebody
80%
20%
CO-06 (Aurora)
See Full Big Line
(D) Jason Crow*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-07 (Jefferson County)
See Full Big Line
(D) B. Pettersen*
(R) Somebody
90%
10%
CO-08 (Northern Colo.)
See Full Big Line
(R) Gabe Evans*
(D) Yadira Caraveo
(D) Joe Salazar
50%
40%
40%
State Senate Majority
See Full Big Line
DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
80%
20%
State House Majority
See Full Big Line
DEMOCRATS
REPUBLICANS
95%
5%
May 19, 2007 03:45 PM UTC
81 Comments
There have been a couple of complaints here recently about piling on Republicans. On the liberal side can we please try to differentiate between the numerous crooks with a [R] after their name and Republicans in general?
And to the Republicans, can we keep it civil from your side too. Gecko’s response to almost anything is to threaten to beat up anyone he disagrees with. And DDHGLQ falls back on name calling and ad-homiem attacks regularly.
The “your stupid”, no “your stupider” point/counter-point doesn’t buy any of us much. It definitely does not add to the discussion.
thanks – dave
you lilly-livered, Al Qaeda-loving peacenik commie.
Joking, Dave. I admire the effort, but most of us have chosen anonymity, and with it too oftem comes irresponsibility. Best thing we can do is ignore those who add nothing.
I do think the fact that I am not anonymous has kept me a bit more civil.
I like your sentiments, though. There are just as many good honorable R’s out there as there are D’s.
You get my real email address (which is my name) and my real personal website. So the info is just a click away.
I consider it a point of honor to strive to be the conscience of our Party. The way you can tell the difference between the “numerous crooks with an [R] after their name and Republicans in general” is that the latter do not hold public office. It is, unfortunately, almost becoming that simple.
Of course your observation is a generality, but I hear what you are saying. It is what I’ve been trying to say on this site for many months. My disdain for Republicans if for the majority of R politicians. It is not for the R voter hoping against hope that his candidate will win and do a good job .
I don’t think I am either uncivil or name calling. But I *do* think something has gone very, very wrong with the Republican party in the last few years. I can’t truthfully regard Republicans as merely the opposite number of Democrats anymore. The leadership has sold out every conservative value the party once heal (small government? fiscal responsibility? keeping the government off people’s backs? respect for the constitution?) and seems to care only for perpetuating its own power.
So while I don’t slam a person for belonging to the Republican party, I do look askance if they support what it is doing right now, rather than trying to change it for the better. I am sorry if that seems uncivil, but it is the unvarnished truth.
I just try to stick to the issues – and there’s plenty of amunition with just that.
– dave
ps – my mom is an elected Republican. But I’ve been registered as a Democrat since age 18.
I know both of those things (I read more than I post).
My grandparents were Republicans, and my mom was until she switched parties. But that was a different era. My mom grew up in Chicago, where the Dems were machine politicians and the Repubs were the cleaner party. My grandfather knew and supported Barry Goldwater (they lived in Phoenix after he retired). I would have disagreed with Goldwater’s positions. He was far more conservative than I have ever been. But I would have felt that we each had the best interests of the country at heart, even if we disagreed about what *was* best.
I do not feel that the modern Republican party has the best interests of the country as its primary goal. They have sold out whatever principles became inconvenient to their goal of achieving power. This has happened both nationally and in Colorado.
I am trying to be measured here. But I do not agree that discussing issues is sufficient in the present environment. Until the Repubs clean up their act, I have a goal of getting them out of power, regardless of the individual Repub’s positions. I haven’t always felt this way, and I hope to not feel this way in the future. But that is the current reality.
by opposing the corrupt and those who do not have the interests of the country at heart – but not paint all Repubs with that same brush.
After all, if your goal is to get rid of the bad guys, the Repubs who do place the interests of the country first are actually one of your strongest allies.
After all, it is a lot easier to return the Repub party to the good guys in the party than it is to eliminate it.
– dave
that the vast majority of the republicans ARE corrupt. Not every one, just the majority. I am guessing that I am one of those that you had in mind when you spoke out against republican bashing. Sorry, but from where I sit, they are a CORRUPT party.
What scares me is that I suspect that this is true of dems as well. In particular, I never believed that they would pull us out of Iraq (nor wished to see it ; yet). But they said that they would create laws to stop the lawlessness that we have seen from the republicans for the last 10-20 years. Sadly, they recently and quietly gutted their own packages when it came up. In light of that, and the state dems handling of 41, it makes me realize that things will not improve until more states approve 41 clones (better written would be useful). In addition, we need some new and honest politician who will create such laws. It will almost certainly require somebody from outside of the system. If OBama was smart, he would push that aspect of it.
No one in office is perfect. And there is always some self-interest. The trick is in that framework to find a way to make it work.
They do exist. I am becoming convinced that we need to limit term limits on the federal congress since we have it EVERYWHERE else.
BTW, IMHO if light is shed on this deal by the media, and the congressmen who vote for it, then it will be changed.
They make good politicians leave. My mom has shone a light on a lot of things the Dems in Hawaii wanted to keep quiet. But she is coming up on year 12 in the house there and would be long gone if they had term limits.
here is my proposal for term limits.
But that won’t stop corruption. The only things that keep it minimized is transparency, people paying attention to what the politicians are doing, and people demanding competent government.
and voting them in way, way back both here and in CA, I would gladly reverse my vote if I could.
Perhaps a few wise souls understood what TL could do, but we sure now know. We lose the institutional wisdom and we get a whole lot of shuffling and juggling of offices. We no longer have a person who is effective where he or she is and would like to remain there.
Either way, problems. But I’m ready to go back to the old. Federal offices do not have term limits and it is, overall, OK.
when Republicans have mended their ways? Is there some quantifiable test we can run?
that’s when we’ll know.
If Gecko hasn’t threatened to beat you up, you’re either a girl or you aren’t blogging correctly.
I’m kidding of course. Civility is desperately needed, as is a willingness to hear, or in this case, read, an opposing opinion without personalizing or attacking.
(Of course, some of these exchanges are entertaining, but don’t tell anyone I said that.)
Great article on this in The Daily Camera. And as someone who’s real name is available in my profile and is not shy about having strong arguments – I have never had anything occur where I wish I was anonymous.
I think using real names not only causes us to be a bit more polite in what we post, but to also be a bit more polite to others as they are real people.
Food for thought…
Real names or not, in all likelihood we will never meet, and as such your voice is just as virtual as mine. In other words, you are a person that runs his own business, has an all-star basketball playing daughter who is getting a scholarship to Mines, had a nasty divorce, and has a mom who is a player in Hawaiian politics, but with all that info and your name you are a person that I dont know. I guess my biggest befuddlement is why people take this so seriously? Yeah, its politics, a passionate subject, and I am as passionate as anyone here, but once I am off I stop thinking about this place.
Another forum that I am on regularly bans people or puts them on probation. Of course, at that site there is a registration fee of 10 dollars and everytime a person gets banned they have to reregister, 10 bucks and all. The nominal fee helps keep the riff raff out, but the moderators and admins help keep the peace too. Everybody, short of the founder is anonymous, and he uses a screen name. Its civil there.
In part, I think if people really want to “keep it civil” then keep it civil. Others will come around, and if they dont who cares. Avoid them, engage them when they are civil. Also, I like the bequeathed name “Mr. Toodles.” But, if you would like to know my real name, just ask.
The ‘real’ life example of anticrat424 was a great image in that article. You go into a social event, hear a guy ranting on and on, pointing fingers, shouting about some person or thing. You look to see who he is and his nametag says anticraft424.
Just goes to show, if you can’t rant in public without people thinking you’re an ass, why should it be any different in here?
The rule of thumb is, if you wouldn’t say it to someone’s face, you probably shouldn’t post it.
We are what we post. I have a mental image of people who post here. Parsing, I was pretty close with yours. Lauren’s image is the best, and I say that half joking.
Half the fun is having a mask. If there was no anonymity here, there may be more civility, but some would not be able to participate.
I’d rather keep my mask on.
I guess I’ll have to stop putting “Lauren Bacall” on my name tags:)
What a great break from the name-calling that has become ColoradoPols
Tak a look at the Bob Schaffr listing in “Th Big Lin” – it spells Announcement Announcmnt. Apparntly ColoradoPols is running low on {rqustd charactr not availabl}’s
Either RTD’s manager is incompetent, less than truthful or using this as a ploy to bust the union.
Or, a combination of all three.
I wonder if the Democratic leaders in the Legislature will have the guts to investigate the RTD mess and get real answers.
That they’ve built three light rail lines – all on time and under budget.
What “mess” are you talking about exactly? And what “incompetence”? Some facts would be nice before you go around calling people crooks.
Those were the easy 3. The reason is that they were using old ROWs. Since LRT is on the ground (as opposed to a monorail or magrail), they will always have an advantage IFF they are in old ROWs. Once they are forced to compete against regular buildings and road, then they become outrageously priced. To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a LRT that has been udner budget or on time once they are out of open space. After that, they are by far they worse option that there is. When this is built out, it will cost far more than any other option that we would have had including bus lines, monorail, or even a inner city maglev, save a subway.
I have vague familiarity that the old (DEnver-New Orleans??) line ran down Buchtel in the DU neighborhood. I’m sure that ROW was given up many decades ago along with the trolley lines.
(The DNO could not use Monument Hill due to the other RR’s grabbing that many years before. Their line ran to Parker, over a large hill and eastward to Elizabeth, Elbert, and through the Black Forest. They came into CS from the east.)
in his own blog sight for his participation in the immigration amnesty.
http://www.johnmccai…
Here’s my contribution to McCain.CON:
And of course, the obligatory automatic answer:
They have to read it to censor it (as they surely will)…. 🙂
I certainly do not now. It is a shame that his legacy will be that he sold us out.
The present system is broken. And if you could wave a magic wand and have all illegal immigrants instantly deported we would go in to a severa depression. Our economy needs most of them.
Yes we should create a legal workable system. But booting the existing illegals out en-masse is imposible to do and if it was, would hurt us badly.
So we need to work from what we have. It’s not a politically pure solution, but it is a workable one.
– dave
It’s just wrong that all of these folks are coming over here without any permission from all us people who were here before them, stealing our land, speaking a different language than us, changing our values and way of life, acting different from us, refusing to assimilate with us!
– Chief Powhatan, 1607
If we created a guest worker program, and told those who were here illegally that they (a) would not qualify as a matter of law and (b) any wages paid by employers would be subject to a 500% excise tax, so they might as well go home, chances are that the bulk of them would.
If you and the corporate robber-barons are addicted to cheap labor to do your landscaping down at the country club, it is time that you reconsidered your position.
Whatever happened to the rule of law, Dave? Our politicians don’t respect it, and the people shouldn’t. America is dead, at least as a viable political entity, as it does not protect our citizens’ most basic rights.
And as a Democrat, what do you say to your base: the working stiff, whose wages have been depressed by cheap foreign labor to the point that he can no longer earn a living wage? WE NEED YOU TO WORK FOR NOTHING?
And here, I thought that the Republican Party was the home of elitist snobs….
if you look at the big picture, you are arguing in favor of protecting the wealth of the wealthier against the incursions of the poorer. I don’t see anything noble in that position.
Laws against robbery “protect[] the wealth of the wealthier against the incursions of the poorer.” Are you also in favor of abolishing them and especially, as they apply to you as a potential victim?
I advocate fealty to the rule of law, not only by our public officials but those who live under its aegis. When we can decide which laws we will and will not follow and do so with impunity, “law” as a concept ceases to exist.
1) Laws prohibiting robbery protect property rights, period. The rich can, and have, robbed the poor, perhaps more often and more consistently than vice versa.
2) More importantly, since the protection of property rights produces more aggregate global wealth, abolishing such protections would lead to greatly increased global poverty. Therefore, I don’t defend protection of property rights (i.e., enforcement of anti-robbery laws) simply out of blind theoretical fealty to any law that happens to be in existance, but out of a recognition of its social utility.
3) Economists consider the unobstructed mobility of all factors of production, including labor, to also produce aggregate economic benefits, thus lending the same argument of economic utility to the defense of open immigration policies.
4) The fact that a law exists obviously does not prove that it is either just or conducive to aggregate human welfare. I hope I don’t need to list all of the counter-examples that have graced the pages of human history.
5) Anti-robbery laws are laws that apply to everyone residing in or visiting the polity in which the laws exist. They are, in and of themselves, non-discriminatory. Anti-immigration laws are specifically targeted at people who enter from without in any manner not santioned by those laws (legal means clearly being unavailable to the majority who enter in such manners). They are precisely discriminatory (in accordance with the principals of nationalism).
6) Your initial argument was laden with the rhetoric of unencumbered immigration being a tool by which the rich defend their wealth against the poor (in your example, a tool by which the owners of the means of production suppress wages). My counter-argument was that on a more fundamental level (i.e., global rather than national), precisely the opposite is true. Your “robbery” metaphor implicitly acknowledges rather than disputes the accuracy of that counter-argument, changing the topic from what policy is preferable to what policy is currently on the books. So, if our legislators, persuaded by lobbyists for the business interests you have indicted, were to pass laws permitting relatively unencumbered immigration, with the result of suppressing wages, you would, by your logic, have to defend that policy as the correct and preferable one, because it is the law. That did not seem to be the nature of your initial argument, only your once-again misdirectional response to the fact that your initial argument was fallacious: Restricted immigration is what protects the privileges of the relatively wealthy from the incursions of the relatively poor, rather than does, as you argued, unrestricted immigration. You were simply wrong, and recasting the argument by offering an analogy which is in no way relevant to the actual content of your argument does not change that (i.e., your analogy concerning anti-robbery laws argues that it’s okay to pass laws whose purpose is to prevent flows of capital from the wealthy to the poor. Even setting aside the fact that protection of *individual* property rights arguably has a more complex purpose than that, your original argument was that the problem with open immigration is precisely that *it* prevents the flow of capital from the wealthy to the poor in the form of suppressed wages. Your fallacy is analogous to arguing that the problem with laws promoting carbon sequestration and reduction of green-house gasses is that they may create some local warming of the environment. What is missed by that argument is the more fundamental fact that such policies create *less* global warming of the environment. Similarly, open immigration policies create some local reductions in the flow of wealth from the wealthier to the poorer, but create a greater overall flow of wealth from the wealthier to the poorer).
I was going to say that, but you beat me to it;)
using that much of my brain power in one setting could blow a fuse.
Imagine what kind of a society we would have if some lowlife was able to ignore all those nasty laws which keep him from doing whatever he might want to to your virgin (or, once he got done, used-to-be virgin) 12-year-old daughter. Robbery? Rape? Racketeering? It makes little difference. We can’t simply obey the laws we want, and ignore the ones we don’t. The glue holding society together is its laws.
Thirty years ago, Australia had a one-page immigration form. Today, they are highly selective as to who they will let in, as they only have so much water to go around. New Zealand, otoh, is quite aggressive in its immigration policy. Do we not have a right to determine as a society what our society will look like?
Imagine what would happen if open immigration was suddenly forced upon Israel. Would the Jewish state survive for ten years as a Jewish state? Unless a society can decide for itself what it will be, it will certainly perish. While it might be that we last longer than Israel does, I don’t see how a nation-state can endure if it has no control over its borders.
As for the concept of open immigration, it may or may not be of net economic benefit. The indirect cost of services, inevitable degradation of the environment, and other factors might make it a net negative for our society. I don’t know, but it is utterly irrelevant to this discussion.
If we decide as a nation that we want more people among us (and we might), we can make that determination. If we have an orderly process by which a person can join our society in accordance with law, should we not require that everyone who eschews that route and openly defies that law be prosecuted and/or forcibly removed from it?
To grant amnesty to the illegal is a slap in the face of all of those who abide by the law.
Your radical globalism and destruction of the nation-state is quite another issue. As for me “being wrong,” it seems that you think that I have a right to your opinion.
If this is about the rule of law, then what is your problem with “robber barons,” who almost always have robbed within a legal context? And what does your argument about the suppression of wages have to do with it, since liberal legal immigration has the same effect as liberal illegal immigration? And if an amnesty is legislated, then it is as much a part of the rule of law as any other piece of legislation. Do you, by the way, have the same opinion concerning the amnesty to Vietnam draft dodgers, who had also broken the law? If not, it’s another example of your inconsistency. If so, it’s another example of your dysfunctional dogmatism.
“The rule of law” does not benefit from inflexibility, as you argue (at least when convenient).
Please, if at some point I stop responding to your incessant stream of weak arguments, don’t misinterpret it as implicit agreement, or the lack of a prevailing countr-argument. It will just be a matter of how best to spend my time.
YN: “The rule of law” does not benefit from inflexibility, as you argue (at least when convenient)
The rule of law is a little more sophisticated than what you make it out to be for your tawdry polemic purposes. We have no legal or moral obligation to obey an unconstitutional law, and an affirmative obligation to refrain from participating in crimes against humanity. As both Vietnam and Iraq can fairly be seen as illegal invasions (which were war crimes on their own), then a refusal to serve in the army that perpetrated it is both legal and proper. As such, I don’t have any real problem with the blanket amnesty that was offered to draft-evaders, to the extent that it was a recognition of this fact and position. Apples and kumquats.
The motivations of those behind the amnesty movement can be fairly questioned without compromising the argument itself. Business interests covet cheap labor, and want the illegals to depress the wage base. Hispanics want members of their race in, to strengthen their ethnic group’s clout. These factors are all relevant to the discussion, and you appear intelligent enough to know it; please spare us all the canards.
While the grant of amnesty would of course be lawful, that would send a horrific message to the rest of us, as it says that the law does not matter. Of course, you might believe that the law does not matter, and you are at liberty to say and think anything you want.
Whether you choose to respond is not my concern; at some point, the discussion should have an end. I am by no means awed by your flaccid globalist arguments, which have as their ultimate goal the destruction of our nation-state. We simply disagree; you can save the gratuitous verbal abuse for your wife.
Thank you for once again demonstrating your depths.
Hey TILTAWHIRL…you sure you want this great guy on your side?!
I defer to your superior intellect, admit to my lack of sophistication, and so on. Just fill in the blanks any way you wish.
“(my) tawdry polemical purposes.” I’d be intrigued to know what these are? I’m clearly a far more interesting person than I realized.
“which have as their ultimate goal the destruction of our nation-state.” What is the emoticon for rolling on the floor in laughter? I pause, savoring the pungeant aroma of phrases such as this one, marveling at God’s or Nature’s sense of humor to have produced such a living, breathing, caricature of the human intellect, and ask myself, what can I possibly say in response that could add to or enhance the self-annihilating effect of your words all on their own? It’s excrutiating, almost painful to witness, and yet so richly deserved that one cannot help but feel some glow of gratification.
Not only would a more discerning and less absurd observer recognize that if, indeed, the improbable allegation that I am trying to destroy our nation-state were true, I would undoubtedly have the good sense to seek a more effective vehicle for my designs than to debate a joke like you on a Colorado political blog…, but they would also certainly recognize the more obvious and important point: I HAVE NO ULTIMATE GOAL! For rational people, this is either just a form of entertainment (as in my case), or a venue for forwarding a fairly precise, local agenda. Pretty obvious, isn’t it? No one is on-line stroking their cat as the camera ingeniously avoids revealing their scarred face, laughing with practiced Hollywood menace, plotting the overthrow of…anything. It takes a VERY SPECIAL PERSON to invoke such absurdities in an on-line debate over political philosophy. The same kind of special person who waxes idiotic about “America wasn’t just a country for me, it was a dream, and now it’s dead, but the rigor mortis hasn’t yet set it.” OH…MY…GOD!!!
But some people, desperate for relevance, conjure up fantasies of the noble cause that has called them to arms and their unique qualifications for fighting it, filling the pages of their own internal comic book, tying a red cape around their neck and jumping off the sofa to save humanity from the nefarious designs of godless bloggers like me. Disagreement with the hero, identification of the hero’s logical fallacies, are clealy made in defiance of God or the Founding Fathers, or whatever other authority you can manage to invoke. It cannot be, of course, that your arguments are hollow, or that you’re not really all that special after all (at least not in a flattering sense of the word). If someone doesn’t agree with your analysis, they are plotting the downfall of democracy. If they point out an inconsistency, they missed the (artificial) subtlety, so easily dismantled by even a fairly bright middle-schooler, by which you can have your cake and eat it too.
Your arguments are shallow, inconsistent, and often boil down to such innanities as “if I decide that a law is immoral, then the fact that it is a law is irrelevant, but if others decide that a law is immoral, then breaking it is tantamount to the destruction of civilization.” Amnesty is okay when you declare it to be okay, and is proof of lawlessness when you declare it to be proof of lawlessness. It’s “apples and kumqoits” because you are the definitive source by which morality can be determined, and the actual ambiguities and disagreements involved in the real world are irrelevant: All we need do is ask you for the final determination.
Your arguments are all a shell game, engaged in by an individual with no skill at legerdemain. The only person, after your clumsy verbal maneuvers, who doesn’t know under which shell to find the pebble is…, you got it…, none other than you.
I have often argued against ad hominen attacks on this blog, and have generally avoided them, but you’re combination of utterly vacuous argumentation and “faux-lofty” self-canonization (not to mention bigotry) are annoying enough to test anyone’s resolve. So let me put it this way, and be done with it: I wish you all the best in your noble fight against the foes of democracy, the robber-barons, the destroyers of our nation, and all other comic book villains in your path. I just hope that this little fantasy of yours remains an on-line farce, and that you never do yourself or anyone else any actual harm trying to act it out in the real world. (Though, at the moment, I wouldn’t really mind that much if you decided to test your powers by jumping out a window).
This, by the way, is the crux of your inconsistency: You pontificate repeatedly about the pre-eminence of the law, the dangers of each deciding for himself which laws to follow, and so on, and then turn around and make declarations such as this one. To what court, precisely, are you referring when you make this claim? To what law (Domestic or International)? Regardless of how you, or I, or anyone else may feel about the efficacy or morality of our involvement in Vietnam, there has never been any serious argument mounted, in or in reference to any court, concerning the illegality of that war. There has certainly been much talk concerning the international legality of the invasion of Iraq, but, to the best of my knowledge, the court in Den Hague made no ruling on the matter. Neither, technically, were illegal, because the definition of legality is made by the courts, not by each individual to his or her own satisfation (to a large extent, of course, the case of Iraq, especially, reflects the vulnerability of international law to the “realpolitic” of the distribution of power among nation-states, but that’s another topic).
By making your own unilateral judgement concerning its legality, you are committing the very sin that you claimed is so anathema to your sensibilties: Individual rather than jurisdictional determinations of legality. I’m quite certain that you, as an individual, have no jurisdiction.
Even if the invasion of Iraq were illegal in the sense that a responsible world court should have ruled it to be illegal, the rule of law means that we respect legal rulings (or the lack thereof) even while striving to perfect the imperfect system within which they are made.
A legal scholar (which you clearly are not, in spite of statements such as “the law is more sophisticated than you understand” -or something like that) could reasonably argue that the invasion of Iraq actually did violate international law, but American involvement in Vietnam most certainly did not, at least not as international law was and is actually constituted. You simply judge it to have been wrong, which is something quite different. So, when it’s convenient for your arguments, your personal judgement serves as a substitute not only for judicial process, but for the letter of the law itself, and when it’s convenient for your arguments, the law is sacrosanct. You just can’t have it both ways.
As for your specific denial of any comparability between the amnesty for draft dodgers and the amnesty for illegal immigrants, you invoked the imaginary notion that American involvement in Vietnam was illegal, though it obviously wasn’t illegal domestically, and in fact wasn’t illegal according to international law either, and you said that citizens are not obliged to obey illegal laws or to commit crimes against humanity. How convenient all of your interpretations are! You don’t think it’s possible to argue that preventing a person from seeking available work across a border that itself was drawn through the artifice of an “illegal” war (a least as illegal as Iraq or Vietnam), in order to feed his literally starving family; a person, in fact, who is descended from the original inhabitants of this continent which we conquered and stole (as are the vast majority of the Mexicans who illegally cross our borders), is a crime against humanity? For all your bloated fantasies concerning your analytical prowess, you really do lack imagination.
On another thread, you challenged us to “dazzle (you) with (our) brilliance.” What misplaced hubris to think that you are any judge of brilliance, or that anyone respects you enough to be interested in dazzling you! What we are actually doing is dazzling each other at your expense.
Just think of the problems that would solve.
Amnesty for murder-rape-child molestors-drugs-corporate crimes-everything.
Heck lets just have amnesty every 10 years-5 years-every year.
Lets just have amnesty for everything all the time.
we would need no courts-police-jails-etc.
Think of the money we would save!
Responding to riogrande and theduke:
First, yes I think the law should be enforced. However, there are laws that are impossible to enforce and it is better to change them that to enforce them. Social gambling used to be illegal but it was unenforcable and if it was possible to enforce it it would have made criminals of many many people. So about 20 years ago states started legalizing it and there was no demand to prosecute those who had gambled up to then.
Second we also have an economy that needs immigrant labor. Look at the unemployment rate. We are basically at full employment (the way the US counts unemployment if you quit a job Friday to start a new one Monday you were unemployed for part of this month – so we will never have 0%). Yes it does affect job availability and wages a little – but very very little in the present economy.
Yes it sucks to reward those who have snuck into the country. But we have to look at how to best handle this moving forward. We have all these people here and they are integrated into our economy and into our society. Yanking them all out is impossible. We can’t find them all and if we did, the economy can’t contiue without them.
So we set up a system to make them legal. Think of it as a statue of limitations like we have for most crimes. If someone stole $100.00 10 years ago and we find out today, should they still be charged with that crime?
Along with the amnesty program, we also need to fix our immigration system so it works. And that means setting it up to accept the number of immigrants this country demands. Because the root problem is the gigantic mis-match between the need and the system. Since the US is a free market economy, the law of supply & demand will always trump and mis-matched law.
– dave
I agree completely.
One thing I don’t understand though, I hear this bill is predicted to be 1000 pages long. Does it really have to be this long and complicated?
My favorite was the tax simplification bill when Reagan was president. Everyone held up this inch thick stack of papers while talking up the tax simplification it contained.
And it did simplify taxes. But still, an inch thick???
If written well they cover all the statutes the proposed policy affects. If not than the loopholes occurr. With an issue as complex as immigration, a 1000 page bill is either 1) totally bogus (in which case we’ll hear about it) or 2) designed to influence and change many of the problems the system faces (visas, reentry, family issues, naturalization…).
Often the shortest bills introduced in the CO Legislature are the ones that generate the most debate, worry and angst. Get a twenty page bill in there, sails through.
…is to enforce the laws on the books, and to make things so difficult for those who are working here illegally to continue to do so to go home. No services. No education. No health care. Nada. A 500% excise tax on all wages paid to them. If we do what is necessary, we won’t have to remove them on our own.
However, if they do remove themselves voluntarily, they could apply for temporary worker visas. We should give priority to those countries that allow our citizens ready access to their markets, in much the same way citizens of the Commonwealth get preferential treatment in Australia. After that, if we need the cheap labor, we can import it as needed.
I have no problem with an orderly system that respects the rule of law, but I do have a major problem with a government that willfully flouts the law, and rewards others for doing so.
IMHO, illegal immigration was a 2006 election year wedge issue. Illegal immigration has been around for 50+ years, but only in election year 2006 did it rise to something politicians could beat their chests about. It’s easier for a shallow politician to beat up on Mexicans than to formulate a plan to solve the Iraqi quagmire or propose a workable health care program for Coloradans.
Immigration is a FEDERAL issue, yet, Colorado state politicans (e.g. Beauprez) pushed it in their STATE election bids vilifying Hispanics (and apparently missed the fact that one out of five Colorado voters are Hispanic).
The illegal immigration drumbeat works as an election wedge issue in Tancredo’s district (CD-6), which has the smallest Hispanic population (6%) (next smallest is CD-5 and CD-4), but it guarantees Republican losses in statewide races, in metro Denver, Pueblo, Southern Colorado, and all the other CDs.
Focusing on the issue did an huge disservice to the Republican Party by making all Republicans look like racists. IMHO, much of the Republican losses in Colorado in 2006 were due to the retarded position the party took on illegal immigration.
to see how quickly it collapsed after the special session last summer.
It only collapsed among “Real People” after the special session.
However, there are still a fair amount of racist Archie Bunker types out there. A lot of people in Western Colorado, for example, emigrated from California 10 or 15 years ago to get as far away from Mexicans as possible. Whatever ethnic group they belong to doesn’t matter, of course, as long as they get to be the last people admitted to the country and can close the gate behind them.
Whether or not there are enough Archie Bunkers left alive to matter is a whole different question.
We’ll see.
I was going around for months saying “No duh! This has been going on for, like, for – ev – er!”
and irritating. R’s get painted as the anti Hispanic party when we are certainly not of one mind on this issue. Pro Labor types like Lou Dobbs are just as critical, but don’t seem to get the same treatment or exposure in the press as the R’s do. Sure, there are some R’s who are racist, and that is their number 1 reason for opposing immigration, but the majority of Republicans fall into the “rule of law”, “safety”, or “free market” camps with regard to immigration.
You’re destroying the ‘boogieman’ paradigm that’s necessary for these guys to explain everything that’s wrong in the world.
Republicans like you and I don’t exist. Or we’re just temporarily hiding our racist/colonialist/fascist/elitist ways.
I hide my racism and corruption beneath a thin veneer of civility and Revlon.
of the anti-illegal immigration movement is Tom Tancredo. Before that it was Pat Buchanan. As long as these are the people seeking attention and leadership on the issue – and as long as other Republicans let them make it one – then it’s a label that will stick, regardless of who is really in agreement with them and who is not.
This week the ruthlessness of the administration was exposed for all to see when Comey testified:
FBI Director Mueller ordered the FBI agents in the hospital room to prevent anyone from physically trying to remove James Comey from the Ashcroft’s hospital room while Card and Gonzales were present.
Comey also testified that he did would not attend a meeting with Mr. Card without a witness.
What we know now is that when the putsch didn’t work and they didn’t get the AG’s signoff on their illegal program, George W Bush decided to continue it anyway. In fact, the only thing that created enough pressure to have even the slightest changes to the program was the threat of all the top DoJ officials to resign publicly.
This begs some questions. What opinions of legality are being written today by Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) after the departure of Jack Goldstein and James Comey? Who is left in the DoJ who puts their highest allegiance to their oath to protect and defend the Constitution above the interests of the Party? Now that we know that the OLC and the DoJ were so corrupted even before the 2004 election, what have they been doing since then besides attempting to steal elections? (And did you know that the person the WH wanted to have replace Jack Goldstein as head of the OLC was our old friend, John Yoo? No, really!)
We know that they have succeeded in purging the “traitors” who didn’t put Bush above the Constitution, and we only found out about their illegal actions because some of the people in the government believe in the Rule of Law. Now that they are gone, what other crimes are happening under the cloak of secrecy?
The next important question is, what can be done to rein these bastards in? Kargo X has been writing about the next problem for awhile. This administration is ruthless and blatant in their quest for power. So although the Congress has the authority to conduct investigations, when they issue subpoenas, if the WH decides to not comply, who is going to make them comply? The Justice Department? The courts?
One obvious answer is impeachment, but with a large segment of the Republican party buying into the authoritarian dream of a one-party-state where they can do whatever they want, it looks like this approach could be a long slog.
Joining Kargo X, John Dean writes about the other mechanism built into the Constitution to deal with the scofflaws like Gonzales. He notes that instead of holding a “no confidence” vote on Gonzales, they could decide to hold him in contempt. And Dean believes that Gonzales has made enough enemies on the Republican side that this vote would pass. Once that vote passes, then Capital Hill police officers could arrest and detain Gonzales until the WH complies or until the end of the Bush administration. Once they have Gonzales, perhaps they can go after Rove and then Addington, and mop up the rest of the underlings that enable the dirty work of the Cheney administration. As an added benefit the steady drumbeat of scandal and illegality can help make the case for impeachment and we might just get rid of these criminals sooner than the next election.
After the fall of the Cheney regime, we can start talking formal trials. How’s that sound?
h/t Mary
Whether it is Mary Mullarkey and Mitch Morrissey with respect to my personal situation, or Alberto Gonzales and George Bush with respect to people we will probably never know, it is the disdain for the rule of law among our rulers, which in turn is engendered by a lack of effective enforcement of that law. Whenever a prosecuting attorney is anything other than a faithful servant of that law, there is no law. Justice Brandeis minced no words:
With corrupt foxes like Troy “I Don’t Know Jack” Eid guarding the chicken-coop, a Congress motivated to look the other way (at the time, it was), and a patchwork quilt of official immunity protecting the perpetrators, how can we expect our laws to be enforced? A hundred years ago, the rule of law actually meant something:
Whether it is our President or state supreme court, public officials are free to set the law at defiance with impunity. Prosecuting attorneys enjoy “prosecutorial discretion,” which means that they have the right to look the other way. Our own Commission on Judicial Discipline does much the same thing, as have all federal agencies and Congressional committees controlled by the thugs running our government. Whether we are speaking of the Colorado legislature or Congress, our representatives are either in on the deal or utterly feckless.
While a single political party can control the courts and the legislature, it cannot control the people. Thus, the solution is to empower the people to take action when the powers-that-be decline to do so. In Colorado, that solution will be the Judicial Accountability Act of 2008 (and, other parallel legislation CAR 31 cares to submit next session to take care of corrupt officials like Mitch Morrissey). What we can get done on the federal level is uncertain, but the idea of making mere citizens private attorneys general has been tried in other areas of the law.
The Republican candidate (assuming one of the front runners gets it) will campaign on the Bush approach but competent.
The Dem candidate will campaign on becoming a nation of laws once again.
The voters will decide. I have faith in the people of the United States.
“The United States is continuing to make large payments of roughly $1 billion a year to Pakistan for what it calls reimbursements to the country’s military for conducting counterterrorism efforts along the border with Afghanistan, even though Pakistan’s president decided eight months ago to slash patrols through the area where Qaida and Taliban fighters are most active,” the NEW YORK TIMES will report in Sunday editions, according to a copy of the article advanced to RAW STORY.
Justice Clarence Thomas sat through 68 hours of oral arguments in the Supreme Court’s current term without uttering a word. In nearly 16 years on the court, Thomas typically has asked questions a couple of times a term.
And yet, his vote is not only important…in that…well…he’s a supreme court judge…but he doesn’t have to explain or defend his votes.
Am I the only one that thinks this is very weird?
The scarier part is that Thomas is reputed to be the intellectual leader of that wing of the Court.
some people love to hear themselves talk constantly. Some people are deep in thought, others are napping. I doubt if Clarence could make you happy either way though:)
that Bill Orally let this one go on his show, or that someone was actually watching him closely enough to catch it.
http://youtube.com/w…
The assault on our culture, our government, our values and our environment…..not to mention ouor sensibilities, our morality our ethics….on and on…is truly frightening. Thanks for being a strong bulwark voice.
The battle is on! Those of us on the side of good governance and preservation will prevail!
Black Sabbath’s War Pigs
——————————————————
Generals gathered in their masses,
just like witches at black masses.
Evil minds that plot destruction,
sorcerers of death’s construction.
In the fields the bodies burning,
as the war machine keeps turning.
Death and hatred to mankind,
poisoning their brainwashed minds.
Oh lord, yeah!
Politicians hide themselves away.
They only started the war.
Why should they go out to fight?
They leave that role to the poor, yeah.
Time will tell on their power minds,
making war just for fun.
Treating people just like pawns in chess,
wait till their judgement day comes, yeah.
Now in darkness world stops turning,
ashes where the bodies burning.
No more War Pigs have the power,
Hand of God has struck the hour.
Day of judgement, God is calling,
on their knees the war pigs crawling.
Begging mercies for their sins,
Satan, laughing, spreads his wings.
Oh lord, yeah!
I quote Steppenwolf, you quote Black Sabbath….
Freedoms just another word for nothin left to lose.
Kristoferson who wrote it I believe.
if you think about it the only really free are those who have nothing. If you have something you worry about loosing it or having someone take it away. If you have a house -you are tied to it- a wife-children-etc.
But, then again some say the very rich have more freedoms by virtue that they can buy it- ala-O.J.
LOL
…that Kristofferson is a RHodes Scholar and a Helicopter pilot?
Not only that, but when he was trying to get Johnny Cash to hear one of his songs (I think it was Sunday Morning Sidewalks) he landed his helicopter in Cash’s yard to give him the tape.