Congrats and criticisms to start the week.

Edited for clarity on 10-Aug-2006...

[This post meanders a bit. Sorry.]

First, congratulations to Governor Napolitano. On Monday (today as you read this) she takes over as Chair of the National Governor's Association. Her elevation to the position (she was Vice-Chair for the last year) is a sign of the bi-partisan esteem and respect that her colleagues hold for her.

I first read about her ascension to the position in a story regarding the NGA's opposition to a clause in the House-approved National Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 5122, sec. 511) that allows the President to federalize National Guard units in the various states "without the consent of the" governors of those states.

Originally, I was going to write a post about how the Republican congressmen of AZ voted to undercut their own Democratic governor in a bit of partisan gamesmanship. However, after performing a bit of due diligence (aka - research), I found that while the 6 Rep congressmen from AZ did vote for the bill, so did Democrat Ed Pastor. Further, I found that the bill passed on May 11, 396 -31, 5 not voting.

Deciding to take a quick look at the bill to determine the root of this bipartisan support, I found a legislative behemoth. Even those Reps that had misgivings about certain sections could probably find something that they really liked.

Also, checking the Congressional Record of the debate, I couldn't find anything that indicated an AZ congressman expressed support for the specific part of the bill that took power away from the Governors and concentrated it in the hands of President Bush. Maybe someone slipped the language into the bill during a committee session, but there was no indication here.

I decided that while I would love to take AZ's congressmen (particularly you-know-who :) ) to task for placing the President's power acquisition schemes above the safety of the state and its residents, it wouldn't be fair to do so without evidence.

[Note: if someone has a link to such evidence, please forward it to me if you aren't going to write about it yourself. I'll be happy to update this post and give credit where it's due. Thanks.]

So, I figured that this would be a "JD-free" weekend (never a bad thing, that :) )

Then I read both the AZ Republic's and the East Valley Trib's Sunday editions.

Now for the criticism.

Both had JD as part of their op/ed pages on the same day.

In the Trib, they had a guest column from JD titled "Israel must win to save the rest of us." [Couldn't find a link online, but I'll check later on to see if one goes up.]

After spending the first couple of paragraphs excoriating Sam Coppersmith for questioning JD's adoration of anti-Semite Henry Ford, JD moves on to calling for the utter destruction of Hezbollah by Israel. Given that I support Israel, it's difficult to criticize him too much for this very simplistic message, but I retch when he writes "[a]s in any war, there have been dreadful mistakes and civilian casualties." He continues by justifying Israel's mistakes because they have apologized for them, while berating Hezbollah's because they haven't.

Dead civilians are dead civilians, whether killed by the "good guys" or the "bad guys." Lives are destroyed, no matter who fires the bullets or launches the rockets. That can never be forgotten.

Hayworth's cavalier dismissal of those deaths is absolutely vile. His column can best be summed up as "Kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out, and say 'we're sorry' for any incidental civilian deaths."

The column continues in a similar fashion, closing with another jab at Sam Coppersmith.

I can't tell if he's trying to salvage what he can of the Jewish vote, if he truly just likes death and destruction, or if he's trying to get the anti-Semite/pro-Israel Christian rapture vote.

[Note to the Trib: Find a better picture of JD. His current pic has him with a crooked smirk that looks about half a second from a "what me worry?" ear-to-ear special. It's goofy. Lose it.]

Over on the Republic's editorial page, there was an unsigned editorial titled "A failure to communicate" written about the Congressional meetings about illegal immigration (officially, the meetings were about 'securing the vote', protecting it from undocumented aliens. Hmmmmm....so *that's* who's responsible for Florida in 2000. :) )held this week in Yuma and Phoenix.

The usually corporatist right-wing AZRep editorial board surprisingly rips into the way the meetings were conducted. In short, the public meetings were set up to accept no public input.

According to the piece, Reps Pastor, Grijalva, Franks and Hayworth joined Vernon Ehlers at the meeting. The two Dems, Pastor and Grijalva, wanted to solicit public input, but that was nixed by the chair (Ehlers). Nothing in the piece indicates that JD wanted to hear from members of the general public, especially in an unfiltered, uncontrolled atmosphere.

Links to the prepared statements that were submitted for the hearing on August 3rd (Phoenix) are here.

Enough already. Of all the smoke-screen issues that the Reps have tried out this year (see: marriage, same sex; burning, flag; tax, estate) illegal immigration is the only one with legs.

It combines the historical strain of virulent nativism that lies just beneath the veneer of civility in our culture with the simple fact that illegal immigration *is* a substantive issue - it does affect many people, for better and for worse.

Now that the demagogues and hatemongers (JD, anyone?) have successfully fanned the flames, the issue isn't going away any time soon, though apparently they would like us to forget it in favor of their issue of the week.

Too bad the vast majority of the people in the country NEVER had to worry about the estate tax or tried to marry someone of the same gender or tried to burn a flag (other than as prescribed in Title 4 of the US Code, Section 8, paragraph k) in the first place. All of us are either immigrants or the descendants of immigrants.

I think that regardless of where people stand on the issue (and there is a wide spectrum of opinions on this one) most can agree on one thing -

When Congress wants to crawl out from under their rocks and listen to the people most affected by illegal immigration and by the (mostly) crackpot 'plans' to address it, they'll be welcome.

Until then, they should quit wasting our time and money.

Personal note: I'm going to miss JD when he loses in the fall. He provides soooo many subjects for posts. Maybe he'll get a job with Fox News so he can keep spewing his bigoted bile. And I can keep criticizing it.

Of course, since I don't watch Fox News, maybe I'll just have to learn to write about the common sense positions of and reasonable legislation written by Harry Mitchell.

:)

G'night!