Here’s a pretty damned important ruling from the right-wing extremist court that voters asked for in the 2004 election :

The Supreme Court scaled back protections for government workers who blow the whistle on official misconduct Tuesday, a 5-4 decision in which new Justice
Samuel Alito cast the deciding vote.

In a victory for the Bush administration, justices said the 20 million public employees do not have free-speech protections for what they say as part of their jobs.

Critics predicted the impact would be sweeping, from silencing police officers who fear retribution for reporting department corruption, to subduing federal employees who want to reveal problems with government hurricane preparedness or terrorist-related security.

Like the article says, “in a victory for the Bush administration”…..

The Senate passed as slightly decent (which is the best we could probably hope for under the current leadership) immigration reform bill today, but you wouldn’t know it based on the rabid ranting of conservatives and newsmen alike. The one thing I’ve heard in every description of the bill is that it provides “amnesty” for illegal immigrants. Well, if this is “amnesty”, then we’re all screwed :

Those in the country unlawfully for five years or more would be permitted to remain, continue working and eventually apply for citizenship. They would be required to pay at least $3,250 in fines and fees, settle any back taxes and learn English.

Illegal immigrants in the country for more than two years but less than five would be required to travel to a point of entry before re-entering the United States legally and beginning a lengthy process of seeking citizenship. They would be subject to the same fines, fees and other requirements as the longer-term immigrants.

An immigrant in the country illegally for less than two years would be required to leave with no guarantee of return.

Paying fines, back taxes, taking a background check (that wasn’t mentioned in the above article, but I’ve read elsewhere), being forced to learn English, and the possibility of becoming a citizen. How is that amnesty??? The very fact that there’s a fine involved means that this proposal is not amnesty. If it’s not harsh enough for the conservatives who want white people to have more babies, then that’s one thing, but calling this bill amnesty is clearly a lie.

The Senate bill also increases penalties against employers, but I still consider them a token gesture at best :

The Senate voted Tuesday to fine employers who hire illegal immigrants up to $20,000 for each unauthorized worker, putting teeth in a broad immigration bill before sending it to a final vote later this week.

Employers would have to check Social Security numbers and the immigration status of all new hires within 18 months after money is provided to the Homeland Security Department to expand the electronic system for screening workers.

“This is probably the single most important thing we can do in terms of reducing the inflow of undocumented workers, making sure we can enforce, in a systematic way, rules governing who gets hired,” said Sen. Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois.

The amendment passed 58-40. Ohio Republican Mike DeWine voted for the amendment while Ohio Republican George V. Voinovich voted against it. Opponents said the verification system would take years to implement and complained that workers deemed illegal could still hold onto jobs until their appeals are exhausted.

First of all, a fine of $20K sounds good, but it’s an arbitrary number. If nothing else, the fine should have some relation to the amount of money that employers are saving by hiring illegal workers. I don’t know how feasable that would be, since you’d have to determine how much a given job would be paying in a job market with wages that aren’t being driven down by illegal workers, but I’d be willing to bet the total savings would still be above $20K. Background checks and social security number tracking would be even better, but it’s a moot point anyways.

The problem isn’t that there aren’t enough laws, but that the people in charge of enforcing the law don’t give a shit about immigration. If you care about immigration, you need to elect a government that shares your priorities. Based on the outcry and the last six years of government inaction, the American people are clearly ready for a change. The only question is what kind of change are we gonna get? The blind rage from the immigrant-bashing Lou Dobbs wing or a more thoughtful approach that recognizes that welcoming immigrants into our country doesn’t have to happen at the expense of border security or working class values.

So, this bill is far from perfect. It’s got that xenophobic and uncessessary “English as the national language” crap as well as a guest worker program (which I’ve complained about here before as “separate but equal” labor), but there’s a silver lining here. From what I’ve read, the House and Senate versions of “immigration reform” (aka. Panderfest ‘06) are so radically different that, if we’re lucky, this thing will probably get stuck in gridlock until after November. Seriously guys, do you really want the people who screwed up Iraq and New Orleans to bring their bold and decisive leadership to the border?

The subject line for this post was taken from something I heard Jon Brion say at Largo once, but I think my favorite thing about Madonna is her humility (via Defamer) :

I know that being predictably “offensive” is her shtick, but this is just getting sad. Hasn’t she done the “appropriating religious symbols” thing already? If she wants to keep offending people, maybe she should rent some John Waters movies for inspiration. Pink Flamingos alone has enough offensiveness for Madonna to “reinvent” herself for another decade. Of course, that just assumes that you buy the whole “reinvention” act in the first place. Not that I’d ever listen to her music, but her whole persona reeks of the same bandwagon-jumping and press-manipulating that infuriates me about John McCain. Just because you were the first to capitalize on a trend doesn’t mean you deserve more props than the people whose ideas you’ve co-opted.

Here’s something really, really bizarre that I found recently when Googling through the White House website. From an “Ask the White House” session with HUD Secretary Mel Martinez :

King, from Mars writes:
Greetings Mr. Secretary

Although there are no humans on Mars at present, I would like to invite the human race to consider Mars as an ideal location for a vacation home or just a place to get away from it all.

Would you consider offering incentives to those who might want to build a home on Mars? I’ll tell you, it is a beautiful place and oh, let me tell you, there is nothing like Autumn on Mars.

And please don’t tell me that you are looking at Venus first.

Kindly

King Bloop Zod
Mars

Mel Martinez
Dear King,

Your problem is one that does not appear to be housing. I think you are doing great at promoting tourism but affordable housing in America is more of my concern. Good luck in your endeavors.

That was on June 2, 2003. Six months later, the President made this surprising announcement :

With the experience and knowledge gained on the moon, we will then be ready to take the next steps of space exploration: human missions to Mars and to worlds beyond. Robotic missions will serve as trailblazers — the advanced guard to the unknown. Probes, landers and other vehicles of this kind continue to prove their worth, sending spectacular images and vast amounts of data back to Earth. Yet the human thirst for knowledge ultimately cannot be satisfied by even the most vivid pictures, or the most detailed measurements. We need to see and examine and touch for ourselves. And only human beings are capable of adapting to the inevitable uncertainties posed by space travel.

As our knowledge improves, we’ll develop new power generation propulsion, life support, and other systems that can support more distant travels. We do not know where this journey will end, yet we know this: human beings are headed into the cosmos.

Mars, bitches! But seriously, Mr. President, what’s the hold up? Don’t you know King Bloop Zod is waiting for us?

At the risk of coming off like a fanboy (or even worse, a fanman), lemme just mention that I’m really looking forward to the new Superman movie. I’ve been reading comics off and on since I was a kid and Superman has always been my favorite character by a mile. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about the movie itself as its release date gets closer, but as someone who’s looking forward to the marketing orgy that precedes Hollywood blockbusters, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that Warner Brothers seems to have dropped the ball again, at least as far as their spin-off merchandise is concerned. Take a look below at action figures from Superman Returns and Batman Begins :

Superman seems to have been greased up and Batman looks like he’s holding one of those devices they have at Home Depot to keep your garden hose from getting tangled. Throwing in the fact that the complexion of both figures makes them look like drowning victims, it’s hard to believe that these are official movie tie-ins. The look more like the bootleg action figures you’d see at dollar stores and swap meets. By contrast, take a look at the offerings from the Silver Age line of figures from DC Direct :



Not only are the figures photographed in a way that makes people want actually to purchase the products, but they look much, much better. Batman comes with Robin and isn’t holding a batarang longer than a baseball bat. The Superman figure not only doubles as a robot, but he comes with a super monkey (the name’s Beppo, btw). So, if you’re looking to waste money, do yourselves a favor and skip Toys R Us and just head to the nearest comics shop.

Spotted in line at the grocery store…

It looks like The Onion, which recently had an article titled “Are Your Cats Old Enough To Learn About Jesus?”, is once again forced to play catch-up to reality. Our society’s only hope for redeption lies here.

Uggghh….the “jobs Americans won’t do” meme will never die, but who am I to argue with anecdotal evidence?

Some economists say such accounts don’t mean that Americans won’t do some jobs, but that employers such as Gurney simply aren’t paying enough.

“Every time someone says illegal immigrants take jobs from Americans or do jobs Americans don’t want, I want to scream,” UCLA economist Christopher Thornberg says.

This argument makes Smallwood want to scream herself. On a recent job that went into overtime, a Diversified Landscape foreman, Vincente Sanchez, was making $52.34 an hour.

“How high can you go?” she says.
. . .

Last week Smallwood wrote a flier that says she would pay $34 with experience and $14 without. The notice cautions that no application would be accepted “without verification of proper identification that allows you, by law, to work in the USA.”

The flier is up in more than a dozen landscaping supply stores. So far, Smallwood says, there have been no calls.

It’s times like these when I feel like the world has turned upside down in the last few years. After all, how else can you explain a situation in which conservatives are begging for government intervention in the economy and liberals (or at least some of us) are insisting that the laws of supply and demand should be allowed to resolve a situation?

The thing I find so damn frustrating about this never-ending argument is the fact that the “jobs Americans won’t do” are jobs Americans did do, at least until employers figured out they could pay illegal immigrants less and not have to worry about getting in trouble for it. From what I’ve read, the massive influx of Mexican immigrants didn’t pick up steam until the late 60’s or early-70’s, but it’s not like we had self-picking fruit and lawns that didn’t require mowing before then. The implication that Americans aren’t willing to get their hands dirty and put in a honest day’s work is not only factually incorrect, it’s insulting as well.

And none of this is to denigrate the work ethic of immigrant laborers. I’ve been saying for years now that anyone who comes to this country to do manual labor for next to nothing has worked a lot harder to achieve the American dream than I’ll ever have to, so if anyone’s earned the right to pursue citizenship, it’s them. If they’re already here and working hard, why shouldn’t they be allowed to become citizens and participate in all of the rights and responsibilities that come along with that?

Please spare me the hand-wringing about people who “skip to the front of the line”. The reason there’s a line in the first place is because the number of people we allow into the country is based on an arbitrary quota preference system that doesn’t accurately reflect the number of people entering our country. If you’re lucky enough to be one of the fraction of immigrants who are allowed to begin the path towards citizenship, the process for becoming a citizen is often prohibitively expensive and a bureaucratic nightmare. The naturalization process isn’t indicative of the needs of our country or the immigrants themselves.

Which, in the toxic terms that define the current immigration debate, means that my position would be described in a sneering, Lou Dobbs-ian tone as “supporting amnesty“. As conservatives work towards making the word “immigrant” synonymous with “criminal”, this strawman argument is a way of modernizing the Willie Horton slur and broadening it to include almost every Spanish-speaking immigrant. If you support giving “illegal aliens” citizenship, you support criminals (unlike the God-fearing, flag-waving patriots in the Republican party). The racist subtext of this debate is starting to make itself clearer, but it’s not like this is the first time the GOP has exploited racial tension in an election year.

Besides, there’s a big difference between giving people who are already here a clear path to citizenship and granting citizenship to a large subset of our population automatically (a position I haven’t heard anyone endorse). As far as I’m concerned, if they’re already working here, we should be doing everything we can to further integrate them into our society, not cement their status as second-class citizens residents through a “guest worker” program that does nothing but cover the asses of employers who have been disregarding our nation’s labor laws. If the President truly believes that immigrants are an essential part of our economy and are doing jobs that we “won’t do”, then there’s no reason to exclude them from our American family.

Of course, the greatest irony is that the only halfway decent excuse for keeping immigrant laborers segregated from the rest of the working class is the faux-righteous outrage that the immigrants in question are “breaking the law”. One wonders where these defenders of civic virtue have been over the past few years as the Bush Justice Department has made a deliberate effort to cut down on the enforcement of laws that make it a crime to hire undocumented workers. Apparently the only crimes worth shedding crocodile tears over are the ones committed by poor Mexicans. Perhaps we should take a cue from the Republican response to the President’s own lawbreaking by working to bring immigrants’ residency status back “within the scope of the law”.

As I said above, my position is that we should expand our citizenship to more accurately reflect our population and ensure that the American dream is within the reach of anyone willing to work hard to achieve it. If you want to call that “amnesty”, so be it, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have a reasonable naturalization process, strong border security (at both borders), and increased enforcement of the laws that are already on the books. Of course, such an approach might put the needs of the working class and the nation’s security ahead of those of lawbreaking businesses, and we can’t have that.

Oh. My. God. This defense of “massive deportation” of immigrants at WorldNetDaily leaves me speechless (via Digby) :

Not only will it work, but one can easily estimate how long it would take. If it took the Germans less than four years to rid themselves of 6 million Jews, many of whom spoke German and were fully integrated into German society, it couldn’t possibly take more than eight years to deport 12 million illegal aliens, many of whom don’t speak English and are not integrated into American society.

Gosh, it sounds so easy! All it’ll take is turning the entire country into a police state while the military knocks down doors and demands proof of citizenship.Perhaps we can set up camps in which we concentrate any Mexicans who choose to remain.

Sick, sick, sick…

The truly remarkable thing about this whole immigration mess isn’t that it suddenly became an issue (funny how that always happens in even-numbered years, huh?), but that it’s uniting conservatives and liberals against the President’s incompetent leadership. Lou Dobbs, who I once referred to as my “favorite fire-breathing, immigrant-baiting blowhard”, recently cut through the bullshit and got to the real core of the problem :

Only a fool, Mr. President, Sen. Kennedy, Sen. McCain, would believe you when you speak of new legislation. You don’t enforce the laws now.

Would you do so if the law were more to your liking? Would you secure our borders and ports? Would you halt illegal immigration? Those are rhetorical questions, only, I assure you. The answers are obvious; obvious because of your conduct.

As many as 3 million illegal aliens continue to cross our border with Mexico each year. Enforcement against illegal employers of illegal aliens in this country is all but nonexistent, Mr. President. How do you explain that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have all but ended their investigations and inspections of employers that hire illegal aliens? Again, only a rhetorical question, because we all know the answer.

But here is the official record of your sense of duty: 318 employers out of five and a half million in this country have been fined for hiring illegal aliens since 2001. In 2004, only three employers were fined. That is a dismal record, Mr. President, as dismal as the fact that the number of ICE agents assigned to enforce immigration laws in the workplace has declined from only 240 back in 1999 to now less than 100.

The problem in our lack of border security and illegal immigration is becoming increasingly obvious: two political parties that are beholden to corporate America, the largest employers of illegal aliens, and the leadership of both parties that are selling out American citizens in search of cheap labor and political advantage. How dumb do you all think we are? Again, that’s only a rhetorical question.

C’mon Dems. Conservatives are practically begging you to distance yourselves from the moneyed interests that have rotted the GOP from the inside. You can get tough on immigration without stabbing the working class or immigrants in the back. You can be pro-business without selling your souls to your corporate campaign contributors. Stop playing by the Republican’s rules and start writing your own.

This is hilarious in a “Holy shit, our President is so out of touch that he actually believes this” sorta way :

BUSH : It is important for Americans to know that we have enough Guard forces to win the war on terror, to respond to natural disasters and to help secure our border.

Tell that to the people of New Orleans. Here’s a guy who’s proven himself unable to walk and chew gum at the same time (or really alone for that matter), who’s now trying to convince us he can do both and juggle. “Lemme try again, double or nothing” is not a strategy for success.

Equally “hilarious” was this bit of defense :

BUSH : The United States is not going to militarize the southern border. Mexico is our neighbor and our friend.

You’re sending the military to the border, dummy. What else should we call it? I know you want people to think they’re getting sent there to “aid” the border patrol, but they’re not getting deployed to the Mexican/American LOC to make coffee.

Lest the immigration hawks believe that the President is being too kind to immigrants with his support of a separate, but equal guest worker program, pay attention to the fine print.

BUSH: Therefore, I support a temporary worker program that would create a legal path for foreign workers to enter our country in an orderly way, for a limited period of time.

This program would match willing foreign workers with willing American employers for jobs Americans are not doing.

Every worker who applies for the program would be required to pass criminal background checks. And temporary workers must return to their home country at the conclusion of their stay.

Thanks for all the hard work and don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.

Since there isn’t a path to citizenship, there’s not a whole of incentive there for immigrants to join a program that promises to deport them at the end of a specified period. And since the Bush Administration has all but suspended the enforcement of labor laws against employers (aside from a few well-timed, recent publicity stunts), getting employers to go through the trouble of doing background checks on their indentured servants isn’t going to be nearly as attractive as sticking with the status quo. This isn’t just a bad idea on practical grounds, but on moral ones as well. Pay close attention to the fine print of this “guest worker” program. This isn’t a way for workers to work hard and earn the right to permanently join our American family, it’s a cheap way to cover the asses of employers who want a steady supply of cheap, expendable labor. The President should be ashamed of himself.

Heh. The President is going to give a major primetime address on Monday to try to convince the public that, four and a half years after 9/11, he finally cares about illegal immigration. It’s sorta quaint how the White House still thinks the public likes Bush enough to sit through one of his speeches and respects him enough to believe what he’s saying. It’s been a long, long time since he was a speech away from reversing his political fortunes. Too little, too late, Junior.

The big idea that’s apparently important enough to interrupt 24 to tell us about is a plan to deploy whatever National Guard troops the President can scrape together to help secure the border. This might be a good idea if illegal immigration was a sudden crisis, but the immigration “problem” has been brewing for more than thirty years. It’s not like the President can just pretend this snuck up on him. Besides, we already have an agency that patrols the border….they’re the border patrol. If you’re responding to a semi-permanent security situation on the border, you should devote more resources to that agency, not misuse the National Guard again.

Regardless of the merits of the Presidents proposals or their popularity with the public, as someone who’s firmly opposed to this latest bit of pandering, I see very little to worry about. After all, if we learned anything during Hurricane Katrina, it’s that the President’s promises to deploy National Guardsmen are worthless. Just like his pre-hurricane assurances to Louisiana state and local officials, George Bush just wants to give everyone the impression that he’s on top of things, but he doesn’t want to bother with paying attention to a crisis or taking any responsibility whatsoever. The only “crisis” the President is concerned about is the likelihood of Republicans losing the House. So on Monday night, he might give a cute little speech, but we all know it’s not going to mean a damn thing.

Shamelessly stolen from Crooks&Liars.

Stuck in a hotel in Seattle on a business trip (which explains the lack of blogging) and I’m watching the C-Span’s rerun of Senate hearings mentioning the latest bit of extra-constitutional shenanigans by the current squatters in the executive branch. The battle lines seem to be predictably drawn along party lines (at least from the parts I’ve seen), with the Democrats taking the “separation of powers keep America from sliding into despotism” position and Republicans taking the ” don’t mention anything, lest the terrorists find out that we’re pissed about 9/11″ position. Unfortunately for the almighty Bush and his fellow patriots, those bastards at USA Today couldn’t resist tipping off the terrorists about the NSA’s attempt to gather data about every call made within our country. So there’s a helpful hint, Mr. Bin Laden. Never, ever use a telephone in the United States.

But what’s especially odd is that the President-fellating caucus were concerned that Americans might draw a parallel between this scandal and the NSA’s warrantless wiretap program. I suppose one might see a common thread between two programs that pry into the communications of the American people without any judicial or legislative oversight, but collecting information about telephone calls isn’t the same as listening to the contents of those calls. One Senator went as far as insisting that that telephone records aren’t private information, which seems sorta odd considering some recent Congressional action :

In a unanimous vote Tuesday the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 4709, the Law Enforcement and Phone Privacy Protection Act of 2006.

The bill introduced by Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, back in February 2006 would amend Title 18 to provide criminal penalties for fraudulent sale or solicitation of unauthorized disclosure of phone records.

The bipartisan legislation was approved by a vote of 409-0.

‘Few things are more personal and potentially more revealing than our phone records,’ Smith said in a statement. ‘A careful study of these records may reveal details of our medical or financial life. It may even disclose our physical location and occupation — a serious concern for undercover police officers and victims of stalking or domestic violence.’

If passed in the Senate, the legislation would impose serious criminal penalties against those people who sell, transfer, purchase or receive confidential phone records of a telephony company without prior consent of the customer.

“If passed in the Senate” is turning into a mighty big “if” these days. Unlike the people’s house, Senate leaders think your telephone records are, like the name and occupation of Joe Wilson’s wife, public information that should can be shared freely at the President’s sole discretion.

I love these commercials they keep showing on CNN with smart-ass kids telling us how wonderful “clean coal” technology is. Watching a twelve-year-old giving a lecture about energy independence feels as if someone reached into my brain and found a way to broadcast the thoughts that run through my head every time George Bush talks about his energy plans. Like in his recent gushing to ethanol industry, his combination of enthusiasm and arrogance would be boiled down like this :

“Did ya know you can drive a car on this?”

Which is to say that if you want to learn more about energy, don’t trust a coal industry shill who’s too young to drive or a big business whore who can’t tie his own shoes. Or, to beat the trolls to their own punchline, a liberal blogger who’d rather score cheap shots on the President than do some research and write a good post about alternative energy sources.

Also, I dunno where else to put this, so I’ll just mention it here. David Blaine is lame.