American Republic Online

With approval numbers in the 20s, Congress doesn’t seem to be making any friends. I predict, if anything, these numbers will actually dip even lower. This is due to an congress that seems better at upsetting constituents, than actually passing much legislation.

Conservatives and moderates are up in arms about the Senate’s immigration bill as detailed by here by the ARO. At the same time Liberals are livid about the Dems backing down about time tables in Iraq. Eloquent Affleck made this quite clear during a recent spot on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher. A transcript of sorts is linked to below. We appologize in advance for all the *s.

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Stanley Kurtz has a nice (short) piece on Chain Migration at the Nation Review Online that discusses how

“Chain migration has cleared out entire village in Mexico. And it has turned areas of rural North Carolina into places where Spanish is the dominant language.”

• Chain, Chain, Chain

For those that like to crunch numbers, here is a numerical breakdown of the additional “legals” the current immigration bill would create. Please note the following about these numbers:

• They are counting additional visas above the current 1 million/year
• They already account for any ammendments that have reduced the numbers provided in the orginal bill

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Every politician in the country claims to be against Amensty. Last week the US Senate got a chance to back that claim. Unfortunately 66 Senators proved to be liars when it came to Amnesty, as they voted to against its removal from the immigration bill.

Here’s the official ammendment language: “To strike title VI (related to Nonimmigrants in the United States Previously in Unlawful Status)”

And here are the 29 Senators that lived up to their promises and voted to remove Amnesty from the bill:
Alexander (R-TN)
Allard (R-CO)
Baucus (D-MT)
Bond (R-MO)
Bunning (R-KY)
Byrd (D-WV)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Corker (R-TN)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Dole (R-NC)
Dorgan (D-ND)
Enzi (R-WY)
Grassley (R-IA)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Landrieu (D-LA)
McCaskill (D-MO)
McConnell (R-KY)
Nelson (D-NE)
Pryor (D-AR)
Roberts (R-KS)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Sununu (R-NH)
Tester (D-MT)
Thune (R-SD)
Vitter (R-LA)

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John Kasich, a guest host for O’Reilley, proved himself to be a blithering idiot while holding down the fort yesterday. Here’s the setup: A new creation museum opened on Monday and “Fair & Balanced” Fox wanted to show both sides. So they got Ken Ham head of the museum and Lawrence Krauss an evolutionary scientist against the museum to “debate”.

Each man opened with their positions basically: a 4.5 Billion year old Earth & Genesis is a just a story verses a 6 Thousand year old Earth & the Bible account is literally true. It could have been a good debate, unfortunately John Kasich didn’t like either position and set out to bring BOTH men over to HIS view.

Now while most school children could point out how these two men held diametrically opposed views, Kasich asked Ham “Why is it not acceptable that evolution and creationism can be compatible?” Ham responded that while many people held Kasich’s theistic evolution view, “Evolution and a literal Genesis are not compatible…”

Kasich then interrupts and says “But maybe a literal Genesis is not the deal here.” I have to stress here that John is saying this to the man that just opened a 27 million dollar museum dedicated to the view that scientific evidence supports a literal six day creation. I mean, does John Kasich have ANY knowledge of the people he’s interviewing?

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In the spirit of graduation season, Neal Boortz’s commencement address seems appropriate:

So here are the first assignments for your initial class in reality: Pay attention to the news, read newspapers, and listen to the words and phrases that proud Liberals use to promote their causes. Then compare the words of the left to the words and phrases you hear from those evil, heartless, greedy conservatives. From the Left you will hear “I feel.” From the Right you will hear “I think.” From the Liberals you will hear references to groups –The Blacks, The Poor, The Rich, The Disadvantaged, The Less Fortunate. From the Right you will hear references to individuals. On the Left you hear talk of group rights; on the Right, individual rights.

That about sums it up, really: Liberals feel. Liberals care. They are pack animals whose identity is tied up in group dynamics. Conservatives and Libertarians think — and, setting aside the theocracy crowd, their identity is centered on the individual…

The key to accepting responsibility for your life is to accept the fact that your choices, every one of them, are leading you inexorably to either success or failure, however you define those terms.

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And after that touchy-feely moment, let’s bring us back to an answer to the “why.”

Military officials have released a “torture manual” that was discovered in an Al-Qaeda torture room alongside a man who had been tortured.  Call me crazy, but “blowtorch to the skin,” “drilling hands,” and “eye removal” seems a far cry from “put underwear on head and make listen to Eminem” or “act like you are flushing the Koran” or “give new prayer rug, new Koran, and three squares a day.”

Warning: graphic.

They will not let up.  Perhaps this is the reason that the troops on the ground want to keep fighting, and the folks at home who are starting to get bored of American Idol don’t see the point.

Spencer Ackerman of the “progressive” Washington Monthly contrasts the Democrats’ incessant “it’s for the troops” and the mood of some of the troops on the ground:

 To speak to the troops fighting in Iraq is to see a particularly stark difference between their mindset and that of most Americans today. I saw this when, a few weeks into the surge, I traveled to Baghdad to see what the change in tactics looked like on the ground…

“Who needs chicks in bikinis when you got terrorists with AKs?” [Lt.] Wellman retorted. “You can get a hard-on from that.” 

From Wellman’s perspective, the war was going well. “For this district we’re at right now, we’re past the storm,” he told me. Many of his fellow troops in the 57th agreed. Small-arms fire and car bombs were still plaguing Wellman’s soldiers, but there had been a measurable drop in violence over the past thirty days. “Now, with the security plan,” said Wellman, “my district, it’s settling down. And it’s only going to get better.” 

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Jeff Emanuel has a nice overview piece at the American Thinker on the current immigration legislation process. It includes the problem with backroom deals and publically praising your successful creation before the bill is actually written. It’s a good piece if you’re just joining the immigration debate as it will catch you up on the last year or so in about 2 pages.

For the uninitiated, though, one might find the process being used to create such a sweeping and important law shocking.

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