The Man Is Weak

 

May 28th: White House assistant Stephen Miller, the architect of President Trump’s immigration policy, pushes ICE officials to dramatically ramp up the arrests — calling for 3,000 illegal migrants to be picked up per day. (Trump had campaigned on the promise to deport 1,000,000 illegals a year.)

June 11th: Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested more than 70 people at a meatpacking plant in Omaha, Neb., and other federal agents targeted farms north of Los Angeles.

June 12th: Clearly feeling heat from big farmers and meat processors and the hospitality industries -- who were complaining loudly to the White House about the disruptions to their operations, Trump stumbled into a change of policy based on favoritism: "We can't take farmers and take all their people and send them back because they don't have maybe what they're supposed to have, maybe not," Trump said. The New York Times reported that a senior Immigration and Customs Enforcement official quickly ordered a pause to immigration raids at agricultural businesses, meat packing plants, restaurants, and hotels. 

June 14th: President Donald Trump directed federal immigration officials to prioritize instead deportations from Democratic-run cities.

June 15th: President Donald Trump said on social media that he is willing to exempt the agriculture and hotel industries from his nationwide immigration crackdown. The surprise move came after executives in both industries complained to Trump about losing reliable, longtime immigrant workers in immigration raids and struggling to replace them. Plus there had been pushback from some farm-owners -- some had slammed their gates shuts and wouldn't let ICE in without a warrant. 

Also June 15th: ICE and HSI field office supervisors began learning about a likely reversal of the exemption policy, after hearing from DHS leadership that the White House did not support it, according to one person with knowledge of the reversal. During a morning field call, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials told leaders representing field offices across the country that they must continue to conduct raids at worksite locations, "a reversal from guidance issued days earlier under pressure from certain industries that rely on migrant workers."

June 16th: The Department of Homeland Security told staff that it was reversing guidance issued last week that agents were not to conduct immigration raids at farms, hotels, and restaurants. Agents are ordered to continue conducting immigration raids at agricultural businesses, hotels, and restaurants. The new instructions were shared in an 11 a.m. call to representatives from 30 field offices across the country.

Tillis: Bowing To Trump "Is Immoral"

 

“I didn’t come here to have the president as a boss or a candidate as a boss. I came here to pass good, solid policy. It is immoral for me to think you looked the other way because you think this is the linchpin for President Trump to win.”

--Sen. Thom Tillis, Thursday, Jan. 25

As of yesterday, the White House and a bi-partisan group of Senators including Thom Tillis of North Carolina had reached a deal on a border security bill which will crack down on asylum requests and make other reforms the Republicans have wanted, thus unlocking foreign aid spigots for both Ukraine and Israel. The Biden administration went far to compromise on the border, motivated much by the crisis in Ukraine.

But also as of yesterday, Mitch McConnell, who's actually been a supporter for getting the border deal, told his Senate caucus that this particular border deal probably has zero chance of getting passed by the House, as Trump doesn't want it passed, because he intends to run on immigration horrors, so McConnell thinks it unlikely that House Republicans will buck the capo and vote for the very reforms they've been screaming about. "So you guys probably don't want to push it right now."

Thom Tillis flew mad. He urged his colleagues "not to make it all about politics at the behest of a candidate." Sen. Mitt Romney was more direct:

“The border is a very important issue for Donald Trump. And the fact that he would communicate to Republican senators and Congress people that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem — because he wants to blame Biden for it — is really appalling .... Someone running for president ought to try and get the problem solved, as opposed to saying, ‘Hey, save that problem! Don’t solve it! Let me take credit for solving it later.’

 So to be clear, Tillis opposes Trump for the best reason -- "It is immoral." As he continues his current trajectory out of the MAGA embrace.

Trump's Legacy and McConnell's Dick-in-a-Box

 

McConnell forced the confirmation of some 226 Trump-appointed Federal judges, and those surprise packages have already started doing what they were put on the bench to do.

Judge Drew Tipton

At the urging of the Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is himself under investigation for bribery and abuse of power, Trump-appointed Federal Judge Drew Tipton put a restraining order on Biden's "pause" to immigration deportations for “a review of policies and practices.” That thwarting of Biden policy came just six days into the new president's term.

According to Elie Mystal, the Biden order "wasn’t radical; it didn’t change the policy about who can be deported. It aimed simply to stop the government from shuttling as many people as possible out of the country as quickly as possible while the new administration tries to figure out which deportations should take priority and whether the people facing deportation received due process of law as opposed to whatever the hell Trump was doing."

Mystal summarized Judge Tipton's restraining order thusly: "He ruled that Texas had standing to sue the Biden administration (which is wrong). He also ruled that the Department of Homeland Safety likely exceeded its authority by implementing the pause — which is both wrong and ludicrous in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in the DACA case last year, which reaffirmed the executive’s broad authority to determine who should be deported and when they have to leave. At Slate, Mark Joseph Stern went into detail about Tipton’s 'bizarre decision,' writing, 'Tipton does not appear to have a rudimentary understanding of either immigration law or the practical realities of the immigration system.' ”

More of this to come, no doubt, with the biggest of McConnell's dicks-in-the-box sitting on the Supreme Court at the top of the legal heap.

How Joe Biden Will Begin To Reverse Trump Policies

We expect the newly inaugurated president to sign some 15 separate executive orders this afternoon, with more promised in the next weeks.  The collective effort was characterized by Biden's aides as “undoing” and “reversing” policies implemented by Trump that were “harmful” or “inhumane.” 

The Pandemic

Swiftly following his swearing in, President Biden plans to sign executive actions that will require masks on all federal grounds, and he will ask agencies to extend moratoriums on evictions and on federal student loan payments. He will urge Americans to don face coverings for 100 days while reviving a global health unit in the National Security Council — allowed to go dormant during the Trump administration — to oversee pandemic preparedness and response. He will also begin to reverse steps taken by President Trump to withdraw from the World Health Organization by dispatching Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease official, to speak at the international group’s executive board meeting tomorrow. He will create a White House Covid-19 response team that will coordinate across the federal government and with states on ramping up vaccinations, distributing more masks and gloves, expanding testing capacity, reopening schools and more. 

Immigration

The new president will sign an order repealing the ban on travel from several majority-Muslim nations. Another order will call on the Department of Homeland Security to continue an Obama-era initiative protecting “dreamers” from deportation and issuing them work permits as long as they qualified under the requirements laid out when the program, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, began in 2012. Biden will also end the national emergency over the border that Trump declared as a way to circumvent Congress when lawmakers would not grant him funding for his wall. He also promises to repeal the Trump administration’s interior immigration enforcement order that sought to withhold federal funds from cities that shielded undocumented immigrants. And he will halt construction on the border wall. 

The Census

The new president will nullify the Trump administration’s directive that attempted to exclude the counting of noncitizens from the U.S. census.

Climate

President Biden plans to sign an order revoking the permit, issued by the Trump administration, that allowed for the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, and he will sign an order to rejoin the Paris climate accord. The United States will officially be part of the 189-country climate agreement in 30 days.

Racial Equity

President Biden plans to rescind the “1776 Commission” established by the Trump administration to push a much more conservative (lily white) version of American history in public schools. That commission issued its report only this week to widespread scorn from historians because of its soft-soap on the history of American slavery. In other orders promised for coming days the president-elect has promised to root out systemic racism from our institutions, holding the federal government accountable for advancing equity for families across America.

Transgender Rights

The new president plans to revoke "in coming days" the ban on transgender people from serving in the military.

Abortion Rights

President Biden intends to reverse the so-called "global gag rule" (the "Mexico City policy") that blocks U.S. aid to organizations abroad that perform abortions or offer counseling on the procedure.

The Body Count -- Kevin McAleenan

A Reoccurring Feature on Who's Jumping Off Luxury Liner Trump

Kevin K. McAleenan, who was until yesterday the acting secretary for the Department of Homeland Security. He had only been in the job for six months. Trump naturally announced the resignation via Twitter and actually wrote that McAleenan "wants to spend more time with his family" (not making that up). 

The lack of self-awareness in this president would be much funnier if it were not such a staggering self-parody.

According to a trio of reporters at the NYTimes, 

Mr. McAleenan’s departure from the White House came after he tried to embrace the president's increasingly aggressive assault on legal and illegal immigration publicly even as he privately resisted some of Mr. Trump’s most extreme ideas.

A former deputy commissioner for the nation’s border security agency under President Barack Obama, Mr. McAleenan watched in recent months as the White House surrounded him with Fox News contributors to key positions in the agency....

An Open Letter To Congresswoman Virginia Foxx

You should vote for the "Emergency Supplemental Appropriations for Humanitarian Assistance and Security at the Southern Border Act, 2019," which is before the US House right now, but we know you won't. You wouldn't vote for assistance to victims of Hurricane Florence, which devastated the lives of so many North Carolinians in 2018, so why would you feel any empathy for brown children on the southern border?

The brutalizing of children seeking asylum in the land of the free shocks the conscience. The cruelty of Trump administration policies appalls the heart. We know Donald Trump's first instinct is to inflict pain: "She's not my type." That appears to be your first instinct too. Do you want to be like two peas in a rancid pod with Donald Trump?

You built a nursery business in the North Carolina mountains using immigrant labor, so you certainly know how to use people. Do you also feel any sympathy? You like to brag about how poor you were growing up, which is, I guess, supposed to be an index to how much you feel for other poor people, but you don't appear to feel at all. Bragging about how poor you were doesn't open a window into fellow-feeling for others. Do you look at people sweating to make you richer and feel nothing but an uptick in your bank account? Even expendable workers need food and water, and their knowing you grew up poor doesn't help at all. It might just increase their pain.

The whole world is watching the inhumanity of the United States government toward powerless human beings. We are watching. You are part of the government. You have power. You have influence. You have lots of money. Why don't you do something other than hardening your heart?

Or are you a prisoner of your own history?

Such a proud time!

Breitbart Goes After Thom Tillis

The most aggressive GOP champion of amnesty and outsourcing is North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis .... Tillis describes his “SUCCEED” bill as a way for illegals [to attain] citizenship, even though the bill awards that huge prize in 15 years to illegals who can enroll in education course after high-school and also avoid jail sentences that exceed one year. [Breitbart, 2 Oct. 2017]

The Breitbart writer, a hardliner on any immigration of brown people, doesn't like the "conservative version of the DREAM Act," which Tillis coauthored with Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma. The Breitbart writer holds a grudge against Tillis for using his senatorial power back in July to block put a hold on Trump's nominee for director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Sen. Tillis blocked the nomination to extort an additional 15,000 guest worker visas out of Homeland Security for certain North Carolina industries: "Summertime resort, seafood and landscaping industries are struggling to find American workers and need the foreign labor to survive" (Washington Times). That alone made Tillis a MAGA enemy. And then came the Succeed Act.

Not the first move Tillis has made that puts him cross-ways with Trump's America. He also  introduced the Special Prosecutor Integrity Act in the Senate, legislation designed specifically to protect Robert Mueller from the whims of Donald Trump.

Surprises happen all the time these days.

What won't be a surprise: a primary challenger for Thom Tillis in 2022. He must figger that's a loooong way off, but time flies when you're plotting revenge.

Trump Lays a New Turd in the GOP Punchbowl

Republican leaders in the US Congress were perhaps looking forward to a September when they could get a couple of positive things done, like beginning to relieve Houston, and maybe raise the debt ceiling -- votes likely to be bi-partisan and popular -- but no, Trump has to go and drop DACA on them, saying, "Now, you've got six months to pull my bacon out of the fire."

Majority reaction -- wide and deep offense. Business leaders have risen up against Trump's move, risen up like a king cobra about to strike. Political leaders in both parties hate it, warned Trump against it, now scuff at the dirt. Qualified Hispanic voters who used to regularly vote Republican -- there are some -- are reconsidering their values. Congress will groan under the load while multiple "polls show that DACA enjoys overwhelming support among the public."

(Republicans stand to lose a substantial bloc of voters. Up to 38% percent of Hispanic voters have voted Republican, depending on the place and the candidate. Mitt Romney got 31% of the Hispanic vote. Trump, not.)

It's clear Trump didn't know what he was doing yesterday. By evening he was tweeting -- “Congress now has 6 months to legalize DACA (something the Obama Administration was unable to do). If they can’t, I will revisit the issue!”

I will revisit the issue. I bet you will.

If certain facts and human realities weren't clear to Trump, Sessions knew exactly what he was saying and what it all meant, and he gleamed like a greased pig in those television lights. Was he exulting in his heart? "Fewer brown people will be coming here, or staying. Praise Jesus!"

Why did Trump have to go and do that now? Of all the things that terrify him -- being touched by strange people, being laughed at, being put on the spot publicly and dared to tell the truth -- looking weak is strong juju for Trump men, and some eleven conservative Republican attorneys general had threatened to sue Trump by today if he didn't start to end DACA. (Plus he was on his way to a big public rally of his DACA-hating peeps in North Dakota today.)

The attorney-general-posse is led by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is under indictment by a Texas grand jury for securities fraud. Paxton was joined by the attorneys general of Arkansas, Alabama, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia, as well as Idaho Gov. C. L. Otter, in a June 29 letter to Jeff Sessions urging the White House to start phasing out DACA by Sept. 5, or face a lawsuit.

Jeff Sessions ... the willing stooge Trump sent out yesterday to face the cameras, the man who loves what's happening -- he had reportedly told Trump that he wouldn't defend DACA in court. The Constitution is his shield, he believes says. With Sessions, the law follows the heart, and the white Anglo-Saxon race is very important to Sessions. He's on record praising the 1924 eugenics-based immigration law that enforced racial and ethnic animosity. In a Breitbart radio interview with Steve Bannon in 2015 Sessions made perfectly clear his preference for people who "assimilate" completely, and you can figger all day what that means.

And then comes Irma.

A Notorious Camera Hog Goes All Shy and Stuff

Donald Trump has never been one to avoid the camera ... until today. He won't personally announce his decision to sort-of, kinda end President Obama's "dreamers" program, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Trump himself won't face the cameras to announce his non-decision decision. He's sending out immigration hard-liner Jeff Sessions to make the announcement (and Sessions has already signaled that he'll take no questions -- how's that for standing proud behind your administration's decision to quash the dreams of some 800,000 otherwise productive members of this society?).

Non-decision decision? Trump will say he's ending the DACA program but has really decided to punt the whole question over to Congress for the next six months. Congress? Is he serious? Congress has never demonstrated any aptitude nor willingness to solve the problem of children brought to this country illegally who have subsequently made productive lives for themselves and rich contributions to the communities in which they live. The stories are now multiplying about "dreamers" who've been helping to pull people out of the Houston flood waters.

Dreamers like the undocumented daughter of some of Virginia Foxx's long-time servants, a young woman who reportedly graduated with honors from Watauga High School years ago and then had trouble finding a place in college because of her undocumented status. Did Virginia Foxx help her? No, at least according to people who know that situation.

Trump is purely playing to his alt-white base, and he should hide his face.

“It’s not clear what delaying this for six months means,” said Mark Krikorian, another immigration hard-liner who runs the Center for Immigration Studies.

“He’s being pulled in a bunch of different directions, and because he doesn’t have any strong ideological anchor, or deep knowledge of the issue, he ends up sort of not knowing what to do,” Mr. Krikorian said. “I think the fact that they did nothing to [DACA] suggests that they had no idea what to do,” he added.

The cruelest part of this: The federal government has the cellphone and home address of every DACA recipient, information they volunteered to the government with the promise it would never be used against them or their families. That was part of President Obama's original executive order.

“They grew up here, they work at nearly every major company in America, serve in the military and many are working on recovery efforts in Texas,” said Todd Schulte, president of FWD.us, a progressive immigration reform group that has urged the president to retain the program. “If DACA is repealed and no permanent legislation passed, they will all be fired and our government will begin the large-scale deportation of people raised in the United States.”

Does Trump want that as his legacy? Does the Republican Congress?

HORRORS! Trump Flip-Flops on Illegals, Starts Copying Obama

The Emperor has no balls

Calling it a "flip-flop" really insults every past political flip-flop in history, since a flip-flop implies that Trump ever really had a position at all, rather than just a swaggering moment of theatrical braggadocio, but he had a meeting at Trump Tower over the weekend with some Hispanic leaders, and now he's desperate to actually have a policy position, which, as he told Bill O'Reilly yesterday, is suddenly and amazingly similar to President Obama's:

"We’re going to obey the existing laws. Now, the existing laws are very strong. The existing laws, the first thing we’re gonna do, if and when I win, is we’re gonna get rid of all of the bad ones. We’ve got gang members, we have killers, we have a lot of bad people that have to get out of this country," he said on Fox News. "As far as everybody else, we’re going to go through the process. What people don’t know is that Obama got tremendous numbers of people out of the country, Bush the same thing. Lots of people were brought out of the country with the existing laws. Well, I’m gonna do the same thing."

Say goodbye (apparently?) to those mass deportations and that yuge "deportation force." We suspect that famous and fabulous, imaginary wall is beginning to look more like a silt fence. Stand by for further developments.

Midnight Koch and Late-Night Peeing

How do you know when the Republican Overlords in Raleigh are doing something so wrong they're frankly embarrassed by it? They hide it in the dark.

They've done it before. They voted after midnight to override Gov. Perdue's veto of their budget bill in 2011, supposedly giving cover to the votes of five Democratic defectors, and they stuck the dagger in public school teachers' backs in the wee hours, hobbling their right to organize.  Just two examples.

And now, O My Brethren, some powerful white hand in the North Carolina General Assembly has added a surprise and off-topic provision 17 to an “Act to Amend Certain Environmental, Natural Resources, and 3 Other Laws,” H593. The whole bill is up for final passage in the NC Senate this very day. When H593 passes, Section 17 will make it easier for big corporate farmers to abuse their foreign workers with impunity.

Brent Jackson

The likely culprit with the white hands -- Sen. Brent Jackson, who represents Duplin, Johnston, and Sampson counties. The Independent's Paul Blest just posted yesterday a lengthy investigative piece about Senator Jackson's big farm and his legal importation of foreign workers yearly and the multiple charges and lawsuits against him by some of those same workers, and how, by gum! H593 became a convenient vehicle for making sure that immigrant workers can't complain through the legal system about big farm owners. According to Carol Brooke, "Section 17 seeks to modify North Carolina’s Right to Work law, more accurately described as 'the right to work for less.' ” (The details are extensive and complicated. Recommend Paul Blest's investigative piece for the complete story.)

I call this legislative sheepishness "Midnight Koch," because this is exactly the kind of "reform" the Koch Bros. are all about, further paving the road to Complete Corporate Control. Workers are workers and should know their place. In fact, they should be grateful for their place in the scheme of things, which is after all ordained by God Almighty.

The embarrassment of H593:

Passed 1st Reading ... April 27, 2015
Referred to Comm. On Rules ... April 27, 2015
Withdrawn From Comm ... May 5, 2015
Re-referred to Comm. on Agriculture/Environment/Natural Resources [on which Sen. Brent Jackson sits as Vice Chairman] ... May 5, 2015
Committee Substitute Reported Out Favorably and Placed on Calendar for Full Senate Action on June 20 ... June 16, 2016
Withdrawn from Calendar and Re-referred to Committee On Finance  [on which Sen. Brent Jackson sits as a member] ... June 16, 2016
Reported Favorably by Committee On Finance ... June 21, 2016
Withdrawn From Calendar and Re-referred to Comm. on Rules & Operations of the Senate [on which Sen. Brent Jackson sits as a member] ... June 22, 2016
Committee Substitute Reported Favorably and Placed on Senate Calendar for today ... June 23, 2016

Who is Brent Jackson?

First elected in the Tea Party Wave of 2010, Jackson (who declined to comment for Paul Blest's article) "rose quickly through the ranks. He currently serves as cochairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. In that role, he's presided over cuts to legal aid in North Carolina—especially targeting Legal Aid of North Carolina, the only one of the state's three legal-aid providers that has a unit dedicated to helping farmworkers."

Virginia Foxx Said What?

Congresswoman Virginia Foxx issued a statement on President Obama's executive action on immigration. Considering her own personal history and the way she has benefitted financially from Hispanic immigration (like here and here and here and definitely here), we feel embarrassed for her ... since she's clearly incapable of feeling embarrassed for herself.

(My mother always warned me to beware of the person who doesn't feel embarrassment.)

Personal message to Virginia Foxx: if President Obama is violating the Constitution, then why don't you and your chums in Congress impeach him? Otherwise, you're just blowing rancid smoke.

Wait. What?

Why Not Just Go Ahead Make 'em Wear a Pink Sombrero?

Last June, the so-called "Deferred Action Program" went into effect nationally for certain immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. The Deferred Action Program offers work permits and a two-year deferral from deportation until a more permanent immigration reform can be worked out in the U.S. Congress.

In North Carolina, some Republicans were mightily aggrieved by this. It reeked strongly to them of amnesty. Since the Deferred Action Program allowed for the now-grown-up baby-immigrant to work in the state, state driver's licenses were mandated. At first Tony Tata, appointed by Gov. McCrory to lead the state's Department of Transportation, sat on his hands. Then Attorney General Roy Cooper said to Tata, you've got to issue driver's licenses.

So what did Tata and his boys at DOT come up with? A pink stigmatizing strip on just those driver's licenses issued to people covered by the Deferred Action Program. This Pink Badge of Discrimination, DOT said, would be issued starting March 25th.

There are such echoes of the yellow Stars of David sewn on unwelcome residents' clothing in another era that some Republicans in the General Assembly have quailed at the bad publicity, now grown to international scope.

A bill has been introduced in the NC General Assembly to delay DOT's plan to June. One of the bill's sponsors, state Rep. Mark Brody, said transportation officials overstepped their authority by approving the licenses. He said that is the Legislature's prerogative.

The American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina condemned the proposed licenses, calling them "an unnecessary marker that could lead to harassment, confusion and racial profiling." The Latin American Coalition in Charlotte said the license would create a "class of 'inferior' citizens."

North Carolina is the only state to mark licenses in this prejudicial way. But then, North Carolina is possibly the only state in the union to be taken over by a radical brand of Republicanism that is so thirsty for absolute power that it would seriously consider branding and shaming people who have really done nothing wrong.

NC GOP Evidently Got the Memo (And Actually Read It!)

The portentously named "NC House Select Committee on the State's Role on Immigration Policy," which had revved up its investigation early in the year like a posse looking for someone to hang, has done a "one-eighty" since that unfortunate election and instead issued a report that is Basic Pabulum about immigration.

No more hard-line on immigration, folks, at least not in this General Assembly about to convene in Raleigh.

That is, until some Tea Partier with poor reading skills decides to act up. We can't wait.

The WataugaConservative Defines the Brown Menace

Blogger girds himself over at the WataugaConservative and tells us in no uncertain terms that he does not "romanticize the illegal aliens from Latin America" ... because he once lived there.

For the record, Mohamed Atta once lived here and did not end up romanticizing us. So much for the excuse of "I've lived there, so I know what I'm talking about." One takes one's biases across international borders as easily as carry-on luggage.

It's rare to see expressions of this kind uttered with such bland matter-of-factness -- moralistic and racial assessments of the "values" of others that have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. "Immigrants, illegal" (but not the legal variety too?) clearly don't measure up to the superior "values" of Mr. Blogger at Watauga Conservative.

The arrogance of that -- not to mention the chilling echoes of cultural superiority from, say, 1933 -- is fairly breathtaking. Show us your passport, indeed.

And then there's this:

"The bottom line is that in the past when aliens brought their values to this country, they came in such small waves, we could absorb them. Soon they learned what makes us prosper and they adopted our ways and language. This time they overwhelmed us so fast and stayed under the radar so long, that we can’t think of these illegal aliens the same as we did aliens in the past."

Mr. Blogger feels "overwhelmed" by something that he didn't notice until it was ... too late for self-protection? He's so unnerved that he can't think of "these" the same way. Which sorta begs a question.

This is cultural paranoia suitable for "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," the vastly superior original version from 1956.

Whatever it is, it's not something that I recognize as superior Americanism. Nor superior Christianity.

Another Shining Moment

The U.S. House passed the "Dream Act" on Dec. 8, 216-198, mostly along partisan lines (though some 48 blue dog Democrats voted against it). The legislation would provide legal residency to undocumented young people who graduate from high school, complete two years of college or military service and have no criminal record.

Naturally, Congresswoman Virginia Foxx voted against the bill. What you may not know is that local authorities say that a young woman who grew up on the Foxx estate might have benefitted from its provisions. The young woman's parents worked for the Foxxes. Meanwhile, she graduated from Watauga High School with honors and attempted to enroll in Caldwell Community College. She was rejected because she did not have citizenship papers.

Obviously, she needs to be punished for eternity over something she had no control over.

Yesterday, the U.S. Senate Republicans -- assisted, incidentally, by NC Democratic Senator Kay Hagan -- voted not to even take up the "Dream Act."

A compilation of comment on the action taken by Senate Republicans, from this morning's gas-bag shows:

NBC's ANDREA MITCHELL: The dumbest thing that the Republicans did was the DREAM Act. … that is going to turn out to be a real setback for Republicans because these are people who wanted to serve in the military and get educated and contribute to the society.

NEWARK, NJ, MAYOR CORY BOOKER: To tell people who've been through high school, high school presidents going on to college some of the best brains who have no relation to their home country. This is crazy. It's hurting America.

GOP STRATEGIST MARK McKINNON: The Republican Party has got to recognize Hispanics are the huge growing demographic in this country .… We gotta send the right signal to Hispanics in this country in addition to the fact that it's the right policy.

FOX NEWS' JUAN WILLIAMS: The one thing that I regret … is the defeat of the DREAM Act for the immigrants and the immigrant kids. I just think, again, Republicans play politics with real lives, real people, real aspirations and they leave the immigration issue on the table when that's the real business of the American people.

Colbert Takes Washington

Not sure which was actually funnier, Stephen Colbert's 5-min. statement this morning before the House Judiciary subcommittee on immigration ("I don't want a tomato picked by a Mexican. I want it picked by an American. And sliced by a Guatemalan, and served by a Venezuelan, in a spa, where a Chilean gives me a Brazilian.") ... or the looks on the faces of the Republican members of the committee, particularly Steve King (R-Iowa).

At one point Colbert requested that a video of his colonoscopy be submitted into the Congressional record. Congressman King at that moment looked as though he were having a colonoscopy, without benefit of fentanyl.

Despite his deadpan delivery as a blowhard Bill O'Reilly (but I repeat myself), Colbert's satire highlights the human cost of the mixed messages on our southern border: Stay Out! and Please Come Do Our Field Work!