Posse Incitatus

A Coming Blacklash?

A hat tip to conservative black author Deneen Borelli for the term "Blacklash" (Taken from the title of her recent book).

It's a good term to describe what I think eventually has to happen when more blacks give up on being loyal to their abusive lover, the Democrat Party.

We've been hearing for years now about how blacks would suddenly grow enthusiastic with conservative Republican principles such as school choice, opposition to abortion and defense of traditional marriage, and abandon the Democrats.

But it sure never seems to translate come election time. And it probably won't for quite some time. But cracks are showing in the liberal/leftist/ black coalition. More and more high profile black leaders are staunchly advocating conservatism as capable of benefiting African Americans far more than the bankrupt statism to which they've pledged their loyalty for at least half a century.

Here are some examples: Dr. Benjamin Carson, the Johns Hopkins University neurosurgeon raised in the Detroit ghetto by a single mother; Artur Davis,  the Alabama Congressman and attorney who used to be a Democrat; E.W Jackson, the Virginia candidate for lieutenant governor; and Saratoga Springs, Utah, Mayor Mia Love, a candidate for the U.S. House in the 2012 election. There are many more; I've only mentioned a few.

I am a Twitter enthusiast. No, I am not obsessed with this social media platform, nor do I devote large chunks of time to it. But I do appreciate its ability to offer a broad sampling of thoughts, insights and observations about society, popular culture and the political arena from across the world. Some of my favorites on Twitter are disgruntled black conservatives who are on to the current administration's shabby record.

Make no mistake: There's no dearth  of intelligent,  articulate and engaged African-Americans who are fed up with the Democrat Party and its destructive polices. But they are equally disgusted and disenchanted with the Republican Party's tone-deaf interactions with blacks. 

Black conservatives are disgruntled with the same old, tired, white, clueless leaders of the GOP. Reince Priebus, Karl Rove and other Republican leaders may think they know how to lead the way, but they are sadly mistaken. Many black conservatives recognize the incompetence of the current GOP leadership as well as the hostile reception the likes of Priebus and Paul Ryan would receive in the inner city, 

Large numbers of black conservatives are ready and willng to reach out to their fellow African-Americans on their own terms, GOP leadership and orthodoxy be damned. More power to them.

The elitists of the GOP are like Nero fiddling while Rome burned. They are isolated, insular and clueless. They'd better get a clue about blacks' disenchantment with the Democrats and lukewarm attitude toward Republicans.

It's a cliche, but it's true: Perception is reality. And for too many African-Americans who have voted Democrat for decades, the perception of Republicans is of bland, middle-aged white guys who don't care about the views and concerns of black people.

Vague themes such as opportunity, liberty and tax reform don't resonate with people who too often feel threatened by crime, rotten schools and corrupt, inept local leadership. And who the messenger is counts at least as much as what the message is.

If the GOP starts by hammering home the destructiveness of so-called immigration reform to black working families (lower wages and higher unemployment), it will have planted some important seeds.

I sincerely believe that the more black people wake up to the folly of progressive policies, including genocidal abortion, crony capitalism, a failed approach to education and an aggressive gay rights agenda, the more likely they'll be to abandon the Democrat Party.

BIG DAY IN EGYPT — It was one year ago that Mohamed Morsi won election as president of Egypt. Millions of Egyptians are unhappy with a bad economy, high unemployment and everyday hardships such as power blackouts. Many believe Morsi, a member of the Islamic Brotherhood, wants to install sharia law. Huge demonstrations by Morsi opponents and supporters are planned today in Cairo. This comes as waves of Sunni Egyptians are flooding into Syria to join the rebels seeking to overthrow the regime of Bashar al-Assad. That conflict is shaping up into a Shia-Sunni clash, with bad guys on both sides. Meanwhile, Iran grows closer each day to having nuclear weapons. Things show no signs of calming down in this godforsaken part of the world.

 

Belated commentary on gay marriage

While much of the blogosphere has been in a tizzy this week over the Supreme Court's rulings on what constitutes a marriage, I find myself profoundly indifferent.

In the first case, it is essentially meaningless except for a very small portion of the population.  I would be surprised if there were more than 10,000 married gay couples and very surprised if there were more than 100,000.  In a nation of 300 million, thats .03 percent (pardon my math, I did go to public school).

Moreover, there wasn't much tangible at stake.  The inheritance laws have always been easy to circumvent for the truly rich (just ask the Kennedys, still living off all that bootlegger money) and most if not all states offered some form of 'domestic partner' benefits, as did most companies.

It basically came down the federal tax code (which features a marriage penalty) and symbolism.

I shrug at your symbolism.  Whatever floats your boat, man.

Some on the religious right are wringing their hands at the loss of morality and the downward spiritual spiral in which the republic finds itself but as a student of history I have learned that people are always claiming that we are on the brink of total societal moral collapse.

To me the real question is what happens next.  I've long suspected that the gay marriage becomes legal it will become compulsory and churches that decline the ceremonies will have their tax-exempt status revoked.  Given the IRS jihad against the Tea Party, this seems quite credible.

If you told me that 10 years ago the Catholic Church would be forced to pay for birth control, I'd have laughed in your face, but that's where we are.

In any event, the dirty secret is that liberals are utterly uninterested in gay marriage, or fixing past wrongs - they want to destroy their opponents, period.  Such is the nature of the modern left that it activists are now actively seeking points of disagreement simply so that they can have something to fight about.

The world will never be built to their satisfaction because even after they take over everything, they will have to argue about what that means.  Sometimes I wish I didn't read history because these remakes get awfully depressing.  Plus, the second and third versions are almost always  inferior to the original.

The only comfort I derive is the knowledge that as bad as things are, they have been worse  and are likely to get worse.  We'll somehow muddle through the coming storm and when it strikes us with its full force, we'll look back and sigh with nostalgia for the days when we had plenty to eat, lots of toys to play with and the most pressing issue was whether a clerk would stamp a piece of paper.

 

 

The Stupid Party and the Evil Party

Journalist M. Stanton Evans coined this apt term to describe the two major political parties. And he added that occasionally the two parties join together to pass a stupid, evil bill. That's called bipartisanship.

This describes the rush to enact a massive immigration bill that has absolutely possessed and obsessed members of the Senate and may get the better of the House, too. New York Times columnist Ross Douthat nicely describes the appalling disconnect of Obama's actions (gun control, climate change and immigration) and the country's needs (jobs, wages and the economy in general).

This massive Senate bill, starting out as a supposedly great bipartisan piece of legislation from the much ballyhooed "Gang of Eight" is now over 1,000 pages long, unwieldy and chock-full of bribes and kickbacks to get as many senators onboard as possible. It's Obamacare all over again, only the results could be far more devastating.

The House is not likely to take up the Senate bill should it pass, which now seems likely. But even if Boehner's troops enact a more reasonable immigration bill, political pundits generally agree that the Senate negotiators will roll their House counterparts in a conference committee.

Naive senators like Bob Corker of Tennessee support the amnesty bill because they've been promised more miles of fence and thousands more border agents. Forgive me if I regard this promise as about the equivalent of former Michigan Congressman Bart Stupak believing President Obama acted in good faith when he issued a bogus executive order prohibiting Obamacare from paying for abortions. At the time I referred to him as "Bart Dupe-pak," and I think many of the GOP senators are making the same mistake.

Haven't we learned our lesson by now that Barack Obama doesn't give a rat's ass what's in legislation or what previous court rulings say: He's so much smarter and more enlightened than the rest of us, he will do us a favor by ruling with executive fiat. He knows what's best for us. What a joke!

The fact is, if anything resembling this amnesty bill is enacted into law, the United States will change radically within a few short years. The population will swell with poorer, less educated people who are less likely to assimilate than immigrants of the past. The welfare state will explode; hospitals and schools will be overburdened; our justice system and prisons will be overwhelmed. Wages will be depressed, and unemployment for blacks, already way too high, will worsen.

The Republican Party is on the verge of suicide, because Democrat rolls will swell with millions of new voters, and the backlash from conservative America will pummel the increasingly useless GOP (headed up by the clueless Reince Priebus) and its large number of go-along-to-get-along sycophant lawmakers.

Rush Limbaugh has stated repeatedly that a third party has no chance in our current system. But I am not so sure. The Tea Party has been a de facto third party for four years now, and strange things have happened, such as Republicans winning the Massachusetts Senate seat formerly occupied by Ted Kennedy, and the New Jersey governorship.

Granted, Scott Brown and Chris Christie are much closer to being RINOs than Tea Party members, but the fact they could win in deeply blue states underscores widespread voter disastisfaction with the status quo.

We are in a volatile political enviroment, and each of us who cares about the fate of our nation must pressure the Senate to vote against this destructive bill.  And should it pass, we must turn our attention to the House, which still could serve a laudable purpose as a blockade against disaster.

Bankrupt Detroit

The long-ailing Motor City has not filed for bankruptcy yet, but I believe it will within a few weeks.

The city's emergency financial manager, Kevyn Orr, met Friday with creditors, insurance companies, investors, unions and pension officials to plead his desperate case. He proposed that investors and lenders — many of whom purchased what they thought were secure municipal bonds —  take a "haircut" of about 10 cents on the dollar. In other words, if Detroit owes your firm $200 million for bonds you bought several years ago, all it can pay is $20 million, and then walk away.

Orr made it clear to the nearly 50 unions representing city employees that further wage and benefit concessions are in the cards, as are efforts to put contracts out for bid and privatize some city services.

Frankly, I believe Orr's chances of working out arrangements with all of these stakeholders are minimal. But perhaps he's just going through the motions before a bankruptcy filing, just to prove he at least TRIED. Good-faith efforts to come to terms with your creditors seem to be a necessary prerequisite to favorable treatment in bankruptcy court.

Detroit's fiscal dilemma, which dates back to the 1970s but has steadily worsened in the past 10 years, is that servicing its long-term debt and pension/health care liabilty for retired city employees takes up an inordinate amount of its tax revenues. This leaves too little money to provide police and fire protection and other essential services such as garbage pickup, reliable electrical service and streetlights that work. As it stands, the city's long-term debt is a staggering $17 billion.

According to the Detroit Free Press, 46 cents of each dollar of tax revenue goes to public safety, and another 38 cents toward debt and long-term obligations. 

It is true that inept and corrupt politicians have screwed Detroit royally in recent decades. Most of them were black Democrats. But the finger-pointing between largely white suburbanites and mostly black city residents oversimplifies things and delays real recovery.

Middle-aged and older whites in the suburbs often point to the 1967 riots, which spurred white flight and began a long, steady decline in the Motor City, as the watershed event that led to the current disaster. In their minds, Detroit was hunky dory before that, and bad ever since.

But what they neglect to acknowledge is that, prior to the 1970s, black Detroiters suffered from well-documented police brutality at the hands of a largely white police force. Furthermore, blacks were relegated to substandard housing in Detroit until the white flight began in the 1950s and 1960s. That was when bankers and real estate agents used blatant red lining and scare tactics to get whites to sell their homes at below market prices, then turned around and sold those same homes to blacks at unfairly high prices. To these conniving sharks, white flight was simply a golden opportunity to make a killing.

The white and black southerners who ventured north to Detroit in the first half of the 20th century for high paying factory jobs typically did not have more than a high school education. Regrettably, many of their children and grandchildren also did not further their education past high school, believing that high paying union jobs would never go away. Illiteracy is a serious problem in the city, probably increased by the high school dropout rate.

While the educational level of Detroiters hasn't progressed much, industry has undergone a dramatic transformation in the past quarter century. Robotics, outsourcing and foreign competition that have forced American auto companies to downsize have caused many of these jobs to evaporate forever. And Detroit is left with a vicious downward spiral: Few jobs, low tax base, bad schools, violent crime, drugs, gangs, illegitimate births and more population drain as those who can afford to leave the city do so.

Detroit proper had nearly 2 million people in 1950, 1 million in 2000, and about 700,000 today. (The entire metro area has nearly 4 million people.)

But as people continue to flee and tax revenues decline, there is less and less money for police and fire services just as demand for these services escalates due to grinding poverty and violent crime becoming more and more common inside the city limits.

Past mistreatment of blacks by whites has led to a bitter, insular culture among many Detroit residents. They are mistrustful of suburban whites and fail to acknowledge that it is wealthy white investors and philanthropists -- Mike Ilitch, Dan Gilbert, Peter Karmanos, Alfred Taubman and the Ford family, for example — whose steadfast investment and financial support have prevented Detroit from being in even worse shape. Downtown Detroit is doing fairly well; it's just that the majority of neighborhoods are blighted, crime-ridden, dangerous and crumbling.

Detroit, believe it or not, was known in the early 1900s as the Paris of the Midwest due to its tree-lined boulevards and beautiful architecture, including majestic churchs, art deco skyscrapers, and stately homes. (Yes, there are still some beautiful homes inside the city limit, especially in the Palmer Woods subdivision, where Mitt Romney gew up.) But the city's distress and blight are so overwhelming, it is dificult to be optimistic.

I've stated before that Detroit reminds me of an attractive, intelligent and talented person with a bad substance abuse problem. His or her life has been marred by destructive habits, unsavory acquaintances, ugly incidents and poor choices, all of which feed off of each other in a perfect storm of misery. Veering off on a path of destructiveness can make anyone or anything appear ugly and irretrievably broken.

Kevyn Orr and the bitter medicine of bankruptcy can eventually cure Detroit's financial ills. Retirees relying on pensions will suffer, as will city residents who pay tax rates that are ridiculously high given the poor level of services they receive. Crime and bad schools will remain stubbornly as cancers upon the city.

But in order for the city to truly recover in viability, safety, optimism, the health of its neighborhoods and the vitality of its schools, the people will need to take a look in the mirror and resolve to do better.  The time for finger pointing, complaining and paranoia has come and gone.

It's literally do or die, and don't think it's not possible that this once-great city could die completely, with the level of abandonment so profound that recovery is next to impossible.

Fast and Furious — Middle Eastern Version

Okay, so the intent is not the same, but the consequences could be similar. A few years ago, the Obama administration allowed straw purchasers of weapons in the United States to arm Mexican drug dealers and gang bangers with weapons, ostensibly to ascertain who the purchasers were. This would, it was hoped, lead law enforcement authorities up the chain to bigger fish such as drug kingpins.

But the disastrous program backfired, resulting in the deaths of untold numbers of innocent Mexicans including women and children, and the death of a U.S. Border Patrol agent. 

Fast forward furiously to June 2013, and the Obama administration has announced it is going to arm rebels in Syria seeking to overthrow the murderous dictator Bashar al-Assad. Several months ago, President Obama stated that if Assad used chemical weapons against the rebels involved in the bloody civil war, which has already claimed 80,000 lives in 2 1/2 years, that would "cross a red line."

It took a while, but Obama finally determined that crossing that red line meant Assad would have to face consequences: a better-armed resistance. The administration contends it has a much better knowledge of who the "good" rebels are as opposed to the Islamists such as al Qaeda, Islamic Brotherhood and other violent terror groups.

But the fog of war isn't just an expression, and it's not just something that's present among the combatants on the battlefield. It also pertains to military planners, strategists and politicians. Let's face it, information "on the ground" in bloody Syria is not necessarily accurate, nor can informants be trusted to tell the truth.

I have stated in a couple of past blogs that I don't think it is wise for the United States to get involved in what I consider a no-win situation. Hezbollah, a Shia puppet of Iran, supports Assad, while Sunni Islamists such as al Qaeda seek to overthrow his regime. This is like a battle of Hitler vs. Stalin (or, for Michigan State Spartan fans, Michigan vs. Notre Dame). You just don't want to get involved, or to root for one side to win.

I fear that Islamofascists will obtain U.S.-supplied weapons and ammunition, and many innocent people will die. And if Assad's regime is overthrown, will we be any better off with Koran-worshipping nut jobs replacing him? I think not.

Your tax dollars at work, indeed.

Push Back with RELISH!

 Maybe it’s just because it’s springtime and the weather has been gorgeous of late. But my spirits have been pretty darned good, and I think part of that is I am happy about developments in Washington, DC.

No, of course I am not happy about dysfunctional government, bloated deficits and arrogant, imperious leaders whose contempt for the American public knows no bounds. I am happy that the Obama administration’s haughty overreach is coming back to bite them in the arse. 

The Benghazi disaster does not appear to be something that will have legs, although it could blow up again.

Furthermore, I am delighted that the Republican Party now has some lawmkers who have “a pair,” as the vernacular goes, and aren’t afraid to push back against left-wing B.S. Sen. Rand Paul and Sen. Ted Cruz are a couple of good examples of men with spines. They have repeatedly faced down left-wing Democrats and not minced words when it comes to denouncing the incompetence and wrongheadedness of so many of the administration’s actions.

Sen. Paul staged a nearly 13-hour filibuster against the Obama administration's drone policy back in March, then a couple weeks later filibustered against gun control legislation. Sen. Cruz has been a forceful voice against ill-advised gun control, the "Gang of Eight" immigration bill, and the nomination of Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense.

More recently, a group of private citizens testified in congressional hearings about the IRS targeting and harassing conservative groups seeking tax-exempt  status. It was with great pleasure that I witnessed a this slapdown by Prof. John Eastman of the National Organization for Marriage gainst a brain-dead liberal, Rep. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon. Blumenauer opposes tax-exempt status for an organization that advocates defense of traditional marriage. Defense of traditional marriage to those of Blumenauer's ilk out on the far left flank is kind of like believing that Obama's cabinet is made up of two-headed Martians with antennae coming out of their heads.

There are millions of stalwart conservatives who are not afraid to face down the blowhard bullies of the left. They're in the House and Senate, on Twitter, on talk radio, in congressional hearings, on Internet forums across the land, in your workplace and on the street. I say, don't be afraid to push back. Conservatism's leaders have often been inarticulate and ineffective. We conservatives have been too timid, passively allowing a corrupt, compromised press to paint a distorted picture. We have not been up in arms sufficiently about the leftist control of K-12 schools and academia. We have not gotten the word out about how the federal government's enormous size facilitates a lack of accountability and the blatant politicization of various government agencies.

I say, PUSH BACK. And push back with vim and vigor. After all, we've got a country to save.

The futility of the surveillance state

There is much discussion on the right side of the blogosphere as to just how damning the recent revelations about data-mining and gathering phone records are to the new administration.  On the one hand, the Wall Street Journal and Bush-era officials defend the practice as essential to national security.

Rising in opposition are conservatives who rightly point out the blatant hypocrisy of the Democrats embracing and expanding programs they once denounced.  These people are in turn called hypocrites because they tolerated similar programs under Bush.

Long-time readers of this blog know that we are naturally sympathetic to the needs of national security and the imperative of protecting the public.  This need transcends politics and the change of adminsitration.

That being said, there is a thing called a "learning curve" and what we have discovered since the dark post-Sept. 11 days is that all the data-mining in the world is useless without the will to do anything with it. 

The most recent terror attacks were not developed by skilled covert operatives whose clever and encrypted communications could only be discovered by the most sophisticated equipment available.  Far from it - the Boston Bombers were self-proclaimed jihadis that we were warned about by the Russians who openly traveled to get their terrorism training under the very noses of our security.

Similarly, Maj. Hassan Nidal openly proclaimed his desire for jihad and the U.S. Army did nothing about it.  No amount of data-mining will overcome the political correctness that has blinded our institutions to even the most obvious threats.

At the same time, we have learned that the IRS, EPA and other agencies determined that the Tea Party was the one enemy they would pursue to the ends of the earth, using every tool in their possession to destroy.  This is the realization of the classic paranoid conspiracy theory - the government builds up its power in response to an external threat and then uses it against domestic opponents for utterly unrelated reasons.

One need not be a rabid libertarian to now undestand that these agencies and their secretive powers are a threat to our freedoms - one must only have a healthy dose of common sense.

For all its computing power, the NSA was helpless to find the Boston Marathon Bombers - that fell to a guy checking his boat.

Similarly, all the phone records on the planet couldn't stop a radicalized Army major from shooting up his own base.

I should make it clear that I do not blame the NSA for its efforts.  Like all bureaucracies, they want to build out their edifice to the maximum extent possible.  All departments want the shiniest toys, the largest number of employees and the minimum amount of accountability they can achieve.  It is inherent in human nature.

It is up to our elected officials to step in and stop this from happening, and they have done a poor job in this respect.

Like with gun control, I might support the surveillance state if it actually worked.  But we know it doesn't.  While the whiz kids play with computers, the enemy builds bombs with pressure-cookers.   Just as with gun control, when the inevitable massacre happens, no one will be held accountable for the failure to connect the dots and the citizenry will be blamed for not giving up even more of their liberties.

If there is once trend in American intelligence capabilities it is to consistently misread the intentions of our enemies.  Blinded by our own prejudices, complacent in our superior technology, we assume that the adversary will do what we want - playing into our own limited defenses rather than bypassing them.

Pearl Harbor is said to loom large in the American psyche, but the lesson there is not danger of the sneak attack but our own ineptitude in detecting them.  Failing to note the signs of an attack was not unique to that instance.  We also failed to detect the German buildup at Kasserine Pass, failed to detect their buildup at the Bulge, missed the obvious signs of impending Chinese intervention in Korea - in fact one could write a book on all the Cold War stuff our best and brightest got wrong, up to and including the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The point is that admitting one's own weakness is the first step in fixing it.  We still keep pretending that it is all a matter of finding a "smoking gun" when we have countless examples of them being offered up to us only to ignore them in favor a theory we like better.

So we monitor email, web pages and Skype with great dilligence and hassle crippled grandmothers at airports while waving through military-age men fresh from summer training camp in Dagestan.  Oh, don't get me wrong, I think that if we tried to use racial profiling we'd screw that one up, too.  It is a mentality and the hardest thing to fix is stupid.

More than 200 years ago some stuffy white  guys without any internet or iPads figured out that giving up liberty won't buy any more security - it just makes you a servant to the state.  It says something about our pathetic educational system that people are today acting like this is a new discovery.

Enough.  Tear the thing down.

Thank you, D-Day heroes

It was 69 years ago today that thousands of brave soldiers, sailors and Airmen invaded the shores of Normany, France to help liberate that nation from the evil tyranny of Nazism.

Over 5,000 ships, 13,00 aircraft, and 160,000 allied troops took part in the audacious amphibious invasion, at a high cost in terms of deaths and serious injuries.

President Franklin Roosevelt offered a poignant and moving prayer to the nation, broadcast on the radio. Let us never forget the character, courage and sacrifice of these brave heroes who changed the course of history.

Regrettably, many World War II veterans are deceased,  and fewer and fewer remain, since most of them are in their late 80s or 90s. The other day I just happened to learn about a terrific World War II vet, 86-year-old Jack Apostol, whose Memorial Day interview aired on a Detroit TV station. 

Although he was not involved in the Normandy invasion, he paid a heavy price and laid his life on the line as 58 percent of his division was killed in battle. Mr. Apostol describes in vivid detail his harrowing battlefield experience, after which he said he saw an image of Jesus Christ in the sky.

If God allows me to live into my 80s, I hope I am half as lucid as Mr. Apostol. What an incredible man! It is people like him who make this the greatest nation on earth.

Thanks, Jack, and thanks to all World War II veterans and indeed, all who have served our country.

Marco's Comeuppance

Sen. Marco Rubio is a nice guy, and his heart is in the right place on many issues including free market economics and taking a hard line against the thugs running his ancestors' homeland, that hellhole island of Cuba.

However, Rubio has been unbelieavably naive and unrealistic with his constant advocacy of a gigantic, unworkable immigration bill that, if enacted, promises to change our nation radically and permanently. The 1,000-page "amnesty bill," as some call it, would pose crushing burdens on our already overtaxed welfare state, schools, hospitals and medical clinics. 

As if those forms of harm are not severe enough, the bill would most likely not do an adequate job of protecting our southern border from swarms of more illegal immigrants. Even if enforcement measures were placed in the bill and the bill became law,  you can bet that our elitist president would simply elect not to enforce the integrity of our borders. In his mind, that would be evil, racist, cruel, unkind, so if he feels like it, he'll just ignore the law as he's already done on numerous occasions.

You can also guarantee that this bill, if enacted, would pretty much relegate the Republican Party to permanent minority status. There might not be another Republican president in the next 30 years, if not longer.

With all of that being said, the good news is I don't believe this bill stands a chance of becoming law. Even Rubio himself acknowledges that he doesn't have enough votes in the Senate to prevent a filibuster. Great!

And as we know, the House is controlled by the GOP. Moreover, many of the House Dems are not nearly as left-wing as the Senate Dems. If they know what's good for them in the 2014 election, they'll vote against the Gang of Eight's boondoggle.

The Boston Marathon bombing, which made it clear how difficult it is to track and monitor immigrants and served as a reminder of the nettlesome problem of non-assimilation, drove some nails in the amnesty bill coffin.

Recent abuses of power by the IRS (not to mention foolish wasteful spending at conferences, a la the General Services Administration a few months ago), have undoubtedly reinforced in Americans' mind that you cannot trust our mammoth, inefficient government to effectively oversee the myriad responsibilities a comprehensive immigration bill would impose.

So Scary Harry wants to bring the bill to the floor next week, eh? Well, I say, BRING IT ON!