Immigration legislation, supported by both the Congress-controlling Democrats and George W. Bush, is heading for a showdown on the Senate floor today.  Even with the White House and the majority of Congress in favor, the odds don’t look good.

Senate Republicans control more than 40 votes and can thus filibuster the bill to death and probably will.  Instead Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) will probably pull the bill, signaling its defeat.

Various amendments to the immigration bill would provide a path to citizenship for Mexicans – this isn’t really an “immigration” bill, it’s a Mexican immigration bill – who have been here for a given period of time, two years in one version, four years in another.  As there are an estimated 12 million undocumented Mexicans living and working in the US, approving either version would add millions of new citizens in a short period of time.

Republicans, who are blocking the immigration legislation, are the party of corporate interests in Congress.  If millions of now-undocumented Mexican workers were to become citizens in the next decade, it would mean industries like meat-packing, construction and agriculture (for all intents and purposes, an industry), which now hire many undocumented workers, would be forced to pay workers – Mexican and native-born – higher wages.  The employer could no longer intimidate workers by threatening to call immigration agents.  Labor unions might be able to organize the workers in those industries, giving the moribund labor movement a new lease on life.
Continue reading »

This morning’s Washington Post has a report that updates the ongoing revelations of how the federal government and its allied corporations are invading your privacy.

An internal audit by the Federal Bureau of Investigation found over 1,000 instances in which the feds illegally obtained information about citizens’ phone calls, e-mails and financial transactions since 2002.  The audit covered only 10 percent of the bureau’s investigations, so it’s safe to assume something like 10,000 illegal incursions in the past five years, which works out to an average of six per day.

Worse, the Post reports that of the thousand violations found by the audit, only two dozen were the result of the FBI making illegal requests of the corporations holding the data.  The other 976 violations of citizens’ privacy occurred because the corporations gave the FBI data it didn’t ask for.
Continue reading »

Does anyone remember 2000? Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush promised voters that, if elected, he would “restore honor to the Oval Office.” Months later, when he… well, he wasn’t exactly elected, but when he took control of the Oval Office from Bill Clinton and his aides, the quip going around the political and media circles was that “the grown-ups are back in charge.”

Seven years of lies, corruption, cronyism and self-dealing later, can anyone explain what they were talking about? As the Bush stains that are Alberto Gonzales and Paul Wolfowitz sink indelibly into the national and international fabric, where’s the honor? Where are the grown-ups?

This morning’s Washington Post reports that Attorney General Gonzales and his aides at Justice did not target seven or eight U.S. attorneys for removal, as Mr. Gonzales testified before Congress, but 26 – or at least 26 is the latest number revealed.

Another Post story reports former Deputy Attorney General James Comey had to physically intervene in a hospital to keep then-White House Counsel Gonzales and Chief of Staff Andrew Card from trying to get a medicated John Ashcroft to approve illegal spying on citizens in 2004. Mr. Comey said the actions of Messrs. Gonzales and Card prompted a wave of threatened resignations at Justice. In 2006, Mr. Gonzales testified that the 2004 incident was not controversial at Justice. Both Mr. Comey and Mr. Gonzales made their statements under oath. Care to guess who perjured himself?
Continue reading »