God save us from legislative "gangs".

In an opinion article in The Los Angeles Times on Sunday, Representative Raúl R. Labrador, a Republican member of the group from Idaho, more explicitly laid out the path for Dreamers: “Those who entered the U.S. as children, through no fault of their own, will be allowed to have a pathway to citizenship.”

The second group to receive a path to legal permanent residence would be immigrants who have either a family or an employment relationship that would allow them to apply for legal status, except that they have already entered the country illegally. Currently, most of those immigrants would have to return to their home country for either 3 or 10 years before they would be eligible to reapply.

The House bill would most likely relax or waive those barriers. Immigrants would then have to return to their home country to apply for legal status, aides said, but could do so only after completing a series of hurdles including paying fines and back taxes and learning English, aides said.

The remaining illegal immigrants could apply for “provisional legal status” if they came forward and admitted breaking the law, paid fines and back taxes, and learned English, much as they could under the Senate plan, aides said. This status would allow them to live, work and travel in the country legally, and they could then apply through regular channels for a green card after 10 years and citizenship 5 years after that.

See it's not amnesty! It's just "relaxing" and "waiving" barriers. Silly wingnuts.

Note that the prize here isn't simply "a path to citizenship", it's automatic legalization. GOP amnesty leaders like Marco Rubio, say "border security must come first" but that means before citizenship. Legalization comes right away. I'm sure some, maybe most, illegals care about citizenship but that's just a cherry on top of being able to live and work here legally.

Speaking of Marco Rubio he said he'd walk away from any deal that didn't include the faux "trigger". Well, the Obama administration said no to them. Rubio also wanted extensive hearings on any legislation, Senate Democrats said no to that too.

Anyone think there's anything Democrats could do to make Rubio walk away?

His final political calculation will be fascinating. Mickey Kaus has a theory...Rubio will walk for show but support in the end.

Personally I don't care what polls say on this issue. I think over the course of the last two primaries the GOP as a party has made it clear where it stands on this issue. Still, some will say, "but the polls! The polls say Republicans support "a path to citizenship"". Well, not all of them.

Live by the polls, die by the polls.

Oh and a final thought....if amnesty is just the first in a long process of winning over Hispanics (you know, the natural conservatives) shouldn't we be seeing a bump from the 1986 amnesty any day now?

Posted by: DrewM at 07:26 AM | Comments (207)
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• Insurers See Way To Dodge Federal Healthcare Law Next Year
  
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Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:09 AM | Comments (526)
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Happy Wednesday.

You may have heard about a story that ran in some media outlets -- Washington Examiner, Daily Caller -- that claimed that the RNC tried to hire Lady Gaga to perform at the convention. It did not. Via email: "To be clear, the RNC neither asked, offered, thought of or ever considered the idea of Lady Gaga performing at our convention. And clearly, we didn't offer a million dollars. The story is actually referencing an event by American Action Network, an independent group that is no way affiliated or connected to the Republican National Committee or Republican Convention."

Republican Sen. Mark Kirk endorsed gay marriage yesterday.* He's not up for reelection until 2016, if he chooses to run. The Illinois legislature is currently considering a gay marriage law.

Even WaPo is getting sick of Obama's (and Biden's and Feinstein's and Pelosi's) use of the false "40% of gun sales lack background checks" claim. Three Pinocchios: "A White House spokesman declined to comment on why the president keeps using the 'up to 40 percent' statistic." I think we know.

Having learned absolutely nothing from the past decade, the Obama Admin has decided-- you know, what? Just click through and read the headline. This guy.

Oh, and the story of the idiots trying to rig the New York City mayoral election was pointed out to me by a commenter yesterday. I wondered how anyone could be so stupid as to think they'd get away with such an obvious crime. I'm not the only one: "This latest political scandal has to be the dumbest, most delusional scheme ever concocted."

* Corrected [ace]: Gabe made a typo and left "gay" out of "gay marriage." I've corrected, with his permission.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:52 AM | Comments (405)
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Pop Quiz!

Remember when I said there'd be no math on the ONT? Well promise kept.

Now go put on your chemical hats and get your #2 pencils ready.

No peeking or using the internet. You may break the seal and begin....NOW.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:59 PM | Comments (597)
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A strange juxtaposition of stories from Hot Air. Convicted felony murderer Kathy Boudin is an adjunct professor at Columbia.

But Ben Carson is, according to the left, a "monster."

He saved lives while Kathy Boudin was ending them. Obviously he's a monster and she's a Distinguished Intellectual. Nice leftwing people on Twitter said so.

Recovering former "brain-dead liberal" Evan Sayet has some thoughts that may partly explain this mysterious method of "thought" of the left. He's written a book called Kindergarden of Eden: How the Modern Liberal Thinks, which he talks about with the Daily Caller.

His thesis is that America, since WWII, and until 9/11, has been pretty idyllic. Not much bad has happened -- at least not compared to the rest of the world, and the rest of history. This has created a perverse situation in which stupid thinking is sort of permitted to live, protected from hard consequences -- stupid thinking will not lead you do death any longer, as it once did.* It might just lead you to a professorship at Columbia.

* You know how aristocrats showed themselves to be such by wearing clothes with little practical utility? If you wore those flouncy tufts into a smithy, you'd catch fire. But this was the point: To advertise the fact that the aristocrat was not a laboring man. He was elevated above the plane of utility.

It seems to me there's a certain ostentatiousness about liberal thinking that is calculatedly non-functional and flouncy itself. By advocating a pattern of thinking that is dismissive of practical consequences, the advocate of such thoughts announces himself as someone so advanced and so well-off that he does not have to consider practical considerations.

Hm. Maybe.

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Posted by: Ace at 02:57 PM | Comments (493)
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Bubba Watson is teaming up with Oakley to create a golf hovercart. This seems like they're just having fun, but it could actually prove useful since hovercrafts wouldn't tear up the course like traditional carts do. Either way, I want one.

Video below.

[Update] Since this is so close to April Fools': Bubba WatsonÂ’s hovercraft golf cart is apparently not a joke

Sure, it's expensive and largely impractical. On the other hand, shut up. more...

Posted by: JohnE. at 01:33 PM | Comments (216)
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They're not going to say "illegal immigrant" any more, because, they claim (joining with illegal immigrant advocates who've claimed this for years) "an action is illegal not a person," which is just about the stupidest bubblegum I ever chewed.

So instead I guess they'll call them "unauthorized" immigrants, overlooking the fact that an act is unauthorized not a person, at least until the next mile on the "euphemism treadmill." Which just means that "moron" may replace "idiot" and then itself be replaced by "retard," but each word newly adopted in the euphemistic treadmill march will itself become "associated with negative connotations," because the word itself connotes something negative (at least something people wouldn't want to be themselves).

You can change "crippled" to "differently abled" but that's not going to stop people from noticing that it is better to walk than to be lame.

So I guess we're playing this game with illegal aliens.

Update: The NYT is now considering it as well.

Posted by: Ace at 12:44 PM | Comments (462)
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Why? Because environmentalists are now messing with their ish. Specifically, the oceans have worn away their beachfronts to almost nothing. The Hollywood millionaires would like to dredge up seafloor (with their own money... they claim) and build their beach lines back up, but the environmentalists say Nay, let us "retreat" (demolish homes or move them back) and let nature settle into its "natural state."

Posted by: Ace at 12:20 PM | Comments (193)
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Not enough to win the night, but nearly so.

It also doubled the ratings of a very meh season debut of Game of Thrones.

The GoT season will, I imagine, get better. But George R. R. Martin does so much leisurely set-up it really takes a while for anything interesting to happen. I'm re-reading the third book, reading it more carefully and not just skimming to get to the good parts. I have to say, reading it this way is boring. He really does pad an awful, awful lot. Not only does he have a large number of "Check-In Chapters" -- stuff where nothing of importance happens, but he feels the need to regularly check-in with important characters who aren't doing much -- but even within those chapters he pads like the Dickens. Reading the Jamie chapters, for example-- Jamie obviously loathes Brienne and has loathed her now since the last book. But he'll write paragraphs like this:

What a stupid, ugly cow, Jamie smiled to himself. "You're a stupid, ugly cow," Jamie told her. Then he smiled to himself.

No, really, an entire chapter is like this, Jamie thinking the same thing, then Jamie saying the same thing, and, seriously, Jamie both thinking and saying the same thing in the same paragraph.

But, anyway, it does get better. The TV series is far better than the book in this respect: they cut a lot of the fat. And there is so much in need of cutting.

Posted by: Ace at 11:09 AM | Comments (360)
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Posing as a group called "Act Against Arms," they seek signatures for a petition to take guns out of all future movies... and all old movies, too.

No one's willing to take Obama's line -- if there's anything we can do to save one child's life, we must do it -- literally, at least not when it's their own ox being gored.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 09:51 AM | Comments (314)
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