The Associated Press continues to obscure the line between objective reporting and editorial writing with this rank piece of propaganda by the AP’s Maryclaire Dale (as published in today’s Houston Chronicle), in which she points to a “provocative explanation” for a surge in the homicide rates in major cities along the East Coast: namely, ”not enough new immigrants.”

Baltimore, Philadelphia and other cities in a bloodstained corridor along the East Coast are seeing a surge in killings, and one of the most provocative explanations offered by criminal-justice experts is this: not enough new immigrants.

The theory holds that waves of hardworking, ambitious immigrants reinvigorate desperately poor black and Hispanic neighborhoods and help keep crime down.

It is a theory that runs counter to the widely held notion that immigrants are a source of crime and disorder.

“New York, Los Angeles, they’re seeing massive immigration — the transformation, really, of their cities from populations around the world,” said Harvard sociologist Robert Sampson. “These are people selecting to go into a country to get ahead, so they’re likely to be working hard and stay out of trouble.”

The “widely held notion,” she writes. Is this a “notion” (or this, or this)?

Of course, in citing such conjecture by “criminal-justice experts” (and liberal Harvard sociologists), she fails, as they apparently do as well, and apart from offering no substantive evidence for such a preposterous explanation, to distinguish between legal and illegal immigration — another fine line that gets conveniently lost in the journalistic shuffle these days at the Associated Press. That’s pertinent, I would think, because such a theory, if it were to be convincingly proven, could turn, in point of fact, on the salutary effects of legal immigration and how it has been thoroughly disrupted by a federal bureaucracy ill-equipped or unwilling to facilitate it and a president hellbent on legalizing through the granting of Z-visas illegal aliens.  But to the Associated Press, an immigrant is an immigrant is an immigrant, with or without documentation, and regardless of how they entered or returned to this country, or refused to leave it, or what their personal history were to reveal in a background check. How convenient.

And don’t you just love the expert opinion Ms. Dale taps for her piece:

Alison Sprague, executive director of Victim/Witness Services of South Philadelphia, suggested there is some merit to the theory. Immigrants in Philadelphia tend to be crime victims rather than perpetrators, she said.

“I really do think the vast majority of people are trying to earn a living and support their families and stay under the radar,” Sprague said. Illegal immigrants, especially, “have every motivation not to get involved in something.”

Forgive me, but I’m confused by these statements. Are the immigrant victims legal or illegal, and whatever would lead Mr. Sprague to conjecture that illegal immigrants “have every motivation not to get involved in something,” whatever something might be in Mr. Sprague’s parlance? So you jump a soveriegn nation’s borders illegally, or you return to the country illegally after having been deported, or you purposefully and illegally overstay your temporary visas, and you use, as is almost always necessary, forged documentation to pass yourself off as legal, but having done these kinds of things you most assuredly determine not to get involved in something. Right.

That just doesn’t seem to square with this “notion”:

Many illegal aliens in the United States have been arrested and incarcerated in federal and state prisons and local jails, adding to already overcrowded prisons and jails. The US Justice Department issued a report on criminal aliens who are incarcerated in federal and state prisons and local jails.

The report contained information on the number of criminal aliens incarcerated, their country of citizenship or country of birth, and the cost to incarcerate them. Congress also requested that the Government Accounting Office provide information on the criminal history of aliens incarcerated in federal and state prisons or local jails who had entered the country illegally.

In the population study of a sample of 55,322 illegal aliens, researchers found that they were arrested at least a total of 459,614 times, averaging about 8 arrests per illegal alien. Nearly all had more than 1 arrest. Thirty-eight percent (about 21,000) had between 2 and 5 arrests, 32 percent (about 18,000) had between 6 and 10 arrests, and 26 percent (about 15,000) had 11 or more arrests. Most of the arrests occurred after 1990.

They were arrested for a total of about 700,000 criminal offenses, averaging about 13 offenses per illegal alien. One arrest incident may include multiple offenses, a fact that explains why there are nearly one and half times more offenses than arrests. Almost all of these illegal aliens were arrested for more than 1 offense. Slightly more than half of the 55,322 illegal aliens had between 2 and 10 offenses.

But let’s return again to that incisive quote of Harvard’s Robert Sampson cited early on in the AP story:

“New York, Los Angeles, they’re seeing massive immigration — the transformation, really, of their cities from populations around the world,” said Harvard sociologist Robert Sampson. “These are people selecting to go into a country to get ahead, so they’re likely to be working hard and stay out of trouble.”

Fact is, New York and Los Angeles are seeing massive illegal immigration. And many of these people, in point of fact, are not staying out of trouble. As Heather Mac Donald reports:

In Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide (which total 1,200 to 1,500) target illegal aliens. Up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) are for illegal aliens.

And as Frosty Wooldridge continues:

At a greater level, New York’s Mayor Bloomberg supports illegal alien crime by maintaining a “sanctuary policy” in that city. Last year, four illegals raped and killed a New York jogger. That crime was one of thousands of crimes committed by illegal aliens who are protected from the law. But more horrific in impact of this loss of the rule-of-law, former Mayor Guiliana practiced Special Order 40. Several illegal aliens protected by the Order participated in 9/11. The death toll reached 2,800, but the impact on our nation reverberates today.

And curious, isn’t it, that no mention was made by Ms. Dale, or the experts whose opinions she drew from for her story that, had the terrorist plot to blow up the jet fuel pipeline and storage supply tanks at JFK Airport in New York been successful, the likely cause of this horrific violence against assets and people would have been the result of a “lack of new immigrants” to the northeastern United States!

Follow-Up: Here’s a not-too-old “must read” column by Joseph Farah in WorldNetDaily that merits reading in the wake of Maryclaire Dale’s AP article and the other MSM propaganda suddenly flooding the newstands in the wake of S. 1639’s defeat. A telling excerpt:

As the number of illegal aliens in the U.S. increases, so does the number of American victims.

Follow-Up II: And let’s not forget the “Fort Dix Six,” three of whom were illegal aliens, and what they are suspected of plotting to do — “inflicting mass casualties at a major U.S. Army base.” Could this dastardly plot have been eliminated by a huge influx of illegal aliens in the New Jersey area? The question, of course, is as ridiculous as is the thrust of the AP article.

I paraphrased above, but this Washington Post story contains the actual quote of Senator Graham’s. Hard to believe that the South Carolina senator, having taken a thorough political drubbing yesterday in the failed cloture motion on S. 1639, persists in the thinking that the overwhelming majority of American voters, who have made it clear in countless polls that they want border enforcement first (and enforcement of the ample federal immigration laws already on the books, including employer sanctions) must engage in some kind of Faustian quid pro quo with the United States Senate and the White House in order to have our national sovereignty protected. The man is delusional. No wonder his political stock in South Carolina is tumbling!

The answer to Senator Graham’s statement from South Carolina voters ought to be clear in the next election cycle: there are no votes for you either, Mr. Graham!

(H/T: Lonewacko and Michelle Malkin)

Follow-Up (06/30/07): PoliPundit’s point is well-taken, but we shouldn’t hold our collective breath, as a definite pattern of patent indifference has been set by this Congress, the DHS, and, most certainly, el Presidente Bush “The Decider.”

Read this Houston Chronicle piece, filed by the newspaper’s Mexico City Bureau, over the hand-wringing down south. 

And wouldn’t you say that given this and this and this and this and this, that Mexicans have a lot of nerve accusing America of hypocrisy?

More to the point:

Mexico counts on sending almost a million illegal aliens into the United States each year to ensure billions of dollars in remittance from expatriates, a sympathetic Hispanic lobbying presence in the United States, and easy exits for potential dissidents unhappy with Mexico City’s failure to provide basic services for its own indigenous people.

To facilitate such massive illegal immigration, Mexican officials hector their American counterparts about our supposed illiberality in not letting millions more stream in unchecked. They have even gone so far as to publish a government comic book instructing their own citizens how to cross the American border safely–and in flagrant violation of our laws.

But Mexico has nearly the same problem with its own 600-mile southern border with Guatemala as we do with our own 1,800-mile common boundary with Mexico. Hundreds of thousands of Central and Southern Americans try to cross into Mexico, either to work as cheap laborers or to make their way eventually into the United States as competitors to illegal aliens from Mexico.

In response, Mexico’s policy toward illegal immigrants on its southern border is as brutal as America’s is humane. Violators are often summarily deported–if they are not first robbed by Mexican officials or beaten and killed by criminal gangs. Mexicans may lecture Americans about our purported sins in trying to secure our border, but they don’t seem to care what their own government does to Guatemalans. Again, the irony arises that a government that has abandoned the rule of international law suddenly is worried that another country may be doing to it what it does to others.

Enjoy!

And they get it hear courtesy of Phyllis Schlafly of the Eagle Forum, as linked by Frank Laughter at Common Sense Junction.

Enjoy! Be proud. Celebrate (we deserve it)!

Follow-Up: Why not send these profiles in political courage an e-mail ”Thank You” note, as I intend to do today, as they sure deserve our kudos and appreciation for listening to the American people:

Contact Senator Sessions; contact Senator DeMint; and, contact Senator Vitter.

Follow-Up II: As I committed to earlier (and gladly did), I have sent e-mails to the three Senators cited in this post:

Thank you, Senator, for your steadfastness, leadership, and political courage in resisting the patent duplicity of S. 1639 and its clique of Senate sponsors. The bill would have cost American taxpayers $2.6 trillion, while, at best, only marginally improving border security. Last year’s Secure Fence Act proves that even good legislation, after being signed into law by the president, doesn’t get implemented properly. Americans are fed up with false promises and dashed hopes. As we have been saying all along (and you, to your credit, listened to us), SECURE THE LAND BORDERS and MARITIME PORTS first! Then we’ll be amenable to well-thought immigration reform that follows the normal legislative process with committee hearings, amendments, and full, open debate.

Well, it doesn’t have the incomparable patriotic appeal and emotional stirrings of William Shakespeare’s St. Crispen’s Day Speech, but it’ll do nevertheless! I’m referring to Rich Lowry’s post mortem, published at Townhall.com, on yesterday’s victory for the integrity of American citizenship and the sanctity of the “Rule of Law” (i.e., the defeat of S. 1639) – a political war waged and victory won by aroused American citizens who proved themselves anything but average!

An excerpt (but do read the entire column):

Beware of an aroused citizenry. It’s an admonition that should be ingrained in the brain of any run-of-the-mill politician, let alone someone who has ascended to the United States Senate.But from the Olympian heights of the world’s greatest deliberative body, it is often forgotten. So senators got a reminder in the humiliating defeat of a “comprehensive” immigration bill that had the support of the president of the United States, a bipartisan group of senators with the blessing of the leaders of their caucuses, and the support of the editorial boards of the country’s most important newspapers.

All of that was enough to get all of 46 votes on a key procedural vote that needed 60 to pass. The fight over the immigration bill was the first instance of an insider parliamentary struggle in which bloggers, talk-radio hosts and citizens were able to have a major voice through the synergistic power of the Internet, radio waves and telephone lines. Bloggers picked apart the bill, talk-radio-show hosts broadcast its flaws, and ordinary people jammed their senators’ phone lines — blocking what had begun as a kind of legislative coup.

(H/T: Patrick Ruffini at Hugh Hewitt’s blog)

Fox News has reported their most recent findings today (and Brit Hume just announced them on his afternoon news show moments ago).

The people decided today, not The Decider. That’s what happens (i.e., yet another nose dive in the polls) when a self-styled conservative president cozies up to Ted Kennedy and passes off his patent indifference over borders’ and ports’ security to a lack of legislation that would have cost American taxpayers $2.6 trillion and not improved our porous borders situation.

And it’s only going to get worse.

Follow-Up (06/29/07): George W. Bush’s and Vicente Fox’s ever-faithful loyalists waiting in the wings for yesterday’s vote in the Senate. These must be the same folks who work out with Senator Specter (RINO-PA) at his health club.

It pretty much boils down to this: do you buy “A” (by way of explanation); or, was it more a case of “B” (as many believe)?

I’ll leave it to you!

(But, I’m not ambivalent.)

The American people stabbed it with their steely knives and they just did kill the beast.

Note To Readers: The 46 “ayes” for cloture fell 14 votes short of the 60 that were required to cut-off debate on S. 1639. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had vowed that if the cloture vote was defeated, he would pull the bill. Had cloture been successful, the final vote on the bill would have been set for tomorrow.

Follow-Up: Here’s Charles Babington’s account of the vote for the Associated Press.

The Senate drove a stake Thursday through President Bush’s plan to legalize millions of unlawful immigrants, likely postponing major action on immigration until after the 2008 elections.

The bill’s supporters fell 14 votes short of the 60 needed to limit debate and clear the way for final passage of the legislation, which critics assailed as offering amnesty to illegal immigrants. The vote was 46 to 53 in favor of limiting the debate.

Follow-Up II: In an e-mail just received from Roy Beck, president, NumbersUSA, he wrote the following:

This is one of the biggest victories I’ve ever seen for grassroots activism.

Follow-Up III: Here’s the official tally on the Senate vote this morning on the motion to invoke cloture on S. 1639, the Bush-Kennedy-McCain-sponsored Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill. To make it easier for you to see how your state’s two U.S. senators voted, click on this link. The rejection of the cloture motion was tantamount to the bill’s defeat, as Majority Leader Reid (D-NV) had committed in advance to pulling the bill should this key cloture motion fail. Congratulations are in order — we citizen-activists did it. We defeated the vested interests, the President of the United States, and Mexico City. We stood tall.

Follow-Up IV: Rush Limbaugh has just called the vote “astounding!”

Follow-Up V: I’ve received another e-mail from Roy Beck, president, NumbersUSA, addressed this time to the “NumbersUSA Activists,” of which I am proudly a member. He writes, in part:

THE ESTABLISHMENT lost today.

The average American citizen won. You disproved the cynicism (born of great experience) in this town that this kind of victory was impossible.

All I would say, along with an expression of warm appreciation for all that the tireless Roy Beck and his fast-growing organization accomplished in this pitched legislative, lobbying battle, is that if this outcome has proven anything today, it is that there is not a thing average about American citizens and American citizenship. And that’s precisely why we won. What rose to the surface was the same right stuff that the Americans of the American Founding so resolutely displayed. For S. 1639, in its various forms and iterations and in the clandestine, behind-the-scenes way it was formulated (and the way in which the normal legislative process was circumvented), was tantamount to legislative tyranny, this time by a coterie of self-styled, anything but selfless, Crown Heads of the United States Senate and in concert with the I’m The Decider occupant of the Oval Office, who must keep a biography of King George III on his nightstand. We not only made history today, but we took a page out of history. For that we can be as proud, as we are exceptional.

Follow-Up VI: Kudos to “Jack M.” at Ace of Spades HQ for this fascinating analysis of the cloture vote tally.

Follow-Up VII (06/29/07): I sent the following “Letter To The Editor” to the Houston Chronicle yesterday, which was a slight modification of what I wrote in “Follow-Up V” above:

If the 53-46 defeat of the motion for closure on the Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill (S. 1639) has proven anything, it is that there is not a thing average about American citizens and American citizenship. And that’s precisely why We The People won. What rose to the surface in the woof and warp of this political fight was the same sort of right stuff that the Americans of the American Founding so resolutely displayed. For S. 1639, in its various forms and iterations and in the clandestine, behind-the-scenes way it was formulated (and the way in which the normal legislative process was circumvented), was tantamount to legislative tyranny, this time by a coterie of self-styled, anything but selfless, Crown Heads of the United States Senate, working in concert with the I’m The Decider occupant of the Oval Office, who must keep a biography of King George III on his nightstand. We The People not only made history in defeating this incomprehensible bill, but we took a page out of history.

For that we can be as proud, as we were exceptional.

Now, then, may I suggest to you that you watch this YouTube video in order to recapture what so many of us felt yesterday when we succeeded in restoring “representative government” to the United Sates Senate! (Linked at Diggers Realm and originally provided to the blogosphere, courtesy of Ruth at Illegal Protest.)

That’s right — Senators on the floor of the United States Senate this morning are saying that so many phone calls are being placed by outraged Americans (the real kind, not the Harry Reid variety) wanting a NO VOTE on cloture that the phone system has crashed.

Well, good. Keep after them, Folks! A shut-down system is a message in itself.

202-224-3121 (Capitol switchboard)

Follow-Up: This from an article in yesterday’s edition of the New York Times:

On the eve of a crucial vote on the immigration bill, the Capitol Hill switchboard was deluged again Wednesday as thousands of citizens called their members of Congress — and, perhaps, someone else’s — to weigh in. Not since the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, several Senate aides said, have the lines been so jammed by a single issue.

Note To Readers: Keep calling this morning, as I have been! I just tried the Capitol switchboard number again for the umpteenth time and I’m getting the “all circuits are busy” message. Understand — that’s a message in itself. Keep calling !!!

Follow-Up II (06/29/07): One of the most memorable moments from yesterday’s victory was when the inimitable Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), speaking from the floor of the United States Senate (I was watching him “live” on C-SPAN 2), informed his colleagues that concerned American citizens were calling the Senate’s offices in such numbers that the sheer volume of calls had caused the telephone system to crash. Diggers Realm has the sound-bite!

I published an open letter to Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) at this site back on June 22nd and forwarded those sentiments via e-mail to his Senate offices. But I’m beginning to wonder if he ever read it. First off, I don’t believe either Hobbit-holes or Middle-Earth are wired for ISPs and God knows the Minority Leader has gone underground since the noise level on S. 1639 — the Shamnesty Bill — has been ratcheted up to mega-decibels by outraged American voters and their champions on conservative talk radio. Secondly, Senator McConnell is up for re-election in 2008 and maybe in the past several weeks he’s seen some news accounts of what has happened to the national political fortunes of John McCain (RINO-AZ) and the popularity of Lindsey Graham (RINO-SC). Fact is, those who support amnesty are sure to get their comeuppance come the next election cycles, as Americans are going to have long memories.

This report was published back in May. If Mitch McConnell votes in favor of cloture today on S. 1639, as he’s expected to do, he can anticipate the fight of his life next year. And my guess is that Republican voters (and Democrats alike) have no intention of giving the Senate’s Hobbit-In-Residence a pass for having gone down the primrose path with Harry Reid and the other Masters of the Universe.

McConnell’s performance in recent weeks, to be sure, has shown a “disastrous lack of leadership.” Americans want a fence on the southern border, not one in the United States Senate for Mitch McConnell to hide behind.

Follow-Up: Mitch McConnell voted this morning against the cloture motion!

Follow-Up II (06/29/07): I couldn’t agree more.

Shakespeare wasn’t anticipating the U.S. Senate’s misguided Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill when he wrote that now famous line for his tragedy, “Hamlet,” but it seems apropos just the same.

But where, you ask, is the method in the Senate’s madness? Well, Robert B. Bluey appears to have an answer.

There are all sorts of goodies in Sen. Harry Reid’s clay pigeon amendment, but two pork projects — one in Utah and the other in Alaska — stand out. Why? Three of the senators who would benefit from the earmarks voted in favor of cloture yesterday.

Read the whole piece!

(H/T: Kathryn Jean Lopez at NRO’s The Corner)

The well-respected Ed Morrissey of Captain’s Quarters makes the following observation in this post and I could not be in more agreement with him, as I have been watching the C-Span 2 coverage as well today and I’m sickened by the nonsense:

I’m watching C-SPAN 2 at the moment, a fascinating exercise in official boredom. Today, however, the lunacy outweighs the ennui. As Michelle Malkin notes, the clay pigeon had to fly back to its coop this afternoon after a rushed reading by Senate staffers found a plethora of mistakes and at least one serious omission. That leaves the Senate debating a bill that no one has read, and that no one has put in its final form, which means that everyone on the floor has blathered about nothing at all. It’s almost as ironic as Seinfeld — and we’re paying for it.

If you ran a publicly-traded business this way, the stockholders and Board of Directors would be in an uproar. Of course, American voters are mad as hell, but neither the United States Senate nor the President of the United States are listening. Fact is, 12 - 20 million lawbreakers and the corrupt government of Mexico have their ear.

Follow-Up: It’ll make your blood boil, but nobody reading it will be surprised. Something like 30%+ of our prison inmates are non-citizens and they’re incarcerated for crimes unrelated to their violations of immigration laws — i.e., they’re criminals in their own right. This is one of the principal reasons why most Americans rightly want border enforcement first. Illegal immigration is not a social phenomenon, it’s an industry.

Follow-Up II: Some Senators resent the attempts by Senate “leaders” and the White House to “railroad” them with limited floor debate and the “clay pigeon gambit” that limits the number of amendments. Michelle Malkin continues her liveblogging.

Follow-Up III: Tell me if you don’t smell the pungent odor of mendacity in this not too surprising revelation by the Congressional Research Service, as quoted at Ace of Spades HQ. That’s what happens when the normal legislative process, including committee hearings, is purposefully circumvented by a clique of Senators hellbent on putting one over on the American people. But bloggers and talk radio are not going to allow it.

Just a few of the apt phrases applied to S. 1639 — the incomprehensibly abominable, convoluted, amnesty-laden Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill — by the editors of The Washington Times in today’s edition.

Excerpts follow (but do read the entire piece):

After a furious press from a president with some of the lowest popularity ratings in modern times, the Senate, which just 19 days earlier had voted decisively against shutting off debate, reversed itself and voted 64-35 to resurrect the illegal-alien amnesty bill — along with a set of amendments agreed to by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Republican supporters of the bill to give senators plenty of political cover: They can vote for a bill replete with provisions that undermine our defenses against criminal and terrorist aliens and set the stage for an explosion of the welfare state and massive tax increases in the decades ahead, while approving a couple of amendments in order to give senators political cover.

Yesterday, the Senate began debate on a series of amendments to the legislation. Some come from Democrats intent on making the bill more generous, which is not surprising. Other amendments, however, are designed as fig leafs to enable Republicans to pass a bill that is palatable to Big Business, Big Labor and the National Council of La Raza. As to the rest us, the spin is that they improved the bill, or that they really tried to make it better but just couldn’t muster enough votes. In the latter category is an amendment crafted by Republican Sens. Jon Kyl of Arizona, Mel Martinez of Florida and Lindsay Graham of South Carolina. The amendment puts together $4.4 billion for border enforcement, creates a tracking system for guest workers and permanently bars workers who overstay their visas from returning. On Monday, the three senators added a provision that required illegals to return to their home countries to apply for their “provisional” Z visas.

In many ways, this amendment epitomizes why the American public trusts neither Congress nor the Bush administration to broker a serious deal on border security. As Sen. Jim DeMint points out, nearly all the security provisions in the immigration bill mirror existing laws that aren’t enforced (except when Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff turns on his public relations machine.) And if anyone seriously believes that illegal aliens in any numbers will be forced to return to their home countries to apply for visas, we’ll sell them the Brooklyn Bridge. Sen. Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Republican, let the cat out of the bag the other day, when he dismissed the idea as “putting people through punitive steps” for “no good reason.” And such fig-leaf amendments do nothing to change the crux of the problem with this bill that we have repeatedly documented on this page: The provisions are like a magnet for undesirables in general, and terrorists and criminals in particular.

That headline is a quote by Scott Johnson of the venerated and widely-read Power Line blog, alluding in this post to all of the backroom intrigue and political machinations fueling the U.S. Senate’s determined efforts to pass amnesty legislation in a compressed timeframe this week in the form of S. 1639, and despite the fact that nearly 80% of American voters are unequivocally against this legislative outrage and the $2.6 trillion price tag that would attach to it.

Writes Scott:

Virtually everything important that is happening with respect to the immigration bill seems to be happening under the surface, away from the eyes of prying journalists and concerned citizens. The procedural maneuvering is incomprehensible. The substance of the amendments before the Senate is extraordinarily difficult if not overwhelming given the limited time allowed for their consideration.

I have only my intuition to go on. My intuition tells me that it is impossible to be cynical enough about what is transpiring here, that the second cloture vote is the last chance to kill the bill in the Senate if the fix is not already in, and that the bill’s passage is assured in the House if it makes it out of the Senate. If some version of the bill passes in the Senate as a result of the procedural short-cuts that have greased the skids for it, every Republican who lent an assist should be held accountable.

For those of my readers who think the tone deaf United States Senate and the obdurate occupant of the Oval Office are much too formidable a combined force for everyday citizens to succeed in defeating S. 1639, kindly recall this quote from a famous citizen-patriot during the American Revolution:

 ”They tell us Sir, that we are weak — unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature has placed in our power.”

-Patrick Henry-

Or this:

 ”These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their county; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny like hell is not easily conquered yet we have this consolation with us, the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value.”

-Tom Paine-

Here are the Senators who voted for cloture yesterday on S. 1639, a vote that was tantamount to a vote for AMNESTY. Call them, e-mail them, fax them, and let them know that American voters will have long memories come the next election cycles (and I’m not just referring to 2008).

The Capitol switchboard number is: 202-224-3121

Here’s the U.S. Senate web site and here’s the Senate’s address book. Have at it. Be a citizen-patriot and let your voice be heard (if not heeded).

Other bloggers are providing links to the Reid-McConnell, pre-selected, “clay pigeon gambit,” list of amendments to S. 1639. This site will not.

This bill is a total sham and a coterie of Senators, in cahoots with President Bush and La Raza, is trying to force-feed the legalization of 12 - 20 million illegal aliens, accompanied by a $2.6 trillion price tag, on bona-fide American citizens who are against this Shamnesty by a 4:1 margin.

Amendments, particularly a contrived, handpicked list of amendments, coupled with a staged,  circumscribed floor debate orchestrated by Majority Leader Reid, cannot put enough lipstick on this pig. And a pig it is.

S. 1639 is a legislative abomination. It’s a national genuflection to the corrupt government of Mexico. It’s a wholesale attack on the integrity of American citizenship and on the sanctity of the “Rule of Law.” It re-creates a Welfare State, but with all of the benefits going to lawbreakers and all of the costs being levied on you and me.

It’s an outrage!

Best bet: contact the Republican National Committee today and tell them no more campaign donations except for the individual candidates who oppose those Senators who brazenly wear the scarlet letter “A” on their lapels. No more money to the GOP. Tell them you’ve run out of patience and that the Republican Party has lost all credibility (as has the Ted Kennedy-led Democratic Party). Let them know your fury!

Suggestion To Readers Of ACSOL: Join NumbersUSA (as I did some time back) and become a NumbersUSA “activist” (as I’m proud to be and will remain). Read Frank Laughter’s post on this organization.

Follow-Up: Kudos to Brenda Walker for putting in bold relief in this post at VDARE Blog the wholesale assault being made on representative government by the U.S. Senate. It’s a must read. Her accurate depiction ought to be incentive enough to call the traitors of U.S. citizenship and national sovereignty and give them a piece of your mind.

Follow-Up II: Mark Krikorian at NRO points to and further amplifies Michelle Malkin’s challenge to Republicans to pull the pin on donations to the GOP and to, in fact, demand a refund on past donations, since the GOP, the president, and a number of Senate Republicans have clearly turned their backs on conservatives (and 4 out of 5 American voters) in their all out determination to defy the electorate and get behind the Bush-Kennedy-Kyl-McCain amnesty bill.