Recently in Immigration Category

This is an off-the-top-of-the-head report based on my observations of tonight's results, meaning, no links or final stats. Here's a very general Post report.

Here is the Post's running results page.

Our two Republican Loudoun supervisors who took the strongest positions on local immigration enforcement, who stuck their necks out the furthest and also took the most heat for it - Lori Waters and Eugene Delgaudio - won.

They are also the supervisors in whose districts Help Save Loudoun PAC had the heaviest coverage with the lit drop project. In Sterling and Ashburn, the citizens spoke.

The rest of the Republican board candidates, if the numbers hold, got their asses handed to them.

Not a great year to have an "R" next to your name.

I think the growth issue and general Republican fatigue were major obstacles for these candidates to overcome.

In the Sheriff's race, Steve Simpson won reelection, which shows the undeniable problem posed when the party departs from its candidates. Greg Ahlemann won the nomination in June, and a powerful segment of the party swiftly went to work for the losing candidate who ran as an independent. Three months after the Convention, the party did run a full page newspaper ad supporting Greg Ahlemann and Lori Waters - the candidates beset by newly "Independent" challengers. It might have been helpful if the party had acted sooner. A united Republican party could have produced a victorious Republican Sheriff.

Patricia Phillips lost the Senate race, apparently by about 5,000 votes - a significant margin. Patricia did not run on the immigration enforcement issue in the general election - the issue which won her the primary. I am going to suggest running to the middle on this issue was not a winning strategy.

I think these two races provided an opportunity for Northern Virginia residents to demonstrate their desire for more local immigration enforcement. There were a number of issues in play, however, with both of these contests. The Sheriff race, in particular, evolved into a rabbit's warren of side issues. Greg Ahlemann truly had a mountain to climb to win this election.

Delegate Bob Marshall and Senator-elect Jill Holtzman Vogel won their races, and these were two of the top immigration enforcement candidates for the next session in Richmond. These are two more huge victories.

I don't have results on any of the other Richmond contests.

It appears the GOP lost the Virginia Senate, which is not a great development. On the other hand, the GOP-controlled Virginia Senate in 2007 managed to kill almost every good immigration-enforcement focused bill that passed the House of Delegates last session. So, it's not entirely evident how the next Senate could necessarily be worse with the Dems controlling.

More to come.

So what's going to happen tomorrow?

WTOP reports that, based on absentee ballots, tomorrow's turnout is not going to set any records.

The crummy weather we are having will undoubtedly not help the situation, especially with just the third early-dark evening of the year and morning and evening temperatures that will approach freezing out here in the hinterlands of Loudoun. Election Day will also be "Welcome to Winter Day." It will be tempting to get home from work and stay home.

Based on the weather, and the fact that so many of the issues in the various races are ones which make most voters' eyes glaze over, I think there could be a really low turnout on Loudoun. On the face of it, I think this scenario benefits the Democrats because there will likely be an even mix of political activists from both sides voting, plus the obligatory sprinkling of actual citizens - and this year, I think the latter will break Dem.

LI has a nice prediction thread going, I recommend you check it out.

I don't have a feel for any of the other Supervisor races, but I think Eugene Delgaudio is going to win Sterling District in a landslide. After this is all over, I will share some scans of the direct mail pieces his campaign has sent out. Pretty effective stuff.

I think the Sheriff and 33rd District Senate races will be the most telling. The wild card is the illegal immigration issue, and whether it motivates a sufficient number of citizens - especially in the voter-rich Broad Run and Dulles districts.

If not for the latest iteration of the local GOP weenie wing, Greg Ahlemann would have clear sailing to election as our next Sheriff. Unfortunately, former Republican Steve Simpson decided to play spoiler and make that victory a wee bit harder to attain, and make a Democrat Sheriff that much more likelier.

My personal preference - no surprise - is that all voters pay close attention to the immigration enforcement issue, and vote up or down on that one alone. Lots of other questions can be discussed and hashed out after we've ascertained whether we will still have a country or not.

If the issue has been solidly framed in the sphere of public opinion, that certain candidates are for and others against local immigration enforcement measures, I think the HSL-PAC "ticket" will achieve 90% success and particularly Greg Ahlemann will be our next Sheriff. However, this is by no means assured, because the immigration enforcement message has primarily been expounded on the Web and in various blogs, which are to the votership as a whole as Joe's Home Brew is to Budweiser.

If the turnout is ridiculously low, all bets are off. The only non-aligned people who bother to vote may indeed be those who care about immigration enforcement. The HSL-PAC lit drop campaign, which reached 30,000+ households, might bring an extra 3,000 voters to the polls countywide. It could make the difference.

If you want to help end the illegal immigration crisis in this country, a place to start is with tomorrow's Virginia elections.

Help Save Loudoun PAC's "Immigration Enforcement Ticket" focuses on a number of northern Virginia races in which voters have a clear choice between candidates with very difference conceptions of local and state governments' role in immigration enforcement.

Those who are in favor of a strong local and state role will help put us on the road to fixing the problem. Those not in favor of such a role will help ensure the problem is never solved.

You can download a copy of the "Ticket" here - and please circulate it to everyone you know in Loudoun, Fairfax, Fauquier and Prince William Counties who may have the opportunity to vote for one of these candidates.

To read the educational flyer from Help Save Loudoun PAC which has been hand-delivered to many thousands of households in Loudoun County over the past five days, click here.

I don't know whether a single lit drop to a portion of this county's residences can make a difference in such a geographically massive area, but rest assured more voters now understand how to solve this problem than did a week ago.

Please pass along the above links to every voter you know and encourage them to VOTE TOMORROW, NOV. 6.

The Centreville Citizens Coalition is a brand new civic group formed to address the illegal alien problem in that area, which has become especially notorious at the library - a de facto day labor center for illegal workers. Please contact the Coalition if you are concerned and want to find like-minded people committed to solving such problems.

Referred by Blog Fu.

Mukit Hossain, Gerry Connolly and Mahdi Bray speak about illegal immigration at a Muslim political event in Reston in August, 2007.

Actually, they don't really talk about illegal immigration, but rather they invoke fearful straw men and proceed to condemn them: Opposition to illegal immigration is "intolerance;" anybody who is not "white" will be "profiled" and "targeted"; it's "open season" on EVERYBODY.

Not the most helpful messages, to be sure. But they are worth listening to to get an idea why there is so much confusion about an issue that, at its core, is relatively simple. Luckily, most legal residents of Virginia are now far beyond being susceptible to this sort of rhetoric.

---

Over 50 politicians from across the political spectrum spoke before the Muslim audience. Most of the speeches were fairly tame and uncontroversial. Senate Candidate Patricia Phillips was one of the few who stated clearly her position on the rule of law with respect to illegal immigration.

Patricia actually may have been the ONLY candidate who spoke in favor of immigration enforcement - I have not had a chance to review my notes. But I do recall an attendee whispered to me "man, this woman has more stones than most of the guy-politicians here."

Here is the link to hear Patricia's address:

What is not to like about this man?

Eugene Delgaudio, Sterling District Supervisor, has stood by the legal residents of Loudoun County and is one of our few advocates for immigration enforcement on the Board of Supervisors. He stood by the residents of Herndon during the 2005 imbroglio over the day labor center and ensuing, mildly resonant 2006 elections.

He is the hardest working supervisor in Loudoun County, overseeing the Sterling District from dawn till dusk till dawn. The many residents on his e-mail list get constant updates on everything from crimes, to emergency situations, to store openings, to volunteer opportunities.

He is, frankly, beloved by the Sterling residents. Countless residents have saved his letters of congratulations and thanks - for making the honor roll, or for displaying the American flag. They know that nobody else, not even as nice a lady as Jeanne West, would cheerfully put in the time and energy that Eugene Delgaudio contributes day after day, year in and year out, advocating for this district. He has a personal connection with so many members of the Sterling community and the residents of Loudoun County.

He personally championed the immigration enforcement resolution the Loudoun Supervisors eventually approved unanimously in July - at a time when the media were excoriating any politician who dared to breathe a word about local immigration enforcement.

Small wonder all of Eugene Delgaudio's public events draw huge audiences.

Some people disapprove of his irreverent style: Oh yes, he appears to enjoy his job too much - that I will grant. But in the effort to bring a common sense approach to local government it sometimes becomes necessary to laugh certain things off. Or rather, to laugh a LOT of things off - and this is a way he particularly connects with his constituents. We all know the way the government uses our tax dollars is often ridiculous. It is refreshing to have a Supervisor such as Eugene Delgaudio who is not afraid to say when that is the case.

Our newly emancipated friend Laura stopped in with an interesting comment in this thread, which began as follows:

I know for a fact that the last two times I hired American stonemasons neither one lasted more than a week. The first showed up at 10 am for two days, then he asked me for an advance to help him buy a car because his was broken down. Fired!

The second was an awesome stonemason but he worked a week and then ended up in jail for domestic assault. Fired!

No other Americans have applied for the job.

To which I made the following reply:

Laura, you are a hard one to decipher. Substitute any another nationality for "American" above and you have the precise formulation to get yourself publicly excoriated if not thrown in jail. In fact, I have a studiedly politically incorrect friend who just the other day made a similar observation regarding the quality of plumbing work performed by persons who might have been patrons of your former organization. But I am old school that way, and I have absolutely no problem with either my friend's generalization or yours. Because sometimes stating the truth is politically incorrect, I lean towards the truth anyway.

I am sure you would gladly allow similar blanket observations with regard to Mexicans, for instance.

And if I read you correctly, you are making the exact same type of argument guys in contracting and other trades make regarding their competitors who hire illegally.

So you seem to be a kindred spirit with some people on the "other side" of the debate from you, - except your proposed solution to illegal immigration is to simply apply a semantic trick: change the world "illegal" to "legal" for all those who have cut in line? ("comprehensive immigration reform")

You must have gotten to know SOME people who are following the legal pathway to U.S. citizenship or employment status, right? Do you honestly think it's fair to allow people who break the rules to be simply given the privileges that others have to work for? Because comprehensive immigration reform, in every form it's been proposed so far, makes those who follow the rules look like chumps.

And here is a good question that Jack used to trip Zimzo up with back in the day: Do you believe the U.S. has the right to set any limits whatsoever on how many people come into the country? If so, take the limit, the line of demarcation you consider fair - how many people are allowed in - and tell me: What do YOU say to the next million people trying to get in? What do YOU say if they just sneak in?

I would love to hear your thoughts on that question.

Help Save Loudoun is pleased to present Starletta Hairston, former councilwoman of Beaufort County, South Carolina, and Rich Kelsey, a local attorney, author and expert on illegal immigration who has been following the issue since 1994.

October 25, 2007, 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Founders Hall, Ashburn Volunteer Fire Rescue Department
20688 Ashburn Road
Ashburn, VA 20147

The overall topic will be "Illegal Hiring and Illegal Migration" - how to address the root cause of illegal immigration into the U.S.

Ms. Hairston will discuss the evolution of Beaufort County's Lawful Employment Ordinance, one of the very few examples of local legislation aimed at immigration enforcement that has a) been passed, and b) avoided successful legal challenge. Help Save Loudoun has encouraged the Loudoun County Board to pass a similar measure (and has urged our lawmakers in Richmond to pass enabling legislation if needed).

Mr. Kelsey will discuss several topics, including the legal and legislative ramifications of local and state level immigration enforcement.

There will be ample time for audience question and answers. Often this is the most valuable portion of the program, where audience members can gain a great deal of information in a short period of time.

For example, some people, such as our good friend Zimzo, argue that the damage caused by illegal hiring is a myth, and that no American worker or American business owner has ever been damaged by companies hiring unauthorized workers. Others disagree with Zimzo. Who is correct? Come to the meeting and find out.

....On second thought, don't come to the meeting to find THAT out because I can tell you right now, Zimzo is dead wrong and everyone who has not been DEAD for the past five years should know it.

The only one who gets to make that absurd statement is Zimzo, and the only reason I would permit him to show up and make it is because I would have a bucket of water ready to pour over his head.

But feel free to show up and ask any other types of questions.

(Just kidding. We allow ANY questions and never even bring a bucket to these meetings.)

Although the vote was an extremely positive result, here are the ugly details about how some prominent senators voted. Notably, the top Democratic candidates for president, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, once again demonstrated their pro-amnesty position.

Also, we saw some key Republican defections. A friend writes the following:

Senator Sam Brownback - a lost cause

Barely days after dropping out of the presidential race Senator Sam Brownback showed his true colors and voted AYE for the Amnesty. He never fooled many of us. Hopefully from this day on no one else will be fooled by this open borders/amnesty advocate. This duplicitous Senator should simply be ignored from now on. He is not to be trusted.

Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison - needs severe chastising

Senator Kay Baily Hutchison voted AYE as well - on this AMNESTY bill that had NO enforcement provisions whatsoever. Even the very flawed so called "comprehensive amnesty bill" defeated this past summer had some enforcement provisions. This bill had none. Senator Hutchison showed that she cares more about illegal aliens than she does about her own constituents and the law abiding citizens of the United States. Senator Hutchison is not however a lost cause. She does however, need to be reminded who voted for her and whom she is supposed to serve. She needs severe chastising by the people of Texas.

Further evidence we need to take a close look at candidates demonstrating radical changes of heart on illegal immigration - both of these went through some gyrations over the past two years on the previous amnesty measures. This also brings to mind that quisling-like fellow ...

The Nightmare Act has failed a cloture vote, 52-44!

Harry Reid is trying to push through the "DREAM" act in S 2205 while he thinks no one is looking.

This is a bad, bad bill. See the reasons below. Main reason, it is a front-door amnesty which will lead to immediate reward for illegal behavior while millions are waiting in line to enter the U.S. legally! It is an outrage. Because of chain migration it will result in a new flood of under-educated and unskilled immigrants when social services at every level of government are unable to provide adequate benefits to existing citizens.

We just received word that a group of U.S. senators' staffers are right now in a meeting with a contingent of illegal aliens pleading their case.

We also heard that the phone calls are largely against the "DREAM" act. Let's keep that momentum going!

CALL YOUR SENATORS NOW: Ask them to commit to voting "no" on cloture tomorrow on S 2205 in order to keep it from coming up for a vote in the full Senate.

DC Office of Senator John Warner
Washington, DC
202-224-2023

Midlothian Office of Sen. John Warner
Midlothian, VA
804-739-0247

D.C. Office of Sen. James Webb
Washington, DC
202-224-4024

Virginia Beach Office of Sen. James Webb
Virginia Beach, VA
757-518-1674

If you are in another state find your senator's contact info by clicking here.

Highlights:

• S. 2205 would do what all amnesties do -- entice millions more people to become illegal aliens here. The word across the world would be that immigration crime pays.
• The DREAM Act amnesty doesn't just offer U.S. citizenship to illegal alien teenagers, it also provides amnesty to the parents of most of them. Once the amnestied teens become citizens they can obtain an amnesty for their parents.
• Plus, anybody who can claim to be under the age of 30 can also make a claim to have arrived before the age of 16 and make a move for the amnesty (plus all of their relaties through chain migration).
• S. 2205 provides for no extra enforcement to help ensure that families around the world don't risk their teenagers' lives by forcing them to enter the U.S. illegally across the deserts. Passage of this amnesty likely would increase deaths of illegal aliens in the desert as more and more people attempt to get into the country in preparation for the next amnesty.
• Many of the advocacy groups pushing the DREAM Act amnesty openly say it is intended as a way to break the barrier and then to push for several more amnesties and rewards for illegal aliens.
• Many of these teenagers weren't brought to the United States illegally by their parents. Rather, many of them came on their own and found illegal shelter with legal immigrants who were from their country. Passing this amnesty will encourage millions more families to consider forcing their young teenagers into dangerous journeys to America to become illegal aliens and hope to get similar rewards.
• If there is a compelling story for giving amnesty to any of these high school students, it should be told only after the rule of law has been restored, including a fully functioning entry/exit system at the border and mandatory verification of all new hires by all businesses, governments and non-profits.

More background info here and here.

The Washington Post, god bless 'em, has this marvelous knack for unintentionally putting the dime on people it actually intends to cast in a hagiographical light.

You may recall the priceless case last year when the Post relayed the purportedly heart-warming, inspiring tale of an illegal-alien-boarding-house magnate named Jorge Morales.

Now we have this story, about which it's hard to know where to begin. I encourage everyone to go read it. Here is a highlight:

But a slowdown in the construction industry has forced Ventura to cut his workforce to 15 people. Meanwhile, his plan to buy a new house and offset some of the mortgage by renting some of the rooms backfired after county residents called for a crackdown on overcrowding.

I mean, the nerve of those county residents...

This is exactly why we need to ramp up the crackdown at the local level. As many legal residents suspect, there are people who have no intention of following the current rules for what you can and can't do in a neighborhood. Therefore, we need to add more and more teeth to the regulations until they have the desired effect of forcing acceptance of the rule that you are NOT ALLOWED to run boarding houses in our neighborhoods.

The Loudoun County supervisors REALLY should have gotten some ordinances passed this month.

The whole point is to send the message that this is not the place to be if you are here illegally or hiring illegally. It is as simple as that. The "foot dragging five" (those not endorsed by HSL-PAC) caused this board to miss a great opportunity to follow Prince William County's lead.

The Washington Times Washington Post reports that the Prince William County laws against illegal immigrants is having the desired effect. Illegal immigrants are "self-deporting," and moving to jurisdictions that cater to them, such as Maryland.

We've addressed this matter innumerable times since March, but as the election approaches and the next General Assembly as well, it seems worthwhile to post some reminders.

Twelve House bills dealing with illegal immigration, most of which passed by overwhelming - if not veto-proof - majorities in the General Assembly, were killed in Senate committees this past session.

If you want to research bills yourself, you can of course go to the GA Web Site and type in the bill number or search by representative.

To save you a little time, here are some research aids produced by friends at ANCIR and Help Save Herndon:

Some good bills which died in Senate committees.

Details on some of the bills.

This is why a number of us were saying, after the session had ended, that this Senate needs to be burned down and replaced. It looks like we did not succeed in getting rid of Ken Stolle - but who knows, maybe he has seen the light. It certainly means we need to dump some career politician types and replace them with people committed to implementing immigration enforcement measures in our state.

More to come.

Normally, I would have just left this as a comment (here).
As setup, the discussion was about illegal immigration, but something touching on education (Laura had mentioned teaching and pay; I don't know if she knew I am a teacher, but I felt a couple of things about teaching were worth mentioning.)
Joe thought it worthy of posting as an entry and asked I do so. Here it is:

Laura,

I do apply that same rubric to all labor. What is really difficult is when companies can outsource the labor to a different country (for example, software) which allows lower wages to be used, it is very difficult for those in that industry to compete. Doing the same with other industries would also mean that meaningful wages would have to be paid, but not as long as illegal immigrants are filling the positions.
Now something that will probably take you back a little. I think illegal immigration should be fought at every level of government, but as I teacher, I sometimes know when a student is in the class as a child of a legal immigrant, and when they are in the class as a child of an illegal immigrant -- and I am bound not to reveal that information by privacy in education laws. I've also worked in a district that was nearly pure naturalized citizens -- people that have lived in the country, who's parents lived here, and grandparents lived here (sometimes for many generations). Guess which district has more respectful children: Loudoun -- by far. People that are immigrants (legal or otherwise) have seen first hand how good the education is here for their children, and they demand respect of those that teach. Go somewhere that the parents have always seen good education, and there isn't necessarily the same level of respect.
That said, I still believe the laws should be enforced.

How rich. Employers of illegal aliens attempt to convince business reporters that they cannot function without the cheap labor.

We have heard this sob story before: Work will not get done and, oh my, fruit will rot on the vines. This Post reporter, at least, attempts to answer the obvious questions.

Local and state enforcement of hiring laws causes illegal aliens to leave and legal workers to earn better wages:

"They will not stay here if they know they will get no taxpayer subsidy, and they will not stay here if they know if they ever come into contact with one of our fine law enforcement officers, they will stay in custody until they are physically deported."

Hispanic business groups, citing school enrollment losses and church parish figures, say the laws, which start going into effect later this year, have caused as many as 25,000 undocumented workers to flee the state in recent months. The loss is being decried by the Oklahoma State Home Builders Association.

"In major metro areas we are seeing people leave based on the perception that things are going to get bad for them and that this state doesn't want them here," said Mike Means, executive vice president of the association. "Now we're looking at a labor shortage. I've got builders who are being forced to slow down jobs because they don't have the crews. And it's not like these people are going back to Mexico. They're going to Texas, New Mexico, Kansas, Arkansas, anywhere where the laws aren't against them."

Means said that while construction wages haven't yet gone up in Oklahoma, they are likely to do so if the shortage worsens. Advocates of such laws say that is precisely how strict regulations on illegal immigration can help American workers -- by forcing wages higher. But construction industry leaders counter that a wage increase in Oklahoma, where builders are already paying $15 to $20 an hour for labor in a state with low unemployment, would lead to a net loss of jobs as some businesses are forced to close, particularly if other states allow less stringent hiring practices.

Of course, SOME companies would eventually do the construction work in Oklahoma, being as how you have to be there to do the building. These companies would obey the law. And if no states "allow less stringent hiring practices" then we would be back to the rule of law everywhere. What a concept.

It took a ridiculously long time, but we have finally arrived:

We got Laura Valle's undivided attention:

In a brief interview, Valle said she left La Voz for personal reasons and to become more "politically active" in light of the county's tougher stance on illegal immigration.

"I'm going to keep tabs on Help Save Loudoun," she said, referring to a group that supports local governments enforcing immigration laws.

In response, Help Save Loudoun spokesman Joseph Budzinski said: "I salute Laura for everything she has done and I can't think of a better person to keep a close eye on Help Save Loudoun."

Notwithstanding the fact we all could have avoided so very much unpleasantness if Ms. Valle had simply made this decision a couple weeks earlier, I am pleased to welcome her to the realm of free and open debate.

All snarkiness aside, I think we got off on the wrong foot with Laura because she took a cursory overview of the playing field and decided Help Save Loudoun was her enemy - without spending one single second finding out what Help Save Loudoun actually was. As happens so often in cultural disputes, the La Voz folks imputed their worst fears onto their presumed opponents, and before you knew it we were all blood-enemies without having learned a thing about those on the other side.

Laura seems particularly mixed up about the relationship between Help Save Loudoun and tbe initiatives that have moved through the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors' proceedings since July. There is an evident lack of historical knowledge.

It might surprise her to learn the only formal proposals that Help Save Loudoun has brought to the Board have been 1) support for county government participation in the ICE 287(g) training program and 2) a crackdown on illegal hiring.

Does Laura actually have a problem with either of these proposals? If so, I'd love to hear the rationale.

As hinted at here last month, there appears to have been a bit of back room treachery going on among a clique of local Republicans for the purpose of getting Steve Simpson re-elected as sheriff, after Mr. Simpson got clobbered at the Republican Convention in June and took about four hours to break his pledge to support the party nominee.

The chicanery seems to have included a really pitiable whispering campaign which a semi-prominent local Republican even attempted to disseminate here but which has gone absolutely nowhere - especially now that the superior candidate, Greg Ahlemann, has decided to confront all the allegations directly (more here).

Tough luck for the weasels: Greg Ahlemann is no shrinking violet.

Now comes the revelation via a leaked e-mail exchange - just posted by Loudoun Insider - that some prominent GOPers may have basically leaned on the Ahlemann campaign to shut up about the activities of Simpson supporters within the party. So rather then being thrown out on their arses, the turncoats were permitted to stay, and - if the e-mails are genuine - they counterattacked.

No one I've spoken with has confirmed the e-mail messages are for real, although the lack of response suggests to me they are. Read them for yourself and you'll see they have the semblance of authenticity.

What this means is some people supposedly in the party are really not going to make it easy for the party nominee, Greg Ahlemann, to win this election. What this says about the party is, in my opinion, not much, but then, I have a REALLY cynical view of human nature. There is no reason to think the natural snakiness inhabiting the human race as a whole would not also inhabit the Loudoun County Republican Committee in precisely the same proportions.

More significant is what this episode portends for the public perception of Steve Simpson.

My take on Mr. Simpson from the beginning, since I began following the illegal immigration issue last year and the campaign at the beginning of this year, is he is a decent guy, a little on the feckless side, who happens to have so interest whatsoever in doing anything proactive about discouraging illegal aliens from coming to this area. In Mr. Simpson's words, it's a federal issue, end of story. Until Greg Ahlemann stepped onto the scene in February, Mr. Simpson's entire stated philosophy on the issue was a litany of excuses for why his department will NEVER do anything more than it was currently doing. (You can read the Sheriff's take on the issue, and some of the flack he took from locals, during the February townhall meeting here and here; a little more citizen flack here.)

Mr. Simpson's response to citizens' complaints has been, in essence, you really have nothing to complain about because things are getting better, and in any case there is nothing I can do about it.

Naturally, this approach has not endeared the sitting sheriff to many local residents, and the current controversy will sully his reputation even further while providing quite a bit of motivation to those who want him out of office. QUITE a bit of motivation, I would guess.

I can imagine that local activists who might be getting a bit weary of the campaign season, which has been going on for nearly a year, might get a fresh blast of energy if messages begin circulating to the effect "Hey look at this outrage! Are we going to let them get away with this? Do you need any MORE reasons to work to get Greg Ahlemann elected?" Getting Steve Simpson out of there, while also knocking his supporters down a few pegs, could provide the inspiration to take a few more hours off of work, get up a little earlier on a Saturday, knock on a few more doors.

In a low-turnout election, a few more motivated people three weeks out could make a difference, if such messages were to circulate. Hypothetically.

Our buddies at Equality Loudoun just conducted a fascinating, in-depth interview with Loudoun County Sheriff candidate Greg Ahlemann, no holds barred and no punches pulled. As I've said before, Mr. Ahlemann is at his best in one on one personal interaction. His forthrightness is what won him an improbable landslide victory at the June Republican Convention, and the same quality shines here. Thanks to the EV guys for the detailed and undoubtedly laborious transcription.

Go read it now! If you are not very familiar with Mr. Ahlemann, this discussion will definitely help fill in some of the gaps.

And so all I’m talking about doing is a program that the federal government has already said, hey, local jurisdictions, you can use this in your own community to help deal with, you know, the criminal aspect of it. They don’t give us the authority to go in businesses and check IDs and deport people, because they’re not going to take those people. That’s not our job, and that takes away from what we as law enforcement officers need to be doing, which is dealing with crime and the criminal element. Probably the biggest thing that a group like La Voz could get out, and different community groups, is to get this information out, that having the ICE program here is not going to target people who are here illegally who have not committed crimes. We will not have the authority to deport you, to separate you from your family - obviously there will be a deterrent value, there will be a lot of people who will say, Loudoun is hard on it, so maybe I’m not going to go there to drink, maybe if I live in Centreville I’m not going to come down to Pepe’s and drink, and if I get caught drinking and driving I might be deported, so you can’t put a price tag on that.

Absolutely brilliant.

For Immediate Release October 10, 2007

Contact: Ahlemann For Sheriff Campaign Office
571.223.7661 (telephone)

Greg Ahlemann on Illegal Immigration, Religion and His Tattoo

Leesburg, VA - Republican Nominee for Loudoun County Sheriff, Greg Ahlemann, is planning to discuss his stance on illegal immigration, the role of religion in his life as well as his much talked about tattoo in a press conference with the media.

The press conference will be held on Monday, October 15, 2007 at 10:00 AM at the Loudoun County Government Center Courtyard located at 1 Harrison Street SE, Leesburg, Virginia.

# # # #

For more information, contact the Ahlemann For Sheriff campaign office at 571.223.7661 or via email at info@ahlemannforsheriff.com or visit the web site at www.AhlemannForSheriff.com.

Besides being the only candidate in the Loudoun County race for sheriff to have the slightest appreciation for the importance of local immigration enforcement measures, Greg Ahlemann has the added advantage of being disarmingly personable and straightforward - so much so that he can unflinchingly state his views and beliefs in front of any type of audience and the audience invariably ends up liking him.

He has been the target of a whispering campaign, and this press conference is the perfect avenue to address it.

My recommendation: Be there Monday morning at 10:00 am.

Accomplishing swiftly what Prince William and Loudoun Counties have not yet been able to pull off, and which the town of Herndon is on the brink of, the city of Chesapeake, Virginia has just passed the most far-reaching legislation in the state to limit illegal hiring practices.

The City Council voted 6-2 Tuesday to adopt an ordinance requiring city contractors and vendors to certify that they are not hiring illegal immigrants.

Officials say they think Chesapeake is the first city in Virginia to support an ordinance like this, although other cities also are taking steps to regulate what has largely been a federal issue.

"It makes companies think twice about hiring illegal aliens," Councilwoman Patricia Willis said. "It puts them on notice that somebody is looking..."

Edge was approached by a group of citizens calling themselves Help Save Hampton Roads. Members of the group say they have met with city leaders in Norfolk and Virginia Beach and have redoubled their efforts after a Virginia Beach crash that killed two teenage girls. An illegal immigrant named Alfredo Ramos was charged.

"It's against the law for them to be here, and we know they're here," said group member Pam Gordon of Chesapeake. "We hope this is going to be the door-opener for Norfolk and Virginia Beach."

Congratulations to the folks in Help Save Hampton Roads! While all the media has been focused on the efforts in Northern Virginia, these guys have quietly moved the ball further down the field than anyone could have expected.

And thanks from the entire state to the forward-thinking City Council members of Chesapeake, who have now demonstrated it is possible to get something like this done in a short time. It is fully within the authority of a municipality to set conditions for businesses operating with their jurisdiction. This is the first, most effective step that every local government should have already taken to reverse the illegal migration trend.

Maybe some Chesapeake Council members could come up here and give a few lessons lessons to our local government officials.

A PAC has been formed to help end illegal hiring and illegal migration into the communities of Northern Virginia. Visit the Help Save Loudoun PAC Web Site for more information on how to assist in this effort:

Help Save Loudoun PAC was formed on behalf of the legal residents of Virginia, with the goal of ending illegal hiring here and illegal migration into our area. We want to elect public officials who will work to address these problems by implementing local and state immigration law enforcement measures and increase restrictions on hiring unauthorized workers.

Over the past seven years, because of corrupt business practices and neglect by our public officials, eastern Loudoun and western Fairfax counties became a landing zone for illegal aliens seeking work. This resulted in a "win-win-lose" situation, in that the employers benefited from cheap labor, the unauthorized workers found work, and American blue-collar workers and subcontractors saw their wages drop and opportunities disappear.

Yes, the federal government is to blame for failing to secure our borders and enforce existing laws against illegal hiring. At Help Save Loudoun PAC, however, we believe the solution to the problem must begin at the local and state levels. When local communities act, those at higher levels of government will eventually follow.

We have seen examples already where just the threat of increased enforcement has resulted in a reversal of illegal migration. Within the past year, several states and local communities - including Herndon, Virginia - have passed measures aimed at discouraging illegal hiring, with the result that illegal aliens have begun to depart.

Some of our public officials and candidates for office seem to grasp this principle but many do not.

Polls indicate that over 80% of legal residents of the United States support an "enforcement-first" approach to immigration reform. Help Save Loudoun PAC provides an avenue for promoting people to public office who are dedicated to implementing enforcement at the ground level rather than waiting for the feds to act.

Your contribution to Help Save Loudoun PAC will help in this effort.

The only question is: Which direction is the Loudoun Times-Mirror rotting from, bottom up or top down?

When I got slimed recently by the area's widest-circulation local newspaper, I took it in stride because in my view "integrity" and "journalism" go together about like "prudent judgement" and "puppy." Editor Paul Smith saw fit to print in prominent position a letter with the headline "Shame On Mr. Budzinski," in which the "shame" derived from a deliberate misreading of a disingenuous quote by a reporter who put the word "political" in my mouth - in a front page story in the Loudoun Times-Mirror. Although he posted my rebuttal on the paper's Web site, Mr. Smith did not publish my 300-word response in the print edition which reaches a much larger audience.

The latest offense by the LTM is an order of magnitude more serious: In a story about this week's Sheriff candidates' debate, the LTM printed a slander transcending bias or ethical lapse and treading awfully close to criminal.

On page A5 in Wednesday's print edition, reporter Jana Renn writes:

While Ahlemann tended to criticize the Latino and Hispanic population of eastern Loudoun, George contended that crime exists in every race and culture.

The sentence was since removed from the online version of the story, but the damage has most certainly been done as the paper gets into the hands of tens of thousand of readers this week.

Why do I characterize this as an offense? Primarily because, of all the candidates, Greg Ahlemann is the only one who said nothing about any culture or ethnic group.

You can listen to the entire debate here, but I have transcribed the relevant portions below.

Here is what Mr. Ahlemann said:

Question 3: During the recent debate on illegal immigration in Loudoun, some elected officials and residents have portrayed parts of eastern Loudoun, especially Sterling Park, as being run down and unsafe. Oftentimes these issues have been attributed to illegal immigrants. Do you think this is a fair portrayal of Sterling Park and, if so, what can the Sheriff's department do to improve the quality of life in this community?

Ahlemann: It's a good question and it is the issue in this race. And I don't know that we can quantify and really put a number on the amount of problems that are caused by illegal immigrants. Clearly, as the federal government themselves has stated, I think 12 million illegal immigrants, some people say 20 million. That's quite a large gap, so I don't expect Loudoun County Sheriff's Office or anybody in Loudoun County to have the intelligence to tell us how many are here. Clearly, we've seen a move and change - I've seen it firsthand from working on the streets of Sterling Park since 1997 in how the demographics have changed. I know that many of the people who I arrested initially who had no identification, couldn't speak any English, I'm just gonna guess that they might have been here illegally because at the time we chose not to participate in ICE. Those people lived in Herndon at the time. Now many of those same people live in Sterling. So I think there is a correlation between the two. Trying to say that crime statistics have gone down, you know, seeing that written on a piece of paper doesn't really make the single mother feel much safer as she goes out to buy groceries late at night and there's a lot of people hanging out at different bars or at Pepe's, where we have continuous problems. A place like that clearly needs attention from the Sheriff's Office and probably needs to be shut down.

Pepe's is an establishment notorious in Sterling for the amount of violence and police activity it manages to host - and the police activity is a fraction of what most residents THINK it should hosting. It is six doors down from the local Safeway. Everyone in Sterling who is not a gang member thinks Pepe's needs to be shut down and the fact it has not been is an anomaly much like the Enron scandal was an anomaly. There are many Latino businesses in the shopping complex: Singling out Pepe's demonstrates not a speck of ethnocentrism and any reporter who thinks it does should be working a different beat.

Here are Steve Simpson's and Mike George's answers to the same question:

Simpson: I do think it's wrong to assume, like some people do, that everyone who's in Sterling that's Hispanic is first of all illegal and second of all a gang member, because that's just not true. From our gang unit, the people we deal with, only one in about 20 people we deal with that are in gangs are illegal. So we have to be very careful when we start pointing fingers and saying, making those comments that some people are very quick to make in a campaign. I think there are some issues with Sterling Park. I've been with the Sheriff's Office for 20 years. I think a lot of the issues we see as some of these communities deteriorate are things I've brought to the Board's attention and they're already aware of, and we've talked about this and had a dialogue about housing issues, occupancy issues, zoning issues, those kinds of things. When you have 15 or 20 people living in a house, eight or ten cars parked all over the yard, that's not a law enforcement issue, that's not a Sheriff's Office issue. I can't knock on the door and ask for identification to see who's living there and are they here legally or not. That's not something I can do legally. But zoning officials, housing officials, ordinances that deal with those kinds of things, those are the kinds of things that play out in communities. And with our community policing office we deal with quality of life issues in community policing. That's a program I started when I first took office 12 years ago and we have it throughout the county. Those are the kind of things, working with the county resources, working with the Sheriff's Office in community policing to try to address some of these quality of life issues, that's how you solve those kinds of problems. You don't lock everybody up and everybody doesn't need to go to jail. That's not what it's all about. It's looking at it from a multi-pronged approach with all of us working together to deal with that issue.

George: I agree with Sheriff Simpson when he says we can't look at a certain culture and say they're gang members. I've worked Asian crimes, I've worked Nigerian crimes, I've worked Russian mafia crimes. There's crime in every culture and every race, and we need to be specific about what we're looking at. The crime, if it goes up, is one thing. We need to target crime, we don't need to target a culture.

Setting up a straw man and knocking it down is a classic feature of dishonest argument. It is a technique widely employed in the illegal immigration debate. Greg Ahlemann never mentions any ethnic group, but his opponents do so and go on to accuse him in not-so-veiled manner of "targeting" a culture.

The story by Ms. Renn also said about Mr. Ahlemann:

He said that 4,000 students in Sterling schools do not speak English in their homes, and that while he can't say all 4,000 of them are illegal, 100 of them may be...He later tried to clarify that he was using the numbers as examples and they may not be totally accurate.

Here is what was actually said when Purcellville Gazette publisher Ben Weber had this exchange with Mr. Ahlemann:

Question 4: In light of the recent opening of the new jail facility here in Loudoun County, how do you propose working with the Board of Supervisors and with the areas outside the area, such as Frederick County, in dealing with the overcrowding and housing that we most likely will have in light of the increased gang activity that will likely be taking place?

Ahlemann: ...Speaking with Warren Guerin just a couple weeks ago, of the School Board in Sterling, he said at some schools in Sterling, 64% English is not the language spoken in the home. Four thousand students are in English as a Second Language as part of their curriculum. Four thousand: almost 10% of our students. Am I going to sit up here and say that all those people are illegal immigrants? Certainly not. But could 100 of them be illegal immigrants that shouldn't be in this county? One hundred of them would be $1.4 million taxpayers' savings. There's what we spend to house the inmates. There's no vision, either at the Board of Supervisors level or the Sheriff's level, to resolve these kinds of problems. And that's what I bring, is a new perspective on dealing with things like this. You cut out the criminal element, you deter some of these illegal immigrants from coming here, guess what: You don't have to provide school for them and you save $1.4 million just with 100.

Follow up by questioner Ben Weber: You talked about 4,000 students, you talked to Warren Guerin, you made the assumption, it seemed to me, and please correct me if I'm wrong, that perhaps this large percentage of people that speak a different language - that's part of the reason why we're having this criminal element. I think that's somewhat of a stretch, and please correct me if I'm wrong.

Ahlemann: I'm sorry you perceived that, but I think the point is there's 4,000 - almost 10% of our students - that speak a language that is not English as the first language, that we're educating. And Warren Guerin basically stated at that meeting I was at ...

Weber interrupts: What did that have to do with the jail issue?

Ahlemann: I think it has a lot to do with it ...

Weber interrupts: If I speak Farsi, from Iran, then I'm a potential problem?

Ahlemann: I'm not saying that. There is a correlation between the two. If you're going to look at solving the problems as isolated, and not connecting some of these things together, then we're doing law enforcement the same way we did 30 years ago and we need to look at things in a new light and a new way of dealing with things.

Mr. Ahlemann makes the logical case that increased ICE participation could result in the departure of illegal aliens from this area, and if they were students, or parents of students, in our public schools the county would save $14,000 a year for every one that left and there would be less people in the jail. This is a simple, obvious point that most citizens of Loudoun would immediately comprehend but is, nevertheless, opaque to Ben Weber. And again, Mr. Weber, not Mr. Ahlemann, is the one who brings up a specific culture.

But as to the "4,000": It might have been a little helpful if the reporter had taken into consideration the fact that Mr. Ahlemann was referring to an event covered and quoted - in the Loudoun Times-Mirror:

"In the school system, we do not verify immigration status," Geurin said. His comments elicited a round of applause from the several hundred people in attendance.

He also urged the parents of the school system's immigrant students to take English as a Second Language, or ESL, classes. Of immigrant students, he said about 4,000 in Loudoun took these classes last school year.

That Mr. Ahlemann "later tried to clarify" the numbers is barely true, in the sense he stated clearly in a later exchange that he pulled the "100" figure out of the air to make a point about the potential cost savings. But the printed article leads one to believe he "tried to clarify" about the 4,000 students, when that figure came from a public official on the school board and was quoted in the same newspaper.

The bottom line is the Loudoun Times-Mirror grossly distorted the facts to paint Mr. Ahlemann as a fool and a bigot, when in fact he was completely forthright about the numbers he was quoting and he was the only candidate not to discuss any ethnic group. Why not call out Steve Simpson for the "everyone who's in Sterling that's Hispanic" quote? Who ever said that, besides Steve Simpson?

If the Loudoun Times-Mirror was worth the plastic baggie it's delivered in, THAT'S the statement the reporter would have called into question.

Loudoun Sheriff Candidate Greg Ahlemann dropped in with another great comment here, in the Loudoun Farce thread:

I had a great interview with Loudoun Force. Clearly, this issue stirs emotions on both sides. Loudoun Force and I have different beliefs on how to deal with the illegal immigration problem, as I probably disagree with them on social issues as well. From a former deputy's perspective who worked 5 years in Sterling Park, the community has gotten significantly worse. My former co-workers and members of the gang unit who have seen it change would agree.

Statistics can be manipulated to show about whatever you want. For example, people might look at the # of traffic tickets given out last year compared to five years ago and say "statistics show there are more violations now". When in fact, we have more traffic deputies writing tickets now than we did five years ago. The focus on the traffic division is to write 100 tickets a month now (per motorcycle officer). In fact, in fiscal year 2006, I wrote @ 1,200 tickets, probably the most in the entire department, but my evaluation from my supervisor said I needed to "write more tickets". Huh? So use these statistics with a grain of salt. The statistics written on a piece of paper don't help the citizens feel safer.

If Mr. Simpson believed that crime and these issues were getting better as his statistics show why did he reverse his stance on the ICE issue after 2 and 1/2 years of saying we don't need it? I have stated my intentions with the ICE program. There are those like National Council of La Raza, La Voz and others who disagree with it. I don't expect their vote, but I will gladly speak with them. This is why we have elections. I am giving the citizens a choice, a new direction, in dealing with this.

On a separate note, I was wondering if Jonathan was going to correct or update the factual information about me on his website? Google my name. As far as I know unless Jonathan or the poster is anti-semitic they could put at least an update to that post. I believe Loudoun Force could verify that if needed also.

I say this because I have seen past statements from David and/or Jonathan criticizing candidates for not "updating information they know is false". I just wondered if that works both ways?

Again, if people disagree with me on my patriotism or religious views and choose not to vote for me because of them, that is your choice. Unlike many politicians (which I have seen enough of already from both sides of the aisle), I embrace who am I am and what I believe. I respect that quality in others, even when I disagree with them.

Truly a stand up guy - just what we need in a Sheriff, in my opinion.

Ok, joke's over: This is what I really meant to say.

...I do not blame Mr. Weintraub for his confusion about the illegal migration conundrum, and I truly thank him for making it public, because it is a crazy situation.

But I really had you going for a while there, Jonathan and David, didn't I?

UPDATE: The letter that initiated the discussion has fallen off the Times-Mirror front page, so here is the link again for those who have not read it. There is a fascinating discussion going on in the comments.

UPDATE: Read my accompanying letter at the Loudoun Times-Mirror Web site here. Read David Weintraub's "assuming readers have a very short memory" response here. Compare the facts in the latter column, printed Sept 24, with the article below.

The recent behavior of David and Jonathan Weintraub, prominent Democratic activists from Lovettsville, illustrates how clinging tenaciously to a position you know is wrong can get you a little unhinged. (They are also bloggers.)

The Weintraubs are liberal, pro-illegal alien advocates .... a formulation which, I sincerely believe, most Americans are soon going to recognize as a contradiction in terms. "Construction company owner" pro-illegal alien advocates, or "poultry processing magnate" pro-illegal alien advocates each make perfectly good sense. But "liberals" advocating to redirect funds from disadvantaged Americans and reduce wages for American workers makes absolutely no sense.

Staggering under the burden of this predicament, David Weintraub lashed out in a letter to the Loudoun Times-Mirror, and Jonathan chimed in with a comment, with plucky, yet ultimately feeble, attempts to shift public attention from their plight.

Bizarrely, both Weintraubs denounced certain local people by stating outright lies about things these people allegedly said or did at recent events - without even bothering to check whether there was a reviewable record of what actually occurred. As it turns out, there is. And while it will bring me great pain to lay out all of these facts and corrections, I feel compelled to do so as a service to the Weintraubs, in order to help them take the first difficult steps back toward intellectual coherence.

A Shameful Start

David got the ball rolling with the letter, modestly titled "Shame on Mr. Budzinski".

First of all, shame on Mr. Joseph Budzinski, spokesman for Help Save Loudoun, for trying to claim that La Voz is engaging in improper political activity. Mr. Budzinski knowingly made this misrepresentation.

Now, this is a direct assertion that I said a specific thing, made even more unambiguous by the second sentence, that I did so "knowingly." Presuming to know what I know, David probably should have gone the extra yard and hazard a guess about what I might do, which is to fact-check him.

David is referring to a public statement I made about two weeks earlier about Laura Valle and the organization for which she serves as executive director, La Voz of Loudoun. Ms. Valle had been featured in several recent media reports about opposition to the Loudoun Board of Supervisors' July 17 resolution on immigration enforcement.

Two of the reports linked Ms. Valle with Mukit Hossain, executive director of the Virginia Muslim Political Action Committee, with the Post article stating the two of them would be "rallying" people to attend the Board's next meeting.

My statement was made during an interview with reporter Jason Jacks in a front page story of the August 24 edition of ... the Loudoun-Times Mirror. Since it is the same newspaper, it's not a stretch to think someone might go back and read it. But apparently David's zeal overcame his reason, and he left himself a tad exposed. Because it has an online edition, we can see exactly what was in Mr. Jacks' August 24 report:

What's more, Joseph Budzinski, spokesman for Help Save Loudoun, a group that thinks local governments should enforce immigration laws, said he questioned the public money because La Voz's interim executive director, Laura Valle, has been acting like a political "activist" of late rather than the head of a nonprofit.

"It appears to me that some of what La Voz does goes beyond that of a 501(c)3 [nonprofit]," he said. "I think there are some questions to be answered about this. ... It came as a surprise to me to learn how much money they get from Loudoun..."

Note the word "activist" is in quotes, indicating something I said, but the word "political" is not. I have requested the editors of the Times-Mirror ask Mr. Jacks to check his record of our conversation, because I am pretty sure I did not use the word "political." My primary reason for questioning La Voz' funding was because I thought Ms. Valle seemed to be providing services for and advocating for illegal aliens, and against the citizens of Loudoun County - which is fine for her to do, but not with public funding.

But let's assume Mr. Jacks used the word "political" in his question and I responded without a correction, or let's even assume I used the word somewhere in my reply: What I said is that because of how Ms. Valle has been "acting" and what "appears" to be going on, I thought the question needed to be asked whether La Voz should be receiving public funding - asking this question was the action by Board member Eugene Delgaudio that I was being asked to comment on. Affirming there is a "question" is not the same as to "knowingly" "claim that La Voz is engaging in improper political activity." This is a deliberate misrepresentation.

But wait, there's more. Shortly afterward, Mr. Jacks quotes Ms. Valle:

With respect to political activism, she said La Voz "is pretty light" compared to other immigrant groups ...

.
Ms. Valle here admits that La Voz does engage in political activism. So in the article David Weintraub used as evidence for my "misrepresentation" - the only person who makes a "claim" that La Voz engages in political activity is ... the executive director of La Voz.

David Weintraub apparently lives in a world where people can say all sorts of crazy nonsense and no one ever asks for citations or bothers to check the record. It is my mission to deliver David from that world.

A Note About Laura Valle

In case you are wondering why anyone would give a rat's patoutie about public funding for this nonprofit organization called La Voz, some background:

Though I had met Ms. Valle once, briefly, after television interviews in Leesburg, my first extended introduction to her occurred when I read a provocative July 23 column on the Times-Mirror Web site (which I encourage everyone to read), in which she compared "so called anti-illegal immigrant activists around the country" to Adolph Hitler. The only "ranting and raving" party named by Ms. Valle in the column was Help Save Loudoun, the local citizens' group for which I am a spokesman. Help Save Loudoun is the only such group mentioned by name in Ms. Valle's column.

Ms. Valle wrote that Help Save Loudoun's members

....will preface their outrageous statements by saying that this 'is a nation of immigrants' or that 'my Grandmother came from Italy', etc. They say these things to counter the accusations that they are bigoted, discriminatory, or anti-immigrant.

After labeling Help Save Loudoun as "anti-immigrant" and putting the above phrases into our mouths, Ms. Valle proceeded to launch into a breathtaking display of obfuscation, invoking further caricatures to say that people who are concerned about overcrowded houses are "making an assumption about a person based on the color of their skin or the language they speak."

Then, from her sheltered aerie out in Lucketts (in western Loudoun County), Ms. Valle delivered a tidy slap in the face to the residents of Sterling and those of our neighboring state:

Do these people not realize that if every undocumented person in this county were deported they would still have overcrowded houses with unregistered cars parked in the drives, they would still see people peeing outside (on a side note - I most recently observed that behavior on a private golf course when a golfer had had too much to drink, apparently could not make it to the restroom in time, and instead used a tree). When all the illegals are gone and their neighborhood has still not returned to what it once was, well, what issue will they hide behind then? And if overcrowded, run down houses with cars parked on the lawns are an indication of an 'infestation of illegals' then I am afraid we might have to check the papers of a significant percentage of West Virginia's residents!

The above paragraph perfectly represents the sanctimonious perspective of the elite illegal alien advocates. It is no surprise that the Weintraubs, hailing from Lovettsville, display a natural kinship with Ms. Valle's sneering appraisal of the citizens of eastern Loudoun County who simply want the rules in their neighborhoods enforced. How unsurprising to learn Ms. Valle deems her experience at the golf course in any way proportional to what so many residents of Sterling have to deal with from the house next door.

Memo to the Weintraubs and Ms. Valle: The reason the tide has turned in America is because millions of us who live in regular neighborhoods now have firsthand experience with the negative effects of the influx of illegal aliens into our communities. We do not have the benefit of a ten mile cushion of farmland between our homes and the new suburban reality. Many of us do not even play golf.

After reading her column, a number of people had the distinct impression that Ms. Valle was unfairly targeting Help Save Loudoun, which had prided itself on NEVER ranting and raving nor making broad statements about illegal immigrants. Our primary focus of action, in fact, was on illegal employers. Many of our members took exception to her broadside, which seemed disingenuous, and were surprised to learn she was taxpayer funded.

Shortly after this column appeared and she was featured as spearheading the rallies against the Board, it came to light that Ms. Valle's organization receives over $25,000 in annual funding from Loudoun County taxpayers.

On August 15, La Voz held a public meeting in Leesburg to discuss illegal immigration. Ms. Valle stated the following in response to the question: Does La Voz use taxpayer money to provide services to illegal aliens?

How do you deny somebody the opportunity to learn English, or to help their children that are in the schools - we don't have the capacity, I don't think we have the will, and I don't think it's in anyone's interests to do so.

In other words: Yes.

The final exhibit in our discussion of La Voz is an extremely revealing letter by Ms. Valle printed in the September 4 edition of the Times-Mirror.

Ms. Valle takes a moment to explain how her organization got its name:

The name La Voz (The Voice) was chosen in 2002 by a group of concerned citizens during a community meeting. We have always hoped that it would communicate the message that we are an organization that cares for immigrants.

Why would she bother to spell this out? She had to because she got called on it.

The name La Voz' leaders decided on matches that of another organization which was already prominent in 2002 and, along with the Mexica Movement, is one of the most notorious ideological entities engaged in the illegal migration debate: La Voz de Aztlan.

La Voz de Aztlan exemplifies everything that the most shrill, apocalyptic and paranoid anti-illegal advocates might warn you about, and then some. La Voz (de Aztlan) celebrates anchor babies and unabashedly promotes the reconquista of the southwest U.S., proclaiming Los Angeles the "Capital of Aztlan."

This La Voz also gleefully promotes the agendas of America's enemies. The death of NFL player-turned-soldier Pat Tillman draws snide remarks; the beheading of journalist Nick Berg is portrayed as taking place in Abu Ghraib prison; Osama bin Laden is viewed as the modern Pancho Villa; and, in case there was any doubt about La Voz' sympathies, their Web site even reprints the infamous blood libel against the Jews, Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

La Voz (de Aztlan) takes a benign view of Nazi Germany:

This acceptance of the jew history of Germany would be laughable when one studies the true dogma of the Third Reich. Consequences of internalizing jew lies and acting on them, as we Aztecas, like others, have had led to a misinformed and erroneous view of Nazi Germany. If the jewish depiction of Nazi Germany was true, Hitler would not have supported Francisco Franco in Spain, Mussolini in Italy or have aligned himself with Emporer Hirohito's Dai Nippon (Great Japan). Himmler's Waffen SS was the most perfectly multinational combat organization in the war. Arab civilians prospered more under the Axis than British/jewish occupation. We must be careful not to accept as fact the lies which are published and broadcast about Nazi Germany. We must remember at all times that the jew media censors what gets aired and printed and what most people read, see or hear has been censored to assure it conforms to the zionist agenda.

In sum, La Voz de Aztlan is the type of odious organization that any reasonable American would run away from as fast as our feet could carry us. To the contrary, La Voz of Loudoun adopted their name. This would be akin to the founders of Help Save Loudoun deciding to name our organization the "Ku Klux Kaptains."

Ms. Valle's letter goes on to note

... a bull’s-eye painted squarely on our backs. For what? For helping people. It has been a challenge to navigate through the minefield that is this issue, all the while trying to keep my own opinions and emotions at a healthy distance. It has been a tremendous learning experience, and though I have stumbled along the way, I am proud of my work and the work of the Board of La Voz of Loudoun....

The Board of Directors, volunteer members, and paid staff of La Voz of Loudoun wants it known that we will continue to stay on the high ground. We hope that others will join us there.

Let's all be clear about this: La Voz (of Loudoun) only got a "bulls eye" on their back because they compared Loudoun citizens asking for better law enforcement to Nazis. Claiming "the high ground" in the debate is a pitiful attempt to deflect attention from what Ms. Valle has actually said and done. She admits her "stumble." Good. But this is misdirection, plain and simple, unartfully employed and completely transparent.

The reasons some people might have questions about public funding for La Voz (of Loudoun) have nothing to do with alleged improper "political" activity, but with the organization's aiding and abetting of illegal migration and working against the interests of Loudoun County's citizens.

Crazy Over Greg Ahlemann

The Weintraubs' unstable ground gets even shakier when they discuss Greg Ahlemann, the Republican candidate for Loudoun County Sheriff. Democrats and turncoat Republicans Independents are noticeably freaked out by the Greg Ahlemann candidacy. Ahlemann is such an excellent public speaker and exemplary individual, and has such a compelling vision for the Sheriff's Office that the other two candidates pale in comparison. This has supporters of the trailing candidates very, very scared. Their only resort is to disinformation.

Unfortunately, that pesky public record stands in their way.

David Weintraub's letter continues:

He was present at the Sterling informational forum that Sterling Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio refused to attend, and he knows that the only person there who had to be reprimanded for political campaigning of any kind was Greg Ahlemann, candidate for Loudoun sheriff.

And Jonathan said this in the comments:

Joe Budzinski lied about my community on his Nova Town Hall blog and collaborated with the local anti-gay industry.

Now we see the most transparent political stunts, like sheriff candidate Greg Ahlemann politicizing a La Voz forum and then testifying to the BoS that their funding should be cut because their forum was politicized.

[As to the first sentence, I would say simply: Prove it, Jonathan. My statements about your "community" and my collaboration with said "industry" should be easy enough to cite if such evidence exists. Of course, the way you've framed it, just about any statement could be presented as about a "community" or "industry."]

Let's turn first to the newspaper report:

During questions and answers, Republican Loudoun sheriff candidate Greg Ahlemann, a former Loudoun deputy, said police can detain someone for something as simple as "running a red light" if they are not carrying identification.

He also recounted an incident of an illegal immigrant from Sterling who last year hit and killed a Herndon man with his car. The driver, Jose Santos Sibrian Espinoza, had been cited by police at least a dozen times for traffic violations before the incident.

"I support the 287(g) program," Ahlemann said.

After Ahlemann's comments, Christ the Redeemer's Father C. Donald Howard reminded Ahlemann that the meeting was not a political forum and asked him not to speak again.

This confirms that Mr. Ahlemann was reprimanded, although the evidence of his "campaigning" or "politicizing" is quite absent.

As luck would have it, I have audio recordings of everything Mr. Ahlemann said after he introduced himself.

After one of the panelists had talked about the 287(g) Immigration and Customs Enforcement training program for local law enforcement, during the questions and answer session, Mr. Ahlemann raised his hand and was handed the microphone. He said "My name is Greg Ahlemann and I am running for Loudoun County sheriff" and he proceeded to provide the following information about 287(g). The first recording begins with the interpreter translating Mr. Ahlemann's first words which were before I got out my recorder:

Shortly thereafter, an audience member was called on, and had a question for Mr. Ahlemann, which he answered as follows:

At this point the priest stood up and said Mr. Ahlemann was no longer allowed to talk. They went back to Q & A, and the next question was for Mr. Ahlemann. When the interpreter explained that Mr. Ahlemann was no longer allowed to answer questions, three or four other hands that had been raised went down and there was an audible sigh of disappointment from the audience.

When the event was over, Mr. Ahlemann was surrounded by a crowd of at least 10 audience members, and he spent 15 solid minutes speaking with them.

After listening to the recordings, which are raw audio captures of the event, you will see that Mr. Ahlemann did not do ANY campaigning. The only reason he was "reprimanded" is the priest did not want him speaking - despite the fact that the audience clearly wanted him to talk more. Mr. Ahlemann had direct knowledge of things the people wanted to know. School board member Warren Guerin - who is also a candidate for office - was allowed to speak without reprimand.

But hey, maybe I doctored the audio. Anyone who was at the August 26 event can listen to the recordings and, if truthful, will tell you that is exactly what was said. But maybe it's a conspiracy. Well, we do have another test.

Jonathan Weintraub claims Ahlemann testified about La Voz "that their funding should be cut because their forum was politicized" to the Loudoun County Supervisors on September 4.

WHOOPS! Wouldn't you know it, but there also happens to be a very public record, which is totally incontrovertible, of exactly what Mr. Ahlemann said in that forum. It turns out the Loudoun government has this newfangled thing called a "webcast" on the Internet.

Go to the Loudoun County video archive on this page. Scroll down to the "Board of Supervisors' Business Meeting" of Sep 4, 2007, and click on "Watch."

On the right side of the page, scroll down till you can see item #III, "Public Comment" and click on the link This will skip you ahead in the recording. Then grab the little bar under the video window on the left side of the page and move it as close as you can to 54:38. There you will get to hear and watch Greg Ahlemann's speech verbatim.

For your convenience, in case you cannot watch it, I have transcribed Mr. Ahlemann's September 4 speech below:

My name is Greg Ahlemann. I reside in Leesburg. I appreciate the opportunity to come before you today to speak. I will say that some politicians and power players within politics don't care for me very much, because I'm very outspoken about what I believe. I also believe that's what elections are for. That's one of the reasons why I'm here today.

I'm quite concerned with the fact that we can use county tax dollars to provide services for illegal immigrants, who are in this country illegally, and reward contracts and donations to groups like La Voz who provide services for illegal immigrants when we can't afford to pay our deputies and our teachers enough to live in this community.

I look at the deputies at the back of the room, the deputies in the lobby that are here today. I venture to say that many of the new deputies that come to work for the Sheriff's Office don't live in Loudoun County. Some of them don't even live in the state of Virginia. We can't afford to get them shift differential.

But for people that are in this country illegally we can take our tax dollars and provide services for them. While we neglect the people whose very lives our deputies are paid to protect. It seems like a problem to me.

Our deputies are not members of our communities, many of them. Their kids don't go to our schools. Their not part of our neighborhoods because they can't afford to live here, all while we're sending tax dollars to fund illegal immigrants. Is this really what we think is best for our county and for our communities?

I've spoke to you before about contracts. And I've read just briefly what the attorney had to say about the contracts here. I can tell you, car washes and things like that, we're going to have studies and these things are going to go on long past the election. We could have studies on this for years.

I could tell you, personally, if elected sheriff, I'm not gonna need a study to tell me that our deputies can wash their own vehicles until the Board of Supervisors can decide whether or not we will pay for illegal immigrants if they're working there and send our tax dollars there. I will take a stand on that.

Unfortunately, since January of 2004, when the Department of Homeland Security contacted the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office to invite them to participate in the ICE program, nothing's been done about it. It took until May 1 of this year when I sat in this room and listened as the Sheriff's Office talked about how they were gonna look into the ICE program. During that time, there have been accidents, there have been people killed, like the gentleman that was in Herndon who was killed by someone that the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office had in their custody.

How long do we need to have studies to enforce the law? These things are no brainers. And I also wonder how sincere are our elected officials about really doing something about this. The programs that you guys will decide, and our elected officials will decide on, will only be as effective as the sincerity of those enforcing it.

Thank you

There is, to put it mildly, substantial evidence against the Weintraubs. Without putting too fine a point on it: Their claims are blatant deceits.

Greg Ahlemann did not say a single word about cutting funding for La Voz "because their forum was politicized."

The Weintraubs are lying. The evidence proves it.

Conclusion

Pro-illegal migration "liberals" are in an untenable situation because they have pitted themselves against lower- and middle-class Americans who should be their natural constituency. For a number of years they have employed terms like "compassion" and "civil rights" to justify illegal employment practices without any thought to the other people who might be deserving of compassion, namely their fellow citizens, nor the historical population of citizens who truly have been victims of civil rights abuses, such as African Americans.

The common definition of a progressive activist does not include "facilitator of corporate corruption," but we are living in an unusual time, an ellipsis in American political history. Major social and economic structural changes have occurred during the past two decades, and the political end result is still a long way off. At the moment, we live in an environment of contradictions.

Country club Republicans and self-proclaimed "liberal" elites, who do not live in the communities most affected by illegal migration, are lined up with bad-citizen business owners to encourage the influx of unskilled workers from other countries.

This corrupt elite has a definite constituency among profiteers and illegal migrants, but is solidly opposed to the best interests of most of the legal residents. What is happening in American today is, the citizens have begun to push back.

When illegal migration was only a trickle, the impact was minimal and localized. Today, the effects are broad-based. The local situation serves as an instructive example.

Over the past few years, legal residents of Sterling could be excused for becoming cynical after assuming the county government would take action on businesses hiring under the table, commercial vehicles on their streets, businesses run from homes, single-family houses turned into multi-family residences, drivers without operators licenses or proper insurance, and an assortment of other infractions for which citizens felt they would be held liable but for which illegal migrants seemed to enjoy a lower level of scrutiny and enforcement.

To protect the illegal employment establishment, government agencies seemed to have a policy of looking the other way on infractions by illegal aliens. The general approach has appeared to be: The feds won't take them, and we do not know what to do with them, so we will just let them go.

Now that so many communities have been affected by the influx, legal residents are demanding a different approach. When the problems were largely confined within Sterling Park, the rest of Loudoun County's residents had the luxury of viewing illegal immigration as a theoretical matter. Today, the problem is recognized almost everywhere east of Rt. 15.

For many of us in this county and this country, the problem is right next door. Citizens have seen their livelihoods impacted by corrupt employers who game the system, their local governments' budgets strained by increased demand for social services, and their neighborhoods blighted by unenforced local regulations because authorities are inclined to look the other way.

This is where Help Save Loudoun comes in. We are the advocates for legal immigrants and legal residents. We believe the illegal migration problem is directly rooted in corrupt business practices, and the only way we are going to turn the corner on this problem is by enforcing the law on employers who hire illegal aliens.

We believe that solving this problem must begin at the local level. Just as local police are permitted to catch bank robbers for the federal crime of robbing banks, local governments can take specific steps toward enforcing immigration laws. We also believe that our local and state governments can end the don't ask/don't tell policy toward crimes committed by illegal aliens.

We believe our local government officials have wide discretion to ensure the safety and security of our communities, and they need to exercise it.

If our local, state and federal governments would simply do what they are supposed to do, the majority of illegal aliens would leave - self-deport - and companies would be forced to become good citizens and do what it takes to hire and house legal workers (hey, guys, check out the eastern regions of North Carolina - bet you could find some laborers there), and people like the Weintraubs would have an unambiguous calling to work for the betterment of our least fortunate citizens, remember how to tell the truth, and go back to being classical liberals again.

Bill Buchanan, the Legislative Director for ANCIR, has an excellent blog that's been live since June.

Bill knows more about the illegal migration issue than just about anyone you'll ever meet, and he can reel off data, legislative information and history as easily as breathing. He is an eloquent speaker on issues related to illegal immigration and frequently a guest on radio talk shows around the country.

A regular in the halls of Congress, he spent a great deal of time in Richmond during our 2007 session monitoring the action, inaction and downright treachery of our elected representatives. He created this handy report on the Senate fate of important immigration enforcement bills passed by the House.

I strongly recommend making Buck's Blog one of your regular reading stations. Almost no one knows about it yet but there is a wealth of material there and it is well worth your time.

Please pay a visit and let's help get Bill's blogging career going with some comments!

Republican candidate for Loudoun County sheriff, Greg Ahlemann, left the following note in one of our comment threads. Mr. Ahlemann makes some important points so it belongs on the front page.

(As always, there is an open invitation to the other candidates for sheriff to submit their own posts, and I will also put them on the front page and edit only for punctuation, about which I am frighteningly zealous.)

The true significance of the upcoming Virginia elections was underlined in grand fashion by filmmaker Ron Maxwell at a tremendously successful fundraiser for Greg Ahlemann. Read Ron's speech below the fold. The Greg Ahlemann for Sheriff campaign held a public meeting in Leesburg last night, the best political event I've personally attended in the current campaign season.

Thanks!!! to Ron Maxwell, Redskins hero Dexter Manley, who hung out and signed autographs, and a multitude of local luminaries who showed up.

I counted over 120 attendees throughout the evening. Not bad for a Tuesday night when "Back To School" night appearances provided substantial competition for candidates.

Attendees included Treasurer Roger Zurn, Commissioner of Revenue Bob Wertz, Commonwealth's Attorney Jim Plowman, Senate candidate Patricia Phillips, LCRC Chairman Paul Protic, and former Delegate Dick Black.

I was particularly gratified to finally meet my countryman Jeff Wolinski, and perpetual gadfly, the bulletproof one, Dean Settle. We did not have much time together, but I can tell the three of us could be trouble.

Ron Maxwell's speech traversed the illegal alien issue from A to Z, from the symptoms to the cause. He illuminated the problems citizens have experienced and the corporate interests that foster the influx.

Greg Ahlemann is the sheriff candidate who proposed FULL participation in the ICE 287(g) program, as well as putting a full court press on the Board of Supervisors to implement strict enforcement on zoning and businesses. Sheriff Simpson followed by parroting Ahlemann's proposals with a "me too" response, but Ahlemann set the agenda.

At the local level, everything depends on the WILL of our local officials to enforce the law, because there are innumerable escape clauses for those who do not wish to do so. As an example, Loudoun County receives $59.00 per night in compensation for federal prisoners held in our jail. Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, receives $109.00 per night. As the Mecklenburg County PR person told us, the only reason for the better payoff is they demanded it.

What else are the citizens of Loudoun County not getting, because our elected officials do not have the will to ask for anything better?

Most importantly, electing Greg Ahlemann will put the guy in office who truly believes in immigration law enforcement. Both current Sheriff Steve Simpson and Democratic candidate Mike George are exemplars of the non-enforcement approach. We can all see where that has gotten us.

Following are portions of Ron Maxwell's speech. If you want to understand what is happening with the illegal immigration problem in America today, I strongly recommend you read all of Mr. Maxwell's remarks.

UPDATE: My bad: Board of Supervisors candidate Geary Higgins was in attendance for most of the evening. (In fact he was the ONLY supervisor candidate in attendance. Too bad for the rest of them, they really missed something). I spoke to him and shook his hand so I really should have included him on the luminaries list above. Hey, the first draft of history often includes major omissions ...

The Sunday Washington Post was just full of interesting articles. You have the Dems playing the "word" game where there are no more "earmarks" on their bills. They change the name to something else and say that "....it is perfectly legal". Anybody that shows me a work-around and tells me that it is perfectly legal is skirting the rules. Earmark is earmark. The word carries a bad tone associated with "pork", "special interest" and the like. What that means is spending YOUR money wastefully. What the Dems do with proficiency (as well as some out-of-step Republicans). Let's just say that those people associated with the left are at it again!

The GOP is wanting to pander to the Hispanics and can't understand why no Republican candidates other than John McCain are willing to show up with the Democratic candidates for a forum tonight in Miami on Hispanic issues. I wonder if they are talking about foreign policy? Otherwise, why would a candidate single out an ethnic group? Special favors? I thought the object was to tell Americans (U.S.) what their positions were to help all? Does this smack of "special interest" also?

Al Gore is going to support one of the Dem candidates...any except the Clintons. Do you think that Hilly is better off because of this? I certainly have my own opinion.

And Mark (I'm the best Governor of Virginia in your lifetime) Warner is in a quandary as to which position to run for. If he chooses U.S. senator, he will be assessed with the other Democratic candidates (and he doesn't stomach that well). Does this say something? He wants to be governor of Virginia again and thinks that his record will landslide him right in. The governor who took a deficet and turned it into a surplus....with a tax increase! Heck, anybody can do that. The Dems are NOTORIOUS for that mindset. Kaine't wanted to save that surplus for a rainy day and increase taxes (and has) more. What is that surplus of our money for? I sure could use it. I forgot. The government under liberal thinking needs ALL your money so that it can manage your life since you are too inept to be able to do that yourself. Government for all. Viva Lenin!

I need more coffee so I can work the crossword.

There will be a FANTASTIC event on the evening of Tuesday, September 11, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm, at Bunker Sports Cafe at 510 East Market Street in Leesburg.

Director Ron Maxwell, of "Gettysburg" and "Gods and Generals" fame, will be the special guest speaker at a fundraiser for Sheriff candidate Greg Ahlemann. Also present will be Washington Redskins legend Dexter Manley!

Details here and here.

Mr. Maxwell is one of the most cogent and compelling historical writers in America. His films are masterpieces, classics in the depiction of American history.

This is a rare opportunity to meet an inspirational artist/intellectual while at the same time supporting a Sheriff candidate who will be one of the key pieces in the effort to take back our nation one community at a time.

Be sure and be there! This will be a memorable evening. I have heard Mr. Maxwell speak before and I can assure you it will be well worth your time.

Getting Dexter Manley's autograph is just icing on the cake.

Following are some excellent columns by Mr. Maxwell which you should read to get a sense of what is in store on Tuesday night.

Sowing The Seeds Of Separatism And Strife

Virginians Are Taking Back Their State

What President Bush Fails to See at the Border

Spread the word!

[Pardon me if this is old news to some of you, but it's new to me and falls in the "What fresh hell is this?" category so I am going to write about it.]

My introduction to local politics of any type occurred in early 2006, soon after we moved here, when I joined the Loudoun County Republican Committee. A central topic of my first two meetings was a bunch of people trying to gain membership in the LCRC, some of whom were considered personae non grata by some members of the committee because these applicants had worked for or supported an Independent or Democratic candidate running against a Republican candidate in local elections years before.

Having been informed that to work against the party's candidates is a major no-no, and enjoying retribution and lifelong grudges as much as the next guy, I cheerfully voted with the majority to keep these scofflaws out of the LCRC.

Fast forward to June 9 of this year: Greg Ahlemann defeated Steve Simpson for the Republican nomination for Sheriff. Obliterated, actually, because Ahlemann defeated the incumbent Simpson by more than a 2-1 margin at the Loudoun County Republican Convention. Ahlemann was the victor fair and square and undisputed nominee of the party.

All participants in the Convention had been required to sign a "pledge" to support the Republican candidates in the November election. This, I can tell you, was a bit of a pain because in signing up delegates for the Convention many of us encountered citizens who had serious moral qualms about whether they could honestly support all local Republicans on the ballot in November. It was rumored there might be an additional pledge required - and perhaps videotaped - as delegates showed up to register at the Convention. This did not occur but the general sense we first-timers had was: We were on our honor to support the winners from the Convention.

After the votes were tallied, the losers were given the opportunity to make a motion to nominate by acclamation their respective victorious opponents, and Sheriff Simpson came to the podium to call for the nomination of Greg Ahlemann.

Then, in less time than it takes to read The Art of War, Simpson reversed himself, broke the pledge, and announced he was going to run for Sheriff as an Independent. This is pretty serious business because Simpson had appropriated some of Ahlemann's key campaign positions related to illegal immigration, and splitting the Republican vote created a very real possibility of handing the election to the Democratic challenger.

Soon after this, it came to light that a prominent member of the LCRC, Dale Polen Myers, assisted Simpson in gathering signatures for his application to the state election board to be placed on the November ballot.

At one of the next LCRC meetings - which I missed because of the press of Help Save Loudoun business - a petition was apparently circulated to have Ms. Polen Myers removed from the committee. This seems, to me, a perfectly logical step, and it seems strange that a petition would even be required. But as the Connection newspaper reports, the petition failed. (Link found at Too Conservative).

Some observations:

1) A bunch of people come to mind who really ought to consider re-applying for admission to the LCRC, now that the standards have been relaxed.

2) I REALLY wish the true meaning of "pledge" had been explained earlier in the year, because it would have made the delegate sign-up process so much easier. ("Oh, you needn't worry about that, Mrs. Smith. Allow me to cross out the word 'pledge' and write 'joke' in its place.")

3) I have to try not to miss any more meetings, because I would have loved to hear the rationales for not bouncing Ms. Polen Myers out.

As most everyone who reads this blog knows, I am a big Greg Ahlemann supporter, because he is light years ahead of the other two candidates for Sheriff on addressing the illegal alien problem in Loudoun County. He understands the problem, he has a broad plan for fixing the problem which includes telling the Board of Supervisors what they need to do to fix it (which will get massive citizen support), and he is truly a stand-up guy who has been running with a consistent message since the campaign began. Greg Ahlemann is someone the citizens of Loudoun will be able to trust.

Since he is not only a great person and great candidate but also the Republican nominee, I would expect the party leadership to get behind him.

Now comes apparent evidence that, in addition to Ms. Polen Myers, a few other key Loudoun Republicans may be opposing Mr. Ahlemann. I'm not going to name any names just now, but there is an important event Tuesday night - a fundraiser for Greg Ahlemann featuring film director Ron Maxwell - which provides a singular opportunity for the LCRC leadership to show up en masse to support Ahlemann's candidacy.

Those who, in a moment of weakness, might have toyed with the idea of following Ms. Polen Myers, have a great opportunity for redemption, to rethink their positions and make a public showing of support for Greg Ahlemann. Show up Tuesday night, guys, and give us some photo ops and statements of support for the Republican nominee for Sheriff.

And, uh, after our sitting Sheriff and a major Republican power broker abandoned theirs, please try to convince us the pledge is not a total joke.

The Tuesday, September 4 meeting of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors was supposed to be a wild public affair, but the circus never made it to town.

The authorities were well-prepared. Several officers each from the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office and Leesburg Police Department were posted around the government building - seven or eight more than you'd see at a typical Tuesday morning meeting. The entire area fronting Loudoun Avenue was blocked off with yellow tape, apparently to ensure the crowds filed through a narrow corridor where several law enforcement personnel were on gatekeeper duty. Parking meters all the way down Harrison Street up to Tuscarora Mill were bagged to keep the street clear.

Everything hinted at the expectation of busloads of attendees pouring in.

And the expectation was not without reason.

After the Loudoun Board unanimously passed an immigration enforcement resolution on July 17, leaders of two local advocacy groups opposing the resolution essentially admitted they were caught flat-footed, and they promised a vigorous response at the September 4 meeting.

Both Mukit Hossain, president of the Virginian Muslim Political Action Committee, and Laura Valle, Executive Director of La Voz of Loudoun, told reporters they were going to bring large numbers of people to the hearing:

Two of the groups leading the charge against the board's efforts are La Voz of Loudoun, a Hispanic outreach and advocacy nonprofit organization, and the Cascades-based Virginian Muslim Political Action Committee...

Hossain's group and La Voz are rallying supporters to attend the Loudoun supervisors' Sept. 4 meeting. At that meeting, the board is expected to hear from county staff members about which services can be cut off to people without legal status and what the financial effect on the county might be.

More from the Connection:

VALLE’S LA VOZ and other groups opposed to the possibility of restricted county services said that they are focusing on educating residents and those with questions about the realities of illegal immigration.

"The goal is not to say they are right or wrong to want to do something," Valle said. "But we want the Loudoun citizens to be involved in this."

Mukit Hossain, president of the Virginia Muslim Political Action Committee, said he is also concerned with making Loudoun residents civically engaged. Hossain, along with other immigrant groups, recently formed the American Dream Alliance, which will work on voter registration and campaigns that support the immigrant community.

"These sort of issues should be dealt with in the ballot box," Hossain said. "I think if you can create activity leading up to the November election, I think we can alleviate the situation."

As it turned out, there were no crowds opposing the resolution, and the audience for the hearing consisted overwhelmingly of immigration enforcement supporters, including at least 10 people wearing "Ahlemann for Sheriff" T-shirts. (Speaking in support of immigration enforcement were Mr. Ahlemann himself and Senate candidate Patricia Phillips).

Although Ms. Valle attended the hearing she did not speak during the public comment portion, and only two of the 14 or 15 people who testified on the issue spoke in opposition to the proposed immigration enforcement measures - and neither of the two seemed to be part of any coordinated opposition.

So why the no show? Perhaps the abysmal failure of the "boycott" and related pro-illegal public events in Prince William County last week left a bad taste.

Whatever the reason, the reversal is a notable shift in tactics from a month ago.

UPDATE - Laura Valle of La Voz responds:

I told no reporter at no time that we (La Voz) was going to try and get a large show at the Board meeting. Our effort to get people involved was the August 16 Panel presentation and the August 26 community meeting. Over 300 people showed up to those meetings. Those are some good numbers.

I did not speak at the Board meeting in part because I was very confident that there would be no action with out further review.

Also, the media misreported when they stated that La Voz is leading the charge against the Board. I am sure you are aware that the media does not always get it right. We have repeatedly stated that we support the Board's effort to look into the issue.

Also I was contacted by Ricardo Juarez (Mexicans Without Borders) in late July at which time I told him that La Voz would not support protests, boycotts, etc. La Voz actually deserves some credit that Loudoun has not experienced what Prince William has over the past few weeks. We have been very outspoken against extremes. We held a meeting at the Sterliing Community Center to get input from the community about what La Voz could/should do in reaction and though we recieved a lot of suggestions to protest and coordinate with other regional groups, we did not pursue any of them as they contradict the stated purpose of our organization which is to integrate and to unite the community.

And no- La Voz has nothing to do with La Voz de Atzlan. (I still have no idea what that is). That's getting old. There are dozens of organizations that use the name La Voz, most of which are Spanish language newspapers, and we are not affiliated with any of them. Please refer to my op ed in the LTM for more on that.

As for the next Board meeting, I am encouraging people to come and speak, but I do not care what they say. 15 people was a pathetic turnout on an issue of such importance.

I cannot speak for Mukit Hossain as I have only met him once but after following all the links it appears he expects people to act at the polls and not during Board meetings.

So Joe, if you are going to continue to write about La Voz at least take the time to get it right, and don't belive everything you read in the media unless it is a direct quote,a nd even those can be taken out of context. I would think as a conservative you would be more sceptical of the media, in particular the Washington Post.

There is no coordinated opposition in Loudoun County that I am aware of. There need not be. The suggested actions brought forth have raised enough questions and concerns all by themselves, as the County Board acknowleged on Tuesday.

No further information yet - this was sent from the press conference which is still taking place.

This provides closure of a sort for everyone who has been asking for the past year, since the new town council took office, "Why haven't they shut that thing down yet?"

UPDATE: Regarding the question of how the town will avoid getting back into the same situation it was in before, with an informal day labor site at the corner of Elden St. and Alabama Ave., Aubrey Stokes of Help Save Herndon reports "The Town will be working with businesses to help them enforce no trespassing."

There is an enlightening column by film director Ron Maxwell (Gettysburg, Gods and Generals), at the Loudoun Times:

This isn't the old familiar immigration we grew up with, the relatively small populations from Eastern Europe, from the Mediterranean, from Japan, from Ireland -- those ancestors of ours who couldn't wait to learn English, who within a generation became more American than Americans, who grabbed hold of the Stars and Stripes and never let go. Sure, our ancestors taught us second languages and, indeed, we celebrate our heritage in the privacy of our homes and among our ethnic and cultural and religious sub-groups. It’s great that we do, but we don't march in angry protest with Irish, Italian or Israeli flags.

What we are witnessing today, what our elites are allowing to happen, indeed abetting, is a burgeoning separatist movement, largely though not exclusively confined to the Southwest.

Ron Maxwell brings a historical perspective to the current illegal alien issue which deserves a careful reading - read it here.

The column takes La Voz of Loudoun to task for a blog post by the La Voz Director about the Loudoun supervisors' resolution on immigration enforcement, which is a bit inflammatory:

Adolph Hitler was quoted as saying "I use emotion for the many and reserve reason for the few." That seems to be the strategy adopted by some so called anti-illegal immigrant activists around the country...

Many of the folks who support this action, and some of those that are members of groups such as Help Save Loudoun, will emphatically state that they are not anti-immigrant...

"State they are not anti-immigrant" is, you should know, not generally meant as a positive formulation. But we deal with it.

In the same issue of the paper, Sterling Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio questions whether La Voz should be receiving taxpayer funds. On a personal note, I'm fine with La Voz, to the extent my Hitleresque tendencies don't poison the relationship.

UPDATE: La Voz' Director tells her story at Too Conservative.

UDATE II: Read The Second Mexican War by Lawrence Auster. An excerpt:

Consider Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castañeda’s non-negotiable demands—“It’s the whole enchilada or nothing”—that he issued in a speech in Phoenix, Arizona in 2001. America, said Castañeda (as recounted by Allan Wall), “had to legalize all Mexican illegal aliens, loosen its already lax border enforcement, establish a guest worker program (during an economic downturn) and exempt Mexican immigrants from U.S. visa quotas!” He also demanded that Mexicans living in the U.S. receive health care and in-state college tuition. As Castañeda summed it up in Tijuana a few days later, “We must obtain the greatest number of rights for the greatest number of Mexicans [i.e. in the U.S.] in the shortest time possible.” What this adds up to, comments Wall, is basically “the complete surrender of U.S. sovereignty over immigration policy.” And why not? As Castañeda had written in The Atlantic in 1995: “Some Americans ... dislike immigration, but there is very little they can do about it.”

As we already noted in the comments to this post, foreign-born inmates account for a disproportionate percentage of our jail population. We did not know at the time, however, what percentage of those were legally in the United States and which were not. Now we have a better idea.

This article in the Washington Times tells us that unlawful aliens make up 6-10% of the inmates. 86% of the unlawful aliens in Virginia jails are Hispanic.

2003 numbers (see the earlier post) showed only that 10% of the inmates were foreign born. Now we see that the majority are also here illegally. This should not be surprising, since those who take the time and trouble to immigrate legally have already demonstrated, by their taking the time and trouble, that they are hard-working and law-abiding people, while those who have come here illegally have shown a willingness to break the law to get what they want.

Ah, well.

It appears one of those individuals you would not want at the top of your party, is now going to be right there at the top of our party.

This, of course, fits a pattern within the GOP.

Reminder: It is telephone book season throughout Northern Virginia - they showed up in recent weeks and they are littering our curbs and office building foyers. I have at least 70 pounds of phone books in my office doorway, for instance.

If you are still getting solicitations with postage-paid reply cards or envelopes from the national Republican Party, the Republican Party of Virginia, the Republican Senatorial Committee, the George W. Bush Cheerleader Society, or whatever, you have a perfect avenue for protest: Send 'em a phone book or three, COD. They will need them.

Support individual candidates, while defunding the party.

The party needs a slap in the face.

UPDATE: Good guy Shaun Kenney, who bears the heavy burden of a paycheck with the word "Republican" on it, seeks to clarify that the Republican Party of Virginia should not be lumped in with the others I mentioned and therefore does not deserve any C.O.D. telephone books as the others most certainly do:

In defense of little ol' RPV, it is a grassroots organization -- meaning that it doesn't take policy positions unless explicitly authorized to do so by the State Central Committee, nor does it automatically endorse incumbents as the RNC does.

In short, RPV operates as the collected voice of the grassroots in Virginia. Please don't send phonebooks.

I'll buy that .... for now.

It's a rare occasion we can match consumerism with civic duty, but now is one of those times.

For the next week, these bozos are attempting to impose a boycott on Prince William County businesses that adhere to the rule of law. The effort is a reaction to the immigration enforcement resolution passed by the Prince William County Board of Supervisors.

Here is more information on the boycott and the group responsible, Mexicanos Sin Fronteras.

Here is today's Washington Post story about the "strong, but divisive" frontman of the group, Ricardo Juarez.

Juarez -- who refuses to disclose his residency status -- calls these policies "a new apartheid" and "racist." And in a move Juarez's critics say is typical of his overheated rhetoric, radical politics and strong-arm style, the businesses in the county subject to the boycott will be those lacking green placards provided by Mexicans Without Borders. Hispanic-owned or not, any business without one will be shunned.

And here is a running list of businesses displaying the pro-illegal placards.

So the next six days are an ideal time to spend money in Prince William County - it is worth the short drive. Also, as it turns out, Mexicanos Sin Fronteras is targeting businesses in Manassas and Manassas Park, which have not passed any type of immigration enforcement resolutions. Go figure. The bottom line is this group is attempting to use strong arm tactics to force businesses to profess defiance of U.S. immigration laws. We need to reward businesses that resist the pressure.

For the next six days, go to Prince William and Manassas to shop. Here is a map of the relevant areas.

Here is a list of many stores in Prince William.

If you don't want to navigate through all those links, let's make it simple:

Do your major shopping at Potomac Mills. Whether for back-to-school, end-of-summer, or any other milestone you wish to concoct, Potomac Mills is one of the best and largest shopping areas in the country. Just head down I-95, or take 123, or any number of other routes. Patronize the stores without the green placards.

Or, go out a short distance on I-66 and take either 234 business or, a few miles further, the exit for 29 west. They've got supermarkets, gas stations, restaurants, used car lots - everything you might need on a daily basis. You can buy all sorts of stuff out there.

Or, drive south on 28 past Centreville into Manassas. It's a pleasant ride ... in some respects ... and in any case there are plenty of places to grab a cold brewski once you finally arrive.

If you are driving south on 95, wait to buy gas until you cross the Occoquan.

The important thing is: internalize the map, and make every effort to adjust your itinerary and come up with excuses to go a little bit out of your way and drop some buckage on businesses that have not caved in to Mexicanos Sin Fronteras.

For my own part, I have a trip south which will afford numerous opportunities to spend money along I-95, and I will also load up on canned goods, blank DVD disks, and cases of certain fermented essentials at one of the supermarkets on 234. Walmart's here and here might also be good places to stock up on cases of sporting goods-related items from Winchester and Remington.

Go shopping, friends, it is your duty as citizens.

An acquaintance spent some time visiting with the Loudoun County Zoning Department yesterday and learned the following:

During inspections of overcrowded housing complaints, if the inhabitants profess to having no identification, and claim to be either A) "extended family" or B) in a Bible study, the Zoning Department inspectors automatically give everyone a pass and cease the investigation. Case closed.

There's some food for thought there, especially regarding how the excuses are being coordinated. These certainly seem to be very common stories, both from anecdotal and press reports. Might there be agencies or NGO's facilitating illegal behavior?

The neighboring town of Herndon, population 24,000, has three times as many inspectors as Loudoun County, population 200,000. In the past, I have stated this is a problem and Loudoun needs to have many more inspectors.

In light of the current revelation, I wonder if Loudoun's Zoning Department might actually deserve to be cut back further. Who needs 'em?

In a related story, someone I know just filed a report to the Sheriff's Office on a house nearby for residents who were switching license plates among cars. A deputy came to the reporting citizen's house during daylight hours and knocked on the door to "discuss" the supposedly anonymous complaint. The citizen said they definitely did not want to publicly discuss the complaint.

The deputy then walked across the street to the allegedly offending residence. The complainant watched through the window as the deputy knocked on the offender's door, and when it was answered the deputy pointed back at the complainant's house.

More on the Sheriff's Office here. It seems like everyone on Sterling Park has stories like these.

Hey, ever wonder why Sterling residents are so reticent about filing zoning or other complaints?

Between Zoning and the Sheriff's Office, the Loudoun County government has done a remarkable job elevating official indifference to an art form - a drive around Sterling Park illustrates this fact quite impressively.

In my view, these and other instances demonstrate why we need a change in mindset among the Loudoun County Supervisors - with Eugene Delgaudio and Mick Staton as good indicators of how the entire Board should be focused - and a change in leadership in the Sheriff's Office, with Greg Ahlemann as the man for the suit.

Virginia's socio-political revolution continues apace as another jurisdiction rediscovers self-government, and those of us who get their kicks from this sort of thing spend the last lazy, hazy days of summer in a public work-session on a Saturday night. At a police station, no less.

Blog Khan counted 100 participants at tonight's initial meeting of Help Save Fairfax. That's pretty impressive for a meeting arranged with minimal advance notice in a county whose government has given advance notice that little is planned by public officials to address the local effects of illegal immigration.

Numerous elected officials and candidates were in attendance.

Among them was Virginia Senator Ken Cuccinelli (right), currently the strongest advocate citizens have in the state Senate on the issue of illegal immigration.

Representatives of each of the state's "Help Save ... " groups participated in the program. Above are Greg Letiecq (Blog Khan), (left) president of Help Save Manassas, and masters of ceremony Phil Jones and Aubrey Stokes of Help Save Virginia/Help Save Herndon. I spoke on behalf of Help Save Loudoun.

Delegate Tim Hugo

Springfield Supervisor Candidate Pat Herrity

Virginia 33rd District Senate Candidate Patricia Phillips (left) and Loudoun County Sheriff Candidate Greg Ahlemann.

Sterling Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio

(Also present and conversing with the attendees was Fairfax County Supervisor Candidate Gary Baise - picture to follow in a later post).

The presentation and discussions covered many aspects of the illegal alien problem, including the bad things that cause citizens to take notice, the good things citizens have been able to accomplish to help solve the problem locally, Virginia Senator Ken Stolle (without whom no such discussion would be complete), and other items that will be elucidated at a later date.

More than anything, the evening featured extended opportunities for citizens and would-be elected officials to share ideas and concerns. This type of cross-pollination has been a hallmark of Help Save Loudoun's activities and has resulted in some significant political accomplishments. Although in our membership we are non-partisan, so far the only candidates we've gotten the time of day from have been Republicans (and some Republicans have blown us off entirely).

This is somewhat curious and amusing, because our membership composition continues to be pretty bipartisan, but the power-brokers who will talk to us are largely of one party. Don't the Democratic candidates realize they are missing the boat? No, they do not.

We also had a few interlopers, filming, taking notes and photos, seeking intelligence.

Memo: Here's your intelligence, guys: Calling us racists will not slow us down.

And as the venerable Nelson says on the Simpsons, Haaaa Haa!

No time for the usually trenchant level of analytical reporting tonight, because I am a busy, busy man. Tonight all you get are some pictures.

First, from the historic events in neighboring Herndon, Virginia earlier this week:

Citizens gather prior to Tuesday's Herndon Town Council hearings on the future of the Herndon day labor site. The Council voted to require the next operator of the site to verify that all who use it for ad hoc employment are legally permitted to work in the U.S.

Aubrey Stokes of Help Save Herndon speaks with a Fox News reporter.

Senate candidate Patricia Phillips with members of Help Save Loudoun and Help Save Herndon.

Washington Examiner reporter interviews local citizens.

Next, at an event held tonight by La Voz of Loudoun, designed to distinguish facts from fiction in the immigration debate.

The panelists were La Voz Executive Director Laura Valle (left), Sheriff Steve Simpson, and representatives from an organization that provides legal assistance to immigrants, and from National Council of La Raza (sorry, but the first draft of history does not always include the names of everyone involved).

There was a GREAT question asked which I do not have time to transcribe right now, but which essentially linked NOVA TownHall, Help Save Loudoun, candidates Greg Ahlemann and Patricial Phillips, and even Tom Tancredo, for goodness sakes, into a nefarious web of conspiracy. It was absolutely friggin' inspiring. Just magnificent. All I need now is to get my picture posted at the Southern Poverty Law Center and I can die content.

(By the way, if you care about immigration enforcement, please go right now to the Web sites of all three of those candidates and give them some money. Right Now!! No dawdling!)

Finally, also at the La Voz event, the man Loudoun Insider has deemed worthy of a man-crush, Potomac Supervisor candidate Ken Mikeman (left) with our good buddy Jonathan of Equality Loudoun. Mikeman is pretty nice looking, I must say, but I have spoken with the man and Zoolander he ain't.

There were a couple radio interviews this week:

This was on Washington Post radio.

This one was on PBS station KCRW. (My part is the second half, about 15 minutes in, but the first part is worth listening to).

In what I'm sure is pure disinformation meant to dampen my overwhelming zeal, the Washington Post blog is spinning that I was not the first choice for the one interview, but was only selected because some public officials supposedly turned it down. In reality, I'm quite certain that the public officials were only considered because of my legendary busy schedule, and everyone was quite delighted that I was, in fact, available after all.

If you listen to either of those, I am certain you will agree that my tactic of never interrupting my counterpart, and allowing them to speak for two or three times as long as I speak, will, in the end, prove to be the most effective approach. It's all about winning the war, baby, winning the war.

The Herndon Town Council voted last night to require that the next operator of the day labor center established by the previous council check the legal working status of those who seek employment at the site.

This vote represents a sort of closing-the-circle on the events of May, 2006, in which the citizens of Herndon established the town as America's Bunker Hill in the current struggle.

Under the new Council, Herndon has led the way on several additional initiatives designed to end the influx of illegal aliens, including becoming the first municipality to send police officers for immigration enforcement training earlier this year.

Here is the Post's report on last night's historic vote; here is the Washington Times report; and below is a report by Herndon resident Bob Rudine.

08-15-2007

By Bob Rudine

The Herndon Town Council decided tonight that the Herndon official day labor site will have to check the legal status of the laborers who use the site. In a 6 to 1 vote after two evenings of citizen comment a resolution was passed which sets the stage for a new operator of the site.
The current operator is Project Hope and Harmony (PH&H) aka Reston Interfaith, with funding provided by Fairfax County and a site provided by the Town of Herndon. Herndon also has an anti-solicitation ordinance which prohibits employers from hiring Day Laborers anywhere else within the town. This ordinance has been upheld in a court challenge based on the existence of the formal day labor site.

The Town Council is seeking a site operator who will validate the legal status of the day laborers' right to work within the United States. Several request for proposals have gone out and they currently have one bidder on the contract. Due to the length of time it is taking to find a qualified operator, the town had to consider an extension for PH&H to operate the site until a new operator who will verify legal status can take over.

The resolution to extend the special exception has two sets of conditions governing the operation of the site. The first (Operator A) is for the continued use by PH&H until a new operator can take over. The second (Operator B) defines the conditions for the new operator. Several changes were requested by PH&H and were incorporated into the special exception including extended hours and an expansion in the number of day laborers the site is allow to have on site.

A third option is available to the council which would eliminate the site altogether if the extension is not approved. This option is not being considered since the anti-solicitation ordinance would be overturned allowing the day laborers to return to the informal day labor sites within the town.

Several amendments were offered during the council deliberations. Two amendments were discussed which would allow charitable donations to be distributed at the site for PH&H. The first would allow all charitable donations to be distributed at the site. The second would allow for food donations only to be distributed. Both amendments failed.

Harlon Reece, the only current councilmen who voted to establish the current day labor site offered an amendment to delete all reference to Operator B from the resolution. This would, in effect, eliminate the immigration status checking altogether and allow the site to operate unchanged in its current configuration. His amendment did not receive a second vote required to proceed and died.

In passing the resolution the Council explained that their oath of office required them to uphold the law and that the law could not be applied selectively. The Mayor said that the town would do anything necessary to ensure the citizens that the day laborers would not return to the streets of Herndon. Reston Interfaith was thanked for their service to the community and the town promised to work with them in their other projects within the community.

During the public testimony, 50 people spoke on the Special Exception which allowed the day labor site to operate. I think it fair to say that everyone there believed that the challenges faced by the Town are caused by the absolute failure of the federal government to enforce immigration law. The issue of what the town can and cannot do is still being debated.

The supporters of the current site claim that the current site operator provides the best solution for the town by removing the day laborers from the streets of Herndon. They are still gathering all around town, and have been since the formal site opened, due to a lack of employers using the formal site. Photos of the 7-11 at Elden and Alabama and other informal sites in Northern Virginia were shown to support their claim. Photos were shown which clearly show day laborers congregating in and around the former informal site. The reality is that street solicitation was curtailed by vigorous enforcement by the Herndon Police of the anti-solicitation law after it was upheld in court.

The supporters of Operator B with legal status checking of day laborers support the notion that current site supports illegal aliens and the town would be better off without the site. The town council’s approach was supported by most of these speakers, recognizing the importance of the anti-solicitation enforcement program to the town. Clearly they believe that this is the best compromise available at this time. One speaker requested that the Town consider adoption of an alternative version of the anti-solicitation law used by some localities which does not require a formal site in order to withstand legal challenge. The notion that the day labor site is a temporary solution was mentioned by several of the speakers including one recommendation to eliminate the annual renewal provisions in the special exception. Residents, from the adjacent county of Loudoun, expressed their concerns regarding the possibility of day laborers establishing an informal site just inside their county if this plan were adopted.

Several residents requested that the council not renew the extension which would close the site outright.

Law suits against the town were expressed or implied by some of the speakers against the anti-solicitation ordinance and Operator B if the current plans were implemented.

Other issues discussed by the speakers included the use of the site as a location to distribute charitable contributions of food and clothes which is the current practice. Crime statics were presented showing the percentage of crimes committed by Hispanics was increasing when compared with non-Hispanics. Since the police do not collect data regarding legal status of criminals, the extent and impact of illegal aliens on crime is still subject to some conjecture and debate. Overcrowded housing was also mentioned by some speakers even though the extension does not address this issue specifically.

In related news, the pro-illegal national Republican Party has firmly established itself as the entity we cannot defund quickly enough. IF you are still receiving solicitations from the Republican Party, AND you still have any telephone books left in your house, you know what to do.

Bricks will suffice in a pinch.

Today's Post has a feature story on the situation in Sterling that is pretty good ... for the Post. Which is a significant qualification.

But in truth Sandhya, the reporter, is one of the better ones on the issue of the illegal alien problem and if the media as a whole covered the issue in as balanced a manner as she does Americans would have a much better understanding of what is really happening.

In the story, a few residents were interviewed along with some activists from the pro-illegal side. I recommend everyone read it because it gives a partial picture of the local situation.

The article reflects a bit of naivete, repeating zoning department reports that overcrowding inspections often "found Bible study groups." Conversations with locals familiar with zoning violation reporting could have revealed how extraordinarily common such Bible study sessions are claimed to be taking place in houses full of migrant workers. The conversations would have been punctuated with guffaws.

Also, the identification of one gentleman as "a remodeling contractor" would have been slightly more accurate if he were labeled a "former remodeling contractor who was driven out of the business some years ago by corrupt competitors using illegal workers." I happen to know he next tried to build a livelihood as a landscaping contractor - with a similar final result.

But the point that jumped out at me was the sheriff's office report that "only one in 20 gang members in the county is in the country illegally, and most are U.S. citizens." The sheriff himself made this point at a Help Save Loudoun meeting earlier this year, contradicting a report at another meeting in which deputies in the Loudoun Gang Intelligence Unit told our audience that the gang population is largely composed of illegals, and the growth in gang activity parallels the influx of illegal aliens into the area.

The story also repeats Sheriff Steve Simpson's statement from a debate a few months ago in which he told a questioner asking what he would say to Sterling Park residents who felt their neighborhood was becoming less safe, that "the crime rate is going down." In several public events where Sterling residents asked what he intended to do about the increasing problems in the community, I heard the sheriff tell constituents, we are doing everything we can. In effect, he has promised that things are only going to get worse, despite the fact that citizens had laid out a number of initiatives he could pursue to make Loudoun County less hospitable to criminal aliens - and no one had ruled out demanding the Board of Supervisors allocate more funds to do so.

This is known as the "tin ear" approach to dealing with one's consituents, and explains in large part why the sheriff was demolished by his Republican convention opponent, Greg Ahlemann, in a major upset, by a margin of over 2-1.

Well, I have just received a copy of an open letter to Sheriff Simpson, in reaction to the Post article, sent by one of his Sterling constituents to the Board of Supervisors. The letter helps fill in some of the holes in the article:

Dear Sheriff Simpson,

I can't tell you how relieved I am to read in today's Washington Post front page article about Sterling that "only one in 20 gang members in the county is in the country illegally, and most are U.S. citizens."

So the next time my neighbors are assaulted while strolling on the sidewalk, shot at through the walls of their home while they sleep, dodging bullets in the parking lot of the Sterling Safeway, or reporting another theft from their garages, I'll remind them that statistically, their safety is being threatened by fellow citizens, not illegal aliens.

I'll comfort them by quoting your assurances that increasing crime in Sterling is merely "a widespread perception" unsupported by data, and that we're probably overreacting to "a few high-profile shootings and gang-related incidents."

Maybe that information might have stopped my neighbor from moving out of Sterling this summer if he knew that the gang members who bullied his daughter at the middle school last spring are here legally. Now that the Post has widely publicized this important distinction, maybe my neighbors can put their unsold houses back on the market and try for an expensive second time to sell and move away.

I, for one, will feel a deeper sense of pride when I spend yet another Saturday morning picking up hundreds of empty and shattered beer bottles from the corners of my neighborhood streets, knowing that most of this litter was probably created by good old U.S. citizens.

Thanks for your clearly heartfelt concern for the citizens of eastern Loudoun.

As a side note, we don't tend to see much of Sheriff Simpson, at public events, here in Sterling. My guess is this end of the county has been written off in his campaign strategy, such as it is.

The Washington Post is reporting that Loudoun County Supervisors Steve Snow (R-Dulles) and Scott York (I- At Large) have said that if the neighboring town of Herndon finds a new operator for its controversial day labor center who will ensure that all those served are legal workers, Loudoun County may set up its own day labor center.

This is going to cause a firestorm of a controversy in Loudoun County, but it is important to point out the issue is not clear-cut.

It is widely acknowledged that Herndon's day labor center, operated by an entity called "Project Hope and Harmony" - which is really just a committee of the local non-profit Reston Interfaith - serves primarily illegal aliens. It came into existence largely because for several years a 7-11 store at the intersection of Alabama Avenue and Elden Street had served as an informal, ad hoc hiring site which was very disruptive to the surrounding community.

The Herndon day labor center was opened in December, 2005, by the town government, against the wishes of the majority of the town's citizens.

Several months later, the citizens voted the mayor and most of the town council members out of office, with great fanfare.

After several months in office, the new town council passed an "anti-solicitation" ordinance to restrict freelance hiring on the town's streets. When the ordinance was challenged, a judge ruled the ordinance was lawful - as long as the town had an alternative for those who wished to seek employment and employees.

Ironically, the day labor center became the legal prerequisite for the anti-solicitation law.

Herndon is now seeking bids from organizations to run the day labor center when Project Hope and Harmony's contract (actually a "special exception") runs out in September. It is generally assumed the town would like to find an operator for the center who will take one additional, important step: check the legal status of all prospective workers - something Project Hope and Harmony will not do.

If such an operator is found, one might logically conclude that many of the illegal aliens currently served by the Herndon day labor center will go to the adjoining Loudoun County community of Sterling to seek work.

Within 50 yards of the Herndon day labor center is another 7-11 on Sterling Road (Rt. 606) which is already the site of some hiring solicitation activity. It appears that Loudoun Supervisors Snow and York are considering the necessity of passing an anti-solicitation law similar to Herndon's, on the assumption the illegal hiring will simply move across the street and into other areas of Loudoun County if the Herndon center becomes inhospitable to illegals.

In order for such an ordinance to pass judicial muster in Loudoun County, the supervisors apparently wish to duplicate Herndon's model of having an established day labor center which can serve as the designated, legally approved location for ad hoc hiring.

It seems inconceivable that Supervisors York and Snow would have any intention of establishing a workers' center which did not ensure all those served were legally allowed to work in the U.S. Loudoun's supervisors have, after all, been in close contact with the Herndon government to discuss the issue.

Setting up a day labor center for illegal aliens in Loudoun County would not only be a massive affront to the citizens of Sterling, it would be political suicide for any Loudoun County official who signed on to such a plan.

Assuming the Loudoun supervisors are not complete fools, but instead merely wish to replicate the end result Herndon is seeking - a day labor center that only serves legal workers - it seems appropriate that Loudoun County should pay close attention to the current RFP process in Herndon to find a new operator for the Herndon day labor center.

Longtime local resident Butch Baughan is forming a non-profit organization and is one of the applicants to run the Herndon day labor center, under the concept of a vocational education and job-pairing service for all citizens of the area. Butch can speak very eloquently about the need for job training and mentoring for disadvantaged citizens, having spent much of his career as a high school vocational teacher.

Perhaps the new operator of the Herndon workers' center could be considered to run a Loudoun County center as well?

The Republican members of the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors took a stand we should all be grateful for when they sponsored the strong immigration enforcement resolution on July 17.

Thanks to Mick Staton, Eugene Delgaudio, Bruce Tulloch, Steve Snow, Jim Clem and Lori Waters for sponsoring the resolution.

The resolution ended up passing 9-0, with the Board's Democrat and two Independents joining the Republican majority.

This action followed the Loudoun County Republican Convention - well over a thousand people - unanimously passing its Resolution In Support Of Legal Immigration on June 9. That resolution has not gotten nearly the publicity it deserves, because with it the largest political convention ever held in Loudoun County delivered an extremely strong statement for immigration enforcement at all levels of government.

In Loudoun County, at least, the GOP is standing up for the citizens.

Now, as the Virginia political season ramps up, those battling for the seats up for election in November are speaking out further on this issue. Here are some statements delivered this week by our pro-enforcement candidates for office:

1) "As supervisor ... I would take action against employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants," and "partner with Immigration and Customs Enforcement so that our Sheriff's Office is authorized to enforce federal immigration laws ... shut down document mills that illegally produce phony identification, and enforce zoning ordinances to prevent the overcrowding of homes."

2) "The main 'service' an illegal immigrant comes to Loudoun for is a job ... I oppose illegal immigration and want to see effective measures to fight it. That's why I want to see an end to the employment of illegal aliens in Loudoun."

3) "The most important power localities may possess is the ability to penalize employers who knowingly employ undocumented workers. The local response to the problem might just lie in penalizing the Americans who are breaking the law."

4) "Put simply, illegal is illegal. Our first priority must be to deport any illegal immigrant who commits a crime and shut down the document mills ... We must crack down on businesses that lure illegal immigrants to our community ... People come here because there is work and money to be found. This situation is not fair to honest businesses that hire legal employees and must compete with unscrupulous businesses, which hire illegal immigrants for low wages."

(See if you can guess which local conservative made each statement - answers are below the fold)

Trying to find out how much money the local public school system spends on English as a Second Language instruction is like pulling teeth - from a mako shark. For whatever reason, they really don't make this data easy to locate.

I've recently gotten the following pages from the Loudoun County Public Schools FY08 Appropriated Budget which detail actual expenditures on ESL from 2004-2006 and budgeted amounts for FY07 and FY08. The first image shows the FY08 increases and the second the budget detail for all years.

The data is interesting to review both for the change in expenditures over that span and also how the amounts compare to other portions of the overall Loudoun County budget.

First, though: The following chart, from details of the Washington Area Boards of Education budgets, shows the change in ESL participation in the area school systems from 1999-2006. (Click the image for the Excel spreadsheet).

"When we have legal taxpayers struggling to keep medical insurance, I don't think this is too much to ask."

Following the actions taken by the superintendents of Loudoun and Prince William counties, Page County (Shenandoah), Virginia will consider a similar resolution next month:

"I don't feel like there is anything wrong with legal immigration," said Hoke. "But if they want to come here illegally and use our services that are paid for by taxpayers, I have a problem with that."

Hoke would also like to see policies put in place to fine employers hiring illegal immigrants.

Page County has seen an increase in the number of immigrants in the last several years. Over the last two years, Page County Public Schools had to hire staff to educate students that do not speak English.

"We have to allow them medical services and to go to school," said Hoke, "but if we wouldn't allow this to happen maybe they would stay in their own country. When we have legal taxpayers struggling to keep medical insurance, I don't think this is too much to ask."

Not a major surprise:

A federal judge has struck down the Illegal Immigration Relief Act, ruling Hazleton's proposed crackdown on landlords and employers doing business with illegal immigrants is unconstitutional. In a 206 - page opinion, U.S. District Judge James M. Munley stated "federal law prohibits Hazleton from enforcing any of the provisions of its ordinance."...

A previous court order issued by Munley has put Hazleton's ordinance on hold since November. Today's decision is expected to be appealed to Third Circuit Court in Philadelphia.

Actually, Mayor Lou Barletta has already made clear the effort won't stop at Circuit Court, either.

UPDATE: (Via Blog Khan) - Here is the decision. The most relevant portion (in my estimation) begins around page 92.

Fred Thompson just brought Spencer Abraham, former senator and Energy Secretary, onto his campaign team.

Spencer Abraham is, to put it mildly, an open borders guy

A good friend, who has been advocating for immigration enforcement since the 1980s, writes:

For years we were at war with Spencer Abraham. Worse than Ted Kennedy. He virtually killed any chance that the Senate would deal with legal immigration in 1996. He was a steady feature in the ANCIR newsletter back in those days. FAIR and Numbers launched an ad campaign against Abraham that caught him at a bad moment in the summer before his re-election. He was forced to drain his election coffers defending himself and he never recovered. FAIR and Numbers took a lot of heat for this (in 2000 people didn't care much about immigration) but it was enough to get Debbie Stabenow elected.

If the rumor that Abraham will be the campaign manager turns out to be true, Fred Thompson will not be the next president of the United States.

U.S. District Judge James Munley is supposed to issue his decision on Hazleton, PA's Illegal Immigration Relief Act in the next few hours.

More on the Hazleton story here, here and here.

I have been informed that in Manassas tonight, both Mexicanos Sin Fronteras and Help Save Manassas are holding meetings, and the former are planning to hold a protest at the meeting of the latter.

HSM members just found out their meeting was going to draw opponents, but apparently the police chief was already aware of it.

I wonder what exactly a protest at another group's meeting is supposed to accomplish besides demonstrating a surplus of free time. It seems like their energies might be better directed at the decision makers in Prince William County.

Members and supporters of HSM are encouraged to show up for tonight's meeting, to counterbalance the sideshow and also get a first-hand look at the pro-illegal movement's tactics.

UPDATE: More at Blog Khan.

[Following is a guest editorial by the most excellent Nan Matthis of American Daughter]

North American Union

by Nancy Matthis at ADMC.

It's almost a done deal. While most patriotic Americans have been preoccupied this summer with the invasion of illegal aliens across our southern border with Mexico, President Bush has been quietly finalizing plans with Stephen Harper and Felipe Calderon to eradicate our national sovereignty. They'll wrap it up on August 20 at a meeting in Montebello, Quebec.

Soon the United States will be subsumed into a North American Union, just as the nations in Europe have been gobbled up by the European Union. Boundaries will melt away and our dollar will be replaced with the amero, giving the "globalistas" an opportunity to get rid of that pesky phrase In God we trust which reminds us of our rapidly vanishing heritage.

Judging from reports we receive from our friends across the pond, this is not a good thing for nations with successful economies. What it does is bring all the participants into the same business climate, a sort of socialism at the national level -- an advantage for the less robust nations and a huge disadvantage for the vibrant economies.

One of the worst results of such a union is the migration of people within the union that results. In the European Union, for example, poor Romanians are pouring into the United Kingdom and dumping themselves onto the overburdened social services system. Currently in the United States, illegal immigration across our southern border is overtaxing our schools, hospitals, law enforcement and welfare systems. Within the North American Union, the fiscal penalties to our citizens would be greatly multiplied, and it would be legal.

As this calamity bears down on us, the mainstream media are strangely silent. One has to look to Canada to find anyone sounding the alarm. We want to call our readers' attention to this copyrighted article by Global Research. We excerpt a portion here under the principle of "fair use" but we urge everyone to visit their website and read all of it:

...extiende su bienvenida a trabajadores undocumentados.

New Haven, Connecticut has set up an extremely generous new program for illegal aliens, providing many of the benefits of citizenship. To assist in this effort, ALIPAC is conducting a major national campaign to encourage all illegal aliens from everywhere in the U.S. to move to New Haven, Connecticut.

It is supposed to be a fine city, so I say we all get on board and dedicate a little time to furthering this effort.

Print off several copies of this flyer, then run, do not walk, to your local grocery store bulletin board, etc.

Great background info here.

Pretty powerful stuff worth listening to till the end. I am sure we will be seeing a lot more of this in the coming months. The sheer number of illegals being brought across the southern border is shifting public perception of the issue, across party lines.

I was reading Tom Rust's website trying to find out why this man (the ex-mayor of Herndondo whose watch allowed the significant increase of illegals in the town) would initiate such ridiculous and prejudice fines on the drivers of Virginia. On his site was most recently asked questions as to why only Virginians? The response was...constitutionality...working on ways....unfortunately...

Yes, I believe that it is unfortunate that the thinking is that stiffer fines on Virginia drivers will help fill the transportation coffiers of our area. This under the guise of "reducing drunk and reckless driving". In reality, it is a sham for non-enforcement of all driving code laws. Much of this comes from the areas police forces and lack of monies for additional officers or the courts being overworked and understaffed. I have heard this arguement for years.

Craig Hudgins, Independent candidate for Virginia Senate (challenging incumbent Ken Stolle), will be the guest on Bearing Drift's podcast tonight at 7:00 pm. Clicking on the graphic at that link should allow you to listen.

To call in with questions: (718) 664-9599

You could also probably leave questions in the comments section to that post.

Ken Stolle helped kill quite a few immigration-enforcement bills which passed the House of Delegates with veto-proof majorities in the recent session.

For this reason alone, it is worth your time to hear what Craig Hudgins has to say.

[This is a guest editorial from American Daughter]

Sad.

A group has appropriated the Help Save .... name, by forming "Help Save Virginia Beach," without apparently bothering to take on one bit of the concept - which at very least would entail understanding what the REAL local problems are in relation to the illegal alien issue, and having compassion for the victims.

This sort of thing is inevitable in the scenario of A) widespread public discontent, and B) nearly all the advocates on "our" side being volunteers. We are so busy playing catch up trying to deal with our own community issues it is hard to coordinate anything with anyone else, much less take a proactive stance on separating the wheat from the chaff.

It's pretty amazing our Northern VA "loose alliance" of Help Save Herndon, Help Save Manassas and Help Save Loudoun have been so relatively successful in building public support and accomplishing things in such a short time.

As evidenced by the meeting last night, without some degree of thoughtful oversight any group forming to deal with the illegal alien problem can easily revert to losing focus and flailing about. It's a shame this should happen in Virginia Beach because they really have had some serious problems down there. Let's hope at some point someone steps up to form an effective citizens' advocacy group in the area.

UPDATE: More coverage at VB Dems.

The Loudoun County Board of Supervisors voted 9-0 in favor of a resolution which states the Board's opposition to illegal immigration into the county, and directs county staff to investigate the extent to which illegal aliens use county services, and how much this costs the taxpayers.

The resolution goes one step further than that passed in Manassas last week. Supervisor Jim Burton had initially offered a substitute motion to delay consideration of the resolution so it could be examined further, including into how a provision might be added to find ways to punish employers who hire illegal workers. The substitute was defeated, but Supervisors Scott York and Lori Waters drafted an amendment to the resolution instructing the staff and attorney to also investigate means to crack down on employers who game the system.

The resolution also included a provision that "strongly encouraged" the Sheriff's Office to enter into a 287(g) Immigration and Customs Enforcement training agreement with the Department of Homeland Security - however, it was revealed almost as an aside that the Sheriff's Office had already sent the request to ICE in the past several days.

The supervisors were, to a person, statesmanlike in their reasoning for supporting the resolution. (We hope to have transcripts of some of the remarks along with the text of the resolution here later tonight).

The investigations by county staff will involve all of the areas where services are provided to illegal aliens - and I believe the reports regarding the amounts spent on ESOL instruction alone will be of great interest to the citizens of the county.

Because of the valuable information which will now be brought to daylight and especially the clear support for proactive immigration enforcement across the ideological divides usually attributed to this Board, this vote represents a watershed moment in Loudoun County history.

Congratulations to all of the Supervisors - they each deserve thanks and praise from every citizen of the county.

The Loudoun County Board of Supervisors voted to interject into today's agenda consideration of the "Resolution Reaffirming County Policy With Respect To Compliance With Federal Law And Issue Directives Incident To Such Reaffirmation To Loudoun County Staff."

Sterling Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio, one of the resolution's six sponsors, held a press conference this morning prior to the session in which he stated "we need help" and rattled off a list of ways illegal aliens are unjustifiably being subsidized by Loudoun County taxpayers.

(He did not expand the explanation to include the corporations, and foreign government officials and oligarchs also being subsidized by county taxpayers, but that is a discussion for another day).

The Board voted unanimously this morning to send a letter to the town of Herndon and Fairfax County expressing (to paraphrase) this Board's opposition to the continued operation of the Herndon Day Labor Center as a service for illegal aliens. Text of the letter should be available tomorrow.

Sheriff Candidate Greg Ahlemann, Leesburg Council Member Ken Reid, and I spoke in favor of the Resolution.

Because the letter to Herndon passed unanimously and the Resolution already has six sponsors, I'm cautiously optimistic the latter will pass by a large margin if not unanimously.

The sponsors of the Resolution which will be considered in the next hour are: Mick Staton, Eugene Delgaudio, Bruce Tulloch, Steve Snow, Jim Clem and Lori Waters.

The Loudoun County Board of Supervisors will likely see a resolution similar to that passed in Prince William County last week interjected into tomorrow's Board meeting agenda.

The gist of the resolution will be to emphasize that taxpayer-funded government benefits not mandated otherwise by federal law should be restricted to legal residents of the county.

Vice Chair and Potomac District Supervisor Bruce Tulloch said the resolution will affirm that the beneficiaries of local government benefits should be the citizens who paid for the benefits.

It is not exactly a controversial stand for the Board to take, because the citizens of Loudoun should support the proposal by a wide margin, and I expect the resolution to pass by a wide margin. Thanks to Supervisors Tulloch, Delgaudio and Staton for introducing this proposal.

The government and society in Mexico is corrupt from the cop on the beat up to their leading official in the War on Drugs and members of the Mexican legislature. It is the migrant economy that keeps a lid on the unrest in Mexico and allows the kleptocracy to continue. Mexicans outside of the capital have to pay more for potable water, electricity and gasoline than we in the USA do. Considering the income levels, this is not only an unsustainable situation, but gouging of the poor.

Without the cash flow from the north, Mexico might see some unrest leading to reform. Currently, the status quo is enforced by our policy with respect to migrant labor. If we wish to see a reduction in corruption in Mexico and here, then we must have a policy that changes the status quo. Securing our borders would upset this status quo.

"Who else is going to pave the roads here?" Adrian asked, cracking up with laughter. "An American? Ha!"

Thanks to LI and Jay for highlighting today's Post article - which I bet has smoke coming out of ears throughout the state ... from the heads of Virginia government agencies and Latino-advocacy organizations alike.

The resolution's effect on Hispanic communities has stretched well beyond Prince William.

"They're talking about this in Jefferson County, in Clarke, all the way to West Virginia," Adrian Escobar said in Spanish, sipping from a Big Gulp cup outside a pupusa kiosk on Route 1. He and his brother Antonio dashed across the border from Mexico nearly 15 years ago and have been in the United States illegally since. They live in Winchester and make $17 an hour as flagmen for a Virginia Department of Transportation subcontractor.

The Escobar brothers shrugged at all the fretting they'd been hearing from other Hispanics last week, including workers who commute to Prince William to do its grunt work. "Who else is going to pave the roads here?" Adrian asked, cracking up with laughter. "An American? Ha!"

Antonio said he wasn't fazed. "If you're afraid, they'll just intimidate you more," he said. Besides, he added, the brothers have a plan in case Prince William police and immigration officials send them home for a "free vacation" to their father's farm in Guanajuato.

"We'll be right back here in a month," Antonio said

Someone probably should have given Adrian the memo about how the "jobs Americans won't do" line is supposed to be delivered, and how the May 2006 in-your-face attitude worked out for the pro-illegal movement.

Now, how does everyone feel about getting some tough ordinances about legal hiring and ICE participation passed here in Loudoun?

I thought so.

It does seem like Judicial Watch might take an interest in this fascinating Commonwealth of Virginia policy on subcontractors.

Stay tuned for more details on the Free Vacations Program.

I just got this from a friend....

Recently large demonstrations have taken place across the country protesting the fact that Congress is finally addressing the issue of illegal immigration.

Certain people are angry that the US might protect its own borders, might make it harder to sneak into this country and, once here, to stay indefinitely.

Let me see if I correctly understand the thinking behind these protests. Let's say I break into your house. Let's say that when you discover me in your house, you insist that I leave.

But I say, "I've made all the beds and washed the dishes and did the laundry and swept the floors. I've done all the things you don't like to do. I'm hard-working and honest except for when I broke into your house).

According to the protesters:

"You are required to let me stay in your house. You are required to add me to your family's insurance plan. You are required to educate my kids. You are required to provide other benefits to me and to my family (my husband will do all of your yard work because he is also hard-working and honest, except for that breaking in part).

"If you try to call the police or force me out, I will call my friends who will picket your house carrying signs that proclaim my RIGHT to be there.

"It's only fair, after all, because you have a nicer house than I do, and I'm just trying to better myself. I'm a hard-working and honest, person, except for well, you know, I did break into your house. And what a deal it is for me!!!

"I live in your house, contributing only a fraction of the cost of my keep, and there is nothing you can do about it without being accused of cold, uncaring, selfish, prejudiced, and bigoted behavior.

"Oh yeah, I DEMAND that you learn MY LANGUAGE so you can communicate with me."

Sounds like the tightening of border security is working! You know how you can tell? Just count the dead bodies!

This is the video the pro-illegal alien advocates don't want you to see.

Because of the state's tough immigration enforcement law that just went into effect July 1, illegal aliens in Georgia are leaving in droves - some returning to Mexico, some going to other states.

If we in Virginia can take action at the local and state level to convince the illegals that this may not be the ideal place to come to, more will return to Mexico or other home countries, and thus will begin the process of advocating for reforms there. Which is what should have been happening in the first place and which the corrupt people running those countries are extremely grateful not to have had to deal with.

The following should be required viewing for every current or prospective office holder at every level of government.

Blog Fu will be on national TV tomorrow to talk about the positive board action in Prince William.

Also, be sure to read Greg's statement from the hearing.

This is a guest editorial by Ron Maxwell, director of Gettysburg and Gods and Generals.

Pr. William Passes Resolution Targeting Illegal Immigration

As we can see from today's headline in the Washington Post, local communities are compelled to do the work the Federal Government is not doing and will not do - the defense of America and the protection of its citizens.

Virginia is in the process of regaining its sovereignty and the rule of law, city by city, county by county. Local and county sheriffs who will not enforce existing law and state legislators who seek to add to the tax burden of law abiding citizens by providing unending financial support to illegal aliens are being voted out of office. A passel of RINOs was just defeated in Republican primaries across the state. More will fall in the upcoming general election.

Citizens of the Old Dominion state are reclaiming their land, their culture, their language and their society. Virginia, as the entire country, was settled over the centuries through lawful, regulated and legal immigration. Virginians are coming together and saying with an increasing conviction and determination - "If you got here illegally - keep moving!"

The Department of Homeland Security is guilty of a dangerous dereliction of duty. Apart from a few well publicized raids in the weeks preceding the recently defeated Bush-Kennedy amnesty bill (after which most of those apprehended were set free), it has done virtually nothing about interior enforcement of our immigration laws. By the arrest, conviction and imprisonment of agents Ramos and Compean, the U.S. Border Patrol, under-manned and under-funded, has been sent a chilling message by the Bush controlled district attorney in Texas. That message, "Look the other way." Because that is the official policy of this administration, Look the Other Way!

The citizens of Virginia, proud descendants and heirs to Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, James Madison, James Monroe, John Marshall, Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee are not looking the other way!

Intransigent and unresponsive government officials, elected and unelected, who are somehow under the impression that they can lord it over the free citizens of Virginia as if they were inheritors of the divine right of kings are in for a rude awakening. The next thing they will face is a tax revolt.

The billions of dollars being spent on servicing the illegal alien population is collected from and paid by the American taxpayer. If local governments at the city and county and state level refuse to obey the law, if local and county sheriffs and police chiefs refuse to enforce the law on the illegal alien population - then Virginians may simply decide to withhold the payment of taxes to these government entities. If they complain about not having enough jail cells or of not having enough officers to detain the illegals in our community, let's see if they can round up the tens of thousands of citizens who will refuse to pay any more taxes. Will they confiscate their property, will they fine them, will they cart them away in hand-cuffs and take them away to prison?

These politicians and so-called public servants need a wake-up call - they are supposed to be serving the interests of the American citizens who elected them, not non-citizen, alien populations from foreign countries who broke the law to get here and who brazenly continue to break the law every day by working here illegally. These politicians were not elected to keep raising the taxes of Virginia citizens to pander to the interests of foreign intruders. They were not elected to bankrupt their neighbors, overwhelm their school systems and put impossible pressures on their medical systems.

Virginia politicians have a very short time to do the right thing by their constituents and fellow citizens. If not, they will soon face exactly the same thing the British Monarchy faced in 1775 - a tax revolt. Virginians are not meek sheep to be led incrementally to their own slaughter. They are a free people with free will who are standing up for their birthright and their liberty!

The supervisors of Prince William County could and should have stuck to their guns by supporting the original proposals by John T. Stirrup Jr. In any case, they took courageous, commendable and long overdue action in the ordinances they passed. It's a start. Other communities will follow their lead. There is hope for Virginia - we are not yet a conquered people!

Ronald F. Maxwell

What about a tax revolt in every jurisdiction where public officials do not follow the will of the citizens on this issue? The influx of illegal aliens, over the past five years - since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 2001 - is forcing our hand.

The Prince William County Board of Supervisors has passed John Stirrup's immigration enforcement resolution unanimously!

Some notes from a friend on the scene:

- There is a massive demonstration going on right now outside the government building, what appears to be a huge crowd of illegal aliens and their advocates. Many are holding signs, written in English, saying things like "America is a migrant country" and "We just want to feed our families." There is a big pile of English-language signs on the ground, apparently brought by the organizers. From the phone conversation I could hear loud chanting and yelling in Spanish.

- During the hearing, the board chair had asked there be no booing, hissing or clapping. A large crowd of illegal aliens had come into the anteroom - packed all the way up the staircases and along the balcony - who did not understand and proceeded to boo, hiss and cheer throughout the hearing, until a Latino reporter went out and explained to them in Spanish they were not supposed to be doing that.

- One person testifying in support of the resolution nodded toward the crowd of illegals outside and said something to the effect: "Look outside at the other room: That is where we are headed, to become a third world country."

- One of the two Democrats on the board said he took exception to reports in the press that the two of them were against the resolution, and said "I have always been against illegal immigration and would support deporting them back to their own countries."

- There were a couple last minute revisions to the resolution, made so it did not make any legislative changes which would have required a longer period before the resolution could have been voted on. One of the changes was to remove the "writ of mandamus" provision which would challenge existing U.S. law.

- A board member indicated the County had considered including a provision to deny free education to the children of illegal aliens - a direct challenge to the 1982 Supreme Court decision in Plyler v Doe, that all children have a constitutional right to a public education. The board member said the time is ripe to challenge this narrowly-decided case and that Prince William County would be inclined to do this in the future.

- A board member also stated this resolution should serve as a wake up call to surrounding jurisdictions to follow suit.

UPDATE: The illegals appeared to have been bused in (I wonder if they were paid). Here's who most likely provided the signs they were carrying:

Teresita Jacinto, of the Woodbridge Workers Committee, which works with day laborers in the county, helped organize the large contingent of Latinos who showed up at the meeting.

Observation: I bet no one had to bus in the people supporting the resolution.

UPDATE: Full wrap-up with great photos at Blog Fu.

In just about an hour the Prince William County Board of Supervisors will hold a public hearing on Supervisor John Stirrup's resolution which instructs law enforcement and basically ALL government agencies to begin enforcing existing state and federal laws immediately - on pain of "writ of mandamus to compel any non-cooperating agency to comply with such reporting laws."

The local police chief has already gotten the message.

More at Blog Fu. Also, here.

The resolution will likely be voted on during the 2:00 pm meeting. Whether it passes or not, it will set in motion a series of similar efforts elsewhere in the state.

Check back for updates.

UPDATE: 1:45 pm. A friend got one of the last seats in the Board chamber and said the anteroom is filling up with people in folding chairs. The parking lot is packed. At least one film/news crew is present. There are no actual protests going on, but reportedly a group of what appear to be migrant workers under a tree outside the building and a number of "concerned Hispanics" inside. The latter could be anyone, of course, but my friend's take is they are there to oppose the resolution.

UPDATE II: I hear Help Save Manassas was signing up a boatload of new members before the hearing.

UPDATE III: Ted reports:

I listened to a lot of it and it sounded like the pro-illegals had slightly more speakers.

They of course resorted to calling proponents of the resolution racists; saying that proponents wanted to recreate apartheid South Africa; this is an "un-Godlike" resolution; anyone who votes for this should be ashamed; migrant workers were the ones who built this country over the last 100 years because they were the only ones who would do the dirty work etc.

As usual, no facts accompanied by the typical rants we get from our friends on the Left.

While Eileen at VB Dems has discovered some supposed nefariousness with our Attorney General's immigration enforcement initiatives (and rediscovered her special love for Ken Stolle in the process), today's RTD contains this reassuring column from Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling:

While Congress fails to act, states are forced to do what we can to address the issue on the state level. While the primary responsibility for immigration rests with the federal government, there are things we can do in Virginia to help address this problem.

We can require the governor to enter into a Memorandum of Understanding with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) to allow state and local law-enforcement agencies to enforce civil immigration laws. This would enable our state and local police to arrest and detain illegals when they encounter them, rather than releasing them.

We can make sure that illegals in Virginia are not receiving the benefits of citizenship. While we have already acted to take most of these benefits away, we still allow the children of illegal immigrants living in Virginia to pay in-state tuition at our colleges and universities. That should be stopped.

And finally, we can pass our own laws holding Virginia employers accountable for knowingly hiring illegal workers or knowingly failing to confirm their immigration status prior to hiring them.

Read all of that. Local and state legislation will be the next major front in the culture war during the next several months.

As I noted in the last post, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano just a few hours ago signed the strictest legislation in the U.S. regarding businesses that hire illegal aliens.

Georgia's and Oklahoma's are not so bad either; unlike almost everyone else at least they got something passed.

But Arizona's is the one all of our state legislators should be looking at. I'll link to the final bill once it is posted. For now -

Here is the Senate version.

here is the House version.

Now that the beast is seemingly dead, the tar has been allowed to cool and the pitchforks hung back neatly in the barn, many are ruminating: What next?

Notorious illegal alien Elvira Arellano is threatening immediate, widespread transgression of U.S. immigration law.

(In related news, notorious duck Chester L. Mallard is threatening to land in a river and paddle around, occasionally quacking.)

La Raza Newspaper's Blog reports:

Arellano, who has remained in a Northwest Side church since August 15 to avoid an order of deportation, said this would be the deadline the government will have to "revive and pass a comprehensive immigration reform."

Otherwise, pro-immigrant organizers will begin a campaign "aimed at bringing this government and this economy to a halt."

La Raza, in case you were wondering, is a major proponent of "comprehensive" immigration reform - of the pathway-to-citizenship variety - and also strongly opposes allowing local jurisdictions to enforce federal immigration law and file illegal aliens in the National Crime Information Center database.

La Raza is notably better funded than groups on the pro-enforcement side of the issue, and enjoys some pretty sweet financial support from a number of companies you might have heard of before:

The National Council of La Raza (NCLR) recognizes those corporations that have invested in NCLR's long-term strategic efforts with multiyear, multimillion-dollar commitments, including NCLR's Empowering An American Community Campaign.

The Allstate Corporation
Bank of America
The Coca-Cola Company
Citi
Fannie Mae
Freddie Mac
Ford Motor Company
General Motors Corporation
MBNA Corporation
PepsiCo Foundation
The PMI Group, Inc.
State Farm Insurance Companies
UPS
Univision
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

(Interesting and true side note: Just yesterday I was considering trading my Explorer for a Hyundai. This must be fate.)

For more details, check out La Raza's 990 return from 2005: Page 30 is an eye-opener.

And whereas everyone I know involved with this issue is a volunteer, squeezing in time between work and personal life to advocate to the public and local and federal officials, those La Raza folks are doing really well - I mean, some major buckage. Check out pages 7 and 23.

Anyways, despite all the money and corporate and U.S. government funding on her side, I think Senora Arellano is misreading the tea leaves.

I think this type of thing is far more likely to be the kind of next immediate action you will see happening around our nation:

Below is a comment from reader Jenny Perry, a self-described liberal Democrat who understands that facilitating the influx of illegal aliens into this nation is a crime against American workers and all citizens.

The entire debate over illegal immigration has been conducted in a national fog. The recent dispute over an outrageously bad Senate bill which none of the senators supporting it had apparently read was a perfect example of this: It granted immediate legal status to tens of millions of illegal aliens - yet some senators on both sides of the aisle continued to speak of "triggers" which supposedly would have required stepped-up enforcement before any legalization could take place. The CSPAN video archive of Senate testimony the week of May 21 should serve as evidence to have many senators charged with incompetance, if not treason.

We are going to proceed to cut through the fog from this point forward. Allow me to slap you in the face, "liberals" and "conservatives," and point out the labels have become worn and useless. The illegal alien problem has brought this confusion to the forefront. There is nothing "conservative" or "liberal" about supporting corporate profiteers and corrupt public officials who are benefiting from an influx of illegal workers and subsidizing oligarchs in Mexico and Latin America.

Take a moment to read this letter, and then take a moment to think about the fact that our ideological categories are in need of an overhaul.

I am a liberal democrat, my entire family are liberal democrats. We live in the state of RI, a very liberal dem state, however, the majority of my fellow liberal dems are against amnesty (omg, yes I said amnesty and I say illegal alien too).

We recognize that it is an attempt to pit one group of poor people against another, by the US Chamber of Commerce.. to use them as the final nail in the coffin of the American wage standard and workplace protections. We recognize that our schools, our hospitals, are overburdened. Social welfare programs and Social Security and Medicare are being drained dry by the illegal alien hordes that have come here.

We recognize that our job base is declining ever more rapidly every year, and that we have a serious, long term, un and under employment problem in the US. We do not have anything even approaching "full employment", in fact, the 4.75% unemployment numbers are a lie. We know that once someone falls off the unemployment rolls after 26 weeks, they slip between the cracks. Too many others are fighting desperately to keep their heads afloat, working three or more part time minimum wage jobs. They have less time to raise their children as well, which doesn't help deal with the problems that brings about.

What I see are democratic senators and representatives who have bought into this globalization scheme, and are turning a blind eye towards it's attempt to base it on third world standards.

Here is the full text of the magnificent speech given Thursday night by Ron Maxwell at the Jackson Miller campaign kick off.

Maxwell wrote and directed Gettysburg and Gods and Generals, two films which are not only important works of art but also invaluable historical documents for anyone who lives in this region - or in any region - and has an interest in the evolution of this nation.

He also penned an open letter to President Bush last year, originally published in the Washington Times, which was one of the prime wake-up calls to me about the illegal immigration problem.

(Interesting thought: That April, 2006, letter turned out to be politically prophetic. How different things would have been for this president if he had not chosen to ignore it.)

This one is worth reading twice over. Thanks to Mr. Maxwell for permission to reprint it here.

"The Promise of Home"

I sometimes think that the world is divided into two kinds of people; those who live in three dimensions and those who live in one. Those who live in three dimensions live simultaneously in the past, in the present, and in the future. And when you live in three dimensions at the same time, you realize, as Edmund Burke once said, that those of us who live in the present, at any given time, are the trustees of the past, during our lifetime, to hand it over to the next generation, so that the dead and the unborn are as much a part of life as we are in the minuscule amount of years we have to inhabit this earth.

When we are aware of the past, it means we respect the past, respect our parents, our grandparents, our great grandparents, and the generations all the way back to the beginning of recorded history. It means we read with exhilaration, the historical works of Thucydides, or the artistic works of Aristophanes and Sophocles, reaching back over the millennia - which informs us, which makes us who and what we are, and which enlivens us and which broadens our small world into a world of infinite space, an infinite space of thinking, of contemplation, and of realizing our kinship with the many generations that have gone before us.

It means as well that we cherish the place where we grew up and we regard, as you may recall from the opening credits of Gods and Generals, astronomy; as belonging to that little lot of stars that we see hanging over our backyards every night; if we are fortunate enough to live in a place that is not dulled by light pollution all night long. It means that we cherish that homeland, that home place, where we first realized there was such a thing as trees and grass and wilderness and wildlife, open sky. We all started off our lives in a place. We are connected to those places; we are rooted to those places. They are what make us who we are. It is what we call home.

As the paper of record reports, the death of the amnesty bill represented the will of the American people:

The justifiably furious reaction of the American public, which deluged senators with telephone calls, e-mails and faxes, forced the Senate to reverse itself yesterday and send the amnesty bill crashing to defeat - a potentially fatal blow. It was a devastating setback for the Bush administration and its Democratic Party allies, in particular Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Sen. Ted Kennedy.

In addition to being an extraordinary substantive triumph for the American people, it was a huge victory for the conservative movement. Talkers such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, Laura Ingraham and many others played an indispensable role in making available the research by the Heritage Foundation and NumbersUSA and analysis from editorial pages such as this one to tens of millions of Americans in a very short period of time. But ironically, by demonstrating in a powerful way its ability to reach and educate the public about the specific problems with the bill, talk radio has also made liberal politicians like Sen. Dianne Feinstein even more determined to revive the so-called Fairness Doctrine (the equal-time policy enforced by the Federal Communications Commission until it was eliminated in 1987 at the urging of President Reagan) in an effort to take away the one part of the mass media that conservatives dominate. On the final vote, virtually the entire conservative movement lined up against the bill. On the losing side were the leading Democratic presidential contenders — Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama - and the Bush administration, vividly demonstrating the political gap between the president and the conservative movement.

On Tuesday - just 48 hours before the legislative coalition supporting the bill crumbled - the bill appeared to have been given a new lease on life. Despite the abysmal poll ratings of the president and Congress, and the fact that barely one-quarter of the American public favored the bill, 64 senators (four more than needed) voted for cloture. This permitted Mr. Reid with White House support to bring the bill to the floor, together with a carefully selected group of amendments that amnesty advocates believed either 1) were unlikely to pass; or 2) if passed would not change the pro-amnesty thrust of the bill in a significant way; and 3) if necessary, could be stripped out of the legislation in conference.

Yet just 48 hours later, the amnesty coalition collapsed, and the 64 Senate supporters became just 46. What happened? As we noted above, talk radio proved that in modern times, it is indispensable for conservative political success. Much of the credit should also go to the bipartisan lobbying organization NumbersUSA, a powerful advocate for strengthening border security, which made it clear to members of Congress that they weren't buying the phony games some lawmakers wanted to play: proposing tough-sounding amendments that stood little chance of becoming law, while voting for cloture - and in effect for amnesty. The 18 senators who switched from supporting amnesty on Tuesday to opposing it yesterday are Democrats Jeff Bingaman, Sherrod Brown, Tom Harkin, Ben Nelson, Mark Pryor and Jim Webb; and Republicans Kit Bond, Sam Brownback, Richard Burr, Norm Coleman, Susan Collins, Pete Domenici, John Ensign, Mitch McConnell, Lisa Murkowski, Ted Stevens, George Voinovich and John Warner.

A point I'd like to make is that the whole "talk radio" element might be overplayed. I never listen to any talk radio at all, and I think a lot of people are in the same boat. I think a lot of the information about the amnesty bill was circulated via the Web and e-mail.

What is significant about this is that Web and e-mail communications fall into the realm of "news" rather than "rabble rousing" which is the mainstream media framing of talk radio.

Really, in the end, the defeat of the amnesty bill was simply the result of wider distribution of information. Wire services delivered all the facts - we did not need Sean Hannity - and that is why the amnesty bill failed.

Over at Too Conservative I got into another argument with Jonathan in which the initial problem was my own bad behavior - which is par for the course for all who know me - but has I think been distilled down to a disagreement over how the illegal immigration issue should be framed.

I'm going to re-post my entire response here with some additions, which I believe falls within the parameters of fair use.

Jonathan, ok point taken: This appears to be my M.O. so let's just say I get to impugn your motivations one or at most two times per message and I allow you to impugn mine twice that number of times, and we should get on famously.

Your argument, and the argument of the article you've linked to, has merit. For anyone considering the illegal immigration issue from a macro standpoint the whole picture must be taken into account. I, for instance, think NAFTA has been a disaster. U.S. companies are selling corn in Mexico cheaper than Mexicans can grow it, so Mexicans are having to come to the U.S. to work. See this excellent post by Stay Puft for a host of links on this topic.

Most importantly, I don't think any intelligent or compassionate person can delve into the issue without delving into the problems with the political institutions of Mexico and Latin America. And, boy, are there problems!

Does anyone actually believe the solution to such problems lies in mass migration? It is not like the migrants are all moving from desert wastelands. They are migrating from countries - Mexico being a stellar example - that should be completely self sufficient. Mexico's corruption, oligarchy and basic mismanagement go back hundreds of years. Bear in mind she won her independence within a generation of our nation doing so.

Considering natural resources and tourism alone, these countries producing the largest numbers of migrants should all be standing on their own two feet. Instead, they have a small, very wealthy and powerful ruling class and an ocean of serfs - a situation that has obtained since before the Spaniards arrived, incidentally, and in which the Spaniards simply filled the appropriate slots with their own folks.

I was lucky enough to attend a very impressive fundraising event in Manassas tonight for Virginia Delegate Jackson Miller, an amazing individual who in his first year in the House emerged as a leader on the immigration reform issue and sponsored legislation that passed the House (before dying in Senate committees).

BVBL reports the crowd surpassed 200. Delegate Scott Lingamfelter (left) gave a rousing introduction.

I can tell you I was among the many who were blown away by the keynote speech by film director Ron Maxwell (Gettysburg, Gods and Generals).

Maxwell discussed the successful defeat of S. 1639 in the U.S. Senate earlier in the day, and the hope this offers that Americans have now risen up to take back their country one community at a time from the "masters of the universe" - business elites who live only for the present, and who are exploiting cheap labor from south of the border and destroying communities on both sides of the Rio Grande.

The American people are a generous people, but they are not dupes and they are not fools. They have moved from skepticism to mistrust to outrage. Where is our national leadership? Who is defending America and our way of life? Not just in Iraq or Afghanistan. Who is defending it here, in our own homes and our own communities?

It is a healthy feeling of self-survival the American people are feeling, in which they are finally turning to political action and imposing on their elected officials - who sometimes forget who elected them and whom they are supposed to serve. Americans intuitively understand that what's at stake here is nothing less than the survival of our country.

We must ask: Who is profiting from the importation of this cheap labor? Who is it that wants to exploit these poor, third world people? Who is encouraging young men and women to leave their children and their parents behind? Who is causing the division of these families, the millions of broken families and separated loved ones. Who is profiting from their exploitation, only then to pontificate - after the fact, after the damage has been done to the fabric of these communities, after the emotional damage to real life people - that all they really want to do is reunify those families, but not, of course, in their native countries, but here in the United States of America.

Why here? Why not in their countries of origin? So that the present-tensers can then legally import millions more of their relatives through chain migration so that they can be exploited as well. So they can put more American citizens out of work, replacing high-priced American workers with those who will do the work that they, the 300 million citizens of the United States are told over and over again by their own president that they really do not want to do.

As if America, all it's great cities and farms and railroads and highways and skyscrapers and navies and air forces and bridges, all its universities, all its industrial might and its space program were built by Mexicans, Hondurans and Guatemalans.

What rhetorical mischief. What political chicanery. What a colossal con game perpetrated on the American people and on our neighbors to the south.

Maxwell's address was a cry for humane efforts to fix the problems in communities north and south of the border.

If we want "comprehesive" immigration reform, that is how it has to happen.

There are a number of extremely important public offices that will be decided in the November, 2007 elections, and Jackson Miller is among the key ones. He needs your support if you are concerned about solving the illegal alien problem in Virginia.

A few of the other good soldiers in this fight were present at tonight's event, including Delegate Bob Marshall, Delegate Jeff Frederick, Senate Candidate Bob Fitzsimmonds, Loudoun County Sheriff Candidate Greg Ahlemann and Senator Ken Cuccinelli.

UPDATE: Here is the full text of Ron Maxwell's speech.

I'm not 100% sure that ANYTHING new needs to be done to deal with illegal aliens in the U.S., beyond the executive branch of our government enforcing existing laws - which, when you look them over, are not too shabby, albeit so utterly unrelated to the actual reality we inhabit they almost seem as though they belong to another country, possibly on another planet.

But if anything was to be done right now, in the spirit of striking while the iron is hot, it ought to be something exactly like this:

United States House of Representatives
Immigration Reform Caucus
Rep. Brian Bilbray (CA-50), Chairman

PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Kurt Bardella
(202) 225-0508

June 28, 2007

WITH KENNEDY-BUSH AMNESTY DEFEATED, BILBRAY CALLS ON CONGRESS TO TAKE ACTION NOW TO ADDRESS ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Congressman Brian Bilbray (R-CA), Chairman of the Immigration Reform Caucus, released the following statement regarding the defeat of the Kennedy-Bush amnesty bill this morning. The Senate fell short of garnering the 60 votes needed to end debate and move ahead with final passage of the bill. The motion failed 46-53.

"Once again, Americans across our nation took it upon themselves to call Senators and Members of Congress asking them to vote against this flawed bill. Because of their perseverance - this bill is dead. It is important that this defeat not signal the end of our efforts to address illegal immigration but rather represent a new opportunity for Congress to take immediate action and pass legislation that will increase penalties on employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants, implement a working employer verification system and secure our border."

While the corks are popping and confetti and silly string still hang in the air, let us sneak a glance gamely ahead at the next stage: Local action. Time to ramp it up.

The senators listed below the fold all voted for cloture on S. 1639, which would have allowed the bill to go forward.

Here is the bill.

Here is the package of amendments.

Reasons why anyone who voted to allow this bill to proceed should be bounced out of office at the next available opportunity are here, here, and here.

There are some fairly prominent names on this list. Good. Some nice fat targets.

UPDATE: And let the gloating begin.

... who voted against cloture on S. 1639.

Here is the tally. Go see whether your senator was a good guy or a bad guy.

Here are the Web forms you can use to send a thank you to your senators who voted against cloture. (Maybe via e-mail would be nice - to give their phones a rest).

Click here to send a thank you to Senator Jim Webb.

Click here to send a thank you to Senator John Warner.

I just got an e-mail notifying that as of 10:20 am this morning the Senate Sargeant at Arms has "closed down the phone lines" because of the volume of calls. I did not know that could happen, but if it did this is the issue that would do it.

UPDATE: There is now confirmation of this on Drudge.

Heh.

Nice work, everyone.

John Hawkins has a source inside the Senate.

Then on Wednesday morning, the bill was out on the internet and bloggers started picking it apart and that morning around 10 AM, Reid pulled the bill so it could be re-drafted because he said there were mistakes in it. They spent almost the whole morning drafting it and when they re-released it, it was 400 pages long. That means that it's likely when the vote occurs tomorrow, not a single senator voting on the bill will have had an opportunity to actually read it. Reid's response to complaints about that has basically been, "Trust me." My source told me that the general response to that from the anti-amnesty senators has been something akin to, "Yeah, right."

Read all of that, it is sure to boost your cynicism to unprecedented levels.

I have to say, despite how unbelievably asinine our Republican 'leaders' are, the Democrats manage to go them one better every step of the way.

Last year the Republicans presided over the passing of S. 2611, likely one of the worst pieces of legislation ever devised anywhere. How do the Democrats surpass that one? By pushing through a piece of phantom legislation that is not even written yet and which - obviously - no one has even read.

I just had a private conference with Not Larry Sabato and Black Velvet Bruce Li; and although the meeting was supposed to be completely off the record, I feel morally compelled to share the entire content with all of you right now.

Blogging ethics allow this.

Let's put it this way: The discussion ended with NLS head honcho Ben Tribbett screaming at me "I will bust you down to COPPER, Budzinski, I will bust your sorry little blog down to freakin' zinc!"

"Get out of town, you crazy bald man" I yelled back, "Zinc isn't even a metal!"

Well, it turns out we were BOTH partially right and partially wrong in that exchange, but who's to quibble over minor details. The important thing is that Don Ben is laying the heavy hand of blog dominance on my back, and I don't intend to submit without a fight.

We've had our run-ins with the Don before, as many of you will recall.

In this instance, the sticking point was illegal immigration. Namely, are those of us talking the talk walking the walk?

Jim Webb, as of late tonight, is reported leaning "yes" on cloture and "no" on the final bill.

Which would be about as weasely as it gets. Yes on cloture lets the Grand Swindle pass in the Senate while a no on the bill supposedly gets the senator off the hook for supporting it.

No dice, Jim. "Yes" on cloture is "yes" on amnesty. Such a vote would be remembered.

Contact Senator Webb here if you want to help him make the right decision on this.

Here's what is wrong with the Republican Party.

Senator Voinovich's cluelessness should serve as a reassuring reminder that our Republican "leaders'" proclivity to destroy the country via instant amnesty for tens of millions of illegal aliens is the result of ignorance more than malice. So we have that going for us.

....just an interesting factoid, for anyone who doesn't fully appreciate the fact our federal government is, primarily, slime.

One has to wonder whether it would even be legal for the Senate to pass a bill that is not yet completely written, much less understood. I believe there would be legal justification for arguing that every senator who votes for such a bill should be sent to prison.

Keep calling. Here are the numbers. Scroll down if you have forgotten what to say.

As I've been saying, the place to strike back at the Republican Party is where it hurts: their bank account.

Hot Air has some excellent advice along these lines - ask for a refund:

Courtesty of Hot Air - Campaign 2008 kicks off with "Muchas Gracias, Senor Graham":

In light of today's vote to move ahead with legislation to destroy America, I'd like to offer the public service of identifying available domain names which some of you may find useful.

All of the URLs below are available as of this moment. I personally prefer to reserve domain names at GoDaddy, but leave it to each of you to use the management tool of your choice.

The easiest move is to go to GoDaddy and reserve the domain there; it takes about 2 minutes.

SenatorNoMore.com

RecallTheSenate.com

MySenatorSucks.com

IHateTheSenate.com

IHateMySenator.com

SenatorTraitor.com

TreasonousWeasel.com

TreasonousWeasels.com

SenatorDickwad.com

BurnDownTheSenate.com

DefundTheRNC.com

DefundTheGOP.com

KillTheRNC.com

KillTheGOP.com

StarveTheGOP.com

SlimeTheSlime.com

SenateScum.com

TheSenateSucks.com

OnARail.com

Grab 'em while the grabbin' is good. But most importantly - USE 'EM!

What the hell is wrong with you? Why? Why would you vote to let this travesty of a bill go forward? Do you really think you're going to get away with the Kerry-esque, "I voted against it -- after I voted for it"?

Are you so in the pockets of the Mexican lobby that you will so ignore your constituents?

You're pro-illegal immigration, pro-abortion, and pro-gun control. Why don't you stop lying to the people of Virginia and switch to the Democrat Party?

In the words of one more famous than you: "Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable." -Daffy Duck, Rabbit Fire (1951)

...with at least one Senator comatose. What the Hell is wrong with these people? Did they ALL have strokes?

They are Sens. Kit Bond, Sam Brownback, Richard Burr, Thad Cochran, Norm Coleman, John Ensign, and Jim Webb.

Start calling, and do not stop until the vote is over, which is supposed to be around noon. Here are the numbers.

Well, it is late at night, the cows are lowing, and our U.S. senators have all presumably hit the hay. The treasonous bastards.

If you try to call the pro-amnesty hotline, chances are you will not get through. I think this means we have done our jobs tonight.

That's toobad, though, because it would be entertaining to be able to abuse your senator over why he or she is in the process of selling off the United States. But the voice mailboxes are now all full.

Here is what to keep in mind: The U.S. Senate is currently at war with the American people, and the senators believe they have the upper hand.

The Senate is poised to pass a bill which will punish Americans and people who have applied via legal means to become Americans. The Senate bill 1639 amnesty for illegal aliens will bankrupt social security, our kids and grandkids, and local governments, and will toss every applicant for U.S. citizenship who has applied for citizenship since May 1, 2005, to the back of the line behind tens of millions of lawbreakers. Every illegal alien who applies will receive legal status within 24 hours, regardless of criminal history or willingness to play by the rules.

The bill was started in a backroom and will be finished in a backroom. This legislation represents the greatest usurpation of power by elected officials in the history of our nation.

Our government intends to replace us - or dilute us - with a more compliant class of voters.

If the Senate allows this bill to go forward tomorrow morning, the upshot will not be merely the end of the Republican party and destruction of the political careers of all those who vote for cloture - it will be setting the stage for insurrection.

They can turn off their phones and fax machines, but they will not be able to squelch the will of the people.

If cloture on S 1639 passes tomorrow morning this won't be simply a matter of electoral 'payback'. This will be war.

As Ace says, you've ------ed us over for the last time.

I wrote and send the following to all the fence sitters in the Republican party. No point in sending to a Democrat Senator. S.1639 is going to kill the Republican party.

Sir,

As a Republican I am writing to you to let you know sir that this is one bill that will kill the party. Passage of this bill will drive the Republican base out of the party. Picture the Democrat Party without Labor, NAACP or the netroots; would it be viable?

Vote no for cloture. A yes vote with a ‘no-vote’ against the bill, S.1639, later will not fool anyone. You will be committing political suicide. The Democrats won't vote for you and the money from big business will not get the base to come to the polls. We, your base, shall not forget.

This bill is the previous immigration bill with a new number. The American people made their displeasure known then. Do you really think we forgot?

Rewarding lawbreaking is against the principals of the Republican Party. This bill rewards the millions of illegal aliens. We shall not forget.

This bill, especially during the time of war will cripple our ability to deal with terrorist who come here under the guise of immigration. This bill will therefore cripple the common defense. We, the republican base, shall never forget this.

We will organize. We will defeat you in the primary, or, if necessary stay home and let a Democrat take your spot. Because, if you vote for this bill, you are worse than a Democrat, you have violated the public trust. A trust, we the Republican base have given you. We shall not forget.

Sincerely,
John Q. Citizen

I figure some staffer might actually read some of the inflow. Who knows? Anyway, I prefer it to some of the other faxes-templates I have seen. Each senator can be contacted through the web. Email maybe a better path than clogged phone and fax lines.

Only about 2 hours left:

Use the local numbers if the DC line is busy.

Special focus should be on Bond, Burr, Cochran, Hatch, Nelson (of Nebraska), Webb. - all these have given hints they are not planning to vote for the bill S 1639 unless it is substantially changed, and will not commit to voting against cloture. BUT THEY DO NOT SEEM TO REALIZE THE AMENDMENT PROCESS IS A SHAM. The only important vote is on cloture on the motion to proceed tomorrow morning.

Click here for some quick points to emphasize.

UPDATE: When the offices close tonight, start using those fax numbers!! Then please start calling again tomorrow morning prior to the approx. 11:30 am vote on cloture on the motion to proceed.

UPDATE II: Whoa! Here is something you can do tonight to stave off the frustration and rage: Make some calls to the Pro-Amnesty Hotline. Follow the simple instructions to bypass the recording and go to your senator's in box. Let him or her know how much you appreciate the fact they have an "Amnestia, Si!" hotline set up.

The latest word is we need six senators from this list I posted this morning to either vote NO on cloture on the motion to proceed on S. 1639 tomorrow morning, or miss the vote, or simply vote "present."

That means we have about five hours before the offices close to make a point to six senators. Use that list and tell them what you think!

Points to bear in mind:

- If any senator is saying they want to go through the process of discussing the upcoming amendments, they need to be told THIS IS A SHAM. Kennedy and Lott have already indicated anything they do not like will be stripped out in conference. The entire amendment "debate" is an exercise in obfuscation. The outcome is rigged and predetermined.

"THIS BILL STARTED IN A BACKROOM AND IT WILL BE ENDING IN A BACKROOM."

- This bill has already been debated in late May and early June and it died. This is where it should be left. Even bringing it back up is a vote for the bill.

- Your vote on final passage is meaningless politically - it only takes a simple majority to pass the bill, which is likely to occur. The only way to kill the bill is with your vote against cloture on the motion to proceed tomorrow morning. If you have any inclination to vote for cloture and against the bill that would be highly deceitful because it will very likely result in the bill getting passed.

(See this post for explanation of the "clay pigeon" tactic which will make it harder to defeat the bill if cloture is invoked on the motion to proceed tomorrow.)

- The bottom line is this bill promises a host of enforcement provisions which go into effect after the tens of millions of illegal aliens will have been legalized through the instant "probationary" Z-visa program. AND THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION HAS ALREADY PROVEN FOR SEVEN YEARS IT HAS NO INCLINATION TO ENFORCE EXISTING IMMIGRATION LAWS, SO ALL OF THESE PROMISED ENFORCEMENT MEASURES ARE ILLUSIONS, VAPORWARE. Let them show they can enforce existing laws, and build the fence that was promised last year, and then maybe "enforcement" could be used as a bargaining chip.

Click here for the list of senators to call and fax.

As this morning's Washington Post reports, over 1,100 immigration bills were introduced in state legislators this year, double the number from 2006. The reason? Our federal government has failed in its responsibility to enforce the laws. As we reported recently, the current bill under consideration in the Senate would nullify all local enforcement efforts (and hand a nice fat bonus to corrupt employers).

So the feds are not only NOT doing their job, but they are trying to make it impossible for localities to get their own houses in order.

Your Monday morning assignment: Kill S. 1639!

This post contains contact information - office locations, phone and (where available) fax numbers - for a group of senators who have been identified as on the fence on the cloture vote on proceeding with S 1639. The information is all below the fold.

Thanks to Ace for the list of "wobbly" senators. I went ahead and added John Warner in since many of you are in Virginia and should be contacting him. Ace reports we need 3/4 of these to vote against cloture.

You will find the local offices are a great way to get through when the DC lines are jammed, especially for faxing.

The vote on cloture on the motion to proceed will likely take place Tuesday, late morning, so today and tomorrow morning - the next 24 hours - are the prime time for working the phones and faxes.

To recap: We need to send the message to these senators that "a vote for cloture is a vote for amnesty," so we want them to either vote NO on cloture, or simply fail to vote on Tuesday. If cloture passes, the bill will move forward and will likely pass the Senate for the reasons explained here.

Voting for cloture, and later voting against the bill (after the bill has been determined to have enough votes to pass) will offer no cover because we voters understand that any senator voting for cloture is voting for amnesty.

More information about why this is such a terrible bill can be found here and here, and here are seven things you can do right now to help kill the bill.

Click the following link for a complete listing of contact information for all the "on the fence" senators, and PLEASE start contacting them. Also, pass this information to everyone you know who is concerned about stopping this disastrous legislation before it goes any further.

Go read about the BIG "sanctuary" problem down in PWC over at Blog Fu (and most importantly in the comments).

More about the apparent hands-off, see-no-evil policy in Manassas here and here.

Read about some episodes in Loudoun County here and here - thankfully, these are of far less import than rape and murder. But the entire trend is a troubling one and, like Blog Fu, I know of innumerable anecdotal local incidents involving crimes by illegal aliens for which there is insufficient documentation to report.

Help Save Manassas is reportedly going to be taking the sanctuary issue up with the Board of Supervisors - every Prince William County and Manassas citizen should be involved and supporting those efforts.

UPDATE: Further evidence of special treatment of the "undocumented" revealed at Not Larry Sabato. As a side note: I recall reading a recent commentary somewhere that pointed out the "undocumented" are not undocumented nor living in the shadows. Through underground channels they can easily obtain sufficient documentation for banking, getting credit cards, buying and registering a car, renting or buying a domicile, attending public schools and getting free medical treatment at the local emergency room. The only sense in which they are "undocumented" is by the lack of presence on U.S. and local government tax rolls - which is not such a bad deal when you think about it.

UPDATE II: More here.

One of the groups to which I belong, the IEEE, has for many years pushed grass roots efforts to help the plight of U.S. engineers (with a little bit of schizophrenia, as they also have "international" in the name, and have explicit ties to helping engineers world wide). It should come as no surprise that they publish books on how to influence the legislative branch. The one way that works best is to visit in person. You have to visit your representatives, but that has more effect than any other method. I am going to Washington in two weeks if I can get an appointment. The immigration issue is worth it.

I'm not sure were I saw this first, but the message is clear. This clip on YouTube is of a lawyers conference and shows how to get around the spirit of the law not do what is right, and hire foreign workers even though you know there are qualified American workers. The most damning quote: "Our goal here is NOT to find an interested and qualified U.S. worker."

Republican candidate for Loudoun County Sheriff, Greg Ahlemann, shown here addressing the Help Save Loudoun meeting this past Monday, has just released the following letter to Senator John Warner:

The Honorable John Warner

United States Senate

225 Russell Senate Office Building

Washington, DC 20510

June 21, 2007

Dear Senator Warner,

As a constituent and candidate for public office, I am writing to express my concern over S.1639, better known as the Immigration Reform Bill. As a former Loudoun County Deputy Sheriff, I have seen first hand the influx of illegal immigrants into our County. Along with this increase, I have witnessed the gang problems, crime and residential overcrowding that have resulted.

On June 9th, 2007, I received the Republican nomination for Sheriff of Loudoun County. This was decided by the voters at the largest county convention in the history of Virginia. Unseating a three term incumbent from within the Party was due, in large part, to my stance against illegal immigration. I have expressed my desire for the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office to participate in the ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement- 287g) program and the voters have responded.

As you know, this bill would provide amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants and effectively make the ICE program obsolete. Federal and local law enforcement have been losing the battle against illegal immigration and I believe passage of this bill would hinder what little enforcement is available.

Securing our borders and deporting criminal illegal aliens is not an issue tied to one political party or the other. I believe, as my supporters do, passage of this bill would have adverse consequences for our County, our Commonwealth and our Country. I urge you to vote against this or any impending bills that would provide amnesty for those that would attempt to enter this country illegally.

Sincerely,
Greg Ahlemann
Republican Nominee - Sheriff of Loudoun County, VA

Thank you, Greg! And thanks to Mick Staton for getting the ball rolling.

It would be nice to see whole lot more of our Loudoun County officials do the same between now and Tuesday morning when the Senate will vote on cloture on the motion to proceed with S. 1639. Tell our senators to either skip the vote, vote "present" or vote NO on cloture. A yes vote on cloture is a vote for amnesty. Contact info for Warner is here, for Webb is here.

In case you have been one of the many people getting busy signals when attempting phone and fax contact with Senator John Warner's Washington, DC office, below the fold are all his other offices. Generally you can get through immediately to any of them.

Sending faxes throughout the weekend and up until Tuesday morning would not be a bad thing to do.

American Daughter has seven things you can do right now, sitting at your desk, to put a stake through the heart of this unholy piece of trash the U.S. Senate is attempting to ram down our throats.

Go do all of them right now! It won't take ten minutes.

When you return, please click here for contact information and talking points to carry you through Tuesday when there will likely be a vote on cloture on the motion to proceed with S 1639.

You want to ensure that both of your senators vote NO on cloture on the motion to proceed - or else vote "present" or else simply find something else to do while the vote occurs. We just need to avoid "yes" votes on cloture on the motion to proceed at all costs.

This bill cannot be permitted to go forward. It will will provide instant amnesty - within 24 hours of applying - to tens of millions of lawbreakers, with only the promise of future law enforcement.

It will serve as an open invitation to tens of millions more to stream across our southern border rather than stay home and work for political and economic reform in their own countries.

It will import and eventually legalize a vast underclass which will destroy whatever is left of our Social Security system and create a catastrophic tax burden on our children and grandchildren.

If you are so inclined, make it a point to contact Virginia's junior senator, Jim Webb. He was elected partially on the basis of having a mind of his own and being "one of us." If he is one of us, he has to see what a complete mess S 1639 is, although as a rookie he is undoubtedly under tremendous pressure to follow the GOP leadership off the cliff. He won a historic Senate race: Now let's all tell him we will stand behind him for taking a historic stand against legislation that threatens to destroy this country.

Contact information for Senator Jim Webb at all of his offices is below the fold.

A living symbol of George W. Bush's effort to erase the U.S. southern border, former Border Patrol agent Ignacio Ramos is wasting away in solitary confinement in a federal correctional facility:

A congressional aide who visited Ignacio Ramos in prison said the convicted Border Patrol agent appeared emaciated, losing more than 30 pounds in solitary confinement.

Ramos, who is appealing his 11-year sentence for the non-lethal shooting of a Mexican drug smuggler, has been in a "special housing unit" since he was beaten by inmates in February at the medium-security Federal Correctional Complex in Yazoo City, Miss., said Tara Setmayer, spokeswoman for Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif.

"He was very happy to see me, but, overall, he was very emotional," Setmayer told WND. "He is demoralized. Languishing in solitary for 135 days takes its toll on anyone."

The men who bloodied Ramos with kicks from steel-toed boots are in the same unit, Setmayer said.

More on the Bush administration's war on the Border Patrol here, here and here.

Bottom line: Senator, please oppose the Grand Swindle!

Supervisor Mick Staton attended the Help Save Loudoun meeting Monday night, along with a number of other local dignitaries and candidates, and spent some quality time conversing with Loudoun County citizens.

We had a decent crowd, about 35 people. Attendees also included Supervisor Steve Snow, Sheriff Candidate Greg Ahlemann, Senate Candidate Patricia Phillips, and Supervisor Candidates Ken Mikeman and Jack Ryan.

Mick Staton announced the letter he has sent to our one possibly reasonably U.S. Senator, Jim Webb. This is an extremely intelligent act by Supervisor Staton, one which should be duplicated by all of our elected local officials statewide.

It is a slap to the face to every citizen of every community who has to deal with the day to day problems that illegal immigrants bring. Finally, it is a slap to the face of local officials, like myself, who are plagued by the problems created by illegal immigration, but are not even permitted to enforce existing immigration laws due to 'lack of jurisdiction.'

I urge you to vote against this fatally flawed legislation...

Bravo to Mick for initiating this. Let's hope all of our other local officials will follow suit.

Over 85% of those arrested under Operation Predator are foreign nationals - committing the unspeakable acts Americans just won't do:

Just four years after the Department of Homeland Security launched Operation Predator, an initiative aimed at those who sexually exploit children, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced today that its arrests had topped 10,000.

"Operation Predator is a great example of how our transnational partnerships and wide-ranging legal authorities can work to protect children," said Julie L. Myers, Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for ICE. "In the course of this highly successful operation, ICE has investigated and arrested people who tried to use the anonymity of the web, foreign travel or their roles as trusted members of the community to hide their crimes. Nothing makes us prouder than eliminating from our communities those who take advantage of children."

More than 8,600 of those arrested as part of the operation have been non-citizen sex offenders whose crimes make them removable from the United States. As of today, more than 5,500 have been removed from the United States.

Next, I would propose, should be Operation Shut The Gates.

Protesters hit Lott's Jackson, MS offices:

Several dozen people attended a protest outside of Lott's Jackson office Thursday to "voice our frustration, disappointment and not understanding of why Sen. Trent Lott is pushing the Kennedy-Kyl bill," said rally organizer Rodney Hunt, president of the Mississippi Federation for Immigration Reform and Enforcement...

"If he sees legislation that harms the United States, it's his duty to kill it," Hunt said, adding Congress and recent presidents have a poor record of providing the money needed for stricter immigration requirements. "We do not have a guarantee that we'll ever have any enforcement."

Meanwhile, Lott says regarding the phone calls, take a hike, but bring it on:

"I've had my phones jammed for three weeks. Yesterday I had three people answering them continuously all day," Lott said. "To think that you're going to intimidate a senator or any senator into voting one way or the other by gorging your phones with phone calls - most of whom don't even know where Gulfport, Mississippi, is - is not an effective tactic. But it's their right to do that."

I think maybe a two-by-six, about 12 feet long, upon which the senator could ride out of town, would be a more effective tactic.

Labor is waking up to the fact that illegal immigration is a crime against American workers. Hispanic advocates say the Senate bill does not go far enough.

We'll take our allies wherever we can find them:

"This takes a problem we have and, instead of solving it, makes it worse," said Richard L. Trumka, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO. He said the temporary-worker program that the bill sets up would hurt U.S. workers by providing a source of cheap labor that would depress Americans' wages...

The Hispanic groups said there is no reason to change the current system, which favors family reunification, and said there is no clamor for the point system.

"It's important for us to be able to walk away from a bad bill, and that's what we're asking Congress to do," said Brent A. Wilkes, executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens.

...and a crackdown on employers.

Some highlights from a nationwide poll conducted Monday night:

National Immigration Survey of 1,000 Likely Voters
Conducted June 18, 2007 by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC

2* Roughly 95% of illegal immigration occurs at our southern border. Should securing this border be accomplished before trying to legalize unlawful aliens and before creating a guest worker program, or should they all be attempted at the same time?

62% Before legalization or guest worker programs are begun
27% All should be attempted at the same time
11% Not sure

8* Should employers who repeatedly and knowingly employ illegal aliens be subject to jail time in addition to stiff fines?

65% Yes
28% No
7% Not sure

13* Would you support mandatory, tamper-proof ID cards for all non-citizens seeking to work in the United States?

82% Yes
12% No
6% Not sure

14* If an illegal alien entered the US prior to 2007, should we offer them permanent legal resident status if they pay $5,000, pass a thorough background check and agree they will not be able to become a US citizen?

28% Yes
55% No
17% Not sure

15* If an illegal alien becomes a legal US resident, should their relatives in the home country get preferential treatment if they apply for US residency?

22% Yes
68% No
10% Not sure

Watch out, fat cats.

...for refusing to yield to the Pro-Amnesty "Masters of Disaster"! (New ad from Eagle Forum).

Why does our government put up with this? It's time for the Army to take up the defense of our borders.

The clay pigeon cometh.

I've heard the first "motion to proceed" on what will likely be a REVISED COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION REFORM BILL will take place later this week.

S 1348 is being rewritten as we speak.

Bottom line: The new bill will be introduced with a "clay pigeon" of amendments:

Under the tentative plan, Reid as early as Friday would launch his target - an amendment encompassing all 22 proposals - and shoot it into its component pieces. The Senate would then vote on ending debate on the immigration measure, which would take 60 votes and limit discussion of the bill to 30 more hours. After that interval, all 22 amendments would have to be voted on, with little opportunity for foes to interfere.

This is apparently hard to fight.

What this means is, at the outset of renewed debate there will be a motion to vote for cloture (shut off debate) on the motion to proceed. We need to fight that initial vote for cloture because once the new bill is moving forward in the Senate it will be hard to stop.

Two points grassroots opponents of the Grand Swindle need to continue to hammer on:

1). A vote for cloture on the FIRST motion to proceed is a vote for amnesty!

2). Senators who vote for cloture with the hope they can escape responsibility by later voting against the bill will not be let off the hook by voters this time: We understand that backroom negotiations on amendments and what will occur in committee will result in Senate passage and we will hold responsible any senator who votes for cloture.

Contact your Senators and tell them A VOTE FOR CLOTURE IS A VOTE FOR AMNESTY.

Here is contact information for senators who need to be contacted:

No major surprise here:

It's immigration, an issue with a lot more life in it than the controversial bill recently put on the Senate's back burner, maybe permanently, maybe temporarily, in the face of mostly Republican opposition. Opponents say it offers amnesty for 12 million illegals; proponents, with justification, say it does no such thing, but who's reading the bill?

Top idea of the month: Whoever throws in against Lindsay Graham in a primary will immediately become the largest Internet fundraiser of all time

A letter from the Costa Mesa, CA city council to President Bush:

Dear President Bush:On behalf of the Costa Mesa City Council, I wish to convey our position on illegal immigration. We feel it is vital that local governments such as ours communicate our concerns in this area. Our community suffers significant social, civil and law enforcement impacts, which appear to be the result of unfettered illegal immigration.

Promoting the deeply flawed SB 1348 is an affront to all law-abiding Americans. Passage of such legislation would be a disaster for our community and nation. We strongly oppose amnesty by any other name; just making something legal does not set things right, and will not address the impacts Americans suffer.

Since December 2006, we have had an Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent assigned to work in our city jail. In the last six months, an astounding 262 arrestees have been flagged as probable illegal aliens from points around the globe who will be subject to deportation after their jail time is served. This demonstrates at a local level that existing laws can work if they are applied.

The immigration system is not "broken," the only thing that is broken is the will to uphold the law. Your administration's lack of will to meet its obligations regarding immigration enforcement is disrespectful toward all American citizens and legal immigrants.

Please uphold the existing federal immigration laws. Please provide all federal, state and local agencies the necessary resources and training to assist where they can. Federal funding is also needed to reimburse local governments' social, civil, and incarceration costs of illegal immigration.

Mr. President, we are weary of the massive local impacts of unfettered illegal immigration. We do not want amnesty for tens of millions of illegal aliens; we do want strong enforcement of our existing immigration laws.

Sincerely,

Allan R. Mansoor

This follows on my post earlier in the week about how the Grand Swindle will overturn all local enforcement efforts:

Ragnar at My Pet Jawa comments on a theory from Mickey Kaus that "businesses are starting to worry about efforts to enforce immigration laws at the local level."

Ragnar notes business executives look around at what the grassroots are beginning to demand from local and state officials and they are shaking in their Bostonians:

If you're an employer who's been skirting the law for years with a wink and a nod, this change in the winds has to be keeping you up at night--with good reason. Some CEOs looking at public opinion polls and knowing their employment rolls haven't been even close to right with God, have to be dealing with some serious heartburn at the thought of angry villagers at the corporate gates demanding massive fines and/or a few years in federal pound-me-in-the-*ss prison.

If the employers can just get across the line on this, they've significantly reduced their exposure. This Amnesty Bill represents a sort of "get out of jail free" card for these executives.

This seems plausible. We need to make sure this message gets out loud and clear the next few days. It is surprising there are not more Democratic politicians getting on board with the pro-enforcement efforts so far.

The event, March for America, received very little promotion but it is going on June 14-16. More information here.

Senators Jim Demint, David Vitter and especially JEFF SESSIONS have been heroically performing the duty of a lifetime as the three key opponents to the Grand Swindle, and they deserve our sincere thanks.

If you have been making phone calls and sending faxes to scold all of those who are leaning toward supporting the treasonous legislation, perhaps you might enjoy a change of pace with a positive call or two?

The men could use any words of support and encouragement to stop the progress of this insane legislation. The more info Americans get about this bill, the more of them will be outraged it is even being discussed.

These three senators deserve a pat on the back and support for putting on the brakes and allowing more time for word to get out about what exactly is being rammed through the Senate under a veil of secrecy about the actual contents (the bill is not even in final form yet!).

Contact information for the "Hero trio" is below the fold.

You could not make this stuff up.

You know that fence they promised last year and again, albeit smaller, this year?

Well now the Grand Swindle is supposedly back on track because - brace yourself - the president has now promised ... actual money to pay for the fence!!

Oh yeah, this is rich. And I mean Alice-in-Wonderland rich, 1984-rich.

Not only that, but the money will also pay for ... enforcement of immigration laws!

Which, incidentally, are already on the books, but why quibble over technicalities.

Not only that, but the money which is suddenly needed to do what was supposed to already be getting done will come from ... funds raised by this new legislation. As in, after millions of lawbreakers have received their "probationary" Z-visas and millions of would-be legal immigrants who were dumb enough to get in line after May 1, 2005 are pushed to the back of the line behind all the lawbreakers.

In other words, no time soon. Pretty sweet deal, huh?

We need to recall this entire government.