Tag: Rights/freedoms

Senate committee approves bill expanding citizenship

Some good news out of Washington. Finally.  The Senate judiciary committee approved the Kennedy/McCain guest worker bill! Next step is, of course debate and a vote in front of the full Senate. But this is a huge step forward towards a moderate, sane immigration policy. The key parts of the bill are:

In general, the bill is designed to strengthen enforcement of U.S. borders, regulate the flow into the country of so-called guest workers and determine the legal future of the estimated 11 million immigrants living in the United States illegally.

The bill would double the Border Patrol and authorizes a “virtual wall” of unmanned vehicles, cameras and sensors to monitor the U.S.-Mexico border.

It also allows more visas for nurses and agriculture workers, and shelters humanitarian organizations from prosecution if they provide non-emergency assistance to illegal residents.

The most controversial provision would permit illegal aliens currently in the country to apply for citizenship without first having to return home, a process that would take at least six years or more. They would have to pay a fine, learn English, study American civics, demonstrate they had paid their taxes and take their place behind other applicants for citizenship, according to aides to Kennedy.

Of course, there are those on the Senate floor who don’t like to take the sane, moderate path:

Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., seeking re-election this fall in his border state, said the bill offered amnesty to illegal immigrants, and sought unsuccessfully to insert tougher provisions. He told fellow committee members that the economy would turn sour some day and Americans workers would want the jobs that now go to illegal immigrants. They will ask, “how could you have let this happen,” he added.

[..]

“Well over 60 percent of Americans in all the polls I see think it’s OK to have temporary workers, but you do not have to make them citizens,” said Kyl.

“We have a fundamental difference between the way you look at them and the way I look at them,” Kennedy observed later.

Arizona GOP Sen. John McCain, a potential presidential contender who worked with Kennedy on the issue, told reporters the street demonstrations had made an impact. “All those people who were demonstrating are not here illegally. They are the children and grandchildren” of those who may have been, he said.

The committee met as several thousand demonstrators rallied at the foot of the Capitol. Many were members of the clergy who donned handcuffs and sang “We Shall Overcome,” the unofficial anthem of the civil rights era.

After a weekend of enormous rallies — a crowd of as many as 500,000 demonstrators in Los Angeles — thousands of students walked out of class in California and Texas to protest proposals to crack down on illegal immigrants.

Teacher in trouble for exercising right to free speech

I have a mini-rant that I keep meaning to expand into a full-blown essay. One day, I am going to write it. But the basics are a list of differences between neoconservatives and liberals. And one of the main differences regards the right to free speech. Liberals not just tolerate a person’s right to free speech, they fight for it. Neoconservatives, on the other hand, thing that the right to free speech is spurious, and that not everyone deserves that right. In fact, they’ll go so far as to try to get good teachers fired for words that the teachers say.

Neoconservatives fear free speech. They fear open minds. They fear critical thinking. But what’s worse, they try to stifle these. They try to force silence on those who dare to voice an opinion they disagree with. And they want teachers, instructors and professors to only teach from one point-of-view: the neoconservative point of view.

Fortunately, there are rays of hope in the younger generation:

Students walked out of Overland High School Thursday in protest over the case of a teacher criticized for airing his political views during class.

Most of the students walked out in support of geography teacher Jay Bennish, whose comments against the Bush Administration’s war policy were audiotaped by a student. Bennish has been placed on paid leave by the Cherry Creek School District.

But what was so horrible, that the teacher had to be put on paid leave? Bennish’s harshest comments were, “‘I’m not saying Bush and Hitler are exactly the same, obviously they’re not. OK? But there are some eerie similarities to the tones that they use.’” Harsh? Sure. And it brings to mind Jon Stewart’s rant about over-using comparisons to Hitler. But is there anything in that rant to cause such an uproar?

Exposing kids to different viewpoints is a good thing! It gives them information they need to do some critical thinking, to figure out what they believe, as opposed to what they are told they should believe.

But then again, critical thinking isn’t part of the neoconservative agenda.

History repeating itself

Those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it. Looks like this goes for a nation, as well as for individuals. Yahoo! News details that much of the debate over President Bush’s illegal wiretapping goes back a couple of decades:

“We strongly believe it is unwise for the president to concede any lack of constitutional power to authorize electronic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes,” Robert Ingersoll, then-deputy secretary of state, wrote in a 1976 memorandum to President Ford about the proposed bill on electronic surveillance.

[…]

George H.W. Bush, then director of theCIA, wanted to ensure “no unnecessary diminution of collection of important foreign intelligence” occurred under the proposal to require judges to approve terror wiretaps, according to a March 1976 memorandum he wrote to the Justice Department.

And it’s unsurprising that the Bush Sr. was involved in trying to keep this power for the president. Still doesn’t change the fact that the FISA rules and the 4th Amendment make it illegal for the president to order warrantless wiretaps.

Yeah, I’d vote for Al Gore in ’08

If Al Gore gave speeches with as much passion, intensity and intelligence as his speech on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I would’ve definitely voted for him in 2000. If Gore decides to run in 2008, he has my vote:

At present, we still have much to learn about the NSA’s domestic surveillance. What we do know about this pervasive wiretapping virtually compels the conclusion that the President of the United States has been breaking the law repeatedly and persistently.

A president who breaks the law is a threat to the very structure of our government. Our Founding Fathers were adamant that they had established a government of laws and not men. Indeed, they recognized that the structure of government they had enshrined in our Constitution – our system of checks and balances – was designed with a central purpose of ensuring that it would govern through the rule of law. As John Adams said: “The executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them, to the end that it may be a government of laws and not of men.

Group opposed to eminent domain gathers signatures for ballot measures

Here’s a good idea: a local Colorado group is trying to get an amendment to limit Eminent Domain onto the ballot this November:

A U.S. Supreme Court ruling this summer allowed local governments to seize property for economic purposes, but said states were free to enact their own laws protecting property rights.

Colorado Citizens for Property Rights is seeking an amendment to the state constitution that would limit the government’s ability to use eminent domain to take property for private uses such as stores, private toll roads, corporate campuses or other economic development projects.

They said their proposal would not affect the use of eminent domain for public projects such as highways, schools or utilities.

I won’t completely endorese this ‘til I get a chance to read their proposal, but I agree with the sentiment. Eminent Domain needs to be limited, as we learned last year.