Don’t get caught flat-footed in front of the press!  Below is a quick rundown of today’s “must reads.” – John T. Doolittle, House Republican Conference Secretary

The Morning Murmur – Tuesday, March 29, 2006

1.  Mexican illegals vs. American voters - Washington Times Op-ed
While the Senate considers immigration reform, it is attempting to legislate into the teeth of the will of the American public.

2. Congress Watch: GOP plans Medicare offensive - U.S. News & World Report
Speaker Hastert took a slap at some Democrats who oppose the new Medicare drug benefit: "While House Republicans are encouraging seniors to sign up for a program that would lower their drug cost, I'm disappointed that the Democrat leadership would demagogue the program and have seniors pay higher prescription drug prices."

3.  Strike of the Absurd - New York Post Op-ed
Tuesday's strikes demonstrate that in France the dogma of theoretical rights trumps the true "Rights of Man." The strikers and university brats in France constitute an economic al Qaeda. They're intolerant, reactionary fundamentalists and rigid opponents of globalization (that Anglo-Saxon conspiracy). They prefer an illusory heaven to an improved reality.

4.  Enforcement First; Amnesty Never - Rep. Phil Gingrey
We should remember what the late Congressman Sonny Bono said when asked for his position on illegal immigration: "It's illegal." Reforming our system requires a commitment to security and lawfulness, and our Senate colleagues must pledge their resolve to these core principles.

5.  Peace Isn't Made When Real Wrongdoing Goes Ignored - San Antonio Express-News
A peace laureate acting as an advocate for war might seem odd. Odd, unless you understand that war is not the worst evil known to mankind. And odd, unless you understand that the absence of war is far from being the same thing as peace.

For previous issues of the Morning Murmur, go to www.GOPsecretary.gov

FULL ARTICLES BELOW:

1.  Mexican illegals vs. American voters - Washington Times Op-ed

By Tony Blankley
Published March 29, 2006

It is lucky America has more than two centuries of mostly calm experience with self-government. We are going to need to fall back on that invaluable patrimony if the immigration debate continues as it has started this season. The Senate is attempting to legislate into the teeth of the will of the American public. The Senate Judiciary Committeemen - and probably a majority of the Senate - are convinced that they know that the American people don't know what is best for them.

National polling data could not be more emphatic - and has been so for decades. Gallup Poll (March 27) finds 80 percent of the public wants the federal government to get tougher on illegal immigration. A Quinnipiac University Poll (March 3) finds 62 percent oppose making it easier for illegals to become citizens (72 percent in that poll don't even want illegals to be permitted to have driver's licenses). Time Magazine's recent poll (Jan. 24-26) found 75 percent favor "major penalties" on employers of illegals, 70 percent believe illegals increase the likelihood of terrorism and 57 percent would use military force at the Mexican-American border.

An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll (March 10-13) found 59 percent opposing a guest-worker proposal, and 71 percent would more likely vote for a congressional candidate who would tighten immigration controls.

An IQ Research poll (March 10) found 92 percent saying that securing the U.S. border should be a top priority of the White House and Congress.

Yet, according to a National Journal survey of Congress, 73 percent of Republican and 77 percent of Democratic congressmen and senators say they would support guest-worker legislation.

I commend to all those presumptuous senators and congressmen the sardonic and wise words of Edmund Burke in his 1792 letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe: "No man will assert seriously, that when people are of a turbulent spirit, the best way to keep them in order is to furnish them with something substantial to complain of." The senators should remember that they are American senators, not Roman proconsuls. Nor is the chairman of the Judiciary Committee some latter-day Praetor Maximus.

But if they would be dictators, it would be nice if they could at least be wise (until such time as the people can electorally forcefully project with a violent pedal thrust their regrettable backsides out of town). It was gut-wrenching (which in my case is a substantial event) to watch the senators prattle on in their idle ignorance concerning the manifold economic benefits that will accrue to the body politic if we can just cram a few million more uneducated illegals into the country. ( I guess ignorance loves company.) Beyond the Senate last week, in a remarkable example of intellectual integrity (in the face of the editorial positions of their newspapers) the chief economic columnists for the New York Times and The Washington Post - Paul Krugman and Robert Samuelson, respectively - laid out the sad facts regarding the economics of the matter. Senators, congressmen and Mr. President, please take note.

Regarding the Senate's and the president's guest-worker proposals, The Post's Robert Samuelson writes: "Gosh, they're all bad ideas ... We'd be importing poverty. This isn't because these immigrants aren't hardworking, many are. Nor is it because they don't assimilate, many do. But they generally don't go home, assimilation is slow and the ranks of the poor are constantly replenished ... [It] is a conscious policy of creating poverty in the United States while relieving it in Mexico ... The most lunatic notion is that admitting more poor Latino workers would ease the labor market strains of retiring baby boomers ? Far from softening the social problems of an aging society, more poor immigrants might aggravate them by pitting older retirees against younger Hispanics for limited government benefits ... [Moreover], [i]t's a myth that the U.S. economy 'needs' more poor immigrants.

"The illegal immigrants already here represent only about 4.9 percent of the labor force." (For all Mr. Samuelson's supporting statistics, see his Washington Post column of March 22, from which this is taken.) Likewise, a few days later, the very liberal and often partisan Paul Krugman of the New York Times courageously wrote : "Unfortunately, low-skill immigrants don't pay enough taxes to cover the cost of the [government] benefits they receive ? As the Swiss writer Max Frisch wrote about his own country's experience with immigration, 'We wanted a labor force, but human beings came.' " Mr. Krugman also observed - citing a leading Harvard study - "that U.S. high school dropouts would earn as much as 8 percent more if it weren't for Mexican immigration. That's why it's intellectually dishonest to say, as President Bush does, that immigrants 'do jobs that Americans will not do.' The willingness of Americans to do a job depends on how much that job pays - and the reason some jobs pay too little to attract native-born Americans is competition from poorly paid immigrants." Thusly do the two leading economic writers for the nation's two leading liberal newspapers summarily debunk the economic underpinning of the president's and the Senate's immigration proposals.

Under such circumstances, advocates of guest-worker/amnesty bills will find it frustratingly hard to defend their arrogant plans by their preferred tactic of slandering those who disagree with them as racist, nativist and xenophobic.

When the slandered ones include not only The Washington Post and the New York Times, but about 70 percent of the public, it is not only bad manners, but bad politics.

The public demand to protect our borders will triumph sooner or later. And, the more brazen the opposing politicians, the sooner will come the triumph.

So legislate on, you proud and foolish senators - and hasten your political demise.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/tblankley.htm
 

2.  Congress Watch: GOP plans Medicare offensive - U.S. News & World Report

By Paul Bedard
Posted 3/27/06

House Speaker Dennis Hastert has kicked off what will be a weeklong bid to promote the new Medicare drug benefit as the May sign-up deadline nears. Facing Democratic attacks on the program and concerns that seniors might punish Republicans because of the early implementation woes of the benefit, the Republicans have mapped out a strategy to talk the program up in town hall meetings, public service announcements, blogs, one-minute speeches on the House floor detailing success stories, and news interviews from now until the May 15 sign-up deadline.

In a statement, Hastert heralded the enrollment of 27 million in the Medicare Prescription Drug Plan, which aims to cut drug costs for seniors.

"This is great news for America's seniors. They recognize that this program will provide them with much-needed prescription drug coverage at a lower cost they can afford, and I'm pleased that so many will feel the benefit," he said.

He also took a slap at some Democrats who oppose the plan: "While House Republicans are encouraging seniors to sign up for a program that would lower their drug cost, I'm disappointed that the Democrat leadership would demagogue the program and have seniors pay higher prescription drug prices."

Hastert's statement was just the first sign of what appears to be a multilevel battle plan pulled together by House GOP Conference Chairwoman Deborah Pryce of Ohio. Her office has been holding briefings with members describing ways they can promote the program and reach out to seniors via town halls, E-mail lists, blogs, podcasts, and special events.

What's more, the conference office has drawn up a state-by-state listing of seniors events and facilities for the elderly for members to tap. Despite the start-up problems with the drug benefit program, Republicans cite polling that finds satisfaction with it once seniors are enrolled.

"Once people are in it, they like it," said a GOP strategist. Politically, the campaign is also important for the slumping Republican Party, since seniors vote in disproportionately large numbers in midterm elections and could make the difference in whether the GOP keeps its majority in the House and Senate.

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/060327/27congwatch.htm
 

3.  Strike of the Absurd - New York Post Op-ed

By RALPH PETERS

March 29, 2006 -- DAKAR, SENEGAL

IN solidarity with protesting students from elite universities, French labor unions decreed a national celebration of self-righteous sloth - known elsewhere as a general strike.

Workers of France, unite! You have nothing to lose but your competitive edge.

Why have the students been demonstrating? Because their government proposed that young workers should not automatically be granted a (short) lifetime of job security from the first day they're hired. Under the proposed reform, the first two years of employment would be a probationary period (under siege, the government offered to compromise at one year).

The regime's hope is that employers might be more willing to take a chance on hiring more young workers if they aren't automatically condemned to keep even the most inept or lazy workers on the payroll - and on their tax rolls.

Reasonable? Mais non, Monsieur le Anglo-Saxon Capitalist Cochon! The burdern must be on the employer to pay, not on the worker to work!

French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin is hardly a sympathetic figure, yet this time around he's right. It's essential for France to create more jobs - especially for the blue-collar youths and the slum-dwellers who rioted out of hopelessness last autumn.

By American standards, the minor reforms proposed seem common-sensical. But common sense has fled the land of Cartesian rationalism. To gratify the world's most-spoiled workers, employers must be treated as bridegrooms forced to marry blindly and for whom the cost of divorce is exhorbitant. And, of course, striking is the French national sport.

But consider who's doing the striking: Workers who already have tenure, plus fashionably left-wing students. Those students ultimately will get their degrees and they'll either find jobs at home or have the credentials to migrate - to that nasty Anglo-Saxon capital, London, if they can't get work visas to the United States.

French students from elite schools can protest and riot all they want. For them, there are no consequences.

It's different for the blue- collar kids. In la belle France, once you leave the Disneyworlds of central Paris or Provence, a quarter of the young are unemployed (the rate's almost 50 percent among those whose skin isn't white).

As for those "progressive" French labor unions, they're not interested in creating new jobs in a changing world or in fostering competitive skills. They just want to protect the unaffordably lavish benefits their current members enjoy.

The strikes and demonstrations aren't about justice. They're about shameless selfishness.

Perhaps we should send a thank-you bouquet to the French strikers for making the English-speaking world look even more attractive to investors than it already did: The French strike, we work. Guess who wins the economic sweepstates. And guess who says the mean world isn't fair.

The French (and their neighbors in Old Europe) enjoyed a golden half-century living off the fat of the land. Now the bones are showing. For all of the worries about our own Social Security system, it looks as robust as a regiment of super-heroes compared to the European government pension funds plummeting toward bankruptcy today.

It's true, folks: There ain't no free lunch. Aging populations suffering from depression-level unemployment rates can't survive if those with jobs demand 35-hour work-weeks, a couple of months' vacation and lavish benefits upon an early retirement. Oh, and 100 percent job security.

The results? French industry is staggering, research is torpid, French investment funds are fleeing offshore and new ideas hardly have a chance.

Think GM's got problems in the showroom? Any of you want to buy a Renault?

France is headed for severe difficulties (and long before a Muslim majority rips out the vineyards of Chateau Margaux). Unfortunately, we need to worry, too.

Quarrels aside, a prosperous, competitive Europe would be good for us and good for the global economy. A continent in spiteful decline threatens to generate enough trouble for internal consumption and wide export, too.

Europe's failures have cost us dearly enough in the past. We shouldn't be caught off-guard a third time because we think that "everything has changed."

Europe hasn't even changed its underwear, let alone its political morality.

Here in West Africa - where the French still loot the local wealth today - the people would line up by the millions for any jobs at all. And they wouldn't expect to keep those jobs if they didn't work. Their relatives in the slums of France would love a chance at even the most-meager entry-level jobs. (The people in francophone Africa speak of the job opportunities in New York City as other people speak of eternal paradise.)

But in France the dogma of theoretical rights trumps the true "Rights of Man." The strikers and university brats in France constitute an economic al Qaeda. They're intolerant, reactionary fundamentalists and rigid opponents of globalization (that Anglo-Saxon conspiracy). They prefer an illusory heaven to an improved reality.

The strikers and protesters in the streets of France aren't defending the Have-nots. They represent the tyranny of the Haves. For now.

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/66123.htm
 

4.  Enforcement First; Amnesty Never - Rep. Phil Gingrey

by Rep. Phil Gingrey
Posted Mar 29, 2006

If millions of healthy 30-year-olds were signing up for Medicare benefits, we'd put a stop to it. If millions of stock brokers were knowingly involved in insider trading schemes, we'd do something about it. And if millions of upper-class Americans were receiving welfare benefits each month, we'd end the practice immediately.

So why do we treat our immigration laws differently from our SEC, Medicare, and welfare laws? Why do we allow millions of illegal immigrants to cross our border and break our laws without penalty?

Proponents of liberal immigration policy are quick to point out that America has a long history as a nation of immigrants. But today's immigration laws are a slap in the face to American tradition. We've created a culture that rewards unlawfulness, allowing illegal immigrants into our country where they cause undue burden on our welfare and healthcare systems, and threaten the very security of our nation. (Remember, the terrorists responsible for September 11 were able to enter and remain in our country because our immigration policies have no teeth).

In December, I was proud to support H.R. 4437, House-passed legislation to enforce our immigration laws. Now that the Senate is taking up immigration reform, it is crucial they pass legislation similar to the House bill -- legislation that puts enforcement first and says "no" to blanket amnesty.

As a physician, I know you have to stop a patient's bleeding before trying to heal his wounds. Likewise, we must stop the bleeding of our borders before we can address other issues of reform. Unfortunately, the legislation making its way to the Senate floor sounds a lot like amnesty for an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants, and it puts guest worker programs ahead of crucial border security reform.

When you consider the current state of our immigration system, it's clear this isn't the kind of reform we need. Our borders are hemorrhaging, with thousands of illegals crossing into America each month. We have an incomplete border fence that does little to stop this flow. The millions of illegals currently living in our country are taking a heavy toll on local schools, hospitals, and social services. Our border enforcement is woefully understaffed, and unable to uphold the laws currently in place. To make matters worse, our state and local law enforcement officials lack the jurisdiction to apprehend illegal immigrants within their own communities.

House Republicans recognized this crisis and voted to add 750 miles to the border fence and grant border authorities increased power to expedite the removal of illegal immigrants. The House also specifically avoided blanket amnesty for the 12 million illegals currently residing in the U.S.

Our Senators have witnessed this same crisis. Now, they risk having the crown jewel of their plan be a guest worker program, while giving short sight to the important border security measurers our nation needs. This kind of reform will not accomplish the security and enforcement achievements of the House-passed bill.

Instead, the Senate must ensure any guest worker provisions do not reward lawbreakers or encourage other illegal immigrants to cross the border in search of jobs, benefits, and the unearned reward of citizenship. The Senate must include House-passed provisions to construct the border fence, eliminate the catch-and-release policy, significantly increase border patrol agents and their technological tools, and allow state and local authorities to help in this crucial effort.

Without these provisions, any Senate-passed bill will be unacceptable to those of us who worked hard to ensure H.R. 4437 would effectively stop the onslaught of illegal immigrants entering our country. Border security must be our primary goal, and until we can effectively enforce our laws, it is difficult to have a meaningful debate over guest worker programs.

We should remember what the late Congressman Sonny Bono said when asked for his position on illegal immigration: "It's illegal." Reforming our system requires a commitment to security and lawfulness, and our Senate colleagues must pledge their resolve to these core principles.

http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=13607
 

5.  Peace Isn't Made When Real Wrongdoing Goes Ignored - San Antonio Express-News

By Jonathan Gurwitz
Web Posted: 03/29/2006 12:00 AM CST

"The consequences of doing nothing in the face of evil were demonstrated when the world did not stop the Rwandan genocide that killed almost a million people in 1994. Where were the peace protesters then? They were just as silent as they are today in the face of the barbaric behavior of religious fanatics."

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Jose Ramos-Horta, writing in the Wall Street Journal, May 13, 2004

A peace laureate acting as an advocate for war might seem odd. Odd, unless you understand that war is not the worst evil known to mankind. And odd, unless you understand that the absence of war is far from being the same thing as peace.

"Some may accuse me of being more of a warmonger than a Nobel laureate," Ramos-Horta wrote. "It is always easier to say no to war, even at the price of appeasement. But being politically correct means leaving the innocent to suffer the world over, from Phnom Penh to Baghdad."

I recalled Ramos-Horta's powerful essay while reading the piddling statement from Christian Peacemaker Teams after coalition forces stormed a house on the outskirts of Baghdad and freed three of the organization's members.

An insurgent group took hostage two Canadians and a Briton along with American Tom Fox on Nov. 26. The kidnappers, the Swords of Righteousness Brigades, murdered Fox in early March.

A break came last week when a man captured and interrogated by the U.S. military divulged information about the location of the three remaining hostages, whom coalition forces promptly rescued.

"Our hearts are filled with joy today as we heard that Harmeet Singh Sooden, Jim Loney and Norman Kembler have been freed safely in Baghdad," CPT said in a statement on March 23.

If you didn't know better, you could read the entire press release and draw the conclusion that the Christian Peacemakers had simply compelled a spiritual revelation in Fox's murderers, who then safely freed them.

That's certainly the impression one gets from the intentionally misleading headline Texans for Peace put on its Web site: "3 Peacemakers friends released" - not rescued, released.

There are plenty of denunciations in the CPT statement about the illegal occupation of Iraq, the illegal detention of thousands of Iraqis and the pain British and American forces are inflicting on hundreds of thousands of others.

What you won't find in the original statement is a single word of gratitude to the individuals who risked their lives to save those of the Christian Peacemakers.

Later, CPT augmented the original statement with an addendum. "We have been so overwhelmed and overjoyed to have Jim, Harmeet and Norman freed that we have not adequately thanked the people involved with freeing them."

Not adequately? How about not at all?

This is par for the course for CPT. The Chicago-based organization's interest in peace tends only to be proportional with the involvement of the U.S. government.

Christian Peacemakers urgently made it to Iraq in time for the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. But they somehow missed out on his 25-year reign of terror, his gassings of the Kurds and his massacres of Shiites.

Similarly, Christian Peacemakers arrived in Afghanistan at the end of 2001, in time to document the devastation caused by U.S. bombing, but too late to peacefully mediate on behalf of the victims of the Taliban.

Just as the "human shields" were willing to protect the Baathist regime from American bombs but not Iraqi civilians from jihadist bombs, Christian Peacemakers seem committed to "waging peace" only against the United States and its allies. There are today, for instance, Christian Peacemaker Teams in Colombia and "Palestine," but none witnessing the genocide in Sudan.

To turn the other cheek - one's own cheek - is a principled demonstration of Christian pacificism. To avert one's gaze from evil, to divert the gaze of others and distort their perception of it, is neither principled nor does it advance the cause of real peace.

http://www.mysanantonio.com/opinion/stories/MYSA032906.02O.gurwitz.1159bbf3.html
 

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