But since there is precious little evidence that a conservative can be educated, I really don�t expect you to change.

In which case, you bloviate here only to see your name on James' blog.

The person who builds an illegal addition onto a a house is breaking the law regarding building codes but is not breaking the criminal laws so is not a criminal.

So too, the person who crosses the border illegally is breaking the immegration laws but is not breaking any criminal law so is not a criminal.

If you are unhappy that they are not criminals you can try to get the law changed to make it a criminal act. Right now it is no more a crime than is an illegal lane change.

But you only show your stupidity by saying they are criminals when you should know better. But since there is precious little evidence that a conservative can be educated, I really don't expect you to change.

Even if this bill is passed, and untold numbers of immigrants become felons, as opposed to the penny-ante criminals they are now, what's the _best possible outcome from this_?

Vastly more local, state, and federal law enforcement resources (not to mention Homeland Security), which are stretched thin as it is, get taken off of whatever they're currently doing & moved over to tracking down these "new criminals". Industries that rely heavily on (and tacitly allow) illegals to work - agriculture, construction, and a sizeable chunk of the service industry - begin to tank. More jobs become available to Americans, but at wages far below what it will take to afford the products of those labors, as prices skyrocket. Meanwhile, since this effort is pretty blatantly focused solely on arresting hispanics, the concept of defending America from terrorism slips farther down the priority list. Gotta keep those rabid bigots in the hard-base happy!

In the end, this is just another attempt to distract the American public from the fact that Bush's talk about fighting terrorism and making America safe is just that - all talk.

It's a bit more complicated than that. The mere act of being an "illegal alien" is not currently a criminal act*. It's a civil offense, which by definition is "an infraction of a law that is not a crime."

This may not make sense using the colloquial definition of "criminal," but the distinction is important legally. For example, you don't go to criminal court for [most instances of] speeding, and it doesn't appear on your criminal record. That's why the proposed legislation is a big deal; it's putting the offense into an entirely different class of jurispridence.

* There are a host of federal criminal laws that are commonly violated in the process of entering and working the U.S., such as entering the country without inspection, failure to carry alien registration and false claim of U.S. citizenship. But these are often very diffucult to prove for evidentiary reasons.

In case you missed it, advocates of illegal aliens held rallies in several US cities over the weekend, the largest being in, of course, L.A.More than 500,000 immigration rights advocates marched in downtown Los Angeles yesterday, demanding that Congre...

Zip forward 100 years to last Sunday. The pics coming out of that event, you may notice that those are not American flags they're waving, but a Mexican ones.

Forgive me, but that doesn't strike me as being overly committed to the American culture, American ideals, and certainly not American law.

Clearly, what these people protesting in LA the other day are after is not the American way of life, they're simply after the money. That, I'm afraid, brings nothing to the American culture.

And capitulation to their demands doesn't, either.

Atleast that is what they think.

They arent assimilating they are conquering one fence jumper at a time.

Michelle Malkin
These sentiments, as I've noted before, are not limited to ethnic fringe groups--but also mainstream Democrat politicians ...

You are doing it here. Illegal aliens are not criminals unless, like anyone else, they break a criminal law.

Those who cross the border illegally are no more criminals than those who cross a lane illegally while driving. Neither violation of the law is itself a criminal violation.

Illegal violations of zoning codes are another example of things people do that are illegal but do not make them criminals.

But since it suits conservatives purposes to call these immigrants criminals I don't expect you to change. Your readers, however, should note just how dishonest this is.