Voter ID and Proof of Citizenship

Missouri is trying to join Arizona in requiring people prove that they are U.S. citizens before allowing them to vote. The battle over voting rights will expand this week as lawmakers in Missouri are expected to support a proposed constitutional amendment to enable election officials to require proof of citizenship from anyone registering to vote. The measure would allow far more ...

McCain Reaches Out to Latino Small Business Owners

John McCain goes Español in his latest ad campaign. Matt Yglesias calls the ad "shrewd," noting that Latinos tend to vote based on their interests rather than as a bloc, that McCain needs to distance himself from the "I hate immigrants" wing of the party, and that "given the tendency of small business owners everywhere to love the GOP a specific ...

Obama on Guns, God, and Hate in Rural America

Barack Obama's foray into pop psychology, trying to explain why rural Pennsylvanians aren't warming to him and are asking him to talk more about patriotism, is causing quite the stir in the blogosphere. "You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now ...

Absolut Redraws USA - Mexico Border

Absolut Vodka has got some 'splainin' to do: Laura Martínez found the ad in the print edition of Quién magazine in Mexico City and it's going viral. Jim Hoft has picked it up, calling it an "Absolut-ly Outrageous Ad," Pierre Legrand profanely calls for a boycott, and Brian Ledbetter goes with "Absolut-ly Insulting." Michelle Malkin cranks it up a ...

Michael Chertoff Interview - Border Fence, RealID, and Alert Levels

As mentioned earlier, I had the opportunity to interview Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff this afternoon on his ordering environmental waivers to expedite construction of a fence along the U.S. - Mexico border and other issues. The summary below is a description, not a transcription, of the conversation, unless quotation marks are used. Noting that these issues have been known ...

DHS Waives Environmental Rules for Border Fence

I'm scheduled to interview DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff later this afternoon about a new policy announcement and other issues related to his department. AP's Eileen Sullivan highlights the changes: The Bush administration plans to use its authority to bypass more than 30 laws and regulations in an effort to finish building 670 miles of fence along the southwest U.S. border by ...

Bloomberg Not Running, Nation Recovers Quickly

Michael Bloomberg says that he is not running for president but has an op-ed in the NYT purporting to show that he's smarter and more reasonable than those who are and it's therefore the nation's loss. WATCHING the 2008 presidential campaign, you sometimes get the feeling that the candidates — smart, all of them — must know better. They must ...

McCain’s CPAC Reconquista

Mark Steyn reports that the only McCain supporters he spotted at CPAC were illegal aliens disguised as college kids: I arrived at CPAC just before Mitt began to speak and was struck by the number of young student-ish types milling about in McCain T-shirts. While my minder went off to check her coat, I was loafing around the lobby, heard ...

Why Give Drivers’ Licenses to Illegals?

Jim Harper has a good post up on Cato regarding the debate over whether illegal immigrants should have driver's licenses.The right answer here isn’t obvious, but it is important. Many people believe that illegal immigrants shouldn’t be “rewarded” with drivers’ licenses. Fair enough: the rule of law is important. There’s also a theory that denying illegal immigrants “benefits” like driver licensing ...

Gazans Knock Down Border, Flee to Egypt

Massive numbers of Palestinians are fleeing to Egypt. Tens of thousands of Palestinians on foot and on donkey carts poured into Egypt from Gaza Wednesday after masked gunmen used land mines to blast down a seven-mile barrier dividing the border town of Rafah. The border breach was a dramatic protest against the closure of the impoverished Palestinian territory imposed ...

Huckabee Would NOT End Birthright Citizenship (Updated)

Mike Huckabee wants to overturn the 14th Amendment, the Washington Times reports. Mike Huckabee wants to amend the Constitution to prevent children born in the U.S. to illegal aliens from automatically becoming American citizens, according to his top immigration surrogate — a radical step no other major presidential candidate has embraced. Mr. Huckabee, who won last week's Republican Iowa caucuses, promised ...

Tancredo Won’t do Spanish Debate

The Miami Herald features a column by Tom Tancredo explaining why he turned down a Spanish-language debate sponsored by Univision. While it never occurred to me that Tancredo would attend such a debate, let alone to care whether he did, his explanation is interesting: I declined the invitation to participate in the Spanish-language Republican presidential debate on Sunday because I ...

Illegal Immigrants Create Community College Controversy

North Carolinians are up in arms over a statewide community college policy that allows illegal immigrants to attend community colleges at out-of-state tuition rates: A recent legal memo from the North Carolina Community College System office broadening the definition of “open door” admissions sparked a firestorm across the state. Citing a 1997 state attorney general opinion that “denies colleges the authority ...

U.S. Visa Policies Costing Billions

Fareed Zakaria reports that our counterterrorism policies have led to a marked decline in tourism during a tourism boom -- and is even keeping out Brits and Japanese. According to the Commerce Department, the United States is the only major country in the world to which travel has declined in the midst of a global tourism boom. And this ...

English Only Laws

The EEOC recently ruled that requirements that employees speak English on the job violate the 1964 Civil Rights Act. This led to action in Congress to overturn the regulations, which in turn sparked heated exchanges among the legislators, John Fund reports: It's been less than a week since New York's Sen. Hillary Clinton and Gov. Eliot Spitzer had ...