On April 28, Democratic Senators began circulating a 26-page comprehensive immigration reform proposal which may soon be introduced in the Senate in bill form. Some of the ideas in this proposal are good, some bad, and a few are ugly. In this post, we discuss what we like about the proposal, in particular, some much needed reforms in the legal […]
Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) must be rolling in his grave. The conservative Republican senator from Arizona ran for President in 1964 on a platform condemning “Big Government”. As a kid, I read Goldwater’s “Conscience of a Conservative” and came away with a strong conviction that America was founded on the principle of individual freedom, and that no […]
Thanks to a healthy dose of jet lag (My wife and I just returned from walking on the Great Wall of China a few days ago!), I finally found the time to read the Supreme Court’s new decision in Kentucky v. Padilla. Although I was impressed that Justice Stevens, in the majority opinion, found that criminal […]
May 2010 promises to be a very good month for persons born in the Philippines who wish to immigrate to the U.S. through their relatives. Of course, when you are born in a country with some of the longest waiting times in the world for family-based immigration, “good” is a relative term. Want to immigrate through […]
Volume Fifteen, Number Four Special Message: With increased privacy and security concerns around the inbox, mostly due to viruses and spam, delivering our monthly newsletter to your e-mail address presents many challenges. Sometimes you don’t receive our newsletter. However, if you add our e-mail address to your address book or safe list, this should insure […]
This evening, I watched a debate on television between a proponent and an opponent of comprehensive immigration reform aka CIR. The proponent emphasized that we need CIR not for the benefit of the undocumented, but because it would stimulate the American economy. The opponent said that this amounted to “open borders” and that our immigration system was already […]
The Highway Patrol officer pulls over a speeder on the freeway. It’s a young woman in a Red Camaro. “Do you know how fast you were going?”, he questions her. “I don’t know, officer”, she stammers, “I’m late for a job interview, and I wasn’t paying a lot of attention. I’m really sorry.” “Not as sorry as I am” replies the officer, […]
Volume Fifteen, Number Three Special Message: With increased privacy and security concerns around the inbox, mostly due to viruses and spam, delivering our monthly newsletter to your e-mail address presents many challenges. Sometimes you don’t receive our newsletter. However, if you add our e-mail address to your address book or safe list, this should insure […]
As Rodney King famously remarked, “Why can’t we all get along?” As Democrats and Republicans in Congress have spent the past year beating each other up regarding the health care bill, do we want the same thing to happen with immigration this year? At the moment, President Obama cannot even find two Republican senators out of 40 […]
The concept of separation of powers, and of “checks and balances”, is as old as Ancient Greece and the Roman Republic. Our Founding Fathers modeled the U.S. Constitution on principles derived from Enlightenment philosophers like Montesquieu, who believed that “the judiciary was generally seen as the most important of powers, independent and unchecked…” He specified that “the independence of the judiciary has […]
