My growing dislike for the act came from one place: I don’t trust anything with a fluffy, positive acronym. The Dream Act? It sounds like something I saw in Tijuana involving Louie Anderson and a tub of pudding. So, of course, the actual bill would be a let down.

Anyway, the name stands for “The Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act,” and that was the problem. It was a lousy bill based on a bunch of unfortunate words, that together, don’t mean squat.

They were picked to spell “dream.” That’s it.

Now, I was for the Act, until I read up on it. Here’s what I noticed:

-the idiotic qualification “if they go to college or join the military” equates sacrifice with reward. I’m all for giving citizenship for immigrants who defend our country -because that’s awesome. But getting citizenship because you go to school? Seriously. Snoring in class is easy. War is hell.

-the age range for eligibility, even after it was dialed back – is still too broad (up to age 30), with the potential for lying so wide – that the act seems as porous as our border. It’s like we’re replacing a sieve, with a sieve.

But look – I’m for some kind of Dream Act, but not this one. Let’s revamp legal immigration: first let’s act like every other country (including Mexico) and secure our borders, then fix this Act. But to do that, we need to be honest. Stop tying lousy bills to emotional heartstrings. Call it what it is. This is about jobs, not diplomas. My suggestion, ditch the school crap, make the military the primary avenue for citizenship.

Make it a sequel. The Dream Act 2: Killing For A Green Card.

And if you disagree with me, you’re a racist homophobe.

TONIGHT:

Matt McCall

Imogen Lloyd Webber

Congressman McCotter

–

Is the anguish acting? You be the judge.

If nothing else, in the subtext of his litany of complaints directed at incompetent Democrats, Jon Stewart does an excellent job pointing out the poetic justice of a Brown win. Nothing could be sweeter than seeing ObamaCare die with an out-of-nowhere Divine Intervention win of Ted Kennedy’s seat.

And watching all the shenanigans Pelosi, Reid, Obama and the Massachusetts legislature have pulled coming home to roost would only make this victory that much sweeter.

Congress has an approval rating of 21%. And when I heard that Harry Reid is actually discussing plans to sneak single-payer, National Health Care legislation not only past the will of the people, but sneak it past the lower house of Congress by attaching it as a rider to a completely unrelated bill… 

…Well, that is an act of such unremitting and bastardly sinfulness that it simply has to be addressed. 

Click Image to Play

I take a look at the four Senators and twenty-something Representatives currently under ethics investigations of one kind or another, and present to you, the American people, my Modest Proposal to get government back in the hands of the governed. 

I’ll save the details for the video, but suffice it to say that the Whittle Plan, at $935,000,000 is not exactly cheap, but it is definitely a bargain at .0003 of the Federal Budget for 2008. 

I don’t want to spoil the delicious details, but here’s the elevator pitch: 

We already pay farmers not to farm. Why can’t we pay legislators not to legislate?  

It’s bold and it’s foolproof. Congressional greed and mendacity have been allowed for. 

I dare say it is an idea whose time has come.

NEA chairman Rocco Landesman, who was confirmed by the Senate on August 7 and began serving the day after his agency organized its now-infamous conference call, may be an excellent Broadway producer. But he’s still struggling to find his voice as a public servant.

Rocco Landesman

As evidence, let me cite his statement on the conference-call matter, issued yesterday. For readers who might be jumping into this discussion for the first time: This call, organized and participated in by the NEA using agency (in other words “taxpayer”) resources, asked some 75 artists to use their talents to promote a huge portion of President Obama’s domestic agenda. Two days later, 21 arts organizations endorsed Obama’s health-care plan. According to the Washington Times, those groups received $2 million in NEA grants during the four months leading up to the call.

Instead of issuing an apology for his agency’s role in this controversy, Landesman uses his statement to “clarify the issues” regarding the call. “Here are the facts,” he writes, and then presents an actual list (“Fact 1,” “Fact 2,” … “Fact 6”). This is amazing. It reads like a schoolboy defending some indefensible behavior. Rest assured, no form of apology appears anywhere.

I won’t pain you with each “fact,” just one that is particularly appalling.  It reads, in part:

Fact 3:  This call was not a means to promote any legislative agenda and any suggestions to that end are simply false.

Just a glace at the transcript of the call reveals Landesman to be flat-out wrong.

You can read the piece in full here.

Enzi Leads GOP HELP Committee Inquiry
Into Alleged NEA Political Activity

 WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), Ranking Member of the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, today led his fellow Republican HELP Committee members in requesting an explanation regarding possible violations of federal law at the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).  Enzi and his colleagues sent the request to NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman. 

In the letter delivered today the Senators questioned the possibility of “taxpayer dollars to engage in lobbying activities to promote the President’s health care legislative agenda and other legislative priorities” during several August conference calls with NEA grant recipients and community stakeholders.

The letter also raises serious questions regarding how the NEA’s participation in these calls may have violated federal criminal restrictions on lobbying Congress, the Hatch Act, appropriations restrictions on spending funds for such purposes and possible contradictions with the entity’s mission under its authorizing statute.

“…The promotion to NEA grant recipients of topics that are at the top of the President’s legislative agenda and urging a call to action creates a serious conflict of interest,” wrote the Senators.

The full text of the letter to Landesman is below:

It was even more recently that San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom (D) confessed to having an affair with the wife of his campaign manager and good friend. Senator Diane Feinstein’s (D-CA) response? “Look, we all make mistakes.” Sanford’s indiscretion is greeted by the left with derision (and with censure by South Carolina Republicans); Newsom is now running for Governor.

How can this be? Is it an aversion to the idea of any objective moral standard? A different philosophy in the requirements of leadership? One can certainly assign a portion of it to the new liberal maxim- embraced by the mainstream media-that conservatives are evil while liberals are good. Blame the rest on the left’s tendency to confuse principles with men.

A belief in universal moral virtues that transcend race, culture and economic status is a precept of conservatism. For new liberals public advocacy of this ideal is hypocrisy disguised as sanctimony. Therefore, when conservatives fail to clear that moral high bar, to liberal eyes it is not only testimony of the vacancy of the principles it is also confirmation of the ultimate depravity of the conservative mind and evidence of why they can’t be trusted with public office.

Because there is little value in principles, for the new liberal it is much better to set the moral bar as low as possible or better yet do away with it all together; simply proclaim that morality is relative and that what is good and true for you may not be true and good for me. And because progressives are doing the good work of bringing about social justice when they inevitably fail to live up to the rather low moral expectations they set, it is for them simply evidence of their humanity and a private matter not for public consumption.

What they miss is that it is precisely the onward march of progressivism that makes the private failings of public servants very much our business.

There was a time in our history when what we expected from our public servants was that they kept the machinery of government well oiled. Times have changed. Progressive politics ushered in an era of leaders as visionaries. Our leaders now ask us to trust them to use the machinery of government to solve the problems of mankind – to make our lives better. We are asked to follow them as they lead us into the Promised Land. It is precisely this change in the focus of leadership that makes the issue of private morality important. The question is not one of sex so much as it is one of credibility and judgment.

If a man can’t be trusted to guard the faith of his wife and the mother of his children, can he be depended upon to guard the public trust? Appeals to the greater social good ring hollow when made by men that visit disaster on their own families and the families of others.

It is ironic indeed that as we are asked to turn ever growing amounts of control over our personal lives to government, we are simultaneously being asked to dismiss notions of moral accountability as prudish or worse.

Of course none of this will make any sense if you are of the opinion that tradition is “so yesterday.” It will make even less sense if the inability of individual men to live up to certain principles is proof of the worthlessness of the principles as opposed to evidence of the weakness of the men.

Despite all the sit-downs Obama had with the Republicans – apparently too many for Speaker Pelosi’s tastes – and despite the fact that the House version of the Stimulus Bill contained specific tax breaks for which the Republicans had asked – though not to the degree they wished – not a single GOPer would break ranks, step up and vote for the bill.  A surprisingly “my way or the highway” attitude for the minority party whose eight years of good cogitating was a major factor in whipping America into the stellar fiscal shape we find ourselves.

When three Republican Senators voted for the Senate version of the bill – Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, and Maine Sens. Olympia J. Snowe and Susan M. Collins, who in particular worked tirelessly with moderate Dem Sen. Ben Nelson to try and reach a true bipartisan compromise – they were immediately put on a “hit” list by the conservative National Republican Trust PAC.  The PAC’s executive director Scott Wheeler stating: “We just want to send a message that we’re going to have a long institutional memory, and we’re going to remind your constituents of what you did.”

What they did?  What’d they do?  Vote for a bill that might ultimately not be big enough to get the country out of the worst economic mess most Americans have ever lived through?  Wouldn’t it be punishment enough to dis-invite them to some soirée held at South Carolina GOP chairman Katon Dawson’s whites-only country club?  To be fair, Dawson resigned his membership to the Forest Lake Country Club in Columbia, SC last September.  That was just a gratuitous dig I had to throw in because…I wouldn’t have been allowed into the club to hand it to him personally.  But to the point of Trust PAC’s tactics; sure, it’s not unusual for one political party to target another political party over a vote.  But for a party to head hunt their own…?

And then, of course, there’s Judd Gregg.  Never mind that Gregg himself lobbied for the job of commerce secretary, never mind New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch making a deal to appoint Republican J. Bonnie Newman to Gregg’s seat.  When it came time to engage in the greater good Gregg, in his own words, realized he could not be a “team player.”  Worse, working with the president he “couldn’t be Judd Gregg.”  Political solipsism if ever there was.  Gregg being something like the T.O. to the Senate.

Regardless of the Republicans’ centrist deceptions, I would hope that Obama continues to rise above and reach out.  Hopefully there will be others such as Specter, Snowe and Collins who put the people’s work above myopic party ideology.  But if nothing else, as the economy improves, President Obama’s actions will serve to shame the lip servers of bipartisanship into taking up true residence.

For more perspective, visit www.thatminoritything.com

I had the privilege of interviewing Rep. Gillibrand for a documentary currently in the works. Barely knew who she was at the time, but by the end of the interview, I knew she was going places. Smart, sharp, personable — and even better-looking in person. One of the more impressive congressional members I’ve ever met. The fact that she is a fiscal conservative who voted against the bailout should hearten us all.

Al Franken persisted as a comedian for decades. Hell, they still refer to him as a “comedian” in the papers. He spent years writing, performing and radio-show hosting as a comedian. The guy managed to do this despite the handicap of a complete and total lack of comedic ability (and, for the record, ideology doesn’t trump comedy for me… I’m a huge Carlin fan and cite Kevin Smith as my reason for giving this business a go). Franken’s career has led me to imagine a skinny, 90lb kid with asthma who wants to be a linebacker for the Pittsburgh Steelers. He has no skill, no size, no talent. But he makes it  – and though he’s never made a tackle, he is widely credited as one of the NFL’s all-time greats. A hero!  But Franken is a hack.

A hack, you say? How dare you, Wilson! I loved that Stuart Smalley movie! Asshole.

Yeah, I’m an asshole. But I’m also right about Franken. It seems the man has failed forward in every stage of his life.

Franken’s supporters make a big deal of his degree from Harvard. And while an Ivy League education will take you a long way, as it certainly did for Franken, President Obama, all the writers at “The Simpsons” and President Bush (among thousands of other household names), it’s usually accompanied by some direction for the graduate’s life. Franken’s degree is in General Studies. It may as well be in Pong or some such shit. Because when I went to school at Saint Cloud State University, a school that is as much a polar opposite to Harvard as anything, people majoring in General Studies were usually the passed-out bastards I had to step over to get into one of the party houses before engaging in some of the college world’s most heralded underage consumption.

After that, Franken started working for SNL as a writer. He created one memorable character, Stuart Smalley (who was, admittedly, funny for about 4 minutes and seventeen seconds), before being shit-canned for doing a monologue about the president of NBC. Okay, there was no official firing … in the same way that Bush didn’t “fire” Brownie after Katrina, but Lorne Michaels left at the end of that season, and without a skirt to hide behind, so did Franken.

He popped up on SNL again after the smoke cleared but didn’t get to anchor the show’s Weekend Update, so he quit. I can hear that monotone, boring voice: “Uh, well, I guess I, maybe you should let me host Weekend Update. After all, it’s the “decade of Al Franken.” No shit, he actually called the 80’s the “decade of Al Franken,” even though unbridled capitalism, patriotism and Reaganism (the antithesis of Franken’s ideology) were very much in vogue and propelled the nation to greatness after Carter’s malaise. But he quit. Or was fired. Or whatever.

He wrote some books including “Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot” and “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them” in between writing screenplays like “Stuart Smalley Saves His Family.” Now, this is the only spot where Franken supporters are going to be able to reasonably argue with me. Those books were successful. And they are the source material that formed the public persona that we Minnesotans rejected in the 2008 election. Oops. I mean, these are the books that gave the super-crazy left the idea that Al Franken would be a decent Senator from the Great Tundra of Minnesota. These voters clearly didn’t consider the movies Franken wrote. But I’ll give them the whole “He was on the NYT Bestseller List” thing.

Franken, an astute Harvard grad, figured out that a whole bunch of people listen to, and therefore there’s a big market in get information from talk radio, so he began hosting a really, really, really, really, really terrible show on something called Air America, which was and continues to be a failure because it’s boring to listen to liberals for the sake of listening to liberals. And because liberal listeners aren’t capitalistic by nature and therefore don’t buy shit that’s advertised, advertisers don’t like this. But Fuckin’ A, you can send a donation. Or you can just take money from the Boys and Girls Club of America.

Franken’s radio show was an abysmal failure. But that didn’t stop him. No, that guy is persistent. Most Harvard graduates are. So to get out of his contract to serve the nation and the people of Minnesota, Franken moved back to the state where he hadn’t lived since he got into showbiz and was a coastal dude because that’s where all the action is his childhood, and announced that he was running against Senator Norm Coleman in 2008.

If you’ll forgive me a little tangent, I’d like to point out that Coleman is no conservative, nor, as I prefer, a libertarian. He’s against drilling in ANWR, among other things, and is generally considered a centrist among both Republicans and Democrats. In full disclosure, I’ve met Norm a couple of times and think he’s a nice guy. Not a raving libertarian like me, but a nice guy. The same could probably be said of Obama. Not my cup of tea politically, and may run the country into the earth, but seems like a nice enough fellow. The point is, the liberals who hate Coleman so much are kind of Windmilling themselves (a term coined by Joe Soucheray, referring to the desire for eco-friendly windmills by environmentalists, who then decry said windmills because of their aesthetics). Coleman’s not a millionaire, he used to be a Democrat, and his ideology is pretty much right down the middle… all things Minnesota Dems have been screaming for.

Back to Franken. He announced he was leaving the radio to run for Senate, and people said, “Really, AL? You’re a comedian. You don’t have any ideas. You haven’t really lived in Minnesota for decades.” Al shrugged and, as always, persisted. He ran and then lost the election. But that didn’t stop him. Franken knew a flawed manual recount was coming. And he quickly announced that we “still don’t know who won the election.” He was down by 215 votes.

After quite a bit of legal wrangling, wherein some votes were counted that shouldn’t have been, some votes were counted more than once, Lizard People got some undue media coverage and Minnesotans declared that they didn’t give a crap which guy was the next Senator, the state canvassing board announced that Franken had the numbers. Coleman’s 215-vote lead wasn’t enough, but now that Franken has 225, he says he’s won. And knowing that Minnesota’s judges are both soft and, in true Minnesota fashion, are opposed to confrontation, I don’t believe that Coleman will win his challenge. Franken will be the next Senator from California New York Minnesota.

I predict that Al Franken will be elected President of the United States of America in 2012. He’ll run, maybe even lose, but he’ll find a way to be called President. And maybe we need someone like Franken in the White House. After all, I think the President should be someone with real resolve. And Al Franken is perhaps the most persistent candidate we’ve ever seen. No failure, no matter how monumental, stops him. Now, if only he didn’t believe that government, in all its glorious ineptitude, is the answer to all our problems.