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Sunday, October 08, 2006

Pocket Veto For The Secure Borders Act?

Oh my...

Is Bush going to sign the 700-mile border fence bill (the Secure Fence Act), passed with great fanfare by Congress a little over a week ago? According to an AP story from Friday:

President Bush has not yet signed the Secure Fence Act

That signing ceremony he held last Wednesday in Arizona, it turns out, was only for a Homeland Security appropriations bill that included “$1.2 billion for border fencing.” It wasn’t the Secure Fence Act.

We’re approaching pocket veto territory here, aren’t we? Under the Constitution Bush has 10 days to sign the bill into law--a deadline that would seem to be rapidly approaching.

Yesterday I was defending a move which allowed the President to spend appropriated border security money on aspects of a “virtual fence” in addition to the actual physical barrier between the U.S. and Mexico itself, but if the President allows the Secure Fence Act to slip by without signing it into law both he and his party are going to be facing a ticked-off conservative base.

And that’s the surest way to ensure a Democrat majority in Congress come November.

According to the Senate voting record the legislation passed Congress on September 29th, which means that the President has to sign it into law either today or tomorrow in order for it to become law.

He’d better do it too, or we can all say hello to Nancy Pelosi and her tax hikes and impeachment hearings.

Comments

Avatar for WOOF

If G thought this bill would adversely effect the
coming election not only would he sign it ,
but he’d be in Arizona digging foundations.

Look for a signing statement.
Why veto a bill when the unitary Preaident
can ignore it?

WOOF on October 8, 2006 at 08:50 am
Avatar for gregdn

I don’t think Republicans would not vote just because of this.  On the other hand I do wonder what he’s up to.

gregdn on October 8, 2006 at 09:24 am

If he does not sign it, it still becomes law… right?

The Prez has three options: sign it, veto it, or do nothing.  The third option I always understood is kinda like implied consent in that it becomes law if he has it on his desk for 10 days and does nothing.


I think Rob hates me… I mean, just look at the pic he took of me!

Sphagnum on October 8, 2006 at 10:31 am
Avatar for Stormy70

You can’t fence the Rio Grande. As a land owner with livestock, I would kick off any idiot trying to fence my land and prohibit the lifeblood of south Texas. Water down there is a major issue. This is just a stupid bone thrown to an overwrought base.

Stormy70 on October 8, 2006 at 11:11 am

As a land owner with livestock, I would kick off any idiot trying to fence my land and prohibit the lifeblood of south Texas. Water down there is a major issue. This is just a stupid bone thrown to an overwrought base.

While I doubt you would be stupid enough get yourself put in jail like that, this is an interesting point you make that I had not heard before.  And I agree that this is more of a “bone” thrown to the “enforcment first” crowd in the conservative base than a well-thought out plan.


I think Rob hates me… I mean, just look at the pic he took of me!

Sphagnum on October 8, 2006 at 11:52 am

Why would he sign a bill that has no funding?


Una Salus Victus Nullam Sperare Salutem

2Hotel9 on October 8, 2006 at 12:55 pm
Avatar for Stormy70

I am not a land owner, but my relatives live on the border. The river is used by farmers and ranchers on both sides of the border. You can’t fence Mexico’s side, and you really can’t fence the Texas side. It would be like fencing the Mississippi, whose course is always changing. Fence California, that’s where the trouble is.

Illegal immigration has been happening throughout our history. The 1800s saw millions of cheap chinese laborers, and the early 1900s had their issues with eastern europeans. Mexicans for the most part are family oriented and conservative. I would care more if the issue wasn’t always framed by the Mexican border, instead of the stupid visa program, where half of the illegal immigrants got into the country.
I could care less about immigration as an election issue. It’s all about Terrorism and Tax Cuts. I am a simple girl.

Stormy70 on October 8, 2006 at 01:53 pm
Avatar for gregdn

Stormy:
Here in So. Cal it’s a big issue.  Yes, we’ve always had illegal immigrants, but I don’t think you appreciate the staggering increase in numbers that has occurred since about 1970.
While you can’t fence the entire border for reasons you’ve mentioned, they can do a much better job than what has been done in the past.

gregdn on October 8, 2006 at 02:13 pm
Avatar for Digger

Mexicans for the most part are family oriented and conservative.

This is total BS. Maybe it used to be this way, but it isn’t anymore. The whole reason the Liberals are pro illegal alien is because they find they vote Liberal more than Conservative when they are legalized. That’s their only reason, not because they are humanitarians at heart.

For instance Myth Debunked

For years, conservative open-borders advocates have touted Hispanic “family values” as a prime reason to increase immigration. Hispanic immigrants, these conservatives say, will save America from itself. At a time when Anglo and black families are disintegrating, when society is becoming increasingly atomized and alienated, Hispanics will bring the traditional values that the country so desperately needs.

...

The truth is now supplanting the fiction. Last Friday, the New York Times ran an editorial, “Young Latinas and a Cry for Help,” that laid out the real state of the Hispanic family. A quarter of all Latinas are mothers by the age of 20, few of them married, reported the Times. This out-of-wedlock teen-birth rate is three times that of white teens, and significantly more than that of blacks as well. The Hispanic dropout rate is also the highest in the country — the Manhattan Institute’s Jay Greene puts it at 47 percent.

There is simply no way to square the facts about Hispanic family breakdown with the myth of the redemptive Hispanic. Talk to any social worker and she will tell you that illegitimacy has become completely normalized among her Hispanic clients.

So your one sentence diatribe—that you’ve probably been spouting for years with no proof—is completely bogus.

Get out of Texas some time and visit areas where it has really devastated their communities and states and then come back and tell us that’s how you want your community to be.

Digger on October 8, 2006 at 09:05 pm
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