Say Anything Blog

Gary Bauer in HUMAN EVENTS explains why Georgia is so important and just what is at stake.

In so doing he reveals the complete absence of moral justification for the Left’s position that somehow, it just isn’t our fight.

By now, the details of Russia’s war with Georgia are well known. Vladimir Putin, Russia’s prime minister, had been planning the invasion for months and massed thousands of troops and hundreds of armored vehicles along the Russian-Georgian border. Russia had been provoking Georgian troops and waiting for the slightest reason to attack. The ensuing five-day war over the breakaway Georgian provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia resulted in the slaughter of thousands of Georgians, including many civilians, and the displacement of tens of thousands more.

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Borat isn’t really from Khazakstan (or however it is spelled).  He is really Sasha Baron Cohen, kinda of like a Jewish, English Tom Green, adopting different personas and setting up bogus interviews with celebrities, politicians… or setting up situations like this.

So pull on your cowboy boots and prepare to shout out yee haaaw to this politically-incorrect tune.

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See if anyone remembers this one.

Tell me it ain’t so John (or is it Juan?)

For all his sucking up to and mollycoddling the Amnesty for Illegals vote, McCain seems to have a tough time keeping two constituencies who are bitterly opposed to one another happy.  On one hand he has, of course, the Hispanic (by which we are supposed to believe that vote is firmly for Amnesty) and on the other, Conservatives, who are heatedly against any form of Amnesty for Illegals, whatever camouflage terms are used to describe it.

Evidently, when McCain tried to mollify enraged Americans that he had gotten the message, well, he enraged Hispanics. 

Sheesh!

David Paul Kuhn Sun Jul 27, 6:36 PM ET

GOP strategist Bill McInturff has long emphasized that earning 40 percent of the Hispanic vote is critical for Republicans to win. Today, McInturff is John McCain’s pollster, and by his metric McCain has a serious Latino problem.

While he earned the support of about seven in ten Hispanics in his last Arizona Senate race, a Pew Hispanic Center poll released Thursday shows that just 23 percent of Latinos intend to vote for McCain in the presidential contest, barely half of the four in ten Latino voters who exit polls showed voted for President Bush in 2004.

“You have to understand in a way that the Republican party is damaged among Hispanics,” conceded Hessy Fernandez, McCain’s spokesperson for Hispanic media. “But at the end of day, it’s the contrast between Sen. McCain and Sen. Obama.”

McCain’s problem looks to be most pronounced among Protestant Latinos, who had seemed to be the GOP’s doorway into the Hispanic population. From 2000 to 2004, Protestant Latinos increased their share of the total Hispanic electorate from 25 percent to 32 percent, in large part because of Bush’s evangelical outreach and strategic microtargeting of the community. Even as turnout increased, support for Bush among the group rose from 44 percent in 2000 to 56 percent in 2004.

The Pew poll, however, shows that only a third of Protestant or Evangelical Hispanics intend to vote for McCain, while 59 percent support Obama — who also enjoys a 50-percentage-point lead among Catholic Latinos, long a solid bloc of the Democratic coalition.

While McCain and Bush have similar views on most social issues, including abortion, McCain’s candidacy may mark a return to an era of blue-blooded Republicans less vocal about their religious beliefs. Barack Obama, by contrast, speaks comfortably and frequently about his faith.

The biggest reason for the shift, though, has been the heated debate over immigration reform that has alienated many Hispanic voters previously receptive to the GOP — and that nearly cost McCain, a co-sponsor of the bipartisan 2006 immigration reform bill that inflamed conservatives, his party’s nomination.

In the 2006 midterm election, exit polls showed Latino support for Democrats had increased by 16 percentage points from 2004, compared to a six-percentage-point increase among whites.

While McCain’s support of the immigration bill — which was eventually voted down — appealed to many Hispanics, it infuriated some conservatives. McCain, his campaign then floundering, promised primary voters that he had “got the message,” vowed to prioritize enforcement and even claimed he wouldn’t have voted for his own bill it if was to have come up again.

The shift in tone placated conservatives while infuriating many Hispanics.

Luis Cortes, one of Time Magazine’s 25 most influential evangelicals in America and twice an early Bush backer — in 2000, Bush visited Cortes at his North Philadelphia office to court his support — hasn’t yet decided who to back this year.

“I’m going to vote brown,” Cortes said.

Does anyone remember: Sin loi, Victor Charlie?

Updated for John M might be, Lo siento, Bendajo!

Image from Secret Bases website, whose text reads:

US Navy’s Marine Corps Security Force & Naval Criminal Investigative Service
and former GCHQ Eastcote, West London, close-up courtesy of Google Earth

The website entitled Cryptom provides detailed open- source intelligence on a platter for anyone who might care to use it.  Indeed at the very top of their home page is the inscription:

Donate $25 for two DVDs of the Cryptome 12-years collection of 46,000 files from June 1996 to June 2008 (~6.7 GB). Click Paypal or mail check/MO made out to John Young, 251 West 89th Street, New York, NY 10024. The collection includes all files of cryptome.org, jya.com, cartome.org, eyeball-series.org and iraq-kill-maim.org, and 23,000 (updated) pages of counter-intelligence dossiers declassified by the US Army Information and Security Command, dating from 1945 to 1985. The DVDs will be sent anywhere worldwide without extra cost.

It should be noted that, in the intelligence field, they say that 95 percent of intelligence can be obtained via open source (at least in free societies, this is not true in Statist regimes, where even basic information is closely-guarded, punishments for revelations are severe and what information is publicly available if often used as ruse and deception) The other 5 percent, they say, is like a bikini, it’s only covers a small percentage of the nation’s secrets, but it’s a very important five percent.

Like anything security-related, we cannot expect any given secret to be protected by impervious, impregnable protection.  Doors, locks, levels of security classification are founded under the principle at what difficulty or cost they will incur on foreign or hostile intelligence services to breach or obtain.

Why then, make sensitive information available to the Red Chinese, Cuban DGI, North Korea, Libya, Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, Al-Qaeda and any number of hostile groups on a silver platter? 

Taken from the perspective of someone or some organization who wanted to set up surveillance on US government officials, an installation, or transport of sensitive materials, conduct activities related to air transport, with nefarious objectives, Cryptom does a lot of their legwork for free.

For instance, one page details GPS Tracking of Radioactive Material Transport another details the counter surveillance and security, including a detailed look at security personnel and access passes which are then easily faked with the proper color paper and a laser jet printer by anyone, in links entitled Preparing for President Bush at Monticello, VA and Photos of Bush lying at Monticello.

Another page, A Practical Attack on the MIFARE Classic gives detailed methods on defeating security measures, such as MIFARE type security access passes:

Contactless smartcards are used in many applications nowadays. Contactless cards are based on radio frequency identification technology (RFID).... Some target applications of mifare are public transportation, access control and event ticketing.

[PDF file]

Other links include such wonders as:

GPS Tracking of Radioactive Material Transport

Israeli Police Stations Eyeball

Storage of Explosives During Transport

Classified National Security Information

Eyeballing US Secret Service Headquarters

(more...)

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Is this old news?

I haven’t seen it.  I haven’t seen it here on SAB.

Forget about crooked cops wanting free coffee… this is our elected leaders working against the United States and for our worst enemies.

Speaker Pelosi Was Sending Messages to FARC Terrorists While Undermining Colombian Government!

New information reveals that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was indirectly sending messages to the FARC. The Marxist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) is designated as a terrorist group by the US government. Speaker Pelosi was doing this while at the same time she refused to bring a free trade agreement with Colombia up for a vote in the US House. In fact, Pelosi took extraordinary steps to block this trade agreement with America’s closest ally in South America.

Colombian Sen. Piedad Cordoba (left) is currently under investigation by the Colombian attorney general for ties to the FARC. Cordoba claims that Speaker Nancy Pelosi was sending messages to the FARC terrorists. Cordoba also claimed during FARC negotiations that Pelosi had assigned Rep. Jim McGovern, as the point man. Captured FARC documents confirmed in March that Mr. McGovern had been working with an American go-between, who had been offering the rebels help in undermining Colombia’s elected and popular government.

The Wall Street Journal reported on the confiscated FARC documents that implicated Rep. McGovern back in March:

The Reyes hard drive reveals an ardent effort to do business directly with the FARC by Congressman James McGovern (D., Mass.), a leading opponent of the free-trade deal. Mr. McGovern has been working with an American go-between, who has been offering the rebels help in undermining Colombia’s elected and popular government.

Mr. McGovern’s press office says the Congressman is merely working at the behest of families whose relatives are held as FARC kidnap hostages. However, his go-between’s letters reveal more than routine intervention.

Now, today we find out who was directing Rep. McGovern—Speaker Pelosi!

Mary Anastasia O’Grady at The Wall Street Journal reported:

Last fall, Mr. Chávez and the FARC hatched an audacious plan whereby the Venezuelan would take “proof of life” of Ms. Betancourt to French President Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris, where the plight of Ms. Betancourt was a cause célèbre. The rebels wrote that Mr. Chávez was sure French pressure for negotiations would cause President Bush to “order Uribe to allow the meeting” between Mr. Chávez and the rebels on Colombian soil, something Mr. Uribe had refused to do. The rebels reported that Mr. Chávez was “super-motivated,” because he viewed the rendezvous as a public-relations coup that would give him and the FARC “continental and world renown.”

That plan flopped, but Mr. Chavez had other cards up his sleeve. One involved Colombian Sen. Piedad Cordoba, who is currently under investigation by the Colombian attorney general for ties to the FARC. She figures prominently in the captured rebel documents, and is notoriously close to Mr. Chávez.

She met at the Venezuelan presidential palace with FARC leaders last fall. From that meeting the rebels reported that “Piedad says that Chávez has Uribe going crazy. He doesn’t know what to do. That Nancy Pelosi helps and is ready to help in the swap [hostages in exchange for captured guerrillas]. That she has designated [U.S. Congressman Jim] McGovern for this.”

If the speaker of the House was working with Ms. Cordoba in this scheme, her judgment was more than a little misguided. The rebels write that on a trip to Argentina Ms. Cordoba told them, “It doesn’t matter to me the proposal that Sarkozy has made to free Ingrid. Above all, do not liberate Ingrid.” In short, why give up such a useful pawn?

Nancy Pelosi has some explaining to do

Democrats and treason

The Left’s Campaign to Destroy Our Military and Lose the War on Terror

Americans cannot comprehend how their fellow countrymen could not love their country. But the left’s anti-Americanism is intrinsic to their entire worldview. Liberals promote the right of Islamic fanatics for the same reason they promote the rights of adulterers, pornographers, abortionists, criminals, and Communists. They instinctively root for anarchy against civilization. The inevitable logic of the liberal position is to be for treason.
-- Ann Coulter, TREASON, p. 292

Since the Episcopalian / Anglican church ordained its openly-gay bishop of New Hampshire, Gene Robinson, in 2003, those churches have faced internal division—or schism—between the Conservatives and the pro-homosexual leadership.  No doubt, a major reason the Conservative minority has not completely split off from the pro-homosexual leadership long before this is that they would lose their churches and any money the congregations might have accumulated over years of worship.

The Washington Times released today a headline from back in May (????) about the fight taking place in Virginia, which has a unique law, allowing congregations to split off and keep their churches. 

The pro-homosexual leadership is fighting this tooth-and-nail.  For if they lose, they lose not only the money and property, but the single cudgel they have keeping those congregations wanting to actually follow the word of the Bible under their control.

Episcopalians want law voided
Julia Duin THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Wednesday, May 28, 2008

A Civil War-era law being used to allow a group of conservative Episcopalians to desert the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia with millions of dollars worth of property is on trial today at the Fairfax County courthouse.

Attorneys for the diocese and the national Episcopal Church, along with representatives of other mainline denominations, will argue that Virginia’s 1867 “division statute” is unconstitutional.

The statute was enacted to allow congregations that dissented with their denominations over slavery and secession to leave with their property. It is being contested by the diocese and the national Episcopal Church. Protestant denominations such as Methodist, Lutheran, African Methodist Episcopal, Worldwide Church of God, Presbyterian and Church of the Brethren have filed friend-of-the-court briefs.

William E. Thro, the state solicitor general, will defend the statute in front of Circuit Judge Randy I. Bellows.

Today’s hearing is part of a multi-trial battle pitting the diocese against 11 conservative churches who broke away from the denomination 18 months ago over issues of biblical authority and the 2003 election of the openly gay Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire. Most of Virginia’s bishops and delegates to the 2003 Episcopal General Convention in Minneapolis voted for his election.

A conservative minority of Episcopalians, centered in Northern Virginia, coalesced in opposing the election and announced in late 2006 they were leaving the diocese and taking $30 million to $40 million worth of property with them. The churches now belong to the Anglican District of Virginia.

The Episcopal Diocese sued to keep the dissenters from using the division statute to keep the property. But when Judge Bellows ruled April 3 that the division statute applied, the diocese challenged the statute’s constitutionality.

The diocese says the statute discriminates against hierarchical churches, which answer to denominational headquarters, in favor of congregational ones, in which local churches make decisions about their leaders, finances and property.

“Matters of faith, governance and doctrine are to be free from government interference,” the diocese said in its May 15 statement, adding that the division statute is “hostile to the concept of religious freedom.”

Jim Oakes, vice chairman for the Anglican District of Virginia, said the division statute, which is unique to Virginia, protects church property for those members who have a stake in it.

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I ... ask for your trust that when I say, I remain committed to fair, practical and comprehensive immigration reform, I mean it.

I think I have earned that trust.

Yes he has.

I don’t want to fail again to achieve comprehensive immigration reform.

“I don’t think [McCain] can appease the hard-core xenophobes and convince the Latinos he is standing up for them at the same time,” said Cecilia Munoz, senior vice president of NCLR, who has been in the middle of immigration bill negotiations. “I think he has to pick a side and make it clear. Is he going after the votes of the xenophobes?”

McCain, the Arizona senator, dismayed Latinos last year when he stepped back from his immigration bill that would have tightened the borders and legalized undocumented immigrants. As boos and hisses from angry Republican conservatives grew louder at campaign events, he switched course and vowed to “first” secure the borders. Were his failed bill to come up again, he would not vote for it, he said.

Now, as the likely GOP nominee, McCain is talking again about the urgent need for comprehensive immigration reform, though he still mentions border security first. Confusion over his position has been compounded by pundits who wrongly suggest that McCain and Obama share the same views on immigration.

Truth is, McCain’s position on immigration is not a flip-flop but a zigzag.

And of course…

McCain said he wanted to correct the record. He said he had supported the immigration legislation even though his critics said it would be “political suicide.”

“I took my lumps for it without complaint. My campaign was written off as a lost cause. I did so not just because I believed it was the right thing to do for Hispanic Americans. It was the right thing to do for all Americans.

McCain has clearly signaled, again and again, that he means to enact Amnesty for Illegals if elected.  Any sops he feeds to Americans that he has gotten the message are election-time lies.

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Oh yeah.

Like the Founders envisioned the Courts being used this way.

Bible Publishers Sued for Anti-Gay References

A Michigan man is seeking $70 million from two Christian publishers for emotional distress and mental instability he received during the past 20 years from versions of the Bible that refer to homosexuality as a sin.

Bradley LaShawn Fowler, a gay man, claims his constitutional rights were infringed upon by Zondervan Publishing Co. and Thomas Nelson Publishing, both of which, he claims, deliberately caused homosexuals to suffer by misinterpretation of the Bible.

Fowler, 39, is seeking $60 million from Zondervan and another $10 million from Thomas Nelson.

According to a USA Today report, Fowler’s two separate suits against the publishers claim the intent of the Bible revisions that refer to homosexuals as sinners reflect an individual opinion or a group’s conclusion.

Fowler says the deliberate changes made to first Corinthians, chapter six, verse nine caused him “or anyone who is a homosexual to endure verbal abuse, discrimination, episodes of hate, and physical violence ... including murder.”

Fowler, who is representing himself in both lawsuits, claims the publishers are misinterpreting the Bible by specifically using the word homosexuals, which made him an outcast from his family and contributed to physical discomfort and periods of demoralization, chaos and bewilderment.

“These are opinions based on the publishers and they are being embedded in the religious structure as a way of life,” he tells a local NBC TV station affiliate in Grand Rapids.

Fowler admits that every Bible printed is a translation that can be interpreted in many ways, but he says specifically using the word “homosexual” is not a translation but a change.

Fowler says Zondervan Bibles published in the ‘80s used the word homosexuals among a list of those who are “wicked’ or unrighteous and won’t inherit the kingdom of heaven.”

Zondervan, for its part, issued a statement to the Grand Rapids press stating it does not translate the Bible or own the copyright for any of the translations it publishes

“We rely on the scholarly judgment of the highly respected and credible translation committees behind each translation and never alter the text of the translations we are licensed to publish,” the statement reads.

“We only publish credible translations produced by credible Biblical scholars.”

U.S. District Judge Julian Abele Cook Jr., who will hear Fowler’s case against Thomas Nelson, says the court “has some very genuine concerns about the nature and efficacy of [Fowler’s] claims.”

© 2008 Newsmax. All rights reserved.

Sometime back Whistler opined on the problem of a politicized NASA using its good name to weigh in on so-called Global Warming, in his thread The Problem with NASA, saying among other things, that:

… not to mention the embarrassing number of times they’ve been caught relocating their thermometers on black top parking lots and above air conditioners.

with the implication being that through negligence or design, they are skewing their results.

Yet this gem that came out recently piqued my curiosity:

NASA Chief’s Global Warming Remarks Called ‘Naive’

NASA sought today to deflect criticism its chief received following skeptical comments he made on the topic of the agency’s role in global warming research.

During an interview Wednesday with NPR, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin expressed doubts that global warming was an issue that humans could or should address.

In a telephone interview today, NASA spokesman David Mould told LiveScience that climate is an important issue about which the agency provides a significant quantity of data, and that it will continue to provide that data, but that NASA’s job is not to make policies or advise on policies.

Along the same lines, NASA clarified Griffin’s remarks (corrected him, politically) in a press release issued late Wednesday:

NASA is the world’s preeminent organization in the study of Earth and the conditions that contribute to climate change and global warming. The agency is responsible for collecting data that is used by the science community and policy makers as part of an ongoing discussion regarding our planet’s evolving systems. It is NASA’s responsibility to collect, analyze and release information. It is not NASA’s mission to make policy regarding possible climate change mitigation strategies. As I stated in the NPR interview, we are proud of our role and I believe we do it well.

Griffin’s comments to NPR’s Morning Edition included: I have no doubt that global—that a trend of global warming exists. I’m not sure it’s fair to say that is a problem we must wrestle with.

He further stated that it is wrong for mankind to say what climate conditions are best for the planet.

To assume that [global warming] is a problem is to assume that the state of the Earth’s climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure it doesn’t change, he said. First of all, I don’t think it’s within the power of human beings to assure that the climate does not change, as millions of years of history have shown.

Second of all, I guess I would ask which human beings—where and when—are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we might have right here today, right now, is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that’s a rather arrogant position for people to take.

Evidently, Griffin inadvertently let the truth slip out and committed heresy in departing from the adopted party line. The rest of the statements from NASA were attempts to get the toothpaste back into the tube.

But is this simply a matter of differences? If the French were investigating the matter, they would gravely intone cherchez les femmes However, my old FBI mentor, had a different view: follow the money. (more...)

What does it mean to be a Republican?  What does it mean to be a Conservative?  The two used to be pretty much synonymous, but with McCain at the helm, the Party’s tiller is soon to be jammed hard a-port.

Some Conservatives intend to try to minimize the damage.

Conservatives to battle McCain over platform
Activists don’t want his views on warming, stem cells, other issues adopted

Conservative activists are preparing to do battle with allies of Sen. John McCain in advance of September’s Republican National Convention, hoping to prevent his views on global warming, immigration, stem cell research and campaign finance from becoming enshrined in the party’s official declaration of principles.

McCain has not yet signaled the changes he plans to make in the GOP platform, but many conservatives say they fear wholesale revisions could emerge as candidate McCain seeks to put his stamp on a document that currently reflects the policies and principles of President Bush.

”There is just no way that you can avoid anticipating what is going to come. Everyone is aware that McCain is different on these issues,” said Jessica Echard, executive director of the conservative Eagle Forum. “We’re all kind of waiting with anticipation because we just don’t know how he’s going to thread this needle.”

....

One main concern is immigration. The current plank on that issue calls for a temporary-worker program, something that both Bush and McCain have supported but that many conservatives view as unwarranted amnesty for people who arrived in the country illegally. She would like a much tougher position and is wary of McCain on the issue.

“Our job is to make sure that the grass roots continue to have a say,” she said.

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DocDave posted this a little while back under the heading of The Cosmological Effects On Climate Change and it was received with a collective yawn, the readership evidently preferring to bicker over smaller things.

What was lost in that shuffle was very good ammo to smite any Global Warming Gore-oid about the head and shoulders for being such a knave.

Not only is the Earth greatly affected by changes taking place within its own molten core and in the composition of the Sun itself other planets in this system are being greatly affected as well.

Long story short: our galaxy, really a small one as far as galaxies go, is being gobbled up by a much, much larger galaxy and we are coming abreast of the galactic gravitational disk.

What does it all mean?

We of the overarching Sagittarius Dwarf Elliptical Galaxy have finally come down next to, and even with the massively powerful spiral armed equatorial plane of the Milky Way Galaxy.

In our movement through space, our Earth has now fully begun to respond to the more powerful galactic energies and electro-gravitational bias of the massive Milky Way. We have reached the higher energy equatorial disc region of the massive spiral arm. We have now been “adopted” by a new system, a stronger and more powerful system, and we can expect changes on almost every level of energy.

Whatever these changes are, they are all part of the natural birth, death, rebirth and transformation of the cosmos. As our knowledge of the universe grows, we cannot but understand how much we do not understand. Such is life.

What it also means is that it doesn’t make a lick of a difference to our ability to change the climate if you use light bulb A or light bulb B, whether you have the carbon footprint of a poor, pensioned spinster or of the jet-setting AlGore.

It also means that if the Global Warming types know all this stuff it would be the equivalent of an old wizard scaring the peasantry into doing his bidding after he threatens to take away the Sun, even though he knows it’s just a regularly-scheduled eclipse.

If they don’t know, then they should be schooled.

Either way, if Obama or McCain allowed to go forward with their asinine and incredibly destructive Cap-and-Trade policies, we will all be reduced to penniless serfs and for no good reason.

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Those Global Warming folks have their eyes directed completely inwards, from the atmosphere to the Earth’s surface and have been ignoring all the far more massive influences that affect Earth and Earth’s climate from within and without.

Let’s start with the Earth’s Magnetic Core

Rapid changes in the churning movement of Earth’s liquid outer core are weakening the magnetic field in some regions of the planet’s surface, a new study says.

“What is so surprising is that rapid, almost sudden, changes take place in the Earth’s magnetic field,” said study co-author Nils Olsen, a geophysicist at the Danish National Space Center in Copenhagen.

The findings suggest similarly quick changes are simultaneously occurring in the liquid metal, 1,900 miles (3,000 kilometers) below the surface, he said.

The swirling flow of molten iron and nickel around Earth’s solid center triggers an electrical current, which generates the planet’s magnetic field.

(more...)

Yes, in the raucous blowback from the McCain-Bush Comprehensive Immigration Reform a.k.a. Amnesty for Si se puede! Illegals, McCain first told Americans to just calm down. Then, after getting an earful at each Townhall meeting he attended, he told us he gotten the message.

Apparently not.

McCain, Obama court Hispanic voters

“It will be my top priority yesterday, today and tomorrow,” McCain said. “We have to secure our borders ... but we also must proceed with a temporary worker program that is verifiable and truly temporary. We must also understand that 12 million people are here, and they are here illegally, and they are God’s children.” He promised to address the issue in “a humane and compassionate fashion.”

It doesn’t take a crystal ball to see that the corpse of Amnesty for Illegals will be revived by a President McCain and there won’t be a damn thing the rest of America has to say about it… because ... don’t ya know… he’s Republican.