Congress will approve an immigration bill that will grant citizenship rights to most of the 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens in the U.S. after Democrats take control next month, predict both sides on Capitol Hill.

While Republicans have been largely splintered on the issue of immigration reform, Democrats have been fairly unified behind the principle that the illegals currently in the country should get citizenship rights without having to first leave the country.
[...]
Democrats in both chambers say they will start with some form of legislation first drafted by Sens. John McCain, Arizona Republican, and Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat, which was the basis for the bill that was approved earlier this year by the Senate.
“This past May, the Senate Judiciary Committee reported and then the Senate passed bipartisan versions of comprehensive immigration reform to bring people out of the shadows while strengthening our borders,” Mr. Leahy said. “I look forward to building on that work next year and making progress on a bipartisan effort that improves security, supports our economy and respects the dignity of all people.”
[...]
Republicans also expressed little confidence that their leadership team is committed to blocking amnesty.
[...]
Rep. Tom Tancredo, the Colorado Republican and a leading critic of amnesty, was initially dejected by November’s elections, fearing that Democrats would ram through immigration reform. But a recent congressional trip with conservative-leaning “Blue Dog” Democrats changed his mind.
They don’t want to touch the issue, he said, after seeing fissures already develop among Democrats’ base voters on the issue. Illegal-alien advocacy groups think the Senate bill is too harsh on illegal aliens because it imposes fines on all and excludes others with criminal records. Those groups also insist future workers have a direct path to citizenship—a requirement that labor unions fiercely oppose.
“I think it’s going to be much more difficult for them to do than I had thought the day after the election,” Mr. Tancredo said.

Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Richard Lugar (R.-Ind.) may have publicly backed Bolton, but his inability to keep the committee in line prior to a vote set Bolton up for a humiliating defeat. Lugar’s failure to recognize—and address—Sen. George Voinovich’s (R.-Ohio) unease about Bolton handed Democrats what they needed: a Republican who objected to Bolton.

When the Senate, hamstrung by Voinovich, failed to act, President Bush was left with one option: a recess appointment for Bolton. During his time at the UN, Bolton proved his critics wrong. He won widespread praise, and this past July, even Voinovich changed his tune on Bolton, promising to vote for him.

When liberal Sen. Chuck Schumer (D.-N.Y.) signaled he was ready to vote against a filibuster of Bolton, it appeared the once-embattled Bolton would finally have the Senate’s backing.

Except another misguided Republican chose to do the unthinkable. On the eve of the Republican primary in Rhode Island, liberal Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee chose to stage a protest, vowing to oppose Bolton because he didn’t agree with the U.S. policy in the Middle East. At the time, it looked like an election move to win over independents.

Sen. Liddy Dole (R.-N.C.), then-chairwoman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, instead of pulling Chafee’s funds to send him a message, decided to send money and staff to Rhode Island to save Chafee. It worked. On September 12, Chafee defeated conservative challenger Steve Laffey. The resources Dole provided were the boost he needed down the stretch.

What did Dole and the GOP get for their investment? Chafee refused to change his stance on Bolton, and even after losing on November 7 to Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse, Chafee remained adamant that he would continue to oppose Bolton’s confirmation.

Lugar, Voinovich, Dole and Chafee aren’t the only ones to blame for this mess. Bush and his congressional liaison team failed to accomplish what should have been a simple mission. Now, with Bolton having no hope for winning confirmation, the GOP has surrendered. Bolton, meanwhile, will end his tenure at the UN early, and the agency he sought to reform is left without the reformer it so desperately needs.

Life for ordinary Iraqis is now more dangerous than under Saddam Hussein as the country descends into violence “much worse” than civil war, according to the outgoing secretary general of the United Nations, Kofi Annan.

“If I was an average Iraqi, I would make the same comparison [about life under Saddam],” he told the BBC.

“They had a dictator who was brutal but they had their streets.

“They could go out, their kids could go to school and come back home without a mother or father worrying ‘Am I going to see my child again?’

“A society needs minimum security and a secure environment for it to get on. Without security, not much can be done.”

North Dakota State made the most of another appearance in the spotlight.

Andre Smith scored 26 points to lead the Bison to a 64-60 victory over Marquette (No. 9 ESPN/USA Today, No. 8 AP) in the championship of the Blue and Gold Classic on Saturday night.

“It was fun, I’ll tell you that much,” said North Dakota State coach Tim Miles, whose team also beat then-No. 15 Wisconsin on the road last season. “It was a great night.”

Smith, who had 18 points in the second half, shot 11-for-18 from the field and had six rebounds, three assists and three steals.

“Andre was jacked up,” Miles said. “We all came here for one reason, and that was to win the tournament.”

Mike Nelson, the tournament’s most valuable player, added 19 points for the Bison (5-2), who shot 51.9 percent (14-27) in the second half.

“We showed pretty good poise down the stretch,” Nelson said.

Jerel McNeal had 16 points and seven steals for the Golden Eagles (8-1), who were upset 71-64 by Winthrop in last year’s championship game, snapping their 13-0 run in Blue and Gold Classic play under coach Tom Crean.

“All in all, we got beat by the better team tonight, no doubt,” said Crean, whose team never led after a 3-2 advantage. “They beat us fair and square in every facet of the game.”

The Bison (5-2), who moved to Division I in 2004-05, won their fourth straight game by making 6-of-8 from the free-throw line in the final 44 seconds.

Dan Fitzgerald made a 3-pointer to cut the North Dakota State lead to 60-57 with 32.6 seconds left, but Marquette couldn’t get any closer. Smith made two free throws to increase the lead to five with 30 seconds left.

Marquette missed consecutive 3-pointers before Brett Winkelman made two foul shots for a 64-57 lead with 9 seconds left. The Golden Eagles forced 25 turnovers but shot just 35.8 percent. They also committed 17 turnovers.

“We gave up too many open looks,” McNeal said. “In crunch time, we couldn’t get the stops when we needed to.”

Nelson made a 3-pointer with 13:54 left to put North Dakota State ahead 39-30. Wesley Matthews scored for Marquette with 10:05 left, cutting it to 43-40, but baskets by Lucas Moormann and Winkelman gave the Bison a 47-40 lead with 8:19 to play.

Combine this with hard 10-9 loss to Minnesota in football this and going D1 maybe wasn’t too crazy.

CQ Politics

As Democrats and Republicans prepare to spar for any advantage in the narrowly divided Senate starting next month, Joseph I. Lieberman, who’s describing himself these days as an independent Democrat, has made it plain that he does not feel all that indebted or beholden to either major political party.

But it doesn’t seem as though he has control over the party created this summer — Connecticut For Lieberman — so that he could stay on the general election ballot in Connecticut despite his loss to Ned Lamont in the Democratic primary. That party is now in the prickly trusteeship of Fairfield University political scientist John Orman, a fierce antiwar critic of Lieberman’s who briefly ran himself for the Democratic Senate nomination before giving way to Lamont. Orman complained that Connecticut For Lieberman was but a fly-by-night front group, founded only to promote Lieberman’s re-election.

To prove his point, Orman went to the town hall in his home town of Trumbull last month and changed his voter registration from Democrat to Connecticut For Lieberman. Since the party had no other registered members — the senator himself has always been a registered Democrat — Orman promptly returned home to vote himself party chairman. His first act in office, unsurprisingly, was to issue a blistering news release denouncing Lieberman for “turning his back on our party” — and for rejoining the Senate Democratic Caucus “even though he was not the nominee from the Democratic Party.”

Orman also took it upon himself to draft new rules of party membership. Among them is a requirement that future Connecticut For Lieberman party candidates must actually join the party — and a stipulation that future party candidates will not be limited to those named Lieberman.

Lieberman’s office didn’t answer requests for comment.

It’s far from clear whether Orman’s reign as party chair will pass muster under Connecticut law. Though Trumbull officials accepted Orman’s change-of-registration form, Dan Tapper, a spokesman for Connecticut Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz, says new parties may not accept new members until after state election results are certified, and that happened only last week.

Orman — who petitioned Bysiewicz to kick Lieberman’s “fake political party” off the November ballot back in August — would be delighted with a showdown with the secretary of state, who’s a Democrat.“I want her to make the same rulings against me that she wouldn’t make against Joe,” he says.

Such an action, he argues, would shine a bright light on how Lieberman’s election-year innovation “just makes a mockery of the way we form new political parties. He had no intention at all of forming a real political party.”

Two days before he resigned as defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld submitted a classified memo to the White House that acknowledged that the Bush administration’s strategy in Iraq was not working and called for a major course correction.

“In my view it is time for a major adjustment,” wrote Mr. Rumsfeld, who has been a symbol of a dogged stay-the-course policy. “Clearly, what U.S. forces are currently doing in Iraq is not working well enough or fast enough.”

Nor did Mr. Rumsfeld seem confident that the administration would readily develop an effective alternative. To limit the political fallout from shifting course, he suggested the administration consider a campaign to lower public expectations.

“Announce that whatever new approach the U.S. decides on, the U.S. is doing so on a trial basis,” he wrote. “This will give us the ability to readjust and move to another course, if necessary, and therefore not ‘lose.’ ”

“Recast the U.S. military mission and the U.S. goals (how we talk about them) — go minimalist,” he added. The memo suggests frustration with the pace of turning over responsibility to the Iraqi authorities; in fact, the memo calls for examination of ideas that roughly parallel troop withdrawal proposals presented by some of the White House’s sharpest Democratic critics.

Much has been written about the North American Union, most of this great investigative work by Jerome Corsi of Human Events.

Officially it is called the The Security and Prosperity Partnership.

Convening that same day in Waco, Texas, for a trilateral meeting, the North American leaders said the security and prosperity of their nations are “mutually dependent and complementary” and explained the impetus for the new initiative.

“In a rapidly changing world, we must develop new avenues of cooperation that will make our open societies safer and more secure, our businesses more competitive, and our economies more resilient,” they said in their statement.

The leaders indicated that the North American partnership will work to achieve these ends and “is committed to reach the highest results to advance the security and well-being of our people.”

Despite the fact that solid conservative outlets such as World Net Daily and Human Events have reported on this, the right-wing blog world seems to want to deny these facts.

Jawa Report sweeps this under the rug:

I’m pretty sure no one would make the mistake of tagging me as a lackey for the Bush Administration, but it looks like Tom Tancredo may be working overtime to quash that pesky “Tancredo in ‘08” movement. Is Tancredo really telling reporters that George Bush is actively working to merge the U.S., Canada and Mexico into a single country?

One would think that a U.S. Congressman would realize that any statement that starts with “I know this is dramatic” and proceeds to defend the ideas of “right-wing fringe kooks” is pretty unlikely to go anywhere good.

The folks at Hot Air also are in full denial.

We get e-mails from those people all the time. We … do not publish them.

I’d hoped never to have to serenade TT with our official conspiracy-theory theme song. But I fear the hour has arrived.

For some reason the right-wing bloggers are total blind on this issue.

More like just totally ignorate of what is going on.