Open Letter to President Barack Obama, Honorable Members of Congress

As a citizen, I am deeply concerned about the safety and security of our nation. I believe illegal immigration poses a dire national security crisis of the highest order and a long-term threat to the American way of life. Mr. President, to win the war on terror, it is essential that the border fence—the one authorized by Congress and promised to the American people--be built in its entirety. All illegal aliens apprehended at the border or internally should be sentenced to serve a minimum of 6 months working on the border fence to help reduce its cost. I am also urging you and the Congress to responsibly address what has become an illegal alien crisis by considering the following other key issues as well:

#1 -- Secure our borders. As first priority, America must stop the hemorrhaging at the border and stop the flow of illegal aliens by investing all the resources necessary to secure our borders. However, improvements in border infrastructure and staffing must be buttressed with vigorous internal enforcement. Mandatory E-verification across the board for all employers, public and private, and all employees, current and new hires, is an essential element of internal enforcement. No more foot-dragging on E-Verification; implement it now! Also, existing immigration laws must be enforced as a vital component of our Homeland Security.

#2 -- No Amnesty. I oppose any form of amnesty for illegal aliens, including the “temporary worker” proposal or any proposals that grant legal residency status or a pathway to citizenship for illegal aliens. Rewarding illegal behavior is certain to increase that behavior. Amnesty, with or without conditions, is a bad idea and sends the wrong message. Amnesty was granted to 1.3 million illegal aliens in 1986. Now we have 12 million, a compound rate of growth of 9.7% per year. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to calculate where that rate will lead in the future if it is allowed to continue or is promoted with yet another amnesty.

1. Build The Fence. As a first priority, America must stop the flow of illegal aliens by investing all of the resources necessary to secure our borders. The 843 miles of double-layered fencing authorized by Congress and promised to the American people has not been built. Yet such a barrier is truly the backbone of any plan to gain control of our border and the illegal aliens threatening our land.

2. Aggressive deportation. Immediate investment in aggressive effort to deport the 12million illegal immigrants currently within our borders – if you’re caught, you are sent back after serving 6 months working on border infrastructure, 2 years if you are a repeat offender. There must not be any official provision to allow self-deportation; if an illegal alien wishes to return to his homeland on his own, his departure must still be classified as "involuntary" so that if he returns he will be classified as a repeat offender/felon. Otherwise, many will ask to be released from detention so they can return home under their own power but they could easily be back the same day if they leave at all. If they are apprehended again, it will be just as if they were not repeat offenders if we allow "voluntary" self-deportation.

3. No benefits. Erect a wall of separation between illegal aliens (and their children) and tax-dollar paid benefits reserved for U.S. citizens and legal aliens. I support The Real I.D. Act (H.R. 418) that prohibits illegal aliens from being issued drivers licenses and prevents terrorists from abusing the asylum laws of the United States. Benefits for birthright citizen children is a huge inducement for border violations. The amount large families of such children can receive represents a cornucopeia of benefits unheard of in Latin America.

4. No work. Stricter punishment of U.S. businesses that knowingly or unknowingly employ illegal aliens. Mandatory E-verification will eliminate any excuse for hiring illegal aliens with false identity papers. Congress needs to establish a national database of legal immigrants to assist both public and private sectors in this effort. The same system should include a provision for the tracking of visa overstays so that they can be promptly apprehended and deported without recourse.

5. Official English. Legislation that establishes English as the Official Language of the United States to be used for all governmental proceedings, publications, and documents at all levels of government. E.O. 13166 must be repealed. Public Interpreters should be provided to those who cannot afford one and who do not have a family member who can serve that function. All other interpreters and translators may be made available but only on a billable basis in hospitals, emergency rooms, police stations and other public facilities. Public and private sectors cannot be required to provide services in alternative languages. True fluency in English must be required for citizenship not just the knowledge of a few words and phrases.

6. No Birthright Citizenship. Illegals flood into the U.S. and then have babies which are granted birthright citizenship. In the U.S., one of the strongest incentives for border violations is the 14th amendment which grants citizenship to anyone who is born in this country. It is difficult to imagine a more irrational and self-defeating legal system than one which makes unauthorized entry into this country a criminal offense and simultaneously provides perhaps the greatest possible inducement to illegal entry. The implementing law for the 14th Amendment must be changed to eliminate this inducement for border violations.

The inducements for border violations include: birthright citizenship, welfare benefits for the families of birthright citizens, inadequate border security and internal enforcement, the lack of adequate sanctions for illegals and their employers, and the availability of jobs. If we deal with all of these effectively, border violations will become unattrative.

Dee's Distortions and Lies

Commentary on Dee’s Tirade

1. Economy: They say they support an improved economy, yet they favor tax cuts for the rich. They favor de-regulation for big business. Under their last administration, they came in with the biggest surplus and, due to their programs, left with the largest deficit.
Many democrats agree with the Republicans that any tax increases during a recession are counterproductive. I expect the compromise that will be reached is to postpone ending all tax cuts for two or three years and then eliminate the tax cuts for the rich. Businesses, big (like the Fortune 500) or small, provide the jobs needed to put America back to work. The more our businesses are freed of taxes, the more competitive they can be in the global marketplace and the more jobs they can create.
The deficit is due to at least three things: Bush’s War, Obam's War, and the deficit. No matter what the Administration says Obamacare will add to the defict.
2. Christian Values: They say they support Christian Values, yet they support an agenda of HATE
This of course is hyperbolic nonsense and sensationalism. This is just another example of a leftwing nut misusing the word Hate for every position they disagree with. Dee is getting hysterical and it shows. Over the years she has become increasingly shrill and unreasonable. She is simply wrong about this. No sane person would even say "...they support an agenda of HATE.". She has become the purveyor of Hate. Any reasonable person can see that from her rants and outright lies repeated ad nauseum. She must be off her Lithium again.
3. American People: They say they are for the American People, yet they are against so-called “entitlement programs.” They want to end social security and Medicare. In order to do so, their first plan is to raise the retirement age to 70.
Republicans are not against all entitlement plans but have opposed any new ones in view of the fact that the existing ones are underfunded. It is a matter of fiscal discipline. Everyone knows that entitlements eat up most of the budget leaving the federal government with little discretionary money for other worthwhile projects. Candidates who suggest doing away with either program have little chance of being elected. If Dee, had been paying attention, she would have seen that people from both sides of the aisle fully recognize this problem but in general have been unable to do anything about it for fear of crossing the public that understandably considers Social Security and Medicare as sacred cows If the objective was to end Social Security, that would obviate the need to raise the retirement age to 70. Raising the age is a simple recognition that unless we increase revenues or decrease expense or a combination of both, Social Security will never be able to cover its unfunded obligations. I have long advocated removing the cap on taxable earnings so everyone pays the same percentage of their earnings into the system while freezing the maximum benefit at the present level as adjusted annually for inflation. That would be a balanced approach with more affluent paying much more without a commensurate increase in benefits. Others would just have to work longer if they can to reduce costs. If that doesn't do it, we will have to raise the combined employer/employee tax rate to 15%. Raising the Social Security tax on the rich rather than the income tax would be more palatable to the people because they could see the benefit. I believe there must be a provision to allow those who are unable to work effectively at age 70 to retire earlier with a small reduction in the benefit in accordance with the standards of the current law.
4. Jobs for Americans: They say they are for American Jobs, yet they want to reduce jobs and cut pay for teachers, police and firefighters.
This is a ridiculous statement. Some states are struggling with grave budgetary problems as a result of their profligate spending driven by the public unions who have no regard for the fiscal discipline that would allow their states to live within their means. When the country of Greece was threatened with bankruptcy for the same reasons, the European Union laid down strict rules Greece had to comply with before any loans would be forthcoming. The Republicans were asking nothing more. They want the states to step up and show what actions they have taken to put their budgets on a sustainable basis before any federal funds are provided. There are many state employees who could and should be laid off first before firemen, teachers, and police but their unions are protecting them just as the teachers’ union is trying to protect their jobs And indeed part of the plan must involve pay cuts for some who are clearly overpaid in comparison with what other states pay their employees. The governor has recognized this and attempted to take action but was thwarted by the courts and the Democrat controlled legislature. Again the greedy unions are at fault. When prison guards make six figures, part of the solution is clear.
5. Immigration: They say they support legal immigration and it is not about being “anti-Latino”, yet they support anti Latino racial profiling bills like sb1070, they support a border fence ONLY on the Mexico border, they support a racial profiling sheriff (apricot), his volunteer masked goons, his suppression sweeps, they support future immigration levels being reduced, but only from Latino or Minority countries, they support English Only, they support Mass Deportation and approve of racial profiling of Latinos; they call citizen Latino children “anchor babies” and delivering babies – “dropping them”; etc. etc.
More hyperbole. Most Americans agree that anti-illegal alien SB 1070 was badly needed and similar measures should be adopted by other states burdened with the costs of illegal aliens. Florida and Missouri have already done so.

The investment in border infrastructure and staffing obviously has to be focused where the problem is the greatest and that is clearly the Mexican border where the drug cartels’ smuggling efforts are most rampant and where millions of illegals find their way across the border. Anyone who claims to have worked for a Fortune 500 company, like Dee, certainly should have at least a minimum appreciation for the optimum deployment of resources.

A major reduction in legal immigration levels from all countries is in the best interests of our country. Since Dee favors a CIR that would increase the number of such immigrants, she is not an unbiased judge of Republican proposals. In the past, various immigration laws have focused on establishing quotas that were representative of the existing population. It is not clear what they are based on now but if the United States is being overrun with illegals from the South it would make sense to reduce the legal quota from those countries to bring the total back into balance. Nevertheless, I am not aware of any Republican proposal that would achieve that goal.

As usual Dee distorts the GOP position on a national language which is shared by many democrats by calling it “English Only” instead of “Official English.” This is an old distortion that Dee has repeated innumerable times. The Spanish language is well-preserved in many other countries of the world. Mexico does not conduct any official business in English. It just makes common sense to eliminate the cost of government publications, materials and ballots that are curently being produced in many languages, especially now that the deficit has gotten completely out of control and will go higher under the Obama Administration.

Mass deportation has never been the policy of the GOP and isn’t now. This is another of Dee’s perennial lies or distortions. The GOP recognizes that some level of foreign labor is needed in the U.S. but would like to make sure Americans have first dibs on jobs.
6. Constitution: They say they believe in and abide by the Constitution, yet this is only when it is convenient for them to do so. They advocate changing the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, and want to end birthright citizenship; they support racial profiling which is against the law.

Republicans believe in and abide by the Constitution even more than the Obama Administration. As I have patiently explained to Dee, the Constitution has been amended 27 times. This is the time for a new amendment or action to reinterpret the words “under the jurisdiction of…” to exclude the children of tourists and illegal aliens. Every developed country in the world, except the U.S. and Canada, has abandoned the concept of birthright citizenship. France did in 1993.
The 14th Amendment has been abused by those who violate the border to drop their babies on American soil. She may not like that phrase but it has been in used since time immemorial. Moreover, if it is a pejorative term, that merely reflect the level of anger at the tourists and illegals who enter our country for the sole purpose of delivering an instant citizen. The GOP merely seeks to curb the abuse of the 14th and obviously will continue to abide by the Constitution until it is changed, not just when it is convenient as Dee suggests.

Racial profiling is illegal but it inhibits the optimum deployment of resources. If one is looking for illegal aliens from the South, it is unlikely you will find them anywhere except in the Hispanic communities or among those who share their features. From a practical point of view, there are many things that can be done to avoid any imposition on Hispanic citizens who wish to cooperate with the law in apprehending illegals.
7. Pro-Life/ANTI Women’s' Choice: They say they are Pro-Life and want to end a woman’s right to choose, however they support the Death Penalty, they advocate wars (e.g. Iraq – no WMD), they advocate assault weapons. They also advocate using torture on prisoners, violating the Geneva Convention.
Everyone knows there is a deep division in the United States over the abortion issue. It was only when several anti-abortion democrat members of the House caved in at the very end, that the Health Care Reform bill was passed. Many of them will regret their change of heart in the upcoming election. It is indeed strange for a Catholic to go against the teaching of her church to advocate for Choice. The church has and may again ex-communicate those who do so. It illustrates how easily some people make up their own rules and indulge in mindless distortions.

It is a mistake to think that all members of the NRA are Republicans. The democrats voted along with everyone else to undertake the war in Iraq, after opposing it later when it became convenient to do so. Now they are trying to claim that they were responsible for the success in Iraq, even though, under the Obama Administration, Iraqis still enjoy only five hours of electricity each day and the car bombings continue -- some success!
8. Pro-Marriage/ANTI Gay Marriage: They say they are Pro-Marriage between a man and a woman, and they rally against Gay Marriage, yet they have the highest rate of members who engage in illicit affairs with male pages, interns, prostitutes and strangers. (eg: larry craig; mark foley, ed schrock; Charlie crist, jim mccrery, david dreier, etc )
Gee Dee, for a moment there I thought you were going to come right out and state your approval of gay marriages or would that be another violation of the Catholic church’s beliefs? I won’t bother to list the illicit affairs of the democrats. Everyone knows this aberration has nothing to do with party affiliation. So what is your position on gay marriage? Don’t keep it a secret from us.
9. Intelligent President: They claim they support intelligent candidates for the Presidency, yet they nominated Sarah Palin for VP.
Palin was a pure poltical choice that brought excitement to the ticket but in the end it was a big mistake. Lieberman would have been a better choice. There have been plenty of dunces and tax evaders in democratic administrations as well. Stupidity has no party boundaries.

The Other Hydra - A Gallery of Dishonor

Some people are so shortsighted that they see no reason why any average American should oppose illegal aliens. Their total focus is on the illegal aliens rather than the national interest. Anyone who disgrees with them must by definition be racists or hate mongers, even distinguished United States Senators. The thing that this other hydra misses is that "leaving the borders open to unlimited illegal entry will ultimately, and it won't take long, reduce the social, political, economic life of the United States to the level of Juarez,Guadalajara, Mexico City, El Salvador, Haiti,India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Sub-Saharan Africa. To a common peneplain of overcrowding, squalor, misery, torture, crime, corruption and rape." Does this vision of America bother them? Apparently not.

Can these folks be considered loyal to the best interests of the U.S.? Hardly! And yet they find it easy to engage in their own brand of hate mongering -- insulting U.S. Senators, the elected representatives of millions of Americans.

A Lawyer Plays the Race Card

A bottom-feeding immigration lawyer we know about favors illegal aliens over his own nation and the wishes of his own fellow citizens. It isn’t much of a stretch from there to what we would call gross disloyalty. He places more value on his immigrant law business than he does on the national interest, the national character, our national sovereignty, quality of life, and standard of living. He seems to believe that the U.S. can accommodate all the impoverished peoples of the world without any adverse impact. Alternatively, he must believe that we should endure the negative effects of excessive immigration in good spirits as a humanitarian gesture to the rest of the world. He must know that we already take more immigrants than any other country in the world.

To support his immigration law practice, he argues for what amounts to open borders based on a belief that our common humanity transcends what he considers to be arbitrary accidents of geography. The borders of a sovereign nation are hardly arbitrary accidents of geography. They were the result of conflicts, negotiations, or purchases. For example, when the Allies acquiesced to the movement of the USSR border westward to the Vistula River in what was formerly Eastern Poland that was hardly an accident of geography. In fact, the irony is that this is the same boundary that was established when the Soviets and the Nazis carved up Poland in 1939. The Louisiana and Alaska purchases are two other examples that established national boundaries that obviously were not arbitrary accidents of geography.

This lawyer believes that realization of our common humanity can lead us toward policies that benefit migrants and citizens alike in the best tradition of this migrant nation. Indeed, such policies already exist as temporary migrant workers are admitted to the U.S. to help with the planting, cultivation, and harvesting of fruits and vegetables. This policy enables them to earn more than they could in their homelands and enables Americans to have a greater variety in their diets.

The U.S. was once a nation where slavery was legal, where women were denied the vote, and which began as a nation of immigrants. We abolished slavery almost 150 years ago and granted woman suffrage in 1920 with the ratification of the 19th Amendment.

In the early days of our Republic, a vast, largely unsettled continent lay before the Founding Fathers and their successors. Natural resources like arable land, timber, fish, water, and minerals seemed limitless. Immigrants were welcomed in large numbers. Now we know natural resources are not unlimited and our policies have changed to reflect that fact. The last major wave of immigration ended in the early 20th century. Those who keep referring to our “immigrant past” are missing the point that the operative word is the word “past.” Our country is now fully developed, settled, and populated. We therefore have a very limited need for more immigrants.

We should, of course, treat immigrants exactly as their status warrants. We allow them to perform a service for us in the fields and in return they earn much more than they could in their homelands or they would not be here. We accord them basic human rights but not all the rights of citizens or legal residents. In return we ask them to abide by our laws and to leave our country before their visas expire. And we ask that they enter our country only if they have the proper authorization.

The immigration lawyer believes that we should focus all our Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement resources on the apprehension of just the drug and weapon traffickers, as if they would be willing to self-identify to make that approach possible. He would let the others go and not worry about them.

The Governor of California has been singularly negligent in his failure to aid the federal government in the discharge of its duty to secure our borders and prevent the establishment of sanctuary cities. He has finally seen the light and has recently deployed some National Guard troops to the border. Schwarzenegger's office said the governor believes more Border Patrol agents are needed to reduce illegal border crossings, human trafficking and the influx of narcotics. The point that he and so many others have failed to recognize is that, without vigorous internal enforcement, more agents or troops at the border will only minimally reduce, not stop, the flood of illegals.

The East Germans found to their dismay that people would brave machine gun towers, mine fields, and multi-layered fences and walls to escape to the West, Why? Answer: because if they were successful, they knew they would never be repatriated.

Similarly, illegal aliens know if they can escape the immediate environs of the border, they will be home free. Under the Administration’s current nonenforcement policies, the probability of illegal aliens being apprehended and repatriated is extremely low unless they run afoul of the law by committing serious crimes. What the Administration refuses to admit is that to secure the borders requires more than improvements in staffing, infrastructure, and the rules of engagement; it requires vigorous and continuous internal enforcement with expeditious repatriation of all of those who are apprehended. That is the missing ingredient of border security in depth. Under current policies the borders can never be secure. Without the threat and the actuality of repatriation, border violations will continue.

The immigration lawyer seems to think that it is easy to tell a drug smuggler from a run-of-the mill illegal alien when they appear at the border or are found in the Arizona desert. According to the immigration lawyer, as soon as a Border Patrol officer has made this easy distinction, he can turn the illegal alien loose and just arrest the drug smuggler. I can hear their conversation now. The illegal alien, who has the drugs on his person or in his vehicle, turns to the agent and points at the other alien and says, “He forced me to carry his drugs.” So the agent says, “Of course, I understand, you are free to go” and proceeds to clap the handcuffs or restraints on the other guy who is actually just a routine border jumper.

This lawyer further asserts that to sort out the drug smugglers from the legitimate tourists and visa holders at the airport ports of entry, we would have to do a body cavity search of everyone including citizens. The most important distinction that he overlooks here is that those apprehended in the desert are not likely to have papers of any kind. Those arriving at an airport would certainly have appropriate documents that could easily be checked. The two cases are entirely different in that sense and that makes it easier to hold those apprehended near the borders for processing. At the airport, those with legitimate papers may still be recognized as smugglers by experienced agents who understand how they act and the subterfuges they employ.

Young people who get into the trade are often asked to swallow many condom-wrapped packages of drugs. After they arrive in the U.S., they go to the specified address to deliver the goods. Of course, if the packages break and release the drugs, the courier could die of an overdose.

The lawyer adds that anyone who wants to enforce the law has an unspoken agenda based on the proposition that if you can’t tell drug dealers from basketball players from rappers, because they all look alike, then we should lock ‘em all up. This, of course, is a ridiculous statement on the face of it. As a lawyer, he knows that no one is suggesting that because it would be illegal and would infringe on the civil rights of citizens. That is quite a different story from those apprehended at the border or internally who have fraudulent documents or no papers at all and who may be subject a law like SB 1070. But he knows that. He, like so many others, sees everything through a glass darkly and when he has no substantive arguments, he plays the race card, or as he put it “I find it hard to be civil in the face of straight racism.”

Anyone, especially a word merchant or lawyer, who uses the term “racism” should at least be conversant with its definition. My dictionary provides the following definition: Racism--“An excessive and irrational belief in or advocacy of the superiority of a given group, people, or nation, usually one’s own, on the basis of racial differences having no scientific validity.”

The word "superiority" may be the key word in that that definition. That definition didn't stop the lawyer from drawing his own biased conclusions and labeling just about anything he disagrees with as racism. Nevertheless, we can say with certainty that in accordance with the definition none of the following beliefs constitute racism.

1. The belief that, as President Obama put it in his immigration speech, “Our nation, like all nations, has the right and obligation to control its borders and set laws for residency and citizenship. And no matter how decent they are, no matter their reasons, the 11 million who broke these laws should be held accountable."
2. A belief in national sovereignty, the national interest, and national character.
3. A belief that America is fully settled and developed and has a limited need for more immigrants.
4. A belief in or advocacy of a reduction in quotas for new immigrants to about 250,000 per year in all categories except tourists, students, and temporary migrant farm workers but including the number of all chain immigrations and family reunifications.
5. A belief that chain (family unification) immigrations should be limited to the spouses and minor children of citizens and that adult relatives of citizens should compete with all other applicants for admission on an even playing field.
5. A belief that the “limit” of finite natural resources per capita as population increases without bounds is zero. (The more there are of us, the less there is for each of us.)
6. A belief that the environment will be severely damaged by a doubling of our population.
7. A belief that homophilia is often mistaken for homophobia.
8. A belief that one can prefer his own culture to one that is loud and obscene without being a racist; and that culture can cut across races and ethnicity.
9. A belief that nations have no obligation to accept more immigrants than they can readily assimilate and who are needed by their economies.
10. A belief that the focus on immigration enforcement in the states bordering Mexico is fully justified by the great preponderance of illegal aliens and drug smugglers who come from that direction.
11. A belief that internal enforcement is an essential element of border security.
12. A belief that E-verification should be mandatory across the board for all employers, public and private, and all employees, current and prospective.
13. A belief that individuals who have been unlawfully present in the United States for a continuous period of more than 180 days, but less than one year, and who voluntarily depart the U.S. should barred from re-entry for 3 years and those who have been here longer should be barred for 10 years. (This is the current law.)
14. A belief that all individuals who have been unlawfully present in the U.S. or who have attempted to enter unlawfully should serve a six month sentence working on border infrastructure before they are repatriated with the admonition that if they return they will do hard time for a minimum of two years.
15. A belief that all local law enforcement authorities should be required to check the immigration status of anyone who is stopped for another infraction and who the officer has reason to believe could be in the U.S. illegally.
16. A belief that minor children, regardless of citizenship, should accompany their parents under a removal order as the best way to maintain family unity.
17. A belief that population growth in the U.S. is due almost solely to legal immigrants, illegal aliens, their higer fertility rates, and their progeny.
18. A belief that to reduce the future demand for energy we must stabilize our population.

I think this lawyer must be one of those small-minded, bleeding heart liberals, the ones who care nothing about the welfare of their country and whose myopia will surely destroy the greatest country on earth. I'm sorry but I find it hard to be civil in the face of straight incivility and name-calling.

Illegals have no allegiance to America

There is a huge amount of propaganda and myths circulating about illegal aliens,
particularly illegal Mexican, Salvadorian, Guatemalan and Honduran aliens. Here's the truth about them.

1. Illegal aliens generally do NOT want US citizenship. Americans are very vain
thinking that everybody in the world wants to be a US citizen. Mexicans, and
other nationalities want to remain citizens of their home countries while obtaining
the benefits offered by the United States such as employment, medical care,
instate tuition, government subsidized housing and free education for their
offspring. Their main attraction is employment and their loyalty usually remains
at home. They want benefits earned and subsidized by middle class Americans.
What illegal aliens want are benefits of American residence without paying
the price.

2. There are no jobs that Americans won't do. Illegal aliens are doing jobs
that Americans can't take and still support their families. Illegal aliens take
low wage jobs, live dozens in a single residence home, share expenses and
send money to their home country. There are no jobs that Americans won't
do for a decent wage.

3. Every person who illegally entered this nation left a home. They are NOT
homeless and they are NOT Americans. Some left jobs in their home countries.
They come to send money to their real home as evidenced by the more than 20
billion dollars sent out of the country each year by illegal aliens. These illegal
aliens knowingly and willfully entered this nation in violation of the law and
therefore assumed the risk of detection and deportation. Those who brought their
alien children assumed the responsibility and risk on behalf of their children.

4. Illegal aliens are NOT critical to the economy. Illegal aliens constitute less
than 5% of the workforce. However, they reduce wages and benefits for lawful
US residents.

5. This is NOT an immigrant nation. There are 280 million native born
Americans. While it is true that this nation was settled and founded by
immigrants (legal immigrants), it is also true that there is not a nation on
this planet that was not settled by immigrants at one time or another.

6. The United States is welcoming to legal immigrants. Illegal aliens are not
immigrants by definition. The US accepts more lawful immigrants every year
than the rest of the world combined.

7. There is no such thing as the "Hispanic vote." Hispanics are white, brown,
black and every shade in between. Hispanics are Republicans, Democrats,
Anarchists, Communists, Marxists and Independents. The so-called "Hispanic
vote" is a myth. Pandering to illegal aliens to get the Hispanic vote is a dead end.

8. Mexico is NOT a friend of the United States. Since 1848 Mexicans have
resented the United States. During World War I Mexico allowed German Spies
to operate freely in Mexico to spy on the US. During World War II Mexico
allowed the Axis powers to spy on the US from Mexico. During the Cold War
Mexico allowed spies hostile to the US to operate freely. The attack on the Twin
Towers in 2001 was cheered and applauded all across Mexico. Today Mexican
school children are taught that the US stole California, Arizona, New Mexico
and Texas. If you don't believe it, check out some Mexican textbooks written
for their school children.

9. Although some illegal aliens enter this country for a better life, there are 6
billion people on this planet. At least 1 billion of those live on less than one
dollar a day. If wanting a better life is a valid excuse to break the law and sneak
into America, then let's allow those one billion to come to America and we'll turn
the USA into a Third World nation overnight. Besides, there are 280 million native
born Americans who want a better life. I'll bet Bill Gates and Donald Trump want
a better life. When will the USA lifeboat be full? Since when is wanting a better
life a good reason to trash another nation?

10. There is a labor shortage in this country. This is a lie. There are hundreds
of thousands, if not millions, of American housewives, senior citizens, students,
unemployed and underemployed who would gladly take jobs at a decent wage.

11. It is racist to want secure borders. What is racist about wanting secure
borders and a secure America? What is racist about not wanting people to sneak
into America and steal benefits we have set aside for legal aliens, senior citizens,
children and other legal residents? What is it about race that entitles people to
violate our laws, steal identities, and take the American Dream without paying
the price? For about four decades American politicians have refused to secure
our borders and look after the welfare of middle class Americans. These
politicians have been of both parties. A huge debt to American society has
resulted. This debt will be satisfied and the interest will be high. There has
already been riots in the streets by illegal aliens and their supporters. There will
be more. You, as a politician, have a choice to offend the illegal aliens who have
stolen into this country and demanded the rights afforded to US citizens or to
offend those of us who are stakeholders in this country. The interest will be steep
either way. There will be civil unrest. There will be a reckoning. Do you have the
courage to do what is right for America? Or, will you bow to the wants and needs
of those who don't even have the right to remain here? There will be a reckoning.

It will come in November of this year. We will not allow America to be stolen by third world agitators and thieves.

David J. Stoddard
US Border Patrol (RET)
Hereford, Arizona less

A Lay Critique of U.S. vs. Arizona

The statements in quotes are from the U.S. vs. Arizona lawsuit brought by the Department of Justice (DOJ).
“In our constitutional system, the federal government has preeminent authority to regulate immigration matters.”
No one denies this but within the Constitutional and other authority reserved to the federal government states may exercise their police power in a manner that affects aliens as long as that exercise is consistent with the federal immigration laws.
“The nation’s immigration laws reflect a careful and considered balance of national law enforcement, foreign relations, and humanitarian interests …. The DOJ argues further that SB 1070 will “…interfere with vital foreign policy and national security interests by disrupting the United States’ relationship with Mexico and other countries.”
This seems a little farfetched since the U.S. relationship with Mexico is already ruptured by Mexico’s unwillingness to secure its northern border and discourage its citizens from entering the U.S. illegally. This is not a one way street. If Mexico wishes to be treated as a good neighbor, it needs to behave like one and stop the flood of its nationals violating the border.
Our national security interests are severely jeopardized by Mexico’s policies toward the U.S. If we had agents on both sides of the border working together to stem the tide of illegals, that would be a basis for a more favorable foreign policy towards Mexico. Since that is not the case, any complaints from Mexico should be rebuffed with a reminder of its failures to help stop the hemorrhaging at the border.
I find the argument regarding foreign policy and national security to be very weak. It suggests that our government can be bribed into establishing foreign policies inimical to its own best interests. It is neither a sound foreign policy nor in the interests of national security to constrain any enforcement of the laws of our country. Sure we want Mexico’s cooperation in the drug wars because that is in the best interests of both countries. The trade off between vital foreign policy interests and open borders and the abandonment of internal enforcement is not acceptable.
As far as other countries are concerned, we need to make clear that they need to control the illegal passage of their nationals to the U.S. via all means at their disposal and that this is what we expect them to do.
The humanitarian aspect of government policy is well-understood. There are aliens who have a well-founded fear of persecution or who have been the victim of a natural disaster and are therefore of humanitarian interest. These aliens are, nevertheless, not free to roam the U.S. at will before their status has been confirmed and documented. Generally, those requesting political asylum are held in detention until the validity of their fear of persecution can be determined. Victims of natural disasters such as the Haiti earthquake are admissible based on decisions made by the federal government and documented in an appropriate way. They will not remain undocumented.
“The United States understands the State of Arizona’s legitimate concerns about illegal immigration, and has undertaken significant efforts to secure our nation’s borders. The federal government, moreover, welcomes cooperative efforts by states and localities to aid in the enforcement of the nation’s immigration laws.”
The Justice Department has a strange way of showing that it welcomes cooperative efforts to support the federal statutes on immigration. It’s not likely to generate much support of federal efforts in that regard by suing the State of Arizona and its governor. Instead the feds should be supporting the Arizona efforts to solve the problem the federal government has chosen to ignore. The feds could also provide model legislation to the other states patterned after the SB 1070 and that it deems consistent with the federal statutes or within executive power to grant.
The feds want to focus on the “real” criminal elements, the drug runners and dealers, the international gangs, and the other criminals among the illegal aliens. While this is commendable, it is not enough and it is certain to fail unless significant resources are committed to the larger problem. It is not as though the criminal elements within the larger population of illegals can be easily identified or that all other illegals who have already shown their disdain for the rule of law will remain crime free. How many times have we read about crimes like DUI resulting in death or injury that were committed by your ordinary run-of-the-mill illegal?
The DOJ apparently feels that SB 1070 represents “…policy that, in purpose and effect, interferes with the numerous interests the federal government must balance when enforcing and administering the immigration laws and disrupts the balance actually established by the federal government.”
The federal government has not established any sort of balance. There is a gross imbalance between the requirements of the law and the attempts by the Administration to pander to foreign powers. There should be no need to balance anything against enforcing the immigration laws. Whatever balance the feds think they have established is clearly not working and is not consistent with the law. If the there is to be any balance, it must be a balance explicitly spelled out in the law in the national interest not some arbitrary executive department decision to subvert the law and disable our ability to secure our borders. What the DOJ seems to be suggesting that anything that might be more effective than the current policies must be summarily dismissed because “it wasn’t invented here (in Washington).” It has not examined SB 1070 from the point of view of the state nor of its potential for solving the illegal alien problem the feds have chosen to ignore. The feds have placed too much emphasis on just what can be accomplished at the border. They have ignored the obvious fact that if illegals and other criminals believe they will be home free if they can escape the immediate environs of the border, the border will never be secure and the criminal elements will flourish.
The Constitution affords the President of the United States the authority to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed. U.S. Const., art. II § 3.”
Why is it then that the President has failed in that duty? Why has he effectively declined the assistance that the Border States can provide in helping to execute the immigration laws? More specifically, why is it the President has failed to faithfully execute Section 8 USC 1324(a)(1)(A)(iv)(b)(III)?
“A person (including a group of persons, business, organization, or local government) commits a federal felony when she or he: assists an illegal alien she /he should reasonably know is illegally in the U. S., or who lacks employment authorization, by transporting, sheltering, or assisting him or her to obtain employment, or encourages that illegal alien to remain in the U.S. by referring him or her to an employer or by acting as employer or agent for an employer in any way, or knowingly assists illegal aliens due to personal convictions.”
“…the President has broad authority over foreign affairs. Immigration law, policy, and enforcement priorities are affected by and have impacts on U.S. foreign policy, and are themselves the subject of diplomatic arrangements. …. The INA also vests the executive branch with considerable discretion in enforcing the provisions of the federal immigration laws, generally allowing federal agencies to ultimately decide whether particular immigration remedies are appropriate in individual cases.”
Is the DOJ suggesting that the President has or could have a foreign policy or a diplomatic arrangement with Mexico that permits large numbers of illegal aliens to remain in the U.S. with impunity? Federal agencies should have some latitude in deciding the remedies that are appropriate in particular cases but neither the President nor any federal agency should have the authority to impose a blanket remedy for all cases.
“Congress vested substantial discretion in the President and the administering federal agencies to adjust the balance of multiple interests as appropriate – both globally and in individual cases.
In exercising its significant enforcement discretion, the federal government prioritizes for arrest, detention, prosecution, and removal those aliens who pose a danger to national security or a risk to public safety. Consistent with these enforcement priorities, the federal government principally targets aliens engaged in or suspected of terrorism or espionage; aliens convicted of crimes, with a particular emphasis on violent criminals, felons, and repeat offenders; certain gang members; aliens subject to outstanding criminal warrants; and fugitive aliens, especially those with criminal records.”
There is no doubt that the federal enforcement priorities are correct but to use that as an excuse for ignoring the much larger number of illegal aliens in the U.S. is an abdication of responsibility. All the more reason why the feds need the help of state authorities in addressing the broader issues while the feds concentrate on criminals, terrorists, spies and traitors. Both functions can be performed effectively if tools like those contained in SB 1070 are adopted by all of the states and ultimately blessed with appropriate language in the federal statutes. The DOJ seems to be suggesting that it can’t be bothered with run-of-the-mill illegal aliens. In effect, it is declaring open borders for everyone unless they wear badge identifying them as hardened criminals. It is foolhardy to think that by some sort of legal profiling the feds can sort out the hardened criminals without paying any attention to all the other illegals. There is only one way to solve this problem and that is to sort them all out based on the needs of our economy and the ability of needed foreign workers to pass a background check and a medical exam.
Of all the bone-headed ideas, one of the worst is the idea that somehow the border can be secured merely by improving staffing, infrastructure, and the rules of engagement at the border. Vigorous and continuous internal enforcement is the sine qua non of in depth border security. This can be facilitated by mandatory E-verification of immigration status at work locations and by the other measures contained in SB 1070.
“Through the INA, Congress set forth the framework by which the federal government determines which aliens may be eligible to enter and reside in the United States, which aliens may be removed from the United States, the consequences for unlawful presence, the penalties on persons who violate the procedures established for entry, conditions of residence, and employment of aliens, as well as the process by which certain aliens may ultimately become naturalized citizens of the United States. See 8 U.S.C.§ 1101, et seq.”
Familiarity with these provisions enables local authorities to provide the cooperation and assistance INS requires to do its job effectively. To deny this source of assistance undermines the ability of the INS to discharge its responsibilities to the American people. More privately operated detention centers, especially in the Border States, with embedded immigration judges or justices of the peace where local authorities can deliver all the illegals they apprehend will have no impact on the deployment or effectiveness of other government agents or entities. Given a fairly rigid set of criteria for deportation, almost anyone could perform that function and expedite the removal of illegal aliens from the detention facilities and from the U.S.
The DOJ has placed a great deal of emphasis on foreign relations, even suggesting that if we were to enforce our immigration laws that would jeopardize the treatment of U.S. citizens abroad. The difference that needs to be made clear is that U.S. citizens abroad generally follow all the rules and therefore there would be no basis for their ill treatment. Like the U.S., other countries welcome legal immigrants and visitors because they are an important part of their economies. Can you imagine Mexican authorities swooping down on Acapulco and arresting all of the well-heeled American tourists just to get even for our repatriation of illegal aliens? Ridiculous! They would be shooting themselves in the foot and assuring that few, if any, American tourists would visit there again.

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Common Sense 2010

In the 1700s, patriot Thomas Paine wrote a pamphlet called "Common Sense" which made the case against King George III's tyranny and for the independence of the colonies. Apparently, at some point, the British people recognized the merit of his arguments and honored him with a statue in the city of his birth, Thetford, Norfolk, Great Britain.

One of his memorable quotes is , “A long habit of not thinking a thing right gives it the superficial appearance of being wrong." This reminds me of our misguided friends who favor illegal aliens over their fellow citizens. Their long habit of thinking secure borders and the rule of law are not very important, tends to give these issues a superficial appearance of being wrong.

It is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants is the liberty of appearing. Consistent with that idea, our objectives have been to (1) allow the truth to appear about immigration's unarmed invasion and its deadly consequences, and (2) to give precedence to the national interest and the rule of law over illegal aliens or even prospective legal immigrants.

The anti-America,pro-illegals rebel against reason. They blithely ignore the long-term consequences of the support they provide for the illegal aliens in America. Few have even given those consequences a second thought and those who have, gloat about the future when minorities will be the majority and Hispanics will control the political processes of our country. They nod with approval knowing that comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) as a code term for amnesty, will mean 12-30 million instant citizens, leaving any thoughts about border security a mere façade. CIR clearly has come to mean "amnesty." They clothe their support of foreign interests in ethnocentric, quasi-humanitarianism, disregarding the broader national interest and yet, facetiously, claim to be loyal Americans. They object to any effective technique or procedure for identifying and sorting out illegal aliens. When they say they are worried about some imposition on or profiling of Hispanic citizens, they are just indulging in an artifice or "red herring." Their real objective is to prevent any meaningful effort to apprehend and repatriate a significant numbers of illegals, after they have served six months working on border infrastructure.

We believe in the equality of man; and we believe that religious and secular duties consist of doing justice, extending mercy, and endeavoring to live in harmony with our fellow-citizens. Some believe that when you look in a man's eyes you will see a divine spark that proves he is a man not a horse to be treated as a beast of burden. Others question that idea and ask, "Where have you seen this divine spark in operation? Where have you noted this magnificent equality?" No two things on earth are equal or have an equal chance, not a leaf or a tree. Many work all their lives exercising their right to prove that they are better than others through their achievements, the jobs they have held, or the esteem in which they are held by their bosses and their peers. They may not think of it in that way. They may see it only as striving for success.

What really matters is equality of opportunity and justice for our citizens. Justice is generally defined in terms of the laws which govern all civilized societies, that justice is the legal system, or the act of applying or upholding the law. Justice can also be thought of as fairness or reasonableness, especially in the way people are treated or decisions are made. In this regard, the fairness or reasonableness with which people are treated is measured against the objective standard of the law, equally and evenly applied. Thus, he that would make his own justice secure, must guard even illegal aliens from a miscarriage of justice; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach himself. But the concept of justice has already been breached in the case of illegal aliens who have violated our borders and are present in our country illegally. If we do not use the objective standard of the law, the rule of law becomes meaningless and we are thrown into anarchy.

It is the business of a little mind to shrink from his or her duty and from the loyalty to their country expected of citizens. In their search for some rationale for their dereliction of duty and disloyal behavior, they are unable to obscure that they value common blood over all else without regard to its ultimate cost to the country they profess to know and love. It is an affront to treat this ethnocentric behavior and false humanitarianism with complaisance. It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry into the motivation and rationale of these latter day apologists for illegal aliens. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving, it consists in professing to believe what one does not believe.

How can anyone believe that allowing our population to increase without bounds will be a good thing? How can anyone believe that reducing the diversity of immigrants entering our country will increase its diversity? How can anyone believe that finite natural resources can somehow be stretched to serve twice as many people without any impact on the quality of life? These are infidelities that characterize those who favor illegal aliens, open borders, and more legal immigrants over the national interest.

It is not a few hardworking illegal aliens that we are worried about; we are defending a country, an idea, a national culture, a national character, a national language, the national interest, the national sovereignty, and the quality of life. As many as 30 million illegal aliens and their progeny may be waiting for the Congress to betray our country for their own shortsighted, selfish interests. If Congress yields to that temptation, there will be no turning back. If amnesty is passed, the 30 million will use the outrageous "family reunification provision" to bring in their large extended families, swelling the immigrant ranks to as many as 150 million, many of whom will line up immediately to begin collecting welfare, Aid to Dependent Children, Earned Income Credits, free education, Medicaid, Medicare and even the Social Security one presidential candidate promised them in 2008. Within a year, they will have been organized by the radical Hispanic lobby groups and prepared to use the ballot box to take over our country. Already, we see on the blogs, "Voto Latino". Wouldn’t a loyal American simply ask everyone to “Vote!”. The result might be the same but at least it wouldn't be so flagrantly disloyal.

When our politicians wake up to discover what their greed and stupidity have done, it will be too late to do anything. They will be turned out of office and our country will no longer be under the control of the American people. It is this concern that motivates the opponents of amnesty and open borders, not the nativism, bigotry, xenophobia, racism or the persecution of minorities and immigrants of which they are often falsely accused in ad hominem attacks. Those are not the features of the mainstream opposition to illegal aliens and excessive legal immigration. They may play some role in the fringe organizations on the extreme left and extreme right. Some would argue that they are features of MALDEF, MEChA, La Raza and at least some of the 800 hate groups identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center (based on undisclosed criteria).

The most formidable weapon against errors of every kind is reason. In the case of immigration's unarmed invasion, the anti-American,pro-illegals often inadvertently provide the facts that permit us to reason about the future of our country. For example, they gloat about the expected minority majority. They point out the population and demographic trends that show Hispanics to be the fastest growing ethnic group in America. It has been shown that Mexicans and their progeny alone account for as many new immigrants as the next ten countries combined. How does that add to the diversity of our nation? Obviously, it has just the opposite effect.

What they studiously avoid is any analysis that would show what this means in terms of our country's future. Victor Hansen has given us a glimpse of that future in his book, "Mexifornia: A State of Becoming". Having lived among Mexicans, taught them, intermarried with them, and observed them first hand, Hansen is in a excellent position to draw the obvious conclusions about where we are headed. These are the conclusions the legal immigration and illegal alien proponents seem incapable of discerning. It is both the direction and the magnitude which are to be taken into consideration not the individual hard working alien. Our country is clearly headed in the wrong direction on immigration and the magnitude of that problem boggles the mind. We can only reason from what is; we can only reason on actualities, not on shortsighted and unwarranted expectations without basis or a certain complacency about America's future. Bankrupt California is the harbinger of America's future.

In Arizona, citizens frustrated by the failure of the federal government to enforce our immigration laws have done the only thing left for them to do. They have fashioned a new state law that closely follows the federal statutes in a final attempt to get control of its borders by making some acts violations of state law as well as the federal law. This is an excellent law that will enable local authorities to do what the Administration has refused to do, get a handle on the illegal alien problem. Some say this will divert the police and sheriffs from their primary duties to serve and protect. On the contrary, activities under the new law will be incidental to their primary duties. The law will reinforce the ability of authorities to serve and protect.

However, the illegal alien problem cannot be solved by the border patrol or ICE agents alone. They need the full support of local government and local authorities. New laws are needed to deny illegals sanctuary in the cities and in the rural areas.

The anti-America, anti-rule of law, pro-illegals among Arizona citizens have tried, out of desperation, to associate the new law with racial profiling which is illegal or other violations of human rights. When confronted with the question of where best to look for illegal aliens particularly those from Mexico, they stutter and stammer, because they know the answer is within the Hispanic community and at the locations typically populated by illegals. They are not really concerned about racial profiling. Their real concern relates to the fact that this law might actually turn the corner on illegal aliens and begin their repatriation.

There are many ways to reduce the extent to which the new law would represent an imposition on Hispanic citizens. But some citizens prefer to remain a part of the problem rather than become a part of the solution. One of most obvious ways is to issue a new comprehensive, counterfeit-proof, machine-readable, biometric ID to all who wish to avoid any imposition. Embedded on such an ID could be all of information found on other conventional IDs like Social Security cards, library cards, parking permits, drivers licenses, green cards, proofs of auto and health insurance, thumb prints, photos and other physical descriptors, perhaps even a coded DNA sample, and a record of honorable military service. This single universal ID would then serve many purposes from checking out a book, cashing a check,to proving a license to drive and one's immigration or workstatus. Showing this single card would be no more burdensome than showing a drivers license. The new ID could be issued by trustworthy employees at designated state and local government offices based on a thorough verification of the documents presented by the citizen, permanent resident, or other applicant. The E-verify system could be expanded to include all of the relevant information so that the bona fides of any applicant could be quickly checked. Police cruisers could also have devices for reading the biometric card. Problem solved.

The only missing ingredient is the cooperation of Hispanic citizens to help their country solve this pressing problem. Their willingness or unwillingness to provide this cooperation is a measure of their loyalty and how valid their concerns about racial profiling really are. If the police knew that most if not all Hispanic citizens in the state had such a validated ID, there would be little incentive to willy-nilly accost every Hispanic they came across. After all there must two or three million Hispanic citizens in Arizona versus perhaps only 500,000 illegals. If every Hispanic was stopped, there would be less than a 20% chance that each stop would uncover an illegal. This would not be a very wise use of the officers' time. So the police would mostly likely focus their efforts on routine traffic stops or on the use of checkpoints like those employed to catch those not wearing their seatbelts (click it or ticket) or DUIs. Neither of these approaches is remotely related to racial profiling and yet both would be very effective in identifying illegals and a beginning of a solution to the problem.

When men and women yield up the privilege of thinking and reasoning, the last shadow of liberty and the uniquely American experiment quits the horizon. When we fail to recognize the most elementary facts about our present situation and fail to draw the obvious conclusions, we have abandoned reason in favor of demagoguery. When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary. When we plan for posterity, we need to remove our rose-colored glasses and objectively assess what that future nation will be like for our children and our children's children. If there must be trouble regarding immigration and illegal aliens, let it be in our day, that our children may have peace and prosperity and the same quality of life as we have enjoyed. That which we obtain too easily, we esteem too lightly. That which we value so little, we will quickly lose.

Again paraphrasing Thomas Paine: these are the times that try the souls of men and women alike. The summer citizen and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from opposing excessive legal immigration and the flood of illegal aliens; but he or she who stands now for the national interest and the rule of law, deserves the love and thanks of all. Those who expect to reap the blessings of America must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it. Perhaps in this case time will make more converts than reason but by then it will be too late. The America we know and love will be gone. If we do not hang together, we shall surely hang separately.

The Disconnect between the Will of the American People and Congress

Rep. Jared Polis, (D., 2nd CD) writing in the Denver Post on May 13, 2010 starts out well with the statement, “I have never seen such a disconnect between the will of the American people and Congress.” Polis claims that “the American people have had it with our broken immigration system” but in actuality, as all the polls show, the American people have had it with the Congress and the Administration, not our immigration system. Polis further states that “across the ideological spectrum, no one is happy with the status quo.” Of course, voters are unhappy with the status quo for a multitude of reasons. Foremost among those reasons is the fact that the Administration has done little or nothing to enforce the immigration laws already on the books. Instead of a broken immigration system, it is a failure of enforcement that has created the disconnect Polis speaks of.

Polis seems to think that states like Arizona are diverting their police officers to enforce immigration laws. This is a misrepresentation of what the new Arizona immigration law requires. Since the state is overrun with illegal aliens and the federal government has failed in its duty to the people, Arizona has enabled police officers to check the bona fides of anyone they stop for other law infractions. The officers are not being diverted from their regular duties. They are merely being allowed to check legal residency status at the same time as they check other forms of identification such as drivers’ licenses and proof of insurance. The ability of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to apprehend illegal aliens is seriously compromised when the local law enforcement authorities in sanctuary cities are directed not to cooperate or assist in the task of apprehending illegal aliens. Given the huge size of the problem and the sheer volume of illegals in some communities, ICE agents are simply overwhelmed without the help of the police. There is no other solution than the one enacted in Arizona. ICE is dependent on the active assistance of local enforcement agencies in the performance of their regular duties.

In the absence of any effort by the current Administration in Washington to deal with the problem, States like Arizona are providing the leadership needed to turn the tide of illegal aliens by enabling local authorities to provide the assistance needed by ICE to do its job. Polis, using a very unfortunate choice of words, says, “Unless Congress acts, more states, counties, and cities will likely pass thuggish and spiteful laws that scare and scapegoat American citizens of certain ethnic heritages.” These laws passed by states like Arizona are neither thuggish nor spiteful. They are legitimate attempts by duly-elected local and state representatives of the people to deal with a problem that both the Congress and the Administration have chosen to ignore. To call these efforts thuggish and spiteful is an insult to the American people. The misguided use of such words is indicative of those with a mindset that favors illegal aliens over citizens and who therefore are responsible for the disconnect.

Both the Congress and the Administration have been deaf to the pleas of citizens for the immigration laws to be vigorously enforced. The E-verification system languishes because Congress has failed make it mandatory across the border for all employers, public and private, and all employees, both current employees and potential new hires. 

Every member of congress has taken an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic and bear true faith and allegiance to the same. They swear or affirm that they take that obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that they will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which they are about to enter. When it comes to illegal aliens, it becomes clear that the Congress has no intention of honoring that oath. They have a different agenda and the American people are just an impediment to that agenda.

Liberal “Sens. Harry Reid, Charles Schumer and Robert Menendez (RSM) recently released a conceptual proposal for immigration reform with a simple theme: If you obey our laws, learn our language and pay our taxes, we will welcome you to America.”  Not so fast there, senators! We don’t need or want anymore impoverished immigrants to burden our social, educational, and medical services budgets and add to our crushing national debt. Instead, we need a national objective of a stable population to be achieved with a soft landing for our economy within twenty years.

The senators say nothing about the failure of the federal government to enforce the laws already on the book. Instead they trot out the tired cliché about “fixing our broken immigration system.” Before we can reach any conclusions about the effectiveness of the current immigration system, we must first make a comprehensive effort to enforce the existing immigration laws.

If the Senate proposal is turned into a bill and brought to the floor, we will see which members of Congress have the backbone to stand up for the national interest, national sovereignty, and national character and which will pander to special interest lobbies like La Raza and cheap labor interests. Polis talks about the disconnect between the Congress and the American people but fails to recognize that the RSM framework is a perfect example of that disconnect. Poll after poll has shown that the voters are opposed to amnesty for illegal aliens. Yet, Reid, Schumer, and Menendez have ignored those results and opted instead to include a form of amnesty in their framework. This will extend the disconnect not mend it.

Similarly, the House is working to pass some form of comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) that, like earlier laws, purports to secure our borders, restore the rule of law to our country, create jobs for Americans, prevent illegal immigration from occurring in our country, and provide for a new amnesty. In the minds of these legislators “CIR” is  erroneouslyconsidered to be synonymous with “amnesty.”

Some argue that what is being proposed is not amnesty. Technically, it is not amnesty if any penalty is imposed, even if it is just a slap on the wrist or some requirements that will never be enforced. However, the common understanding of amnesty is any measure that allows illegal aliens to remain in this country and work, thereby rewarding them with the object of their illegality.

The Senate outline is a tired rerun of the same provisions and promises of the bills that failed in 2007 and 2008.   The senators have tried to repackage those provisions to make it look like they have made some important compromises.  But the amnesty provision that most Americans object to is still there in one form or another.  A bill that omits the amnesty provision would garner widespread support. The other elements of the House version are important and would have a good chance for quick passage if the provisions for amnesty were removed. Our long experience with the existing laws has clearly demonstrated that none of the House provisions can be achieved without vigorous and continuous internal enforcement based on electronic verification of the work status of all employees. While adding more border patrol agents, improving border infrastructure, and revising the rules of engagement are all important, internal enforcement remains the sine qua non of in depth border security. Without internal enforcement, secure borders will remain a pipe dream. The failure of Congress to recognize this fact is part of the disconnect from will of the people.

Typically, Congress tries to candy coat each new proposal to assuage hunger of the voting public for real border security. But most of the proposals turn out to be just another snow job consisting of empty promises that will never be enforced.

No one is suggesting that all illegals should be deported en masse.  Some fireugn workers are important to our economy.  If it can be shown that illegals in certain jobs have not displaced citizen workers, then green cards should be issued on a selective basis. However, foreign workers who have entered the U.S. illegally must never be eligible for citizenship.  That is the least penalty that must be imposed to create the disincentive to violate our borders.  However, if their foreign-born children remain in school and learn English and civics, they could become eligible for naturalized citizenship at age 21.  Illegal aliens are more interested in legal status than they are in citizenship. They mainly want to be out from under the threat of deportation.

There is no reason why E-verify cannot be implemented immediately. We need it right now to detect Social Security name and number mismatches, duplicate and fraudulent Social Security numbers, and other fraudulent identification cards so that employers will no longer have any excuse for hiring or retaining individuals who are here illegally. It is against the law to “knowingly” hire illegal aliens. But employers can get off the hook easily by saying, “I didn’t know” so that loophole must be closed.

The fine for those who have worked here illegally should be based on the applicable tax bracket times the average earnings of illegals times the number of years worked. For example, if the applicable tax bracket is 15% and the average earnings of illegals is $30,000 per year and a particular individual has worked here for 10 years, his fine should be 0.15 x $30,000 x 10 or $45,000 payable over a 10 year period at $4,500 per year.

Polis quotes Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who studies immigration, as saying the Senate proposal "shows how far the Democrats have moved in terms of tougher and tougher enforcement" and that "across the board you see language that would be very comfortable in a proposal written by Republicans." If the Administration gives as much attention to enforcing the senate proposals as it has those already on the books, the new enforcement ideas will remain useless and meaningless.  With no intention or mechanism for enforcement, the new proposals are just hoodwink the public  and  facilitate the passage of the bill.  As long as the bill contains anything that looks like amnesty it will not represent a true effort to solve the problem.

The RSM framework represents no significant departure from the existing unenforced statutes. It is just another cynical attempt on the part of the Congress to assuage the concerns of the voting public without any real plan to enforce the result, except for any amnesty provison.  If the Congress really wanted to enact an immgration refom bill, the first step should be to remove anything that an ordinary citizen would consider to be tantamount to amnesty.

Polis asks, “Why does this disconnect persist? Should we blame the xenophobes who scream 'amnesty' at any reform effort? Or the civil libertarians who oppose any real type of verification of employment status?” The answer is: None of the above!  Polis is simply indulging in insulting hyperbole when he refers pejoratively to “screaming xenophobes.”   He doesn't mention those who fly foreign flags and demonstrate in the streets for rights they are not entitled to.

The disconnect persists because Congress has its own agenda and is not listening to the people. It would not be difficult to pass any necessary immigration reforms but the devil is in the details. If the Congress were to omit any amnesty considerations or pathways to citizenship, make internal enforcement the centerpiece of a reform bill, and make failure to enforce immigration laws an impeachable offense, the bill would have smooth sailing.

No matter what it is called or what penalties are imposed, amnesty is a nonstarter for the immigration debate. Amnesty, per se, is not immigration reform. Immigration reform is: (1) flexible immigration quotas tied to the total unemployment rate by sector; (2) a national objective of a stable population; (3) an end to chain immigrations except for the children and spouses of citizens; (4) a requirement for at least one parent to be a citizen before citizenship is granted to the child; (5) a delay in the award of citizenship until one’s 21st birthday; (6) English as the official language of the U.S.; (7) a system that requires employers to provide irrefutable evidence of need before any foreign worker can be hired; (8) a label on green cards that specifies what kind of work the aliens can perform; (9) a six month term working on border infrastructure for illegal aliens apprehended at the border or internally; (10) a rigid set of criteria for immigration decisions that excludes family separation as a valid basis for appeal; (11) a limit of no more than 250,000 legal immigrants per year in all categories including chain immigrations but excluding visas issued to students, tourists, and temporary migrant farm workers; (12) fast track citizenship for those who enlist in the armed forces for not less than 4 years and who have served at least one tour in a combat zone; (13) legal immigration quotas focused on those who possess innovative or entrepreneurial skills or who have successfully completed a PhD in a physical science, engineering, math or medicine; (14) a prohibition against citizenship for anyone who has entered the U.S. illegally; and (15) a requirement for true fluency in English before citizenship can be granted.

This framework for immigration reform that would eliminate the disconnect between the people and the Congress on this issue.  It would sidestep the contentious issue of amnesty.   Anyone opposing or delaying these immigration reforms will be seen as directly responsible for making the problem worse. Without swift and bold action, we will undoubtedly have many more illegal aliens living and working within our borders. In 1968 there were about 1.3 million illegals in the U.S. On the occasion of the 1968 amnesty bill Senator Ted Kennedy stood up and said,

“This amnesty will give citizenship to only 1.1 -- 1.3 million illegal aliens. We will secure the borders henceforth. We will never again bring forward another Amnesty Bill like this."

Now Rep. Polis, Senators Reid, Schumer, and Menendez and others are proposing another amnesty. It is déjà vu all over again.

If the 1.3 million in 1968 has grown to 12 million today, that would represent a compound rate of increase of 9.7% per year. At that rate the 12 million will become 12 million x 1.097^40 years = 487 million by mid-century. That is a staggering figure! No wonder Congress wants to sweep the 12 million under the carpet with a mass legalization and then begin to count all over again from zero. Although the math is correct, the demographers insist that our population will be “only” about 485 million by 2050.  However, unless something is done besides putting words on paper in another useless bill, the U.S. population could easily exceed 1 billion by the end of this century.

Colorado Senators Michael Bennet and Mark Udall have ignored the cries from Main Street and have called upon Senate Majority Leader Reid to promote the same old amnesty ideas. Represenatives Ed Perlmutter, Diana DeGette and John Salazar have joined Representative Polis as co-sponsors of HR 4321, a new amnesty bill.

People shouldn't be able to cross the border without the proper documents, or to overstay their visas, and businesses shouldn't be able to exploit cheap labor off the books. This continues to happen because the Congress has yet to realize that internal enforcement is the essential ingredient. If the illegals believe that if they can escape the immediate environs of the border, they will be home free, they will keep coming no matter how many agents we assign to the border. East Germans were willing to brave mine fields, machine gun towers, and multi-layered fences and walls to escape to the West because they knew they would not be repatriated. With no such deterrents to contend with, illegal aliens will keep flooding across our borders because they know the probability of being apprehended and repatriated is nil under the current no enforcement policy. Polis is right when he says, “We must stop playing politics with a problem that we should have fixed long ago.” The fix is clear: no amnesty -- vigorous and continuous internal enforcement based on E-verification of work status. E-verify works and will become even better once we implement it across the board for all employers, public and private, and all employees, current and potential new hires.

Politicians in both parties have been barking up the wrong tree and need to come to grips with the fact that while improvements in border staffing, infrastructure, and rules of engagement are necessary, they are not sufficient without internal enforcement that conveys the message: “If you come here illegally, we will catch you and you will serve a minimum of six months working on border infrastructure before you are repatriated with the admonition that if you return you will do a minimum of two years of hard time. The East Germans found out that fences, walls, and mine fields are not enough to deter illegal border crossings. We need to take that lesson to heart and implement a bold program to apprehend and repatriate illegal aliens. Fences and border patrols are not enough.

“So let's not replay this Republican vs. Democrat game with immigration. Good ideas and solutions transcend party.” This issue is too important, and it's time for us to get behind a plan that provides border security in depth and denies jobs, citizenship, and sanctuary to illegal aliens. We know what will work. It is time to get off the amnesty bandwagon and get on with border security.

Crime in Arizona

A few years ago, a young park ranger was murdered in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, presumably by drug smugglers.  Now our pourous borders and go soft approach to illegal aliens have resulted in yet another murder.

Posted on line was the following:  "Forwarded to me by a friend of a friend who retired from Border Patrol. As you know, one of the local ranchers was murdered in Douglas two weeks ago. His funeral is tomorrow. I received three messages similar to the one below from different officers within the Rangers and law enforcement. Yesterday afternoon I talked to another rancher near us who is a friend of ours and whose great grandfather started their ranch here in 1880. These are good people. He told me what really happened out at the Krentz ranch and what you won't read in the papers. The Border Patrol is afraid of starting a small war between civilians here and the drug cartels in Mexico. Bob Krentz was checking his water like he does every evening and came upon an illegal who was lying on the ground telling him he was sick. Bob called the Border Patrol and asked for a medical helicopter evac. As he turned to go back to his ATV he was shot in the side. The round came from down and angled up so they know the shooter was on the ground. Bob's firearm was in the ATV so he had no chance. Wounded he called the Cochise County Sheriff and asked for help. Bleeding in the lungs he called his brother but the line was bad so he called his wife but again the line was bad. Several ranchers heard the radio call and drove to his location. Bob was dead by this time. The ranchers tracked the shooter 8 miles back towards Mexico and cornered him in a brushy draw. This was all at night. The Sheriff and Border Patrol arrived and told them not to go down and engage the murderer. They went around to the back side and if you can believe it the assassin managed to get by a BP helicopter and a Sheriff's posse and back to Mexico. So much for professional help when you need it. One week before the murder Bob and his brother Phil (who I shoot with) hauled a huge quantity of drugs off the ranch that they found in trucks. One week before that a rancher near Naco did the same thing. Two nights later gangs broke into his ranch house and beat him and his wife and told them that if they touched any drugs they found they would come back and kill them. The ranchers here deal with cut fences and haul drug deliveries off their ranches all the time. What ranchers think is that the drug cartels beat the one rancher and shot Bob because they wanted to send a message. Bob always gave food and water to illegals and so they think they sent the assassin to pose as an illegal who was hungry and thirsty knowing it would catch Bob off guard. What is going on down here is NOT being reported. You need to tell people how bad it is along the border. Texas is worse. Near El Paso it's in a state of war. 5000 people were killed in Ciudad Juarez last year and it's over 2000 so far this year. Gun sales down here are through the roof and I get emails from people wanting firearms training. Something has to be done but I don't hold out much hope. These gangs have groups in almost every city in the US. This is serious business. The Barrio Azteca and their sub gangs are like Mexican Corporations and organized extremely well. If this doesn't get dealt with down here you guys will deal with it on your streets."

He's no environmentalist!

Immigration-Reduction Report Card for Sen. Mark Udall (D, CO)

Served in House: 1999-2009, Served in Senate: 2009-

Immigration reduction grade in this Congress  -- F-Recent

D -- Career, D -- Earth Day Sustainability Record

The grades above indicate how well this Member of Congress has been performing on one of the most important public policies affecting the United States' ability to become an environmentally sustainable society.

President Clinton's Task Force on Consumption and Population concluded that it is not possible to have environmental sustainability without dramatically reducing overall immigration to allow for a stabilizing U.S. population.

Instead, Congress has maintained immigration numbers quadruple the traditional average. Immigration policies result in new immigrants and births to immigrants that account for nearly all of the population explosion that currently challenges all U.S. environmental efforts.

Until the 1970s, the United States admitted about 250,000 immigrants each year. This policy helped make this country a great nation. However, Congress' decision to allow immigration to spiral out of control has created an unsustainable situation.


Currently, around 1 million legal immigrants and 1 million illegal aliens come to the United States each year. If Congress does not act to reform immigration, America's population will reach 458 million by 2050.  However, the immigration reform ideas currently being discussed in Congress would increase rather thant curb immigration, further exacerbating the problem.

Immigration helped make America what it is today. However, it is possible to have too much of a good thing.  Our immigrant past is exactly that, "past!" is the operable word in that phrase for all those who wish to save our environment.

Jobs

The Real McCain

A closer look at the life and career of John McCain reveals a disturbing record of recklessness and dishonesty


TIM DICKINSON

Posted Oct 16, 2008 7:00 PM





At Fort McNair, an army base located along the Potomac River in the nation's capital, a chance reunion takes place one day between two former POWs. It's the spring of 1974, and Navy commander John Sidney McCain III has returned home from the experience in Hanoi that, according to legend, transformed him from a callow and reckless youth into a serious man of patriotism and purpose. Walking along the grounds at Fort McNair, McCain runs into John Dramesi, an Air Force lieutenant colonel who was also imprisoned and tortured in Vietnam.



McCain is studying at the National War College, a prestigious graduate program he had to pull strings with the Secretary of the Navy to get into. Dramesi is enrolled, on his own merit, at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces in the building next door.



There's a distance between the two men that belies their shared experience in North Vietnam — call it an honor gap. Like many American POWs, McCain broke down under torture and offered a "confession" to his North Vietnamese captors. Dramesi, in contrast, attempted two daring escapes. For the second he was brutalized for a month with daily torture sessions that nearly killed him. His partner in the escape, Lt. Col. Ed Atterberry, didn't survive the mistreatment. But Dramesi never said a disloyal word, and for his heroism was awarded two Air Force Crosses, one of the service's highest distinctions. McCain would later hail him as "one of the toughest guys I've ever met."



On the grounds between the two brick colleges, the chitchat between the scion of four-star admirals and the son of a prizefighter turns to their academic travels; both colleges sponsor a trip abroad for young officers to network with military and political leaders in a distant corner of the globe.



"I'm going to the Middle East," Dramesi says. "Turkey, Kuwait, Lebanon, Iran."



"Why are you going to the Middle East?" McCain asks, dismissively.



"It's a place we're probably going to have some problems," Dramesi says.



"Why? Where are you going to, John?"



"Oh, I'm going to Rio."



"What the hell are you going to Rio for?"



McCain, a married father of three, shrugs.



"I got a better chance of getting laid."



Dramesi, who went on to serve as chief war planner for U.S. Air Forces in Europe and commander of a wing of the Strategic Air Command, was not surprised. "McCain says his life changed while he was in Vietnam, and he is now a different man," Dramesi says today. "But he's still the undisciplined, spoiled brat that he was when he went in."



McCAIN FIRST



This is the story of the real John McCain, the one who has been hiding in plain sight. It is the story of a man who has consistently put his own advancement above all else, a man willing to say and do anything to achieve his ultimate ambition: to become commander in chief, ascending to the one position that would finally enable him to outrank his four-star father and grandfather.



In its broad strokes, McCain's life story is oddly similar to that of the current occupant of the White House. John Sidney McCain III and George Walker Bush both represent the third generation of American dynasties. Both were born into positions of privilege against which they rebelled into mediocrity. Both developed an uncanny social intelligence that allowed them to skate by with a minimum of mental exertion. Both struggled with booze and loutish behavior. At each step, with the aid of their fathers' powerful friends, both failed upward. And both shed their skins as Episcopalian members of the Washington elite to build political careers as self-styled, ranch-inhabiting Westerners who pray to Jesus in their wives' evangelical churches.



In one vital respect, however, the comparison is deeply unfair to the current president: George W. Bush was a much better pilot.



This, of course, is not the story McCain tells about himself. Few politicians have so actively, or successfully, crafted their own myth of greatness. In McCain's version of his life, he is a prodigal son who, steeled by his brutal internment in Vietnam, learned to put "country first." Remade by the Keating Five scandal that nearly wrecked his career, the story goes, McCain re-emerged as a "reformer" and a "maverick," righteously eschewing anything that "might even tangentially be construed as a less than proper use of my office."



It's a myth McCain has cultivated throughout his decades in Washington. But during the course of this year's campaign, the mask has slipped. "Let's face it," says Larry Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel who served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell. "John McCain made his reputation on the fact that he doesn't bend his principles for politics. That's just not true."



We have now watched McCain run twice for president. The first time he positioned himself as a principled centrist and decried the politics of Karl Rove and the influence of the religious right, imploring voters to judge candidates "by the example we set, by the way we conduct our campaigns, by the way we personally practice politics." After he lost in 2000, he jagged hard to the left — breaking with the president over taxes, drilling, judicial appointments, even flirting with joining the Democratic Party.



In his current campaign, however, McCain has become the kind of politician he ran against in 2000. He has embraced those he once denounced as "agents of intolerance," promised more drilling and deeper tax cuts, even compromised his vaunted opposition to torture. Intent on winning the presidency at all costs, he has reassembled the very team that so viciously smeared him and his family eight years ago, selecting as his running mate a born-again moose hunter whose only qualification for office is her ability to electrify Rove's base. And he has engaged in a "practice of politics" so deceptive that even Rove himself has denounced it, saying that the outright lies in McCain's campaign ads go "too far" and fail the "truth test."



The missing piece of this puzzle, says a former McCain confidant who has fallen out with the senator over his neoconservatism, is a third, never realized, campaign that McCain intended to run against Bush in 2004. "McCain wanted a rematch, based on ethics, campaign finance and Enron — the corrupt relationship between Bush's team and the corporate sector," says the former friend, a prominent conservative thinker with whom McCain shared his plans over the course of several dinners in 2001. "But when 9/11 happened, McCain saw his chance to challenge Bush again was robbed. He saw 9/11 gave Bush and his failed presidency a second life. He saw Bush and Cheney's ability to draw stark contrasts between black and white, villains and good guys. And that's why McCain changed." (The McCain campaign did not respond to numerous requests for comment from Rolling Stone.)



Indeed, many leading Republicans who once admired McCain see his recent contortions to appease the GOP base as the undoing of a maverick. "John McCain's ambition overrode his basic character," says Rita Hauser, who served on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board from 2001 to 2004. But the truth of the matter is that ambition is John McCain's basic character. Seen in the sweep of his seven-decade personal history, his pandering to the right is consistent with the only constant in his life: doing what's best for himself. To put the matter squarely: John McCain is his own special interest.



"John has made a pact with the devil," says Lincoln Chafee, the former GOP senator, who has been appalled at his one-time colleague's readiness to sacrifice principle for power. Chafee and McCain were the only Republicans to vote against the Bush tax cuts. They locked arms in opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. And they worked together in the "Gang of 14," which blocked some of Bush's worst judges from the federal bench.



"On all three — sadly, sadly, sadly — McCain has flip-flopped," Chafee says. And forget all the "Country First" sloganeering, he adds. "McCain is putting himself first. He's putting himself first in blinking neon lights."



THE NAVY BRAT



John Sidney McCain III has spent most of his life trying to escape the shadow of greater men. His grandfather Adm. John Sidney "Slew" McCain earned his four stars commanding a U.S. carrier force in World War II. His deeply ambitious father, Adm. "Junior" McCain, reached the same rank, commanding America's forces in the Pacific during Vietnam.



The youngest McCain was not cut from the same cloth. Even as a toddler, McCain recalls in Faith of My Fathers, his volcanic temper was on display. "At the smallest provocation," he would hold his breath until he passed out: "I would go off in a mad frenzy, and then, suddenly, crash to the floor unconscious." His parents cured him of this habit in a way only a CIA interrogator could appreciate: by dropping their blue-faced boy in a bathtub of ice-cold water.



Trailing his hard-charging, hard-drinking father from post to post, McCain didn't play well with others. Indeed, he concedes, his runty physique inspired a Napoleon complex: "My small stature motivated me to . . . fight the first kid who provoked me."



McCain spent his formative years among the Washington elite. His father — himself deep in the throes of a daddy complex — had secured a political post as the Navy's chief liaison to the Senate, a job his son would later hold, and the McCain home on Southeast 1st Street was a high-powered pit stop in the Washington cocktail circuit. Growing up, McCain attended Episcopal High School, an all-white, all-boys boarding school across the Potomac in Virginia, where tuition today tops $40,000 a year. There, McCain behaved with all the petulance his privilege allowed, earning the nicknames "Punk" and "McNasty." Even his friends seemed to dislike him, with one recalling him as "a mean little fucker."



McCain was not only a lousy student, he had his father's taste for drink and a darkly misogynistic streak. The summer after his sophomore year, cruising with a friend near Arlington, McCain tried to pick up a pair of young women. When they laughed at him, he cursed them so vilely that he was hauled into court on a profanity charge.



McCain's admittance to Annapolis was preordained by his bloodline. But martial discipline did not seem to have much of an impact on his character. By his own account, McCain was a lazy, incurious student; he squeaked by only by prevailing upon his buddies to help him cram for exams. He continued to get sauced and treat girls badly. Before meeting a girlfriend's parents for the first time, McCain got so shitfaced that he literally crashed through the screen door when he showed up in his white midshipman's uniform.



His grandfather's name and his father's forbearance brought McCain a charmed existence at Annapolis. On his first trip at sea — to Rio de Janeiro aboard the USS Hunt — the captain was a former student of his father. While McCain's classmates learned the ins and outs of the boiler room, McCain got to pilot the ship to South America and back. In Rio, he hobnobbed with admirals and the president of Brazil.



Back on campus, McCain's short fuse was legend. "We'd hear this thunderous screaming and yelling between him and his roommate — doors slamming — and one of them would go running down the hall," recalls Phil Butler, who lived across the hall from McCain at the academy. "It was a regular occurrence."



When McCain was not shown the pampering to which he was accustomed, he grew petulant — even abusive. He repeatedly blew up in the face of his commanding officer. It was the kind of insubordination that would have gotten any other midshipman kicked out of Annapolis. But his classmates soon realized that McCain was untouchable. Midway though his final year, McCain faced expulsion, about to "bilge out" because of excessive demerits. After his mother intervened, however, the academy's commandant stepped in. Calling McCain "spoiled" to his face, he nonetheless issued a reprieve, scaling back the demerits. McCain dodged expulsion a second time by convincing another midshipman to take the fall after McCain was caught with contraband.



"He was a huge screw-off," recalls Butler. "He was always on probation. The only reason he graduated was because of his father and his grandfather — they couldn't exactly get rid of him."



McCain's self-described "four-year course of insubordination" ended with him graduating fifth from the bottom — 894th out of a class of 899. It was a record of mediocrity he would continue as a pilot.



BOTTOM GUN



In the cockpit, McCain was not a top gun, or even a middling gun. He took little interest in his flight manuals; he had other priorities.



"I enjoyed the off-duty life of a Navy flier more than I enjoyed the actual flying," McCain writes. "I drove a Corvette, dated a lot, spent all my free hours at bars and beach parties." McCain chased a lot of tail. He hit the dog track. Developed a taste for poker and dice. He picked up models when he could, screwed a stripper when he couldn't.



In the air, the hard-partying McCain had a knack for stalling out his planes in midflight. He was still in training, in Texas, when he crashed his first plane into Corpus Christi Bay during a routine practice landing. The plane stalled, and McCain was knocked cold on impact. When he came to, the plane was underwater, and he had to swim to the surface to be rescued. Some might take such a near-death experience as a wake-up call: McCain took some painkillers and a nap, and then went out carousing that night.



Off duty on his Mediterranean tours, McCain frequented the casinos of Monte Carlo, cultivating his taste for what he calls the "addictive" game of craps. McCain's thrill-seeking carried over into his day job. Flying over the south of Spain one day, he decided to deviate from his flight plan. Rocketing along mere feet above the ground, his plane sliced through a power line. His self-described "daredevil clowning" plunged much of the area into a blackout.



That should have been the end of McCain's flying career. "In the Navy, if you crashed one airplane, nine times out of 10 you would lose your wings," says Butler, who, like his former classmate, was shot down and taken prisoner in North Vietnam. Spark "a small international incident" like McCain had? Any other pilot would have "found themselves as the deck officer on a destroyer someplace in a hurry," says Butler.



"But, God, he had family pull. He was directly related to the CEO — you know?"



McCain was undeterred by the crashes. Nearly a decade out of the academy, his career adrift, he decided he wanted to fly combat in Vietnam. His motivation wasn't to contain communism or put his country first. It was the only way he could think of to earn the respect of the man he calls his "distant, inscrutable patriarch." He needed to secure a command post in the Navy — and to do that, his career needed the jump-start that only a creditable war record could provide.



As he would so many times in his career, McCain pulled strings to get ahead. After a game of tennis, McCain prevailed upon the undersecretary of the Navy that he was ready for Vietnam, despite his abysmal flight record. Sure enough, McCain was soon transferred to McCain Field — an air base in Meridian, Mississippi, named after his grandfather — to train for a post on the carrier USS Forrestal.



With a close friend at the base, an alcoholic Marine captain, McCain formed the "Key Fess Yacht Club," which quickly became infamous for hosting toga parties in the officers' quarters and bringing bands down from Memphis to attract loose women to the base. Showing his usual knack for promotion, McCain rose from "vice commodore" to "commodore" of the club.



In 1964, while still at the base, McCain began a serious romance with Carol Shepp, a vivacious former model who had just divorced one of his classmates from Annapolis. Commandeering a Navy plane, McCain spent most weekends flying from Meridian to Philadelphia for their dates. They married the following summer.



That December, McCain crashed again. Flying back from Philadelphia, where he had joined in the reverie of the Army-Navy football game, McCain stalled while coming in for a refueling stop in Norfolk, Virginia. This time he managed to bail out at 1,000 feet. As his parachute deployed, his plane thundered into the trees below.



By now, however, McCain's flying privileges were virtually irrevocable — and he knew it. On one of his runs at McCain Field, when ground control put him in a holding pattern, the lieutenant commander once again pulled his family's rank. "Let me land," McCain demanded over his radio, "or I'll take my field and go home!"



TRIAL BY FIRE



Sometimes 3 a.m. moments occur at 10:52 in the morning.



It was July 29th, 1967, a hot, gusty morning in the Gulf of Tonkin atop the four-acre flight deck of the supercarrier USS Forrestal. Perched in the cockpit of his A-4 Skyhawk, Lt. Cmdr. John McCain ticked nervously through his preflight checklist.



Now 30 years old, McCain was trying to live up to his father's expectations, to finally be known as something other than the fuck-up grandson of one of the Navy's greatest admirals. That morning, preparing for his sixth bombing run over North Vietnam, the graying pilot's dreams of combat glory were beginning to seem within his reach.



Then, in an instant, the world around McCain erupted in flames. A six-foot-long Zuni rocket, inexplicably launched by an F-4 Phantom across the flight deck, ripped through the fuel tank of McCain's aircraft. Hundreds of gallons of fuel splashed onto the deck and came ablaze. Then: Clank. Clank. Two 1,000-pound bombs dropped from under the belly of McCain's stubby A-4, the Navy's "Tinkertoy Bomber," into the fire.



McCain, who knew more than most pilots about bailing out of a crippled aircraft, leapt forward out of the cockpit, swung himself down from the refueling probe protruding from the nose cone, rolled through the flames and ran to safety across the flight deck. Just then, one of his bombs "cooked off," blowing a crater in the deck and incinerating the sailors who had rushed past McCain with hoses and fire extinguishers. McCain was stung by tiny bits of shrapnel in his legs and chest, but the wounds weren't serious; his father would later report to friends that Johnny "came through without a scratch."



The damage to the Forrestal was far more grievous: The explosion set off a chain reaction of bombs, creating a devastating inferno that would kill 134 of the carrier's 5,000-man crew, injure 161 and threaten to sink the ship.



These are the moments that test men's mettle. Where leaders are born. Leaders like . . . Lt. Cmdr. Herb Hope, pilot of the A-4 three planes down from McCain's. Cornered by flames at the stern of the carrier, Hope hurled himself off the flight deck into a safety net and clambered into the hangar deck below, where the fire was spreading. According to an official Navy history of the fire, Hope then "gallantly took command of a firefighting team" that would help contain the conflagration and ultimately save the ship.



McCain displayed little of Hope's valor. Although he would soon regale The New York Times with tales of the heroism of the brave enlisted men who "stayed to help the pilots fight the fire," McCain took no part in dousing the flames himself. After going belowdecks and briefly helping sailors who were frantically trying to unload bombs from an elevator to the flight deck, McCain retreated to the safety of the "ready room," where off-duty pilots spent their noncombat hours talking trash and playing poker. There, McCain watched the conflagration unfold on the room's closed-circuit television — bearing distant witness to the valiant self-sacrifice of others who died trying to save the ship, pushing jets into the sea to keep their bombs from exploding on deck.



As the ship burned, McCain took a moment to mourn his misfortune; his combat career appeared to be going up in smoke. "This distressed me considerably," he recalls in Faith of My Fathers. "I feared my ambitions were among the casualties in the calamity that had claimed the Forrestal."



The fire blazed late into the night. The following morning, while oxygen-masked rescue workers toiled to recover bodies from the lower decks, McCain was making fast friends with R.W. "Johnny" Apple of The New York Times, who had arrived by helicopter to cover the deadliest Naval calamity since the Second World War. The son of admiralty surviving a near-death experience certainly made for good copy, and McCain colorfully recounted how he had saved his skin. But when Apple and other reporters left the ship, the story took an even stranger turn: McCain left with them. As the heroic crew of the Forrestal mourned its fallen brothers and the broken ship limped toward the Philippines for repairs, McCain zipped off to Saigon for what he recalls as "some welcome R&R."



VIOLATING THE CODE



Ensconced in Apple's villa in Saigon, McCain and the Times reporter forged a relationship that would prove critical to the ambitious pilot's career in the years ahead. Apple effectively became the charter member of McCain's media "base," an elite corps of admiring reporters who helped create his reputation for "straight talk."



Sipping scotch and reflecting on the fire aboard the Forrestal, McCain sounded like the peaceniks he would pillory after his return from Hanoi. "Now that I've seen what the bombs and napalm did to the people on our ship," he told Apple, "I'm not so sure that I want to drop any more of that stuff on North Vietnam." Here, it seemed, was a frank-talking warrior, one willing to speak out against the military establishment in the name of truth.



But McCain's misgivings about the righteousness of the fight quickly took a back seat to his ambitions. Within days, eager to get his combat career back on track, he put in for a transfer to the carrier USS Oriskany. Two months after the Forrestal fire — following a holiday on the French Riviera — McCain reported for duty in the Gulf of Tonkin.



McCain performed adequately on the Oriskany. On October 25th, 1967, he bombed a pair of Soviet MiGs parked on an airfield outside Hanoi. His record was now even. Enemy planes destroyed by McCain: two. American planes destroyed by McCain: two.



The next day, McCain embarked on his fateful 23rd mission, a bombing raid on a power plant in downtown Hanoi. McCain had cajoled his way onto the strike force — there were medals up for grabs. The plant had recently been rebuilt after a previous bombing run that had earned two of the lead pilots Navy Crosses, one of the force's top honors.



It was a dangerous mission — taking the planes into the teeth of North Vietnam's fiercest anti-aircraft defenses. As the planes entered Hanoi airspace, they were instantly enveloped in dark clouds of flak and surface-to-air missiles. Still cocky from the previous day's kills, McCain took the biggest gamble of his life. As he dived in on the target in his A-4, his surface-to-air missile warning system sounded: A SAM had a lock on him. "I knew I should roll out and fly evasive maneuvers," McCain writes. "The A-4 is a small, fast" aircraft that "can outmaneuver a tracking SAM."



But McCain didn't "jink." Instead, he stayed on target and let fly his bombs — just as the SAM blew his wing off.



To watch the Republican National Convention and listen to Fred Thompson's account of John McCain's internment in Vietnam, you would think that McCain never gave his captors anything beyond his name, rank, service number and, under duress, the names of the Green Bay Packers offensive line. His time in Hanoi, we're to understand, steeled the man — transforming him from a fighter jock who put himself first into a patriot who would henceforth selflessly serve the public good.



There is no question that McCain suffered hideously in North Vietnam. His ejection over a lake in downtown Hanoi broke his knee and both his arms. During his capture, he was bayoneted in the ankle and the groin, and had his shoulder smashed by a rifle butt. His tormentors dragged McCain's broken body to a cell and seemed content to let him expire from his injuries. For the next two years, there were few days that he was not in agony.



But the subsequent tale of McCain's mistreatment — and the transformation it is alleged to have produced — are both deeply flawed. The Code of Conduct that governed POWs was incredibly rigid; few soldiers lived up to its dictate that they "give no information . . . which might be harmful to my comrades." Under the code, POWs are bound to give only their name, rank, date of birth and service number — and to make no "statements disloyal to my country."



Soon after McCain hit the ground in Hanoi, the code went out the window. "I'll give you military information if you will take me to the hospital," he later admitted pleading with his captors. McCain now insists the offer was a bluff, designed to fool the enemy into giving him medical treatment. In fact, his wounds were attended to only after the North Vietnamese discovered that his father was a Navy admiral. What has never been disclosed is the manner in which they found out: McCain told them. According to Dramesi, one of the few POWs who remained silent under years of torture, McCain tried to justify his behavior while they were still prisoners. "I had to tell them," he insisted to Dramesi, "or I would have died in bed."



Dramesi says he has no desire to dishonor McCain's service, but he believes that celebrating the downed pilot's behavior as heroic — "he wasn't exceptional one way or the other" — has a corrosive effect on military discipline. "This business of my country before my life?" Dramesi says. "Well, he had that opportunity and failed miserably. If it really were country first, John McCain would probably be walking around without one or two arms or legs — or he'd be dead."



Once the Vietnamese realized they had captured the man they called the "crown prince," they had every motivation to keep McCain alive. His value as a propaganda tool and bargaining chip was far greater than any military intelligence he could provide, and McCain knew it. "It was hard not to see how pleased the Vietnamese were to have captured an admiral's son," he writes, "and I knew that my father's identity was directly related to my survival." But during the course of his medical treatment, McCain followed through on his offer of military information. Only two weeks after his capture, the North Vietnamese press issued a report — picked up by The New York Times — in which McCain was quoted as saying that the war was "moving to the advantage of North Vietnam and the United States appears to be isolated." He also provided the name of his ship, the number of raids he had flown, his squadron number and the target of his final raid.



THE CONFESSION



In the company of his fellow POWs, and later in isolation, McCain slowly and miserably recovered from his wounds. In June 1968, after three months in solitary, he was offered what he calls early release. In the official McCain narrative, this was the ultimate test of mettle. He could have come home, but keeping faith with his fellow POWs, he chose to remain imprisoned in Hanoi.



What McCain glosses over is that accepting early release would have required him to make disloyal statements that would have violated the military's Code of Conduct. If he had done so, he could have risked court-martial and an ignominious end to his military career. "Many of us were given this offer," according to Butler, McCain's classmate who was also taken prisoner. "It meant speaking out against your country and lying about your treatment to the press. You had to 'admit' that the U.S. was criminal and that our treatment was 'lenient and humane.' So I, like numerous others, refused the offer."



"He makes it sound like it was a great thing to have accomplished," says Dramesi. "A great act of discipline or strength. That simply was not the case." In fairness, it is difficult to judge McCain's experience as a POW; throughout most of his incarceration he was the only witness to his mistreatment. Parts of his memoir recounting his days in Hanoi read like a bad Ian Fleming novel, with his Vietnamese captors cast as nefarious Bond villains. On the Fourth of July 1968, when he rejected the offer of early release, an officer nicknamed "Cat" got so mad, according to McCain, that he snapped a pen he was holding, splattering ink across the room.



"They taught you too well, Mac Kane," Cat snarled, kicking over a chair. "They taught you too well."



The brutal interrogations that followed produced results. In August 1968, over the course of four days, McCain was tortured into signing a confession that he was a "black criminal" and an "air pirate."



"John allows the media to make him out to be the hero POW, which he knows is absolutely not true, to further his political goals," says Butler. "John was just one of about 600 guys. He was nothing unusual. He was just another POW."



McCain has also allowed the media to believe that his torture lasted for the entire time he was in Hanoi. At the Republican convention, Fred Thompson said of McCain's torture, "For five and a half years this went on." In fact, McCain's torture ended after two years, when the death of Ho Chi Minh in September 1969 caused the Vietnamese to change the way they treated POWs. "They decided it would be better to treat us better and keep us alive so they could trade us in for real estate," Butler recalls.



By that point, McCain had become the most valuable prisoner of all: His father was now directing the war effort as commander in chief of all U.S. forces in the Pacific. McCain spent the next three and a half years in Hanoi biding his time, trying to put on weight and regain his strength, as the bombing ordered by his father escalated. By the time he and other POWs were freed in March 1973 as a result of the Paris Peace Accords, McCain was able to leave the prison camp in Hanoi on his own feet.



Even those in the military who celebrate McCain's patriotism and sacrifice question why his POW experience has been elevated as his top qualification to be commander in chief. "It took guts to go through that and to come out reasonably intact and able to pick up the pieces of your life and move on," says Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff, who has known McCain since the 1980s. "It is unquestionably a demonstration of the character of the man. But I don't think that it is a special qualification for being president of the United States. In some respects, I'm not sure that's the kind of character I want sitting in the Oval Office. I'm not sure that much time in a prisoner-of-war status doesn't do something to you. Doesn't do something to you psychologically, doesn't do something to you that might make you a little more volatile, a little less apt to listen to reason, a little more inclined to be volcanic in your temperament."



"A BELLICOSE HAWK"



The reckless, womanizing hotshot who leaned on family connections for advancement before his capture in Vietnam emerged a reckless, womanizing celebrity who continued to pull strings. The real difference between the McCain of 1967 and the McCain of 1973 was that the latter's ambition was now on overdrive. He wanted to study at the National War College — but military brass turned him down as underqualified. So McCain appealed the decision to the top: John Warner, the Secretary of the Navy and a friend of his father. Warner, who now serves in the Senate alongside McCain, overruled the brass and gave the POW a slot. McCain also got his wings back, even though his injuries prevented him from raising his hands above shoulder height to comb his own hair.



McCain was eager to make up for lost time — and the times were favorable to a high-profile veteran willing to speak out in favor of the war. With the Senate moving to cut off funds for the Nixon administration's illegal bombing of Cambodia, the president needed all the help he could get. Two months after his release, McCain related his harrowing story of survival in a 13-page narrative in U.S. News & World Report, at the end of which he launched into an energetic defense of Nixon's discredited foreign policy. "I admire President Nixon's courage," he wrote. "It is difficult for me to understand . . . why people are still criticizing his foreign policy — for example, the bombing in Cambodia."



In the years to come, McCain would continue to fight the war his father had lost. In his meetings with Nixon, Junior was known for chomping on an unlit cigar, complaining about the "goddamn gooks" and pushing to bomb enemy sanctuaries in Cambodia. His son was equally gung-ho. "John has always been a very bellicose hawk," says John H. Johns, a retired brigadier general who studied with McCain at the War College. "When he came back from Vietnam, he accused the liberal media of undermining national will, that we could have won in Vietnam if we had the national will."



It was the kind of tough talk that made McCain a fast-rising star in far-right circles. Through Ross Perot, a friend of Ronald Reagan who had championed the cause of the POWs, McCain was invited to meet with the then-governor of California and his wife. Impressed, Reagan invited McCain to be the keynote speaker at his annual "prayer breakfast" in Sacramento.



Then, at the end of 1974, McCain finally achieved the goal he had been working toward for years. He was installed as the commanding officer of the largest air squadron in the Navy — the Replacement Air Group based in Jacksonville, Florida — training carrier pilots. It was a post for which McCain flatly admits, "I was not qualified." By now, however, he was unembarrassed by his own nepotism. At the ceremony commemorating his long-sought ascension to command, his father looking on with pride, McCain wept openly.



BOOZE AND PORK



If heroism is defined by physical suffering, Carol McCain is every bit her ex-husband's equal. Driving alone on Christmas Eve 1969, she skidded out on a patch of ice and crashed into a telephone pole. She would spend six months in the hospital and undergo 23 surgeries. The former model McCain bragged of to his buddies in the POW camp as his "long tall Sally" was now five inches shorter and walked with crutches.



By any standard, McCain treated her contemptibly. Whatever his dreams of getting laid in Rio, he got plenty of ass during his command post in Jacksonville. According to biographer Robert Timberg, McCain seduced his conquests on off-duty cross-country flights — even though adultery is a court-martial offense. He was also rumored to be romantically involved with a number of his subordinates.



In 1977, McCain was promoted to captain and became the Navy's liaison to the Senate — the same politically connected post once occupied by his father. He took advantage of the position to buddy up to young senators like Gary Hart, William Cohen and Joe Biden. He was also taken under the wing of another friend of his father: Sen. John Tower, the powerful Texas Republican who would become his political mentor. Despite the promotion, McCain continued his adolescent carousing: On a diplomatic trip to Saudi Arabia with Tower, he tried to get some tourists he disliked in trouble with the authorities by littering the room-service trays outside their door with empty bottles of alcohol.



As the Navy's top lobbyist, McCain was supposed to carry out the bidding of the secretary of the Navy. But in 1978 he went off the reservation. Vietnam was over, and the Carter administration, cutting costs, had decided against spending $2 billion to replace the aging carrier Midway. The secretary agreed with the administration's decision. Readiness would not be affected. The only reason to replace the carrier — at a cost of nearly $7 billion in today's dollars — was pork-barrel politics.



Although he now crusades against wasteful military spending, McCain had no qualms about secretly lobbying for a pork project that would pay for a dozen Bridges to Nowhere. "He did a lot of stuff behind the back of the secretary of the Navy," one lobbyist told Timberg. Working his Senate connections, McCain managed to include a replacement for the Midway in the defense authorization bill in 1978. Carter, standing firm, vetoed the entire spending bill to kill the carrier. When an attempt to override the veto fell through, however, McCain and his lobbyist friends didn't give up the fight. The following year, Congress once again approved funding for the carrier. This time, Carter — his pork-busting efforts undone by a turncoat Navy liaison — signed the bill.



In the spring of 1979, while conducting official business for the Navy, the still-married McCain encountered Cindy Lou Hensley, a willowy former cheerleader for USC. Mutually smitten, the two lied to each other about their ages. The 24-year-old Hensley became 27; the 42-year-old McCain became 38. For nearly a year the two carried on a cross-country romance while McCain was still living with Carol: Court documents filed with their divorce proceeding indicate that they "cohabitated as husband and wife" for the first nine months of the affair.



Although McCain stresses in his memoir that he married Cindy three months after divorcing Carol, he was still legally married to his first wife when he and Cindy were issued a marriage license from the state of Arizona. The divorce was finalized on April 2nd, 1980. McCain's second marriage — rung in at the Arizona Biltmore with Gary Hart as a groomsman — was consummated only six weeks later, on May 17th. The union gave McCain access to great wealth: Cindy, whose father was the exclusive distributor for Budweiser in the Phoenix area, is now worth an estimated $100 million.



McCain's friends were blindsided by the divorce. The Reagans — with whom the couple had frequently dined and even accompanied on New Year's holidays — never forgave him. By the time McCain became a self-proclaimed "foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution" two years later, he and the Gipper had little more than ideology to bind them. Nancy took Carol under her wing, giving her a job in the White House and treating McCain with a frosty formality that was evident even on the day last March when she endorsed his candidacy. "Ronnie and I always waited until everything was decided and then we endorsed," she said. "Well, obviously, this is the nominee of the party."



THE CARPETBAGGER



As his marriage unraveled, McCain's naval career was also stalling out. He had been passed over for a promotion. There was no sea command on the horizon, ensuring that he would never be able to join his four-star forefathers. For good measure, he crashed his third and final plane, this one a single-engine ultralight. McCain has never spoken of his last crash publicly, but his friend Gen. Jim Jones recalled in a 1999 interview that it left McCain with bandages on his face and one arm in a sling.



So McCain turned to politics. Receiving advance word that a GOP congressional seat was opening up outside Phoenix, he put the inside edge to good use. Within minutes of the incumbent's official retirement announcement, Cindy McCain bought her husband the house that would serve as his foothold in the district. In sharp contrast to the way he now markets himself, McCain's campaign ads billed him as an insider — a man "who knows how Washington works." Though the Reagans no longer respected him, McCain featured pictures of himself smiling with them.



"Thanks to my prisoner-of-war experience," McCain writes, "I had, as they say in politics, a good story to sell." And sell it he did. "Listen, pal," he told an opponent who challenged him during a candidate forum. "I wish I could have had the luxury, like you, of growing up and living and spending my entire life in a nice place like the first district of Arizona, but I was doing other things. As a matter of fact, when I think about it now, the place I lived the longest in my life was Hanoi."



To finance his campaign, McCain dipped into the Hensley family fortune. He secured an endorsement from his mentor, Sen. Tower, who tapped his vast donor network in Texas to give McCain a much-needed boost. And he began an unethical relationship with a high-flying and corrupt financier that would come to characterize his cozy dealings with major donors and lobbyists over the years.



Charlie Keating, the banker and anti-pornography crusader, would ultimately be convicted on 73 counts of fraud and racketeering for his role in the savings-and-loan scandal of the 1980s. That crisis, much like today's subprime-mortgage meltdown, resulted from misbegotten banking deregulation, and ultimately left taxpayers to pick up a tab of more than $124 billion. Keating, who raised more than $100,000 for McCain's race, lavished the first-term congressman with the kind of political favors that would make Jack Abramoff blush. McCain and his family took at least nine free trips at Keating's expense, and vacationed nearly every year at the mogul's estate in the Bahamas. There they would spend the days yachting and snorkeling and attending extravagant parties in a world McCain referred to as "Charlie Keating's Shangri-La." Keating also invited Cindy McCain and her father to invest in a real estate venture for which he promised a 26 percent return on investment. They plunked down more than $350,000.



McCain still attributes the attention to nothing more than Keating's "great respect for military people" and the duo's "political and personal affinity." But Keating, for his part, made no bones about the purpose of his giving. When asked by reporters if the investments he made in politicians bought their loyalty and influence on his behalf, Keating replied, "I want to say in the most forceful way I can, I certainly hope so."



THE KEATING FIVE



In congress, Rep. John McCain quickly positioned himself as a GOP hard-liner. He voted against honoring Martin Luther King Jr. with a national holiday in 1983 — a stance he held through 1989. He backed Reagan on tax cuts for the wealthy, abortion and support for the Nicaraguan contras. He sought to slash federal spending on social programs, and he voted twice against campaign-finance reform. He cites as his "biggest" legislative victory of that era a 1989 bill that abolished catastrophic health insurance for seniors, a move he still cheers as the first-ever repeal of a federal entitlement program.



McCain voted to confirm Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. In 1993, he was the keynote speaker at a fundraiser for a group that sponsored an anti-gay-rights ballot initiative in Oregon. His anti-government fervor was renewed in the Gingrich revolution of 1994, when he called for abolishing the departments of Education and Energy. The following year, he championed a sweeping measure that would have imposed a blanket moratorium on any increase of government oversight.



In this context, McCain's recent record — opposing the new GI Bill, voting to repeal the federal minimum wage, seeking to deprive 3.8 million kids of government health care — looks entirely consistent. "When jackasses like Rush Limbaugh say he's not conservative, that's just total nonsense," says former Sen. Gary Hart, who still counts McCain as a friend.



Although a hawkish Cold Warrior, McCain did show an independent streak when it came to the use of American military power. Because of his experience in Vietnam, he said, he didn't favor the deployment of U.S. forces unless there was a clear and attainable military objective. In 1983, McCain broke with Reagan to vote against the deployment of Marine peacekeepers to Lebanon. The unorthodox stance caught the attention of the media — including this very magazine, which praised McCain's "enormous courage." It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. McCain recognized early on how the game was played: The Washington press corps "tend to notice acts of political independence from unexpected quarters," he later noted. "Now I was debating Lebanon on programs like MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour and in the pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post. I was gratified by the attention and eager for more."



When McCain became a senator in 1986, filling the seat of retiring Republican icon Barry Goldwater, he was finally in a position that a true maverick could use to battle the entrenched interests in Washington. Instead, McCain did the bidding of his major donor, Charlie Keating, whose financial empire was on the brink of collapse. Federal regulators were closing in on Keating, who had taken federally insured deposits from his Lincoln Savings and Loan and leveraged them to make wildly risky real estate ventures. If regulators restricted his investments, Keating knew, it would all be over.



In the year before his Senate run, McCain had championed legislation that would have delayed new regulations of savings and loans. Grateful, Keating contributed $54,000 to McCain's Senate campaign. Now, when Keating tried to stack the federal regulatory bank board with cronies, McCain made a phone call seeking to push them through. In 1987, in an unprecedented display of political intimidation, McCain also attended two meetings convened by Keating to pressure federal regulators to back off. The senators who participated in the effort would come to be known as the Keating Five.



"Senate historians were unable to find any instance in U.S. history that was comparable, in terms of five U.S. senators meeting with a regulator on behalf of one institution," says Bill Black, then deputy director of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation, who attended the second meeting. "And it hasn't happened since."



Following the meetings with McCain and the other senators, the regulators backed off, stalling their investigation of Lincoln. By the time the S&L collapsed two years later, taxpayers were on the hook for $3.4 billion, which stood as a record for the most expensive bank failure — until the current mortgage crisis. In addition, 20,000 investors who had bought junk bonds from Keating, thinking they were federally insured, had their savings wiped out.



"McCain saw the political pressure on the regulators," recalls Black. "He could have saved these widows from losing their life savings. But he did absolutely nothing."



McCain was ultimately given a slap on the wrist by the Senate Ethics Committee, which concluded only that he had exercised "poor judgment." The committee never investigated Cindy's investment with Keating.



The McCains soon found themselves entangled in more legal trouble. In 1989, in behavior the couple has blamed in part on the stress of the Keating scandal, Cindy became addicted to Vicodin and Percocet. She directed a doctor employed by her charity — which provided medical care to patients in developing countries — to supply the narcotics, which she then used to get high on trips to places like Bangladesh and El Salvador.



Tom Gosinski, a young Republican, kept a detailed journal while working as director of government affairs for the charity. "I am working for a very sad, lonely woman whose marriage of convenience to a U.S. senator has driven her to . . . cover feelings of despair with drugs," he wrote in 1992. When Cindy McCain suddenly fired Gosinski, he turned his journal over to the Drug Enforcement Administration, sparking a yearlong investigation. To avoid jail time, Cindy agreed to a hush-hush plea bargain and court-imposed rehab.



Ironically, her drug addiction became public only because she and her husband tried to cover it up. In an effort to silence Gosinski, who was seeking $250,000 for wrongful termination, the attorney for the McCains demanded that Phoenix prosecutors investigate the former employee for extortion. The charge was baseless, and prosecutors dropped the investigation in 1994 — but not before publishing a report that included details of Cindy's drug use.



Notified that the report was being released, Sen. McCain leapt into action. He dispatched his top political consultant to round up a group of friendly reporters, for whom Cindy staged a seemingly selfless, Oprah-style confession of her past addiction. Her drug use became part of the couple's narrative of straight talk and bravery in the face of adversity. "If what I say can help just one person to face the problem," Cindy declared, "it's worthwhile."



FAVORS FOR DONORS



In the aftermath of the Keating Five, McCain realized that his career was in a "hell of a mess." He had made George H.W. Bush's shortlist for vice president in 1988, but the Keating scandal made him a political untouchable. McCain needed a high horse — so his long-standing opposition to campaign-finance reform went out the window. Working with Russ Feingold, a Democrat from Wisconsin, McCain authored a measure to ban unlimited "soft money" donations from politics.



The Keating affair also taught McCain a vital lesson about handling the media. When the scandal first broke, he went ballistic on reporters who questioned his wife's financial ties to Keating — calling them "liars" and "idiots." Predictably, the press coverage was merciless. So McCain dialed back the anger and turned up the charm. "I talked to the press constantly, ad infinitum, until their appetite for information from me was completely satisfied," he later wrote. "It is a public relations strategy that I have followed to this day." Mr. Straight Talk was born.



Unfortunately, any lessons McCain learned from the Keating scandal didn't affect his unbridled enthusiasm for deregulating the finance industry. "He continues to follow policies that create the same kind of environment we see today, with recurrent financial crises and epidemics of fraud led by CEOs," says Black, the former S&L regulator. Indeed, if the current financial crisis has a villain, it is Phil Gramm, who remains close to McCain. As chair of the Senate Banking Committee in the late 1990s, Gramm ushered in — with McCain's fervent support — a massive wave of deregulation for insurance companies and brokerage houses and banks, the aftershocks of which are just now being felt in Wall Street's catastrophic collapse. McCain, who has admitted that "the issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should," relies on Gramm to guide him.



McCain also did his part to loosen regulations on big corporations. In 1997, McCain became chairman of the powerful Senate Commerce Committee, which oversees the insurance and telecommunications industries, as well as the CEO pay packages of those McCain now denounces as "fat cats." The special interests with business before the committee were big and well-heeled. All told, executives and fundraisers associated with these firms donated $2.6 million to McCain when he served as the chairman or ranking member.



The money bought influence. In 1998, employees of BellSouth contributed more than $16,000 to McCain. The senator returned the favor, asking the Federal Communications Commission to give "serious consideration" to the company's request to become a long-distance carrier. Days after legislation benefiting the satellite-TV carrier EchoStar cleared McCain's committee, the company's founder celebrated by hosting a major fundraiser for McCain's presidential bid.



Whatever McCain's romantic entanglements with the lobbyist Vicki Iseman, he was clearly in bed with her clients, who donated nearly $85,000 to his campaigns. One of her clients, Bud Paxson, set up a meeting with McCain in 1999, frustrated by the FCC's delay of his proposed takeover of a television station in Pittsburgh. Paxson had treated McCain well, offering the then-presidential candidate use of his corporate jet to fly to campaign events and ponying up $20,000 in campaign donations.



"You're the head of the commerce committee," Paxson told McCain, according to The Washington Post. "The FCC is not doing its job. I would love for you to write a letter."



Iseman helped draft the text, and McCain sent the letter. Several weeks later — the day after McCain used Paxson's jet to fly to Florida for a fundraiser — McCain wrote another letter. FCC chair William Kennard sent a sharp rebuke to McCain, calling the senator's meddling "highly unusual." Nonetheless, within a week of McCain's second letter, the FCC ruled three-to-two in favor of Paxson's deal.



Following his failed presidential bid in 2000, McCain needed a vehicle to keep his brand alive. He founded the Reform Institute, which he set up as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit — a tax status that barred it from explicit political activity. McCain proceeded to staff the institute with his campaign manager, Rick Davis, as well as the fundraising chief, legal counsel and communications chief from his 2000 campaign.



There is no small irony that the Reform Institute — founded to bolster McCain's crusade to rid politics of unregulated soft money — itself took in huge sums of unregulated soft money from companies with interests before McCain's committee. EchoStar got in on the ground floor with a donation of $100,000. A charity funded by the CEO of Univision gave another $100,000. Cablevision gave $200,000 to the Reform Institute in 2003 and 2004 — just as its officials were testifying before the commerce committee. McCain urged approval of the cable company's proposed pricing plan. As Bradley Smith, the former chair of the Federal Election Commission, wrote at the time: "Appearance of corruption, anyone?"



"HE IS HOTHEADED"



Over the years, John McCain has demonstrated a streak of anger so nasty that even his former flacks make no effort to spin it away. "If I tried to convince you he does not have a temper, you should hang up on me and ridicule me in print," says Dan Schnur, who served as McCain's press man during the 2000 campaign. Even McCain admits to an "immature and unprofessional reaction to slights" that is "little changed from the reactions to such provocations I had as a schoolboy."



McCain is sensitive about his physical appearance, especially his height. The candidate is only five-feet-nine, making him the shortest party nominee since Michael Dukakis. On the night he was elected senator in 1986, McCain exploded after discovering that the stage setup for his victory speech was too low; television viewers saw his head bobbing at the bottom of the screen, his chin frequently cropped from view. Enraged, McCain tracked down the young Republican who had set up the podium, prodding the volunteer in the chest while screaming that he was an "incompetent little shit." Jon Hinz, the director of the Arizona GOP, separated the senator from the young man, promising to get him a milk crate to stand on for his next public appearance.



During his 1992 campaign, at the end of a long day, McCain's wife, Cindy, mussed his receding hair and needled him playfully that he was "getting a little thin up there." McCain reportedly blew his top, cutting his wife down with the kind of language that had gotten him hauled into court as a high schooler: "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt." Even though the incident was witnessed by three reporters, the McCain campaign denies it took place.



In the Senate — where, according to former GOP Sen. Bob Smith, McCain has "very few friends" — his volcanic temper has repeatedly led to explosive altercations with colleagues and constituents alike. In 1992, McCain got into a heated exchange with Sen. Chuck Grassley over the fate of missing American servicemen in Vietnam. "Are you calling me stupid?" Grassley demanded. "No, I'm calling you a fucking jerk!" yelled McCain. Sen. Bob Kerrey later told reporters that he feared McCain was "going to head-butt Grassley and drive the cartilage in his nose into his brain." The two were separated before they came to blows. Several years later, during another debate over servicemen missing in action, an elderly mother of an MIA soldier rolled up to McCain in her wheelchair to speak to him about her son's case. According to witnesses, McCain grew enraged, raising his hand as if to strike her before pushing her wheelchair away.



McCain has called Paul Weyrich, who helped steer the Republican Party to the right, a "pompous self-serving son of a bitch" who "possesses the attributes of a Dickensian villain." In 1999, he told Sen. Pete Domenici, the Republican chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, that "only an asshole would put together a budget like this."



Last year, after barging into a bipartisan meeting on immigration legislation and attempting to seize the reins, McCain was called out by fellow GOP Sen. John Cornyn of Texas. "Wait a second here," Cornyn said. "I've been sitting in here for all of these negotiations and you just parachute in here on the last day. You're out of line." McCain exploded: "Fuck you! I know more about this than anyone in the room." The incident foreshadowed McCain's 11th-hour theatrics in September, when he abruptly "suspended" his campaign and inserted himself into the Wall Street bailout debate at the last minute, just as congressional leaders were attempting to finalize a bipartisan agreement.



At least three of McCain's GOP colleagues have gone on record to say that they consider him temperamentally unsuited to be commander in chief. Smith, the former senator from New Hampshire, has said that McCain's "temper would place this country at risk in international affairs, and the world perhaps in danger. In my mind, it should disqualify him." Sen. Domenici of New Mexico has said he doesn't "want this guy anywhere near a trigger." And Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi weighed in that "the thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He is erratic. He is hotheaded."



McCain's frequently inappropriate humor has also led many to question his self-control. In 1998, the senator told a joke about President Clinton's teenage daughter at a GOP fundraiser. "Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly?" McCain asked. "Because her father is Janet Reno!"



More recently, McCain's jokes have heightened tensions with Iran. The senator once cautioned that "the world's only superpower . . . should never make idle threats" — but that didn't stop him from rewriting the lyrics to a famous Beach Boys tune. In April 2007, when a voter at a town-hall session asked him about his policy toward Tehran, McCain responded by singing, "bomb bomb bomb" Iran. The loose talk was meant to incite the GOP base, but it also aggravated relations with Iran, whose foreign minister condemned McCain's "jokes about genocide" as a testament to his "disturbed state of mind" and "warmongering approach to foreign policy."



"NEXT UP, BAGHDAD!"



The myth of John McCain hinges on two transformations — from pampered flyboy to selfless patriot, and from Keating crony to incorruptible reformer — that simply never happened. But there is one serious conversion that has taken root in McCain: his transformation from a cautious realist on foreign policy into a reckless cheerleader of neoconservatism.



"He's going to be Bush on steroids," says Johns, the retired brigadier general who has known McCain since their days at the National War College. "His hawkish views now are very dangerous. He puts military at the top of foreign policy rather than diplomacy, just like George Bush does. He and other neoconservatives are dedicated to converting the world to democracy and free markets, and they want to do it through the barrel of a gun."



McCain used to believe passionately in the limits of American military power. In 1993, he railed against Clinton's involvement in Somalia, sponsoring an amendment to cut off funds for the troops. The following year he blasted the idealistic aims of sending U.S. troops to Haiti, taking to the Senate floor to propose an immediate withdrawal. He even started out a fierce opponent of NATO air strikes on Serbia during the war in the Balkans.



But such concerns went out the window when McCain began gearing up to run for president. In 1998, he formed a political alliance with William Kristol, editor of the neoconservative Weekly Standard, who became one of his closest advisers. Randy Scheunemann — a hard-right lobbyist who was promoting Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi — came aboard as McCain's top foreign-policy adviser. Before long, the senator who once cautioned against "trading American blood for Iraqi blood" had been reborn as a fire-breathing neoconservative who believes in using American military might to spread American ideals — a belief he describes as a "sacred duty to suffer hardship and risk danger to protect the values of our civilization and impart them to humanity." By 1999, McCain was championing what he called "rogue state rollback." First on the hit list: Iraq.



Privately, McCain brags that he was the "original neocon." And after 9/11, he took the lead in agitating for war with Iraq, outpacing even Dick Cheney in the dissemination of bogus intelligence about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. "There's other organizations besides Mr. bin Laden who are bent on the destruction of the United States," he warned in an appearance on Hardball on September 12th. "It isn't just Afghanistan. We're talking about Syria, Iraq, Iran, perhaps North Korea, Libya and others." A few days later, he told Jay Leno's audience that "some other countries" — possibly Iraq, Iran and Syria — had aided bin Laden.



A month after 9/11, with the U.S. bombing Kabul and reeling from the anthrax scare, McCain assured David Letterman that "we'll do fine" in Afghanistan. He then added, unbidden, "The second phase is Iraq. Some of this anthrax may — and I emphasize may — have come from Iraq."



Later that month on Larry King, McCain raised the specter of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction before he peddled what became Dick Cheney's favorite lie: "The Czech government has revealed meetings, contacts between Iraqi intelligence and Mohamed Atta. The evidence is very clear. . . . So we will have to act." On Nightline, he again flogged the Czech story and cited Iraqi defectors to claim that "there is no doubt as to [Saddam's] avid pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them. That, coupled with his relations with terrorist organizations, I think, is a case that the administration will be making as we move step by step down this road."



That December, just as U.S. forces were bearing down on Osama bin Laden in Tora Bora, McCain joined with five senators in an open letter to the White House. "In the interest of our own national security, Saddam Hussein must be removed from power," they insisted, claiming that there was "no doubt" that Hussein intended to use weapons of mass destruction "against the United States and its allies."



In January 2002, McCain made a fact-finding mission to the Middle East. While he was there, he dropped by a supercarrier stationed in the Arabian Sea that was dear to his heart: the USS Theodore Roosevelt, the giant floating pork project that he had driven through over President Carter's veto. On board the carrier, McCain called Iraq a "clear and present danger to the security of the United States of America." Standing on the flight bridge, he watched as fighter planes roared off, en route to Afghanistan — where Osama bin Laden had already slipped away. "Next up, Baghdad!" McCain whooped.



Over the next 15 months leading up to the invasion, McCain continued to lead the rush to war. In November 2002, Scheunemann set up a group called the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq at the same address as Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress. The groups worked in such close concert that at one point they got their Websites crossed. The CLI was established with explicit White House backing to sell the public on the war. The honorary co-chair of the committee: John Sidney McCain III.



In September 2002, McCain assured Americans that the war would be "fairly easy" with an "overwhelming victory in a very short period of time." On the eve of the invasion, Hardball host Chris Matthews asked McCain, "Are you one of those who holds up an optimistic view of the postwar scene? Do you believe that the people of Iraq, or at least a large number of them, will treat us as liberators?"



McCain was emphatic: "Absolutely. Absolutely."



Today, however, McCain insists that he predicted a protracted struggle from the outset. "The American people were led to believe this could be some kind of day at the beach," he said in August 2006, "which many of us fully understood from the beginning would be a very, very difficult undertaking." McCain also claims he urged Bush to dump Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. "I'm the only one that said that Rumsfeld had to go," he said in a January primary debate. Except that he didn't. Not once. As late as May 2004, in fact, McCain praised Rumsfeld for doing "a fine job."



Indeed, McCain's neocon makeover is so extreme that Republican generals like Colin Powell and Brent Scowcroft have refused to endorse their party's nominee. "The fact of the matter is his judgment about what to do in Iraq was wrong," says Richard Clarke, who served as Bush's counterterrorism czar until 2003. "He hung out with people like Ahmad Chalabi. He said Iraq was going to be easy, and he said we were going to war because of terrorism. We should have been fighting in Afghanistan with more troops to go after Al Qaeda. Instead we're at risk because of the mistaken judgment of people like John McCain."



MR. FLIP-FLOP



In the end, the essential facts of John McCain's life and career — the pivotal experiences in which he demonstrated his true character — are important because of what they tell us about how he would govern as president. Far from the portrayal he presents of himself as an unflinching maverick with a consistent and reliable record, McCain has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to taking whatever position will advance his own career. He "is the classic opportunist," according to Ross Perot, who worked closely with McCain on POW issues. "He's always reaching for attention and glory."



McCain has worked hard to deny such charges. "They're drinking the Kool-Aid that somehow I have changed positions on the issues," he said of his critics at the end of August. The following month, when challenged on The View, McCain again defied those who accuse him of flip-flopping. "What specific area have I quote 'changed'?" he demanded. "Nobody can name it."



In fact, his own statements show that he has been on both sides of a host of vital issues: the Bush tax cuts, the estate tax, waterboarding, hunting down terrorists in Pakistan, kicking Russia out of the G-8, a surge of troops into Afghanistan, the GI Bill, storing nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain, teaching intelligent design, fully funding No Child Left Behind, offshore drilling, his own immigration policy and withdrawal timelines for Iraq.



In March, McCain insisted to The Wall Street Journal that he is "always for less regulation." In September, with the government forced to bail out the nation's largest insurance companies and brokerage houses, McCain declared that he would regulate the financial industry and end the "casino culture on Wall Street." He did a similar about-face on Bush's tax cuts, opposing them when he planned to run against Bush in 2001, then declaring that he wants to make them larger — and permanent — when he needed to win the support of anti-tax conservatives this year. "It's a big flip-flop," conceded tax abolitionist Grover Norquist. "But I'm happy he's flopped."



In June of this year, McCain reversed his decades-long opposition to coastal drilling — shortly before cashing $28,500 from 13 donors linked to Hess Oil. And the senator, who only a decade ago tried to ban registered lobbyists from working on political campaigns, now deploys 170 lobbyists in key positions as fundraisers and advisers.



Then there's torture — the issue most related to McCain's own experience as a POW. In 2005, in a highly public fight, McCain battled the president to stop the torture of enemy combatants, winning a victory to require military personnel to abide by the Army Field Manual when interrogating prisoners. But barely a year later, as he prepared to launch his presidential campaign, McCain cut a deal with the White House that allows the Bush administration to imprison detainees indefinitely and to flout the Geneva Conventions' prohibitions against torture.



What his former allies in the anti-torture fight found most troubling was that McCain would not admit to his betrayal. Shortly after cutting the deal, McCain spoke to a group of retired military brass who had been working to ban torture. According to Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former deputy, McCain feigned outrage at Bush and Cheney, as though he too had had the rug pulled out from under him. "We all knew the opposite was the truth," recalls Wilkerson. "That's when I began to lose a little bit of my respect for the man and his bona fides as a straight shooter."



But perhaps the most revealing of McCain's flip-flops was his promise, made at the beginning of the year, that he would "raise the level of political dialogue in America." McCain pledged he would "treat my opponents with respect and demand that they treat me with respect." Instead, with Rove protégé Steve Schmidt at the helm, McCain has turned the campaign into a torrent of debasing negativity, misrepresenting Barack Obama's positions on everything from sex education for kindergarteners to middle-class taxes. In September, in one of his most blatant embraces of Rove-like tactics, McCain hired Tucker Eskew — one of Rove's campaign operatives who smeared the senator and his family during the 2000 campaign in South Carolina.



Throughout the campaign this year, McCain has tried to make the contest about honor and character. His own writing gives us the standard by which he should be judged. "Always telling the truth in a political campaign," he writes in Worth the Fighting For, "is a great test of character." He adds: "Patriotism that only serves and never risks one's self-interest isn't patriotism at all. It's selfishness. That's a lesson worth relearning from time to time." It's a lesson, it would appear, that the candidate himself could stand to relearn.



"I'm sure John McCain loves his country," says Richard Clarke, the former counterterrorism czar under Bush. "But loving your country and lying to the American people are apparently not inconsistent in his view."