Would Our Founding Fathers Support Legislation By Talk Show Hosts?

By Mary Mostert, Analyst, Banner of Liberty (www.bannerofliberty.com)

June 30, 2007

On a vote of 53 to 46 the Senate rejected S. 1639, which designed address the problem of 12 million or more illegal aliens living in the USA. It was supported by Republican President George W. Bush. We are now being told that the bill was defeated at the urging of talk show hosts who made the bill their #1 discussion topic. Thirty Seven Republicans, fifteen Democrats and one Independent voted against it and thirty-three Democrats, twelve Republicans and one Independent voted in support of President Bush's efforts to reform immigration law.

While the media, the talk show hosts and Republicans who opposed the bill see its failure as a defeat for President Bush, it is really more of a victory for those who oppose immigration reform. After all, we currently have a Democrat controlled Congress primarily because many Republicans did not go to the polls and vote for Republican candidates because they disagree with President Bush on immigration reform.

It is unlikely that any immigration reform will be passed in the current Congress and, after two more years of building an American version of the Berlin Wall on the Rio Grande I doubt that many Hispanics will be inclined to vote Republican. A larger plurality of Democrats in Congress, along with a Democrat in the White House would not bring immigration reform any time in the near future.

While I heard talk show hosts who opposed the Bush immigration reform bill claim that they "had" a copy of the bill, I didn't hear any of them ever actually quote or refer to specific language in the bill. Section one of the now defeated bill would have guaranteed:

(1) Operational control of the international border with Mexico,
(2) Increasing staff for the Border Patrol by 20,000 additional full-time agents
(3) (A) installation along the international land border between the United States and Mexico at least--

(i) 300 miles of vehicle barriers;
(ii) 370 miles of fencing; and
(iii) 105 ground-based radar and camera towers; and (B) Deployment of 4 unmanned aerial vehicles, and the supporting systems for such vehicles on the border

(4) Catching and returning or holding up to 31,500 aliens per day caught crossing the international border between the United States and Mexico in violation of Federal or State law .
(5) Using secure and effective identification tools to prevent unauthorized workers from obtaining employment in the United States.

Of course, the bill isn't perfect, but then I have never actually ever read a perfect bill on any subject. Compromise is nearly always necessary to get important bills passed. It was, however, far better than what we have in place now. Besides, it could have been modified if parts of if didn't work. It is a book length bill - 375 pages - but it would have made it far more difficult for illegal aliens to come through our porous Southern border.

I suspect that I am the not only person who realizes that failure to pass the immigration reform bill was a victory for illegal aliens, drug dealers and those who support them. We live in an age of massive deception. The effort to block immigration reform has been assisted and often funded by those who have a vested interest in maintaining the flood of illegal aliens coming across the border.

In fact, I've been tracking this deception for years because it has been used against my own congressman, Chris Cannon, in the 2004 and 2006 elections when supposedly "conservative" Republicans launched a major campaign to unseat him for being "too liberal." Cannon has a 93% "conservative" voting record and the person who was paying for billboards that claimed Rep. Cannon favored "amnesty" for illegal aliens and should be defeated was the owner of restaurants in Manhattan, NY that were almost totally manned by illegal aliens.

When the US Constitution was written by our founding fathers, the US Senate was designed to represent the States. Senators were chosen by State Legislatures, not by popular vote. The founders created a Republic, not a Democracy. They believed democracies were only a step from anarchy.

As John Jay described it in Federalist Paper 64, the Senate was to be a body composed of "able and honest men" who would have "sufficient time to become perfectly acquainted with our national concerns, and to form and introduce a system for the management of them."

It was thought that a Senate selected by State Legislatures would not fall victim to "the activity of party zeal "which so often takes "advantage of the supineness, the ignorance, and the hopes and fears of the unwary" who did not have the time or the resources to "become perfectly acquainted with our national concerns" such as illegal immigration.

In 1913 that was changed by the 17th Amendment to the Constitution which gave the vote to the people of each state. For almost 95 years the Senate has been selected by the people. John Jay, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison all agreed on the importance of having the State legislature choose senators.

I wonder what they would think of talk show hosts who now seem to be able, without being elected, to take advantage of the "supineness, the ignorance, and the hopes and fears of the unwary" and the unread on a major issue like immigration reform.