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Show Monday, February 1 1, DAILY 2008 HERALD BITQ1AI A5 EDITORIAL 2mUj$Hcmt6 BOARD Craig Dennis, President & Publisher Randy Wright, Executive Editor Jim Tynen, Editorial Page Editor - HERALD POLL K2- Stopping illegal immigration llegal immigration has emerged as the hottest topic of the year in Utah. But what is the best solution to this problem? . Last week, U.S. Immigra tion and Customs Enforcement officials arrested a total of 57 illegal workers at Universal Industrial Sales Inc.'s Lindon plant. Meanwhile, a state Senate committee bill on imsent an migration to the Senate floor. "The people of this state are demanding that we look at it today," said its sponsor, Sen. Bill Hick-ma- a t. George. But there's no consensus yet on which course is What do you think? What is the best way to stop illegal immigration: Border fence? Deportation? Amnesty with fines and other conditions? Punishment of employers? Send your comments to dhpollsheraldex-tra.coor call Please leave your name, hometown and phone number with your comments. comments should not exceed 100 words; voice-macomments should be no longer than 30 seconds. Anonymous and unverifiable responses will not be published. multi-pronge- d 344-294- il best.. Here are some of the chief solutions that have been proposed: BORDER FENCE. Last fall, Con- gress passed and President Bush signed a bill authorizing 700 miles of fencing between the U.S. and Mexico to cut off the flow of immigrants. Advocates say it is a legitimate measure to defend the The Daily Herald will publish comments on Feb. 17. WWV.tedial.crtiVcafoonS nation. Antonio Garza, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, rejected comparisons of the fence to the Berlin Wall, which, of course, are absurd. That wall was intended to keep people in. But many doubt the fence will work. Hundreds of miles of fence in some of the most rugged desert in the world can't be effectively policed. Smugglers will just blast holes in it. The fence may be too expensive to finish anyway. Other skeptics point out that half of illegal immigrants, and perhaps more, are people who entered the U.S. legally on visas and overstayed. No fence will stop them, GUEST OPINION rewards for lawbreakers. And it's not fair to legal immigrants who had to get in the hard way. Amnesty programs only encourage more illegal immigration, critics say. DRY UP THE JOBS. A word to Barack Obama supporters Joel Stein voted for me, I would so never call you again. are embarrassing Obamaphilia has gotten creepy. I With your "Yes We couldn't figure out if the two canvassmusic video, your "Fired ers who came to my door Sunday had taken Ecstasy or were just fantasizUp, Ready to Go" song, your endless chatter about how he's the first one ing about an Obama presidency, but to inspire you, to make you really feel I feared they were going to hug me. it's as if you're tacking Scarlett Johansson called me twice, something photos of Barack Obama to your lock- asking me to vote for him. She'd never even called me once about er, secretly slipping him little notes that read, "Do you like me? Check yes anything else. Not even to see "The Island." or ho." Some of you even cry at his What the Cult of Obama doesn't speeches. If I were Obama, and you The easiest way to stop illegal immigration is to shut off the jobs that attract illegal workers: But some businesses have complained that this puts too much of the burden on them. Some have even sued over efforts to hold them accountable. Some states, tired of waiting for the federal government to act, are targeting businesses as the best way to curb the tide. In Oklahoma, a tough law took effect for the public sector Nov. 1, and will apply to private employers on July 1. Among other things, it requires employers to verify the immigration status of their employees and exposes employers to legal action for hiring unauthorized immh grants in place of U.S. citizens. DEPORTATION. Some politicians boast that they'd deport illegals. For example, Mike Huckabee last month promised to give undocumented aliens 120 days to leave the country. Opponents call such plans cruel and draeonian. They also asked how the United States would physically round up and deport 12 million or more people. Even if this were possible, the Vou n Super Tuesday, John McCain secured the Republican nomination. How did that happen? Simple. In the absence of a compelling conservative, the Republican electorate turned to the apostate sheriff. In the beginning, there were two. There was America's mayor, Rudy Giuliani, determined to "go on offense." And there was America's maverick, John McCain, scourge of Iraq wobblies. Both aroused deep suspicions among conservatives. Giuliani's major on aborapostasy is being tion. McCain's apostasies are too numerous to count. He's held the line on abortion, but on just about everything else he could find tax cuts, immigrao tion, campaign finance reform, he not only opposed the conservative consensus but insisted on doing so with ostentatious self O pro-choic- MEDIA VOICES Settle botched Indian trust ease 1 n exasperated federal judge regarding century of botched accounting by federal bureaucrats handling Indian trust accounts: The government failed, miserably. Finally, a settlement may be in sight for Blackfeet Indian Elouise Cobell, who filed suit in 1996 on behalf of hundreds of thousands of American Indians. The elemental issue is the failure of the U.S. government to be responsible stewards of oil, gas and timber receipts and other royalties held in trust from Indian lands as far back as 1887. After 11 years of stalling by the Interior Department, U.S. District Judge James Robertson concluded that an accounting required by the lawsuit was an impossible foe task. No amount of rensic number crunching would produce a fair, timely answer. For starters, no one could produce CSI-styl- e e followers with him. ' Look at the numbers. Before , Florida, the national polls had McCain hovering around 30, and Giuliani in the After Florida, McCain's swalnumbers jumped to the mid-40lowing the Giuliani constituency whole. On Super Tuesday, the Giuliani effect showed up in the big Northeastern states New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and California. McCain won the first three with absolute majorities of 51 percent or more. And in California, McCain-Giulia(plus Schwarzenegger, for good measure) moderate Republicanism captured 42 percent of the vote. Elsewhere, where Giuliani was not a factor, McCain got no comparable boost. In Oklahoma, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia, he could never break through even 37 percent. The vote was divided roughly evenly among McCain, Mike Hucka mid-teen- s, Garry Trudeau 0UT...HOW you?) . bee and Mitt Romney (trailing). But these splits were not enough to make big ones, all up forthe winner-take-aof which McCain won. The other half of the story behind McCain's victory is this: There would have been a far smaller Republican constituency for the apostate sheriff had there been a compelling conservative to challenge him. But there never was. The first messianic sighting was Fred Thompson, who soared in the early polls, then faded because he was too diffident andor normal to embrace with any enthusiasm the indignities of the modern campaign. Then, for that brief and shining Iowa moment, there was Huckabee until conservatives actually looked at his record (on taxes, for example) as governor of Arkansas, and listened to the music of his often unconservative ll populism. That left Romney, the final stop in the search for the compelling conservative. I found him to be a fine candidate who would have made a fine president. But until very recently, he was shunned by most conservatives for ideological inauthenticity. Then, as the McCain panic grew, conservatives tried to embrace Romney, but the gesture was both too late and as improvised and convenient-lookin- g as Romney's own many conversions. (So late and so improvised that it could not succeed. On Thursday, Romney post-Flori- withdrew from the race.) Conservatives are on the eternal search for a new Reagan. They refuse to accept the fact that a movement leader who is also a gifted politician is a phenomenon. But there's an even more profound reason why no Reagan showed up this election cycle and why the apostate sheriff is going to win the nomination. The reason is George W. Bush. He redefined conservatism with a "compassionate" variant that is a distinct departure from classic Reaganism. Bush muddied the ideological waters of conservatism. It was Bush who teamed with Teddy Kennedy to pass No Child Left Behind, a federal venture MALLARD FILLMORE mrWTI teJ vra uigg, n SKiP'arr. (speaking. The story of this campaign is how many Republicans didn't care, and felt that national security trumps social heresy. The problem for Giuliani and McCain, however, was that they were splitting that constituency. Then came Giuliani's humiliation in Florida. After he withdrew from the race, he threw his support to McCain and took his something as basic as a beginning balance for the Indian accounts. Robertson, based in Washington, D.C., skewered both the bureaucracy and Congress in calling quits to the endless accounting. Bean counters attuned to stretching the work through their entire careers were one problem, but the judge also chided lawmakers for not spending the money necessary to do the job right. In the tortured history of this case, one federal judge was successfully challenged and removed by government lawyers. A special master in the case resigned over the Bush administration withholding information. Officials during both the Clinton and Bush presidencies were cited for contempt. Bottom-line- , honest, credible answers could not be provided ' because of sloppy bookkeeping or outright destruction of records. Settlement estimates are huge, and they lurch between $27 billion and $ 100 billion. Past legislative efforts to broker a compromise were in the $7 billion range. D00NESBURY il JFgpwn i i i into education that would have been anathema to (the early) Reagan. It was Bush who signed the campaign finance reform. It was Bush y who strongly supported the immigration bill. It was Bush who on his own created a vast new entitlement program, the Medicare drug benefit. And it was Bush who conducted a foreign policy so expansive and, at times, redemptive as to send paleoconservatives like Pat Buchanan and traditional conservatives like George Will into apoplexy and despair (respectively). Who in the end prepared the ground for the McCain ascendancy? Not Feingold. Not Kennedy. Not even Giuliani. It was George W. Bush. Bush begat McCain. Bush remains popular in his party. Even conservatives are inclined to forgive him his various heresies because they are trumped by his singular achievement: He's kept us safe. He's the original apostate sheriff. McCain-Feingol- d McCain-Kenned- Charles Krauthammer writes for the Washington Post Writers Group. How to comment letters to dhlettersheraldextra.com 5 Fax to Mail to P.O. Box 717, Provo.UT 84603. I Letters must include the author's full name, address and 344-298- daytime phone number. I We prefer shorter letters, 100 to 200 words. Letters may be edited for length. ) Writers are encouraged to include their occupation and other personal information. I Because of the volume of letters, we cannot acknowledge unpublished letters. I Letters become the property of the Daily Herald. Bruce Tinsley rj kamjriL. Tmf ywje our or ' lr Times. GOP picks apostate sheriff Guan-tanam- reached a logical con- Jjjl has a elusion Stein writes for the Los Angeles CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Neil Wake upheld Arizona's Legal Workers Act, which punishes employers that hire illegal imeconomic shock of suddenly losmigrants. The law allows county ing 5 percent of our labor force prosecutors to go after business could send the nation into an unre- licenses. There are signs the law is coverable tailspin. working. Some illegals are getting ready to leave the state because AMNESTY. Legislation sponthe law is making it hard for them to stay employed. Some of them sored by John M cCain and Ted are applying at the Mexican conKennedy had as its centerpiece a sulate in Phoenix for papers to let plan to allow illegal immigrants them return to Mexico, officials already here to normalize their status. Backers said illegals would told news outlets this week. Other states, including Kansas, have to leave, then "go to the end of the line" before returning here, Mississippi, Indiana and Georgia, are considering tough measures. and they could do that only after We take this as an encouraging paying a fine, staying employed and paying back taxes. sign that states can take effective steps on their own. Opponents say this amounts to From the Seattle Times , Wednesday, Feb. 6, 2008. realize is that he's a politician. Not a brave one taking risky positions like Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich, but a mainstream one. He has not been firing up the Senate with stirring speeches to end the war. He's a politician so soft and safe, Oprah likes him. There's talk about his charisma and good looks, but I know a nerd when I see one. The dude is Urkel with a better tailor. 'Fa Y3miL.y tannery.. |