Harry Reid pulled the plug on an effort to get the DREAM act passed in the defense authorization bill:

"We will move to proceed to this matter before we leave here. I"m going to do my utmost to do it by November 16," Mr. Reid, Nevada Democrat, said last night.

The proposal faced strong opposition from Republicans who objected to mixing immigration with the defense bill and who vowed to filibuster to defeat the measure if Democrats insisted on bringing it up now.

The atmosphere around any kind of immigration reform is extremely poisonous. The flaw of this bill is in the proof of residency, as this Heritage report tells us:

There is no upper age limit. Any illegal alien can walk into a U.S. Customs and Immigration Ser­vices office and declare that he is eligible. For example, a 45 year old can claim that he illegally entered the United States 30 years ago at the age of 15. There is no requirement that the alien prove that he entered the United States at the claimed time by providing particular documents. The DREAM Act's Section 4(a) merely requires him to "demonstrate" that he is eligible-which in practice could mean simply making a sworn statement to that effect. Thus, it is an invitation for just about every illegal alien to fraudulently claim the amnesty.

There might be a good law waiting to be made around the idea of a pass to illegal aliens who broke the law through the actions of their parents and not on their own accord. But this isn't it.

Reid and the other Democrats may give this another go, but without key Republicans and the White House on board, it's probably a lost cause for them.

New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was known as a man who wouldn't back down from a fight while serving as attorney general for the state. He went after corporations (his favorite targets) including: insurance, record and financial firms. He stuck it to the man at every opportunity like a good anti-Capitalist.

Now, as governor, he has the opportunity to stop crime by doing nothing, just letting a law on the books stand. But no, Spitzer has gain street cred with the other Dems and try to increase his vote among Hispanics by changing a law that stopped illegal immigrants from getting driver's licenses:

The change rolls back rules adopted four years ago under the Pataki administration that made it difficult, if not impossible, for tens of thousands of immigrants to obtain driver's licenses because they could not prove legal status. Under the new rules, the Department of Motor Vehicles will accept a current foreign passport as proof of identity without also requiring a valid yearlong visa or other evidence of legal immigration.

Just a question, governor: didn't at least three of the ten men in two planes kill thousands of people in your biggest city overstay their visas? They all had passports as I recall, so your little plan here would not have caught them.

It's coming folks, the individual states are making their moves to subvert federal law and pass their own amnesty plans. The same party that freaks out every time someone suggests that abortion should be decided by the states will have no issue with states acting on this issue. They couldn't care less about the national security implications or even the implications to local security, as long as it gets them more votes and keeps them in power, it's all good.

Spitzer has his eye on a run at the presidency and he's being a good soldier for the real leadership in New York, Hillary Clinton and Chuckie Schumer. They are the power players and whatever they want, Spitzer will give them. Keep that in mind when he runs in 2012 or 2016.

Could a hot topic catapult a GOP second-tier candidate into the 2008 presidential nomination?

Earlier this year, it looked like illegal immigration could be that topic. It brought headlines to Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo, and headaches for President Bush and Arizona Sen. John McCain.

Now Republicans seem united in opposing illegal immigration. In last week's presidential debate, McCain, after making an insensitive reference to "the Guatemalans" on Mitt Romney's lawn, said, "No one, by the way, is for amnesty. I and the president of the United States, both of us from border states, came forward with a plan that we thought was comprehensive and workable with the priority being border security, which remains my position."
What remaining issue could spark an insurgency? Iraq. Anti-war Rep. Ron Paul of Texas articulated his anti-war argument in New Hampshire.

I, and others, had John McCain politically dead not so long ago. It seems that those rumors were premature.

McCain's campaign suffered greatly in the summer by his steadfastness on the "shamnesty" bill. He worked in concert with President Bush, Teddy Kennedy and others to push the bill through that was hated by conservatives and was not accepted by centrists who were wary of the language and intent. Talk radio and the right-wing blogosphere upbraided McCain on a daily basis and his poll numbers dropped quickly. He's taken quite a beating at this site as well.

Here we are with the summer over and the real campaign about to begin and the feeling is that McCain is building up some momentum. His performance during the last debate showed him as a funny guy but also serious when it comes to the war in Iraq and the greater War on Terror. In other words, it was the relaxed, loose John McCain, not the McCain who seems stiff and uncomfortable much of the time. It seems as though he enjoys being in the pack rather than the lead. During the 2000 run, he was looser and ran a decent campaign with the exception of his irritating habit of sticking to his talking points instead of ad libbing.

Senator Chuck Hagel has called it a career. The AP reports that the senator from Nebraska has announced that he will not seek re-election in '08. Now, while such an announcement usually gets Republican voters somewhat worried about having to work harder to defend the seat, there is very little lamenting in conservative circles regarding Hagel's departure. To put it bluntly, many conservatives are happy to see him go as Hagel has hardly been a favorite of the conservative base.

Hagel's problems with the base centered on his pro illegal immigration amnesty stance and his very public anti-Iraq war posturing. In fact, the base was so annoyed at Hagel there were calls on talk radio and on the internet for a primary challenger. This led to the bizarre rumors that Hagel (acting out of spite if a primary challenger was selected) would act as VP to NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg's presidential bid on a third party ticket for the White House. Of course, these rumors were never validated although there were some credible rumors that Hagel would seek the Republican nomination for president, but to say such a win would be a long shot would be the understatement of the century.

From time to time I've given Rudy Giuliani a hard time on this blog for a variety of stances that my former mayor has taken of late. Today, I happen to agree with him. But boy, oh boy, the conservative wing of the GOP is not going to be happy about what Mr. Giuliani said in his interview with blow-hard Glenn Beck .

GLENN: Right. But isn't illegal immigration a crime in and of itself?

GIULIANI: No.

GLENN: Aren't you saying--

GIULIANI: Glenn--

GLENN: You're protecting criminals by saying that being treated as a criminal is unfair.

GIULIANI: Glenn, it's not a crime. I know that's very hard for people to understand, but it's not a federal crime.

GLENN: It's a misdemeanor but if you've been nailed, it is a crime. If you've been nailed, ship back and come back, it is a crime.

GIULIANI: Glenn, being an illegal immigrant, the 400,000 were not prosecuted for crimes by the federal government, nor could they be. I was U.S. attorney in the southern district of New York. So believe me, I know this. In fact, when you throw an immigrant out of the country, it's not a criminal proceeding. It's a civil proceeding.

GLENN: It is--

GIULIANI: One of the things that congress wanted to do a year ago is make it a crime, which indicates that it isn't.

GLENN: Should it be?

GIULIANI: Should it be? No, it shouldn't be because the government wouldn't be able to prosecute it. We couldn't prosecute 12 million people.

Waiting for the YouTube file to add to this, but I'm happy to hear a GOP candidate talk some sense about immigration. And how, do you suppose, the base will respond to Rudy saying that we shouldn't make crossing the border a federal crime?

Arizona will implement the one of the the toughest immigration laws in the country come October. That law would pull the business license of a business owner who employs illegals, ten days for the first offense and permanently for the second.

With that law on the horizon, illegals are packing up, selling their property and heading elsewhere. My guess is not back to Mexico but probably to Texas, California or New Mexico:

The state's strong economy has been a magnet for illegal immigrants for years. But a growing number are pulling up stakes out of fear they will be jobless come Jan. 1, when the law takes effect. The departures are drawing cheers from immigration hard-liners and alarm from business owners already seeing a drop in sales.

It's impossible to count how many undocumented immigrants have fled because of the new law. But based on interviews with undocumented immigrants, immigrant advocates, community leaders and real-estate agents, at least several hundred have left since Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano signed the bill on July 2. There are an estimated 500,000 illegal immigrants in Arizona.

It will be interesting to see how this effects the Arizona economy, unemployment rate and overall job market. I imagine the economy will take a short-term hit as employers are forced to pay legal immigrants and citizens more but the market tends to settle those things out. The true numbers to watch will be the ones that how much the state saves in health care costs and other costs associated. I would imagine schools will be less populated but the savings associated with that will tougher to calculate.

The success or failure of this bill is going to have a strong ripple effect as to where the nation as a whole goes. It's interesting to note that this is happening in John McCain's state, so evidently he was going against the wishes of his constituents by supporting the shamnesty bill.

Captain Ed has more.

New Jersey is a deep blue state (John Kerry won by 7% in 2004 and Al Gore by almost 16% in 2000) where the political machine rules. Political bosses wield enormous power and those bosses are all Democrats. I wouldn't say New Jersey is liberal like, say, Manhattan. It's a state that is blue-collar, union and affluent at the same time, old school Democratic in other words.

That said, it's surprising that the attorney general of the Garden State passed down that the immigration status of those arrested will be established by the arresting officers:

It's just seven pages long. But Directive No. 2007-3 could fundamentally change the lives of New Jersey's immigrant population.

On Friday, civil rights and immigrant advocates expressed deep concerns about a mandate that police ask citizenship status of those arrested for indictable crimes, such as theft, rape and assault, along with drunken driving in New Jersey.

Many said they support the spirit behind state Attorney General Anne Milgram's decision to create a transparent statewide system for police handling of immigration status. They responded positively to a provision barring police from asking victims and witnesses about their status.

This is a reaction to the horrific execution deaths of three college-bound kids behind a school in Newark, a city not far from Manhattan. The alleged leader is a man named Jose Carranza, an illegal immigrant from Nicaragua.

In a recent OpEd piece, the Wall Street Journal has decided to chastise the GOP base regarding their anti-illegal immigration stance by essentially stating such a position will lead to massive election losses in 2008.

"[F]or every base Republican who is gratified by talk of ID cards and border patrols, there's an entire family of Hispanic immigrants who are absorbing the mean language of "sanctuary cities," "lawbreakers" and "deportation." Many of these folks are religious, entrepreneurial, and true believers in the American dream; as such, they're the biggest new voting potential the Republican Party has seen in ages. But a growing number, just like those Catholics of yore, are angered by the recent rhetoric and wondering why they should pull a lever for any party that would go out of its way to tag their community as the source of America's problems." (Source: Wall Street Journal)

Ultimately, the real question here is whether or not immigration law will be enforced or if it will be dissolved or ignored. Unfortunately, the Wall Street Journal has become the voice of greedy business interests who are now addicted to cheap labor. This is a shame as such a position has created a huge fissure in the GOP that the negative effects will be slow to heal.

From the way that some of the leading Republican contenders act, you'd think there was a holy trinity of issues that anyone hoping to capture the party's presidential nomination must never defy.

I speak of abortion, the war in Iraq, and immigration. Of course, a true GOP candidate must be against Roe vs. Wade, for continued support of the surge, and, above all, show a strong antipathy for any position that might be painted as allowing "amnesty." While there may indeed prove to be room for some nuance here or there, as illustrated most vividly by the likes of Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney, to go solidly against any one of these sacred cows spells trouble. Just ask John McCain.

Yet, as a Democrat, I can't help but notice that all three of these issues are losers for the GOP. Consider the rather overwhelming polling data. On abortion, a solid majority of Americans wants abortion to remain legal, if not limited in some circumstances. On the war in Iraq, overwhelming majorities disapprove of the way the war has been handled, and think we shouldn't have gone in there in the first place. Lastly, on the question of how to solve the immigration issue, the numbers are somewhat less decisive. But even here, a majority of Americans seem to want the bill the president put forth to be passed. And when you break down the specific provisions of the bill, such as whether we should allow people to go home, pay a fine, and come back, the public is strongly pro-immigrant, and doesn't much care about the cries of amnesty.

Granted, immigration is the least equivocal of the three, but it certainly isn't the slam dunk issue that will propel the party to victory. Perhaps the party should go back and read Tuesday's Wall Street Journal Op-Ed by Fred Barnes, in which the Fox commentator suggested that the way to avoid being trounced again in 2008 is for Republicans stop acting like Republicans. Good luck on that.

Immigration will be an important issue in the 2008 elections and Republicans may just have an issue to top the Democrats:

Fifty-eight percent (58%) of voters nationwide favor cutting off federal funds for "sanctuary cities" that offer protection to illegal immigrants. A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that just 29% are opposed. Republican Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney proposed such a plan earlier this week.

By a 71% to 16% margin, voters also favor a proposal that would require all foreign visitors to carry a universal identification card as proposed by another GOP Presidential hopeful, Rudy Giuliani. Seventy-four percent (74%) also favor the creation and funding of a central database to track all foreign visitors in the United States.

Those are serious numbers and ones that the GOP can use to further the issue of securing the border and finally forcing Congress to deal with the immigration problem.

In the last week, we saw Newark, NJ Mayor Corey Booker (follow the link and see what unlikely groups are saying "enough!") defend his policy of not asking or investigating the immigration status of those they arrest in the midst of an illegal alien with a long criminal history (including rape of a five-year old) executing three college students behind a school. The story was big all over the country and the immigration issue was given more exposure.

The Democrats should be asked what their thoughts are and the answers will be interesting as they will have to pander to the Hispanic base while not going so far as to say anything that will be usable in the general election.

For a more detailed list of crimes committed by illegals, see Patterico.

It has been going on for a week. A battle for conservative hearts and minds (and votes) that pits two formerly liberal-minded candidates, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani, against one another. The subject of the debate, illegal immigration, is especially hilarious, given that both candidates only recently discovered that they were so against it.

At campaign stops and in Op-Ed pieces written by surrogates, Rudy and Mitt seek to portray the other man as the one who turned a blind eye to the many illegal aliens who populated New York City and Massachusetts during his rival's tenure in office. How pathetic and transparent can these guys get?

"They are trying to rattle their sabers louder than the other and thump on their chests," said Angela Kelley, the deputy director of the pro-immigrant National Immigration Forum. "Both of these guys are trying to remake themselves."

And they are demonstrating truly horrible leadership qualities in the process. Why should any voter believe what these two guys say?

This is not good:

A criminal investigations report says several U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services employees are accused of aiding Islamic extremists with identification fraud and of exploiting the visa system for personal gain.

The confidential 2006 USCIS report said that despite the severity of the potential security breaches, most are not investigated "due to lack of resources" in the agency's internal affairs department.

The USCIS is a division of Homeland Security and is tasked with immigration and naturalization petitions as well as refugees and asylum requests. The fact that they are not investigated because of a lack of resources is a cop out.

They could (and should) coordinate with other agencies within DHS to conduct a proper, thorough investigation and bring those who have broken the law up on charges. Why haven't they? Because, just like every other federal agency, they protect their own so that the Department Heads don't look bad.

The U.S. government and workforce can do anything we put our minds to. Why would the Border Patrol have to resort to asking for volunteers from its ranks to finish construction of 70-miles of fence then?

The U.S. Border Patrol is asking for volunteers among its agents to help build fences on the U.S.-Mexico border, even as President Bush is withdrawing half the National Guard troops he sent there last year to build fences.

A memo circulated last week to Border Patrol sector chiefs said fence-building efforts on the Southwest border were going to fall short of Mr. Bush's goal of finishing 70 miles in fiscal 2007, which ends Sept. 30, "so the Border Patrol is now going back into the fence-building business."

I work with many companies are capable of putting in 70 miles of fencing in less than a month. Why can't the federal government procure the services of qualified construction companies and have them start on both sides and meet in the middle like they did with trans-continental rail system? The answer, of course, is thatPresident Bush doesn't want to seal the border, to the increasing ire of conservatives everywhere.

The big news this morning is the announcement, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed ('The Mark of Rove' by Paul Gigot), that presidential adviser Karl Rove is resigning at the end of the month. Many people are saying that this is a startling development. I'm not one of them. Rove has been at the president's side for an extraordinary number of years -- most advisers resign after only a few. You rarely see a top level adviser last six years into an administration.

After the defeat of the immigration bill in Congress, it was only a matter of time before Rove left. President Bush's longtime friend was a brilliant campaign strategist, but was less effective as an operative who implements government policy. Sometimes his electoral strategy crossed paths with his government policy strategy. And this is where he had his most notable failures, one through no fault of his own and one very much his own fault.

Rove felt that there were two problems facing America that, if handled correctly, would 1) vastly improve the welfare of those effected by the administrations' new government policies, and 2) move long-standing Democratic constituents to the Republican column.