Can You Find a Better Candidate For the Death Penalty?

Today, Texas teenager Dexter Johnson had to be restrained in court. After hearing he was sentenced to death for brutally carjacking and murdering two people during a month long crime spree, he lunged at victims' family members, and had to be tackled by court deputies. Good riddance, scumbag. Execution can not come soon enough for this 19-year old thug.

Supreme Court Limits Affirmative Action in Schools

Today the Supreme Court "rejected diversity plans in two major school districts that take race into account in assigning students but left the door open for using race in limited circumstances." (AP) The case involved two school districts which utilized programs to assign students from black and white neighbors to schools which were often far from their homes in order to artificially attain some sort of nebulous "diversity" within individual facilities.

In the majority opinion, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the following:

"Simply because the school districts may seek a worthy goal doesn't mean that they are free to discriminate on the basis of race to achieve it."

An eloquent point, and a highly intelligent one, made in this debate over means and ends. For quite awhile, those blinded by their focus on the ends have ignored the gross hypocrisy in their support of means so similar to the very evil they were fighting against: discrimination. Can one, in good conscience, use discrimination to reverse discrimination? Especially discrimination against individuals whose only "fault" is to share an ethnicity with people who may have discriminated against people who share your own ethnicity? This game of racial guilt, blame and perceived privilege is in itself simply another form of bigotry, another form of prejudice, another form of ugly racism, as individuals would be rewarded or punished based on skin-color rather than personal belief, action, guilt or achievement. All affirmative action has done is to institutionalize discrimination and promote tribalism over individuality. Affirmative action has been a ill-conceived assault on personal liberty and responsibility.

In a moment evoking Yogi Berra, Roberts also put forth these words of wisdom:

“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

While somewhat obvious, this is a point often lost or intentionally ignored in the discussion. You cannot battle the practice of racial discrimination and privilege with a different form of racial discrimination and special privilege. If it is wrong to judge and discriminate against blacks based on their race, then it is equally wrong to do the same to whites. The anti-affirmative action argument is not suggesting the wrongness of discrimination against blacks, as many times as proponents would like to race-bait and toss the word 'racist' around; it argues that discrimination of any sort, for whatever "lofty goal," is wrong. The affirmative actionists have merely attempted to argue that one form of discrimination is worse than another, depending on who are the victims, again attempting to create some sort of race-based (ie, bigoted) hierarchy of worthiness of victimhood.

Justice Clarence Thomas, the only black person on the Supreme Court, wrote this in a separate opinion endorsing the majority ruling:

“What was wrong in 1954 cannot be right today. The plans before us base school assignment decisions on students’ race. Because ‘our Constitution is colorblind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens,’ such race-based decisionmaking is unconstitutional.”

I would go even further to say that plans which incorporate any consideration of ethnicity, any attempt to artificially "promote diversity", or alter ethnic proportions within a group, are equally discriminatory, whether or not they do so directly. Thomas also wrote:

"Every time the government uses racial criteria to 'bring the races together,' someone gets excluded, and the person excluded suffers an injury solely because of his or her race."

Amnesty Defeated

On the Cloture Motion (Motion to Invoke Cloture on S.1639 ):

YEAs ---46 (Villains)
Akaka (D-HI) Bennett (R-UT) Biden (D-DE) Boxer (D-CA) Cantwell (D-WA) Cardin (D-MD) Carper (D-DE) Casey (D-PA) Clinton (D-NY) Conrad (D-ND) Craig (R-ID) Dodd (D-CT) Durbin (D-IL) Feingold (D-WI) Feinstein (D-CA) Graham (R-SC)	Gregg (R-NH) Hagel (R-NE) Inouye (D-HI) Kennedy (D-MA) Kerry (D-MA) Klobuchar (D-MN) Kohl (D-WI) Kyl (R-AZ) Lautenberg (D-NJ) Leahy (D-VT) Levin (D-MI) Lieberman (ID-CT) Lincoln (D-AR) Lott (R-MS) Lugar (R-IN) Martinez (R-FL)	McCain (R-AZ) Menendez (D-NJ) Mikulski (D-MD) Murray (D-WA) Nelson (D-FL) Obama (D-IL) Reed (D-RI) Reid (D-NV) Salazar (D-CO) Schumer (D-NY) Snowe (R-ME) Specter (R-PA) Whitehouse (D-RI) Wyden (D-OR)

NAYs ---53 (Heroes)
Alexander (R-TN) Allard (R-CO) Barrasso (R-WY) Baucus (D-MT) Bayh (D-IN) Bingaman (D-NM) Bond (R-MO) Brown (D-OH) Brownback (R-KS) Bunning (R-KY) Burr (R-NC) Byrd (D-WV) Chambliss (R-GA) Coburn (R-OK) Cochran (R-MS) Coleman (R-MN) Collins (R-ME) Corker (R-TN)	Cornyn (R-TX) Crapo (R-ID) DeMint (R-SC) Dole (R-NC) Domenici (R-NM) Dorgan (D-ND) Ensign (R-NV) Enzi (R-WY) Grassley (R-IA) Harkin (D-IA) Hatch (R-UT) Hutchison (R-TX) Inhofe (R-OK) Isakson (R-GA) Landrieu (D-LA) McCaskill (D-MO) McConnell (R-KY) Murkowski (R-AK)	Nelson (D-NE) Pryor (D-AR) Roberts (R-KS) Rockefeller (D-WV) Sanders (I-VT) Sessions (R-AL) Shelby (R-AL) Smith (R-OR) Stabenow (D-MI) Stevens (R-AK) Sununu (R-NH) Tester (D-MT) Thune (R-SD) Vitter (R-LA) Voinovich (R-OH) Warner (R-VA) Webb (D-VA)

Not Voting - 1

Johnson (D-SD)

The bill has fallen 14 votes short of the 60 necessary to limit debate and clear the way for final vote (and possibly passage) of the dreaded legislation.

Despite this victory, now is hardly the time to rest. The people has spoken quite loudly on the issue of illegal immigration, and it is time to demand real action. After this fight, the amnesty crowd will avoid this issue like the plague, but there is still real work to be done, real reform to be made.

The first is to demand border and national security. For the most part, all that needs to be done is for our government to enforce and follow existing laws. The building of a border fence which was signed into law last year must be completed. The border patrol must be given the tools and the support necessary to protect this nation and stop the swarm of illegal aliens across the border. The judicial and executive witch hunt of border patrol agents must be stopped - agents should no longer be punished for doing their job. Illegal aliens must be held completely accountable for their disregard of the law of the land, both for entering this country without permission, and for any other laws broken during their stay. Local police must be given the tools and authority necessary to assist in the battle.

Secondly, the incentives for illegals to come here must be eliminated. Businesses which hire illegals must be held accountable for breaking the law. Landlords who knowingly provide housing to illegal aliens must face punishment. Government services and handouts, including free health care and education, for illegal aliens must be eliminated.

The federal government, overall, has proven unwilling to do what is necessary to stop the flow of invaders and secure the borders. Despite more empty promises made by the supporters of the awful amnesty bill, promises which cannot be trusted one iota given the past record of this government, the citizenship of this country does not trust our representatives and judicial system to do what is right and necessary. The lies of the past cannot be forgotten, and awareness of these untruths played a major role in the public's reaction to this latest legislative attempt.

The proponents of the amnesty bill often told the people that "something must be done," but the people saw through this empty reasoning. Something RIGHT must be done. Something EFFECTIVE must be done. If a man is drowning in a river, something must be done. But that something should not be shooting him in the head. It should be rescue. To just do something is not enough. That something needs to work. And no one believes you if you say you're going to do something, but you sat around doing nothing - or worse than nothing - while three people drowned before him. Or if you actively prevented others from rescuing those people as well - stopped others from throwing out ropes. And, even worse, you pushed more people that couldn't swim into the rapids; your actions encouraged them to take a devastating dip.

This nation is threatening to be drowned by waves of illegal aliens. Presidents, Senators and Congressmen will visit disaster zones after fires, earthquakes, hurricanes and tornadoes, but fail to visit the disaster zones that are the American neighborhoods that have been devastated by the storm of criminals brought to this land as a result of inaction and turning a blind eye to policies and procedures that have created an open border atmosphere.

Am I optimistic that the current administration and Congress will awaken to these troubles and toughen up their stances and actions against illegal aliens? Not much. To some degree the fight must be taken to the local level as well. Communities are already beginning to rebel against a federal system that has abandoned them and ignored their needs. Local ordinances and a support of local law enforcement against illegals are the beginning of the way to both fight the battle at a community level, and to increasingly make the power brokers and special interest panderers in Washington aware of just how critical this issue has become.

We, the people, have slapped the government across the face for not only their failure, but their willingness to sell out the interests of this country to special interests, be they race-baiters and America-haters, or conscienceless shady business opportunists. And that slap has stung.

Those opposed to amnesty for illegal immigrants were branded "extremists," but they were truly the only moderates, the only rationalists, in the debate. The architects of amnesty legislation called themselves compromisers, but let their own extreme lack of integrity motivate them to ignore the best interests of this country and the will of the people. The only thing they truly compromised was their own honor and their own commitment to serve this nation and its citizens.