Take all the illegals ? Like grandma and pa, the 5 year olds…
Maybe we should consider not giving citizenship by simply being born here. If you are here illegally and give birth, walla, a US citizen who votes a few years later. At least we can agree that it is not an easy answer made more difficult by years of allowing more illegals inside. Maybe would be better to try and agree on the results we want first, but that won’t be easy either. Of course a lot of people headed back south when the economy tanked since there seemed to be more jobs down there than here at the auto and other plants.
Being born here is simple ? Votes a few years later, probably for another minority ? Can’t have that. Let’s just have, only white citizens who belong to one partiular party can “have natural born citizens”.
One thing for sure…if we do nothing, there will be more illegals. The key are the businesses that hire them and the govt. that encourages it. It has nothing to do with where one is born. They are and should be legal. Otherwise, we become a nation of bigots.
i thought we already were, or atleast have been, turning into a nation of bigots
And, no, just the 18 to 50 year olds should serve, their families will be granted citizenship upon completion of their tour as well. The family can live in tents on the base until then.
I do agree that penalties should be given to those people/businesses who hire illegals
Not gonna happen,lets annex Mexico,Meso America and Canada(git er’ done{very few illegal immigrants} then lift the trade embargo on Cuba,shutdown Gitmo, legalize marijauna and the mild so called gatewaydrugs(beer,coffee,cigarettes-whoops that part has already been done,make the drugs the elite enjoys availible to to general public,turn all those stinkin’ so called penal institutions into greenhouses and farms and try to get by on a sustainable lifestyle.
Folks I said it once and I will say it again,when all the cheap fossil fuels are gone,we are headed down the tubes(better get those power sats in orbit) peak oil is a reality,no matter what Dr.Gold said. Clean coal?I give you mountain top removal.I made a living helping to tear up Mother Earth and I know what I’m a pontificating about.When you disturb the hydraulics of an area,the effects are long reaching and long lasting.The federal government managing our forests? What a joke,makes you wonder what North America did before the Whiteman came along-Kevin
Didn’t Rome field a mercenary army from bordering tribes? How did that workout?
Rome collapsed from decadence,etc-you cant let the Fox guard the Henhouse ,due to the 5th columns and so on.
But this brings me back to my unease,I foresee a time in this country when “Balkenzation” will occur,despite Mr .Lincolns sucessful nipping it in the bud in the 19th century,we have be become very wishy-washy in our tolerance of things that have an influence to split this country.I suppose it seems alright to some to make the rich,richer and cede all(or most of our constitutional freedoms) to big brother.These spying systems seem to have been in place for awhile,in my opinion this war on terror is a play on sensationalism,many things claim more lives then" terriorists".I for one think its to bad about the networks of snitches ,rats and busibodies in even the local communities.People need to mind thier own business and stop worrying about if “Joe Blow” is having a good time on his or hers front porch.Folks I think Altruism is out the window,you better start growing your “victory garden” and weaning off the petroleum drug,the days of the “Marlboro man” are drawing to close,the water is getting warmer-Kevin
Didn’t the patriot act pretty much legalize big brother spying on us?
@bscar2–I grew up in the 1950s where McCarthyism made us believe that Communists were everywhere. There was a television program “I Led Three Lives” about Herbert A. Philbrick, who was a citizen, Communist, and counter spy for the FBI. The scripts were approved by J. Edgar Hoover. The plots finally got to the point where they were unbelievable. In one show, the Communists were planning to plant bombs in vacuum cleaner handles presumably to wipe out the American housewife. Senator Joe McCarthy ruined the reputations of many people he tried to label as Commies.
Now, it seems to me that where the Communist scare left off, the terrorist scare has begun. Unfortunately, it is our own government doing the spying. Under the patriot act, the government may monitor the books a citizen checks out of the library. When this happens, censorship isn’t too far off. Maybe Bin Laden and AlQaeda did win.
@triedaq Here here. I can maybe understand keeping calling information to maybe connect relationships, BUT you have to look at the money and what’s behind it. Billions are spent on private contractors and its a revolving door for government employees. If that was the end of it maybe, but it never will be. Every year more and more will have to be kept and analyzed to “keep us safe” and keep the skids greased.
On the other hand I absolutely do not believe that it does not go deeper than this to include telephone conversations, email traffic, and so on. How much farther would you have to go to have house to house inspections with or without probable cause. Its got to stop before it gets out of control if it already isn’t.
So guys, what would you have said about being search and X-ray(ed ) before bording a plane before 9/11 ? Everyone would complain of privacy while now, most take it for granted. The govt. is an extension of us. With all due respect @triedaq , using the phrase " government is doing the spying" with the word in the same sentence, “unfortunately” seems to discount our acceptance of corporations using the same information from telephone and Internet providers for merchandizing. Have we eliminated attacks because of govt… spying ? I feel so. At the very least, we have caught, prosecuted and punished many terrorist using accumulated and saved communications ( yes data mining) between average citizens which home grown terrorist have used to plan attacks.
Assuredness of getting caught is indeed worthwhile. And, it has little to do with just the administration in power. It has to do with all of our elected officials, liberal and conservative alike who, through oversight have gone along with these measures. I feel their mindset is, " it’s better to have your electorate complain about personal rights violations, then going to the funerals of their loved ones and holding us equally responsible"
It’s a loose, loose debated but at least we need put things in perspective. Put yourself in position of debating the checks and balances needed to accomplish both…personal freedom and security. Do this instead of just playing the govt. “is spying” name calling game. It’s an easy way to get everyone to agree with you when you just blame the govt. Unfortunately, we forget our ballot box makes us the govt.
@Bing, would be terrorist use domestic telephone conversation and emails to communicate. Many terrorists, world wide and at home have been caught, located and killed or prosecuted by this traffic and it must be done before and not after the fact.
@dagosa–I realize that businesses collect internet data on people for purchasing habits I don’t like it. Amazon clutters my email with books I might like to purchase because I have bought books from them when the books weren’t available in my local library. The same thing happened when I purchased some compact disk recordings from them. I don’t like it and I limit my purchases from them to books and compact disks that I can’t obtain locally.
When I was in college in the early 1960s, an organization sprang up called the National Student Association. I attended a rather liberal, small college and the liberal students were pushing the institution to join this National Student Association. We did send a student to a meeting of this organization and when he came back, he urged the college to stay away from the organization. This student, who was president of the young Democrats group on campus took a lot of heat from the liberal students. I had coffee with him one morning and he said, “I can’t put my finger on it, but there is something strange about this National Student Association. In any event, I don’t see any benefit to our college as being a part of this organization”. On his recommendation, the student body voted against joining the National Student Association. Two years after I graduated, it turned out the National Student Association was a front for the CIA. The CIA wanted to track liberal students that it thought might be Communists. This is why I am wary of the National Security Administration and the Patriot Act.
@dagosa I’m glad we’re being protected from the terrorists at CBS. Just because you catch a few bad guys doesn’t make the abuse of many more innocents acceptable in a supposedly free society.
@Triedaq,I don’t like this marketing ploy a bit,if anything it makes me not want to buy anything from these marketers.All that sort of related crap that comes up when you do web search irritates the crap out of me.many times I have hit the wrong link ,because of that stuff.
Uh Guys,I hate to be the bearer of bad news,but the budget minded terrorists sure have cost us big time-Kevin
@Bing
Just catching a few bad guys in this highly technological age where just one of them can be responsible for hundreds of deaths and injuries is much different from the old west. A bomb, semi auto magic weapons, mass transportation puts thousands of people at risk from " just a few". This data mining is critical to trying and prosecuting after the fact as well. If you under estimate what jst a few can do, you leave yourself wide open for attack. Oversight is the key and a debate about that, not just CIA blaming or big brother gone amuck. Again, would you accept what we do at air ports prior to 911… Probably not !
Watching the Hummers go by on on interstate on the backs of flat beds,drives home a point we are one of the few countries that can afford such expensive machinery to destroy lives and property with.
One of my leader mandates would be,no more income tax and we would have our government funded with tariffs and sales taxes,I would work toward eliminating property tax,save for the initial transaction and maybe annual increase in value,the good old boy buddy,buddy system would suffer greatly under my reign-Kevin
Hmmm, yes I did accept it before 9/11 but I thought it was a little silly in 1971 for a company of Army Reservists in dress uniforms to have to remove their brass in order to make it through the metal detectors at the airport. I thought we were all on the same team.
Like I said, they have spent billions to catch a few terrorists. I do I do believe 90% of it is a money game and then a power game. Maybe the same thing could be done for millions instead and without compromising the privacy of 300 million citizens at the same time. Maybe just maybe.
I was flabbergasted when Bush II proposed and congress passed all the Homeland Security legislation rather than take some close scrutiny of the FBI, CIA, and all other agencies tasked with security,then making some serious changes in the leadership and programs.
^ I wasn’t.
Which is why PBO’s plight isn’t funny and will have consequences for the next President.
@Bing
I get that you think a few terrorist are not worth billions. But they represent an entire infrastructure that recruits others to do their work. Those few terrorist represent the CEOs of terrorism. You can’t prove a negative like putting more cops on the streets of NY opened business opportunities by cutting crime. Then, because there was less crime, we start cutting cops and crime goes back up. For some, it all comes down to money, money , money and to heck with the lives it saves or makes better. Funny thing. When you invest in security, you enhance business opportunities and the economy actually grows and everyone prospers. The same occurs with the environment, education and infrastructure.
The old “once of prevention”, " penny wise" at the front end. 9/11 occurred with all our losses because of lack of security, not too much.