Saturday, May 20, 2006

Running Late

Some people around here were hogging the computer, especially the older one who didn't have to go into the office. They shall remain nameless, but they know who they are.

The Fool of the Week is the U.S. Senate.

The Senate pulled two particularly stupid stunts this past week that I thought I would lend comment to today.

First, during the grilling of Gen. Hayden for CIA Director, some questions posed to him were not able to be answered in open forum. So, he said he would be available for however long of a session in private that the committee needed to have questions answered. Those on the left who object to him mostly because he is the President' nominee were adamant about their misgivings concerning his nomination. Senator Feingold, hoping to run for President himself, went so far as to say Gen. Hayden didn't warrant credibility as a nominee. But how many senators showed up for the private briefing? Only six or 7. Was Feingold one of them? No. Feingold was the one who said they may require as much as 6 or so more hours in private session to get answered to questions. The session lasted about 1 1/2 hours.

On Thursday, two amendments were up for vote in conjunction with the Immigrant Reform bill. The first was brought up by Sen. Inhofe, R-OK, making English the official national language and requiring new citizens to pass an English proficiency test. The vote on this amendment was 63 to 34 in the affirmative.

The second amendment brought forward by Sen. Salazar, D-CO, would make English the "unifying and national language" but those who don't speak English would not be penalized. How is it unifying if it is not spoken? This was just a touchy-feely statement. The vote on this amendment was 58-39 in the affirmative.

Do you notice what happened? Both received support from the other side of the aisle and both passed. In effect, the amendments will both be sent to committee when the Senate and House hash out their legislation.

The legislation was a waste of time and all about posturing for votes in an election year. Of course English is our national language. Do we really need an amendment to say so? It is clear that to succeed in this country you must speak English. The same is true if an American goes to another country. The common language dominates.

2 comments:

srp said...

Why are they not talking about one of the really, really big changes that MUST take place? Changing the law that states a baby is automatically a US citizen if born here, even if parents are illegals or non-citizens. If that doesn't change, they might as well forget everything else... that is why the illegals come in the first place. Duh! I am about ready to vote the whole bunch of the idiots, both sides, out and start over.

poopie said...

Yeah, and they we don't know what they're doing. Idiots.