BiPartisan Immigration Bill Dies - Thank Ghods

Headline reads "Despite wide bipartisan support, comprehensive immigration reform has just been derailed in the Senate." To which I say Huzzah!

Having followed that debate, having read part of the bill-thing they were working on, having a cousin who's an immigration lawyer who was on loan from the federal Immigration Dept to work for Senatory Kyl from AZ and whose opinion I value, I have a bit of insight on that bill:

It sucked. It was destined to go down in flames from the day it waswritten. Ammendments to it only mangled it into a more twisted form. It was bipartisan support only because immigration was a hot-button issue with those who vote. (The 2006 elections got thru to the few remaining Republicans who actually think for themselves.) The support was of the
"get on the bandwagon" type. And when the "swift boaters" attached the phrase "amnesty" to it, there was no hope for that bill or any other to make it out of committee. The "amnesty" program was so harsh as to be punitive in nature, and would more likely cause the illegals to stay here and hope for something better in ten to fifteen years. But the sound-biters grabbed "amnesty" and successfully ran with it for all it was worth.

I am personally grateful the thing didn't make it out of committee. It would have required life-support from the get-go, and our current federal government doesn't provide support for bills it likes, much less those it
doesn't.

We send mixed signals

Why is "smart" used as a negative word when the oft-stated ambition is to send your kids to college?

"You think you're so smart" and "smarty pants" are spoken in a negative, often sarcastic tone. Why, I wonder? If being smart is so bad, why the rush for college? Or are college grads supposed to be as stupid when they come out as they went in? (and do I really want an answer to that last?)

Reading is Doomed!

I read a poll that said people were reading less. It was done by a newspaper, and people were in fact reading newsprint less. They were reading online news websites and blogs far more. The conclusion is that reading was doomed. No, dudes, reading print is fading, but not doomed. There's still the place for bathtub reading because you do NOT want to drop your PDA or e-book reader into the tub. A book so dropped becomes a soggy book. A PDA so dropped becomes loss of your electronic memory unit. Now, when they have a water-proof computer screen on an arm that can swing out over the tub, then I'd worry about the doomedness of print.