Well it has unfortunately happened.  Huge, blanket Amnesty has been passed by the Senate.  The only thing left standing in front of this insanity is the House's bill which somehow must be rectified with the Senate's before the law is created.

There are many bad provisions in this bill which is estimated to legalize 32 million immigrants and their families over the next 10 years. (The current US population is less than 300 million)  One that deserves mentioning is the fact that illegals social security benefits are guaranteed.   Why?  Because the thing most often pointed out to prove this bill isn't amnesty is that the illegals have to pay a $2000 fine.  Now forget about the fact that illegals may have paid as much as $15k to coyotees to get here and consider this:  The average social security pay out is $919.40 per MONTH.  Yeah.

• Average Social Sec Benefit April 2006
• Senate Passes Sweeping Immigration Bill  

The Senate will be casting their votes for the "comprehensive" immigration bill today.  Most likely the large Amnesty bill will pass since the best chance for its opposition was the Cloture vote yesterday.

President Bush laid out his latest plan for immigration last night.  Chief among the proposals: sending 6000 National Guard troops to the border in "support roles".  Most people yawned.  While some people are worked up about "militarizing the border", most view sending 2% of the Guard to do some office work for the Border Patrol as meer window dressing – and not even a good dressing at that.  

Considering that there are 35,000 police officers in New York city – 6,000 people helping to secure thousands of miles of open border doesn't really inspire awe. Pres. Bush also gave lip service to many, many immigration ideas such as ID cards, walls, fences… enforcement.  But the tone definitely came across as "X, Y, and Z are all great ideas… and we're going to do them… in the future… so lets go ahead and pass the amnesty -er- guest worker program today."  Even the stop gap Guard deployment will likely take weeks if not months to occur, but the Senate is trying to push through amnesty by Memorial day.

On the whole, it doesn't seem like the speech did anything to change anyone's mind.  It simply added one more facet (the Guard) into a growing debate.

Caught a glimpse of the CBS News Early Show today.  The story?  What happened on CSI Miami last night.  And this wasn't a blurb – it had interviews with the actors and talked about the difficulties of the scenes and everything.  What about news that's happening in the real world not just on TV? 

For that they went to live coverage of the reading of the nominations for the Tony award.  Enthralling.  Does CBS News actually WONDER why their ratings are in the toilet?  Are the series slipping enough that you have to "cover" how great the last episode was and how "even-better" the finale will be?  It is really kinda sad and embarrassing for CBS.

Last Thursday Sen. Clinton spoke ay the annual U.S. Chamber of Commerce convention, where she criticized recent graduates for wanting everything right out of the gate.

"Kids, for whatever reason, think they're entitled to go right to the top with $50,000 or $75,000 jobs when they have not done anything to earn their way up…A lot of kids don't know what work is. They think work is a four-letter word." – Sen. Hillary Clinton

Since I know that the average math skills of our youth have been on the decline, it bears mentioning that work – in fact – has four letters.

Mrs. Clinton did not bother mentioning how her daughter Chelsea managed to snag a choice, six-figure consulting gig with a high-priced firm immediately after graduating from Oxford in 2003. Unfortunately, not every kid's parents are President and U.S. Senator. Hillary blamed cable TV, the Internet, cellphones and iPods for instilling a culture that "really argues against hard work. It's a culture that has a premium on instant gratification." However, it was these same type of innovations which led to the dot.com boom which enabled her husband to claim credit for a soaring economy.

Oops. Once the press started pointing out the -uh- oversight, Hillary had to quickly save face.  So supposively Chelsea called the Senator and chastised her for the comments and now – back in touch with the hard working youth of America – the Senator apologized.  Sorry, smells some PR damage control…

• Spoiled Brats
• Sen. Clinton Apologizes for Work Remarks