NOTE: This entry was originally posted at 8:00 a.m., but will stay at the top for the rest of the day.
_______________________________

The first post in Bill Pierce’s pre-election series is up at his blog.

It’s about securing the borders as a precondition for solving the problem of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants already here.

It makes too much sense for Mike DeWine to possibly understand it. As Bill said in his radio interview Friday, DeWine’s career path has been law school, law firm, politics.

Mike DeWine has no real appreciation of the damage to our economic and social fabric being inflicted by the illegal horde. Yes, we must do something about those who are here. No, we can’t deport them all. But before we do something, we have to have firm legislation in place to stop the influx.

Bill Pierce gets it. As you can see from the last paragraph of Pierce’s post, DeWine and the majority of current senators don’t:

Most unfortunately, the Senate took another approach. It ignored the need to control the border and end the flow of more illegal immigrants into the country, and instead focused on a policy to handle the estimated 12 million undocumented people currently in America. Amnesty became the plan (more in Part II), but with no restrictions on the flow across the border it will be a never ending problem and encourage many more to follow. Even the most uninformed among us can clearly see the need to close the door during the winter months OR let the cold air inside. Why can’t our elected representatives in the United States Senate do the same?

Read the whole thing. Visit his main site. Contribute — Even if you think it’s not much, it is. Finally, vote for Bill Pierce on May 2.
____________________________

Note: I have endorsed Bill Pierce for Senate, and have provided nominal financial support for his campaign. BizzyBlog is a member of Blogs for Pierce.

Besides the fact that the people in it are barely visible, plenty:

In the spirit of cooperation, Bob, you can use the pics below if you need ones that people will actually be able to see:

Tom Brinkman:

Here’s Mr. Brinkman cutting off Jean Schmidt’s head on a cake. Ha ha. Nice. You remember this, right, Bob? You should. You were there.

Eric Minamyer:

This original source of this photo is unknown, so I can’t be sure whether or not this is a picture of Minamyer entering a conference room at the Dayton Daily News with you, Jean Schmidt, and Jeff Morgan for a candidate interview during last year’s primary. It was at that meeting where Minamyer observed in a comment posted at NixGuy that he left the meeeting “a bit surprised …… that no newspaper has ever reported that he (that means you, Bob) makes his living representing foreign interests.” Though he supports you now, he has never explained why your occupation, which bothered him then (see the link for more detail), doesn’t bother him now.

Steve Austin:

No, not him….

Yeah, him. Mr. 217 Votes.

Doug Mink:

Sorry, couldn’t resist …..

Here he is. Mr. All of 90 Votes.

Hopefully, Bob, these photos will help you cobble together a better group photo at your web site.

Seriously folks, when’s the last time a candidate put together a Who’s Who of congressional losers to support a winning campaign? (Now I’m sure they are all wonderful human beings, which is why I called them “congressional losers.” This blog has manners. :–>) Bob calls this “McEwen Momentum” in his e-mail announcement. I see it as roughly identical to the “Joementum” Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman pretended to have about a week before he dropped out of the race for the 2004 Democrat presidential nomination. Maybe we should call whatever Bob thinks he has “McMentum(tm).”

A final note to Bob — Your announcement notes that “David R. Smith (is) not involved in the 2nd Congressional district race this year.” Too bad. Now that would be an endorsement made in heaven, because you two have so much in common. Both of you have fudged your career histories, both of you have a lot you won’t tell us, and both of you expect us to have blind faith that you’ll represent our best interests while giving us no good reason to expect it. And David “Mr. 362” Smith pulled more votes than Austin and Mink combined!

Counterquestion: Why did the private carriers get back to full speed so quickly?

A subscription-only editorial in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal observes, and answers:

A week ago Monday the Times-Picayune reported that the U.S. Postal Service’s New Orleans processing and distribution center would reopen the following day — more than seven months after Katrina hit. The paper called it “a move postal officials say will all but eliminate maddening post-Katrina delivery times of a week or longer for letters mailed just across town.” Not that things are completely back to normal. New Orleanians still don’t receive magazines, “although that is expected within weeks.”

Postal Service competitors fared better. Spokesmen for DHL, FedEx and United Parcel Service tell us that all three companies restored service in New Orleans on September 19, just three weeks after Katrina hit.

All three companies also joined in the relief efforts. DHL ferried international aid to Louisiana from Little Rock Air Force Base in Arkansas. UPS drivers “from as far away as Vermont hauled loads of donated supplies to FEMA sites in Mississippi and Louisiana — on their own time,” according to a corporate history. And FedEx, a spokesman says, “transported more than 1,000 tons of relief supplies to areas affected by hurricanes in 2005.”

In Katrina’s aftermath we’ve heard a lot about government “incompetence,” mostly from people who have a bone to pick with the Bush Administration. But it seems likely that the private delivery companies would have outshone the Postal Service regardless of who was in the White House. Some things the private sector simply does better.

It seems long past time for the Postal Service to be privatized. Japan is on the verge of completing theirs, even though it has the added complexity of saving and investment accounts to deal with. Why can’t we?
_______________________________

UPDATE: The Post Office pushes back (HT to commenter below). I will acknowledge that the tasks facing the USPS were more daunting than those facing the three big private firms, but we also have to acknowledge that there were more employees available to help the USPS turn around. But of course, the USPS employees lived and worked in the affected areas, while it’s safe to say that the private carriers, who have major sorting hubs elsewhere, were less proportionately affected. All in all, I don’t think the Journal was taking shots at the carriers themselves; they were saying that a bureaucracy-laden management does not respond as quickly or effectively, no matter how well-meaning everyone is (and I for one am not disputing that). I think the results after more than seven months bear that out, regardless of the fact that the less-disrupted private carriers were up and running in weeks.

Continuing to jeopardize her career at the hard-core open-borders Wall Street Journal (they’re so smart on so many things; why are they so transparently dumb on immigration?) by pointing out more of the obvious, but in magnificent prose:

Where does all this leave me? Does my feeling for immigrants, and my afternoon at the march, leave me supporting open borders, or illegal immigration? No. Why should it? To love immigrants is not to believe America has no right to decide who can come to America and become a citizen. America has always decided who comes here. That’s why it all worked.

While the marchers seemed to be good people, and were very likable, the march itself, I think, violated the old immigrant politesse–the general understanding that you’re not supposed to get here and immediately start making demands. It would never have occurred to my grandparents to demand respect. They thought they had to earn it. It would never have occurred to them to air mass grievances, assert rights, issue a list of legislative demands. Especially if they were here unlawfully.

I happen to think America in general has deep affection for immigrants, knows they are part of the dynamic, a part of our growth and our endless coming-into-being. But when your heart is soft, and America’s is, your head must be hard.

We are a sovereign nation operating under the rule of law. That, in fact, is why many immigrants come here. They come from places where the law, such as it is, is corrupt, malleable, limiting. Does it make sense to subvert our own laws to facilitate the entrance of those in pursuit of government by law? Whatever our sentiments and sympathies as individuals, America has the right, and the responsibility, to protect the integrity of its borders, to make the laws by which immigrants are granted entrance, and to enforce those laws.

I think open-borders proponents are, simply, wrong. I think those who call good people like members of the voluntary border patrols “yahoos” are snobs. I think those whose primary concern is preserving the Hispanic vote for the Democratic Party, or not losing the Hispanic vote for the Republican Party, are being cynical, selfish, and stupid, too. It’s not all about who gets what vote, it’s about continuing a system of laws that has allowed America to become, among many other things, a place immigrants want to come to. And it’s about admitting immigrants in a coherent, orderly, legal manner, with an eye first to what America needs. That’s how you continue a good thing, which is what we’ve had. That’s how you leave Americans who’ve been here for a while grateful for immigration, and immigrants, and loving them, and even wanting, sometimes, to kiss their hands.

The couple, married for 55 years, died a day apart at age 77.

Great lives well lived are a source of inspiration, even when they end (HT Made 4 the Internet):

(more…)