A DC insider brought this column by Peter Ferrara at NRO to my attention. It’s very good, though the description of the current congressional majority’s plans isn’t.

You see, it’s becoming clear to everyone but the Congressional Budget Office that the federal budget will come into balance (as the government defines it — which is an entirely different discussion) during the next fiscal year if it’s just left on autopilot. Since a balanced budget would make a shambles of all the bogus claims that the Bush tax cuts wouldn’t increase revenues, would wreck the economy, blah blah blah, the majority is frantically trying to spend money as fast as it can:

Starting this fall, therefore, Democrats will be harping on a deficit which was rapidly falling toward extinction, but which they chose instead to sustain and perpetuate with excessive spending increases.

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Right Idea, Wrong Cure — Two prolife groups have called for the resignations the 18 congresspersons who published a letter objecting to the Pope’s reminder of the Catholic Church’s penalty for supporting abortion (i.e., excommunication):

But Father Frank Pavone of Priests for Life told LifeNews.com that “Faithful Catholics, as well as those in the pro-life movement from every denomination, have had enough of this double-talk.”

“It is not possible to advance ‘respect for life and for the dignity of every human being’ while tolerating the dismemberment and decapitation of the human beings still in their mothers’ wombs,” he said.

“If they cannot muster the will to protect defenseless children, they should resign,” he said. “We don’t need public servants who can’t tell the difference between serving the public and killing the public.”

I’ll respectfully disagree. They need to be forced to stop pretending that they are members of the Catholic faith, and should be summarily excommunicated.

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Old Media is not carrying the report of a victory in a battle very far, by Confederate Yankee notes (HT Instapundit) — Guess it beats reporting that we lost, which is what might have happened if the Old Media didn’t know it has independent embeds and others looking over their shoulders.

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One thing that shouldn’t be in this sentence:

Avis Rent A Car System is offering customers a wireless Internet service to use in its rented cars, hotel rooms and other places a traveler might go.

The new Avis Connect service, priced at $10.95 per day, can transmit a Wi-Fi signal to multiple laptops and other mobile devices at the same time.

OK, unless there are passengers.

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In an article clearly designed to put globaloney skeptics and those who oppose killing embryos in the name of science in their place, USA Today recounts famous examples of supposedly misguided resistance to science. “Somehow,” they forgot to tell us that resistance has often been justified, including here.

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Getting paid $55 grand to give a speech on poverty (HT NewsBusters). Is this a great country or what?

I haven’t said much, at least in English, about the deformed version of “immigration reform” making its way through Washington (apparently being kicked down the road a bit, but not far), and don’t intend to.

It’s partially because people who are in a better position to do it, including Hugh Hewitt and Debbie Schlussel, and many, many others, are doing the heavy lifting, and doing it well.

It’s partially because I previously fisked a number of items in last year’s bill (here, here, and here), and have commented frequently on related matters for the past two-plus years (some examples here, here, here, here, here, and here).

Finally, it’s because this year’s model is clearly worse, and apparently getting ever worse, with each successive whine.

So I don’t plan on following the twists and turns of this patent nonsense.

Therefore, for the record: I love legal immigration done right. We could probably absorb about double the number of legal immigrants allowed in every year if the problem of illegals didn’t exist. But it’s already perfectly obvious that the current bill is a sellout of borders, language, and culture writ large. It will become moreso as the days go by. It should not pass. Voters should make it clear to their representatives that anyone who votes for the measure as it currently exists, or any of the worse ones that appear sure to follow, does not deserve re-election, regardless of their other possible redeeming qualities.

You want “immigration reform”? Think Oklahoma.

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UPDATE: I do need to note this — The current welfare caseload (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) continues to decline. Since I last posted on it using March 1996 2006 figures, the number of families and the total number of recipients have both declined by about 3% (in the nine months ending December 31, 2006 — recipients from 4.231 million to 4.119 million; families from 1.814 million to 1.755 million). The cumulative decreases in recipients and families receiving welfare since the end of 2000 have been 25% and 19%, respectively — and over 66% and 61%, respectively, since the enactment of welfare reform in 1996.

If this deformed version of immigration “reform” passes, expect much, if not all, of that progress to be reversed. Add to that the cost increases in Food Stamps and Medicaid, which will be the stuff absolute nightmares are made of.

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UPDATE 2: Noteworthy commentary –
- Cal Thomas — “Amnesty by Another Name”
- David Limbaugh — “The Immigration Debacle”
- Thomas Sowell — “The Amnesty Fraud“; “The Amnesty Fraud: Part II” (May 24: Part III)
- Knoxville letter posted at American Thinker — “Blacks and the immigration bill”
- Also at American Thinker, from Dan Scott — “The Immigration Bill Sells Out the Poor” (the legal ones, that is; HT Larwyn)

UPDATE 3: Michelle Malkin — “The Comprehensive Open-Borders Goodie Bag”

It’s a long read, but worth every word (HT DailyGood e-mail):

Published: 10 May 2007

Playing against the odds: Girl with the greatest handicap of all

MacKinzie Kline is not merely a gifted golfer who has won a place on the professional circuit at the age of 15. She also has only a few years to live. Andrew Gumbel reports

There is more than one reason that MacKinzie Kline has been generating headlines in the United States lately. The most obvious of them is that she suffers from an incurable heart defect that will probably kill her before she is 30, and yet she has managed to work her way on to the women’s professional golf circuit at the tender age of 15.

That might be enough to grab anybody’s attention. What makes this girl really compelling, though, to both newspaper columnists and the high-profile golfers who have taken her under their wing, is that she doesn’t play the victim very well. In fact, for someone who needs a constant supply of oxygen and tires easily, she is both charming and, at times, downright pushy.

Go here for the rest of the story.