This spring I developed the habit of Saturday Lowes trips – mostly to see what’s on the closeout sale table (which they set up only on Saturdays). The other day I scored a nice $80 Kitchen Aid ice cream maker for only $30. Now, every weekend Laura makes a half-gallon (2 Liter) batch of ice cream. Today she made Chocolate Jasmin flavor ice cream.

WOW.

I like chocolate. A lot. I really like Ben & Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk. But the simple, sensuous elegance of jasmine and chocolate flavored ice cream blew me away. If I didn’t care whether I died an untimely death as an obese blob, that’s all I’d eat for the rest of my life. And I’d wash it down with my favorite Baker’s Burbon.

We got the recipe from one of my favorite books: The New Taste of Chocolate: A Cultural and Natural History of Cacao with Recipes by Maricel Presilla. If you care at all about cocoa or chocolate – this is the definitive book on the subject. Here is the recipe from the book …

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Today many immigrants took to the streets to show flag – the American flag – and to show America that they are as American as apple pie, and that they have the right to their slice of the pie.

As I have said before, there are quite pragmatic reasons why everyone who truly cares for this country should support a full amnesty for all otherwise law-abiding, peaceful immigrants, if they have no papers. These newcomers are highly motivated to contribute to the best of their abilities to the economy. Being forced to hide, shackles their ability to be productive and represents a serious loss of entrepreneurship. Forcing immigrants underground has created a violent, antisocial dynamic along the southern border in which crime and corruption flourish. Not only is it expensive to try to arrest and deport people crossing the border ($1,700 per person (pdf)), the coyote economy along the border makes it actually easier for the real bad guys to get in, because it reduces the probability they will be caught.

Beyond increasing productivity, saving taxpayer money, and making America safer, there is also a moral value to a comprehensive amnesty for immigrants: allowing people to pursue a dream of success through work and entrepreneurship is simply the American Way. That’s what the American Dream is all about, is it not? It’s not about slamming the door behind you!? It’s about opportunities. It’s about open doors!

For me, that is what America is all about. That’s what I experienced, and that’s why I am still here – despite my frustration about what is going on in this country. The American Dream is all about taking risks to better yourself, about creating opportunities, and about the creativity to seize the opportunity. America has created this dream, has emblazoned it on its banner, hammered it into iron, chiseled it into the pedestal of Liberty and posted it to the Internet. But it has yet to fully live up to its own dream. This dream is alive, but it is not well.

IMMIGRATION AMNESTY MAKES AMERICA STRONGER because it strengthens America’s commitment to this dream it has created. If millions of law-abiding, hard-working immigrants in America are turned into criminals, the American Dream will turn yet more into a mirage. If America has the courage and wisdom to make a commitment to these people, it can prove that this country still values its heritage and its promise to the world. It can show the world that despite mistakes and defeats, despite its so-called President, America still does stand for Freedom and Prosperity and Opportunity for all.

Pretty spring day today – so we decided to head out to Little River park instead of doing chores. First Laura got to run on the trails for an hour, while I helped Jacob practice riding his “thunderbike.” I also showed Julia a safe, easy part of the bike trail she could practice on. When Laura got back, it was my turn to hit the bike trails. This was my first time riding the entire Little River bike trail and I was really surprised just how much fun this trail is. It starts out pretty easy, and you can just do the quick, easy 1-mile or 2-mile loops, which are pretty good for beginners. The back trail, or upper trail, is NOT for beginners, however. The trail has some steep bowls and a bunch of logrolls – nothing outrageous, but certainly a bit challenging and a lot of fun. It’s also a pretty ride, as you climb up this little knoll above Little River, through nice, pristine forest. It’s very quiet, and even on such a nice Sunday afternoon it was not crowded at all. (So probably I should keep it to myself and not even write about it. But if the three people who read this start going there, too … oh well :))

I have to get on that trail more often … next time I’ll take a camera and take some pictures.

For many citizens of Togo, this must be a bittersweet day. On April 27, 1960, the French administered UN Trusteeship and former French colony became an independent nation. But today also marks a year and a day since the ruling party, the RPT, declared victory in the so-called “election” of April 24, 2005. This rigged fraud of a vote handed control over the country to Faure Gnassingbé, the son of Togo’s brutal former president of 38 years, Gnassingbé Eyadema.

Amnesty International issued a statement (fr) yesterday, denouncing last year’s “election” as marred with irregularities and violence. Thirty years of a culture of total impunity for the military and the RPT regime caused the violence that left several hundred dead – mostly unarmed civilian protesters. AI deplores the fact that nothing has been done to find and prosecute those responsible for last year’s violence, despite concrete recommendations in a United Nations report from August 2005.

IRIN has a pretty good status update on Togo, and while it covers the whole mess, the violence, the thousands of refugees in neighboring countries, the distrust among the Togolese, the bleak economc outlook, the need for a reform of the military, etc … the article also points to some encouraging signs:

Togo’s original Independence Day from France – 27 April 1960 – is to be literally re-written back in to the history books. Under Gnassingbe Eyadema, Independence Day was celebrated on the 13 January, the day he seized power in a 1967 coup. Independence Day celebrations on the 27 April are due to take place Thursday for the first time in nearly three decades.

And Lome residents feel more at ease speaking their minds these days. “My colleagues and I discuss the newspaper headlines in front of the news kiosks and we are not frightened to do so,” said Leo Kpakpo, who explained that it wasn’t like that under the late Eyadema. His regime was marked by repression of the opposition, according to the media watchdog NGO Reporters Without Borders.

Now, all journalists jailed for speaking out against the government have been released, a move guardedly welcomed by Togolese Media Observers (OTM). “There is much still to be done,” warned Francis Amouzou, president of OTM. “It is important to remember that at the beginning of Faure Gnassingbe’s regime, journalists were physically assaulted and there have been no enquiries into this harassment.”

Togo: Outward Calm Belies Continuing Problems, UN Integrated Regional Information Networks, posted to allafrica.com April 26, 2006

LeTogolais celebrates this occasion with a story about one of the heroes of the struggle for Togo’s independence: Pa Augustino de Souza (fr). De Souza was born in Agbodrafo on Oct. 15, 1877 and went to school in Aneho. He later worked for the Deutsche Togo Gesellschaft, before he became an independent plantation owner. During the Independence movement, he was President of the Elder Council, next to Octaviano Olympio, Jacob Adjallé and Thimoty Agbétsiafan, and a member of the Committee for Togolese Unity. De Souza was instrumental at laying the foundation that made possible the referendum for independence of 1958 and finally Togo’s independence. Sadly, he died on April 25, 1960, just two days before Togo became independent. (info via leTogolais)

I remember quite well the days after April 26, 1986, when human error and the lack of any disaster preparedness planning led to the worst nuclear accident in the short history of this horrific technology. When reactor no. 4 of the V.I. Lenin Memorial Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station melted down 20 years ago, it released 400 times the amount of radioactivity released by the Hiroshima bombing in the form of a plume that travelled across Europe and released its “payload” in the form of radioactive fallout.

We were told that we can’t drink milk or eat eggs. We were told that we had to stay inside. For days nobody knew for sure what was going on, because the Soviets (remember them?) would not fess up to what had happened. I remember endless discussions about what was safe to eat and what was not. A huge freight train was loaded with radioactive milk powder and travelled all around Germany, but no city allowed it to stay. Eventually this train just disappeared.

Today, there are 443 nuclear power plants in operation worldwide, and 27 under construction. We live within 50 miles of one. These plants produce waste material that will be extremely toxic and radioactive for thousands of years – what a great legacy to leave to our children and future generations. Here’s our toxic, radioactive trash, kids – don’t loose it! And what guarantees do we have that there won’t be another Chernobyl? “Trust us” they say. “We’re careful,” they say. Yeah right. So far they (we) were just lucky – unlike the 336,000 people in Ukraine and Belarus who had to be re-settled after Chernobyl – and unlike the thousands who died as a direct result of the catastrophe.

Today is Africa Malaria Day and this year the focus is on the need to provide universal access to artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs). ACTs are the newest hope for making serious progress toward defeating the Queen of Diseases.

African children are dying of malaria at the rate of one every 30 seconds. Take a minute to try to comprehend that number – and two more die.

Malaria kills an estimated million people worldwide every year, 90 percent of them in Africa. That relentless toll saps energy, money and hope from communities all over sub-Saharan Africa. “Malaria is also a major cause of anemia in children and pregnant women, low birth weight, premature birth and infant mortality,” the Roll Back Malaria partnership says. “In endemic African countries, malaria accounts for 25–35 percent of all outpatient visits, 20–45 percent of hospital admissions and 15–35 percent of hospital deaths, imposing a great burden on already fragile health-care systems.”
New Hope for Tackling an Old Scourge on Africa Malaria Day, Tami Hultman, allAfrica.com, April 25, 2006

While I lived in Togo, I had malaria many times. I’ll never forget my first malaria attack: bundled up in a sleeping bag on the bed of a pickup truck in a 90-degree, humid rainy-season night, I was shivering uncontrollably for hours, thinking that this was it – I was just going to kick the bucket right then and there. For hours I tried to focus my mind by composing a suitable obituary in my head. By the end of my “malaria career” I had tried a wide variety of drugs to deal with it, and they either produced significant side effects or were useless. Some of the drugs produced side effects that were almost as bad as the Malaria itself (hallucinations and panic attacks, liver problems).

Artemisinin sounds like the holy grail to combat this ancient killer, and in combination with other comprehensive efforts, Malaria eradication is possible.

I have always liked Guinness, especially on tap. A nice, cool pint of Guinness slows things down a bit, as you watch it slowly settle to its characteristic dark stillness, with this creamy, meditative – but confident – head.

Recently, Beer Advocate published an interview with Fergal Murray, one of the company’s head brewmasters, and he gave the Alström Bros. the inside scoop about Guinness:

Murray explained that the recipe for Guinness has undergone only minor adjustments over the years. Every keg of Guinness Draught imported to the US comes from St. James’s Gate in Dublin (though Guinness Extra Stout is made in Canada). It contains water, malt, roasted barley, hops and yeast – and that’s it. Like many major labels, Guinness relies on “high-gravity brewing,” which involves large batches of wort (unfermented beer) high in fermentable sugars (note to beer geeks: the goal is a final gravity of 1072). Eventually these are watered down to attain a 4.2 percent ABV (alcohol by volume). The brewers also blend batches to aid in consistency, and the beer is pasteurized.
Mysteries of Guinness Revealed, Beer Advocate, by the Alström Bros, 04-11-2006

Guinness is a remarkable product – produced in enormous quantities by an international conglomerate. Every day, 10 million pints of Guinness are poured in 150 countries. Yet they manage a remarkable consistency and quality for such a mass-market product.

One of the interesting bits of information to me was the relative purity of the product, with no weird chemicals added to the beer, and the comparison of the caloric value: Guinness has only 125 kCal per 12 ounce serving – less than a Budweiser (ugh). Heck – a 12-ounce can of regular Coke has 144 kCal and may contain the carcinogen benzene. And then there are the Coca Cola deathsquads in Columbia. I have not heard of any Guinness death squads.

Forget soda – pour me another Guinness.

Oh yeah, baby! Veg Power rules!

Grease be with you!

Saturday, the ruling RPT and several opposition parties elected the lawyer and opposition leader Yawovi Agboyibo to run their “national dialog” talks. This process began in May 2004 and had been interrupted in February when President Eyadema died. The goal is primarily to find ways to reform the electoral process in the West African nation, which had been ruled by Eyadema for 38 years, mostly as a single-party state.

The opposition’s LeTogolais voices some cautious optimism about the talks, noting the presence of foreign observers and an atmosphere that is “less tense” than previously. However, they also not that this is the 11th time since 1990 a “national dialog” has been convened.

The electoral process is a huge problem for the Togolese opposition. The electoral commission is full of RPT cronies, and the entire process is controlled by the ruling party. Agboyibo is a very smart, capable leader. I met Agboyibo a few years ago, and I was very impressed by his humility and sharp mind. I really hope that he can convince the RPT to make some concessions to allow fair elections.

However, I don’t think that the electoral process is, in fact, Togo’s biggest problem on the road towards democracy and peace. I believe that the most important issue is the ethnic divide between Ewe and Kabyé – the legacy of Eyadema’s brutal regime. The opposition has to try to start breaking down this divide by recruiting Kabyè leaders, and by reaching out to all Kabyè – at least those who are not RPT cronies.
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Julia makes it all the way to the top of “The Rock” at yesterday’s Earth Day Celebration at Duke.

The Nicholas School at Duke had a great Earth Day Celebration. Matt and I manned the Piedmont Biofuels booth.
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Last Sunday, a 28-year-old man was attacked in the city of Potsdam (near Berlin) by racist thugs and violently beaten to a pulp, simply because he is black. This racist attack has prompted a fair amount of outrage and analysis, but also some rather telling statements, like the one from Minister of the Interior Schäuble, insisting that it is “not clear” why the man was attacked, and that “blond, blue-eyed people also can be victims of violence, and sometimes the perpetrators are foreigners” and that that’s supposedly just as bad.

Bullshit!

There is absolutely no question about why this guy was attacked. The Brandenburg police has posted an audio recording (ge) of the attack, which, they hope, will help identify the attackers. As he was attacked, the man recorded the attack with his cell phone to his wife’s voice mail. This chilling recording clearly documents the racist motif of the attack. The attackers can be clearly heard repeatedly calling their victim “nigger” and taunting him. Then they proceeded to bludgeon the poor guy almost to death.

Germany has a real problem. Not just an image problem – a Nigerian delegation cancelled their trip to Potsdam, when they heard the news about the beating. No, Germany has a racism problem. Part of this problem is a legacy of the East German Stalinists. Ironically, despite the fact that Anti-fascism was one of the big slogans of the Worker’s and Farmer’s State, racism is a huge problem (ge) in Germany’s eastern states. Just ask Adebowale Ogungbure (en) a player for the soccer club FC Sachsen Leipzig, who suffers from racist abuse on a regular basis.

Yet, the problem exists all over Germany. Germany’s star national soccer player Patrick Owomoyela had to get a court injunction against a neo-nazi party, the NPD, to stop their recruiting campaign during the Worlcup, which was supposed to prominently feature his white No. 25 national team jersey with the slogan “White, not just a jersey colour for a real national team!”

Jerks!

I have seen it first-hand how this racism permeates German mainstream life. Growing up in Stuttgart, I sometimes hung out with one of the two or three black kids in my high-school. He always had to carry his ID around, because he’d always get his ID checked, especially going downtown. Cops would just walk up to him and demand to see his ID – for no good reason. And he even had a thick Swabian accent for chrissake! And as heinous as the violent racist attacks are, it’s this racist attitude that permeates German culture so deeply, that is the real problem, because it foments the open racism and tolerates the violence.

What to do?

There are many Germans who fight racism. It will be a long, long battle. I think personal contact is the only real cure for racism. So everyone, not just Germans, should look at their community and find ways to build bridges between people. If you live in a place with a strong minority/majority division, seek out those who look or talk different in your neighborhood and invite them to your place. Listen to them, try to see through their eyes. It’s worth the effort. Get your children together – they are your only hope.

The real change has to start with you. So many of our so-called leaders have their heads firmly planted in the sand about this issue. Far too many think that multiculturalism has failed, and far too many think that there has to be a “dominant culture” (Leitkultur) and everyone has to integrate. That’s nonsense, cultural diversity is a good thing and if you open up to it, you will see why.

Philips is working very hard these days to piss off consumers, as acknowledged by one one of their recent patent applications. Odd thing, you think, for a consumer electronics company to create technology to disenfranchise and piss off consumers? Seems disingenuous? Yet, this seems to represent a new industry trend. Consider the recent whooping Sony received over its bungled attempts to impose its will on consumers. Now Philips is handing consumer-rights lawyers this little gem:

If a new idea from Philips catches on, the company may not be very popular with TV viewers. The company’s labs in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, has been cooking up a way to stop people changing channels to avoid adverts or fast forwarding through ads they have recorded along with their target programme.
-snip-
Philips suggests adding flags to commercial breaks to stop a viewer from changing channels until the adverts are over. The flags could also be recognised by digital video recorders, which would then disable the fast forward control while the ads are playing.
Invention: The TV-advert enforcer, Barry Fox, NewScientist.com news service, 18 April 2006
(via Slashdot)

Now that’s what I call a challenge to the marketing department. Can’t wait to see Philips spin this technology to consumers. Maybe they’ll collaborate with La-Z-Boy and create a recliner chair that will strap you in and force your eyelids open while ads are on during the Superbowl. Thank god I don’t have cable TV.

… is real! The atheist filmmaker Brian Flemming has recruited volunteer activists, Rational Responders, to distribute copies of his documentary and flyers that compare Jesus to the Easter Bunny.

Declaring War on Easter, Beyond Belief Media has launched a preemptive attack on the Christian holiday, the company announced today. “Operation Easter Sanity” has already begun.

Using its documentary THE GOD WHO WASN’T THERE as the chief weapon, Beyond Belief Media is covertly planting DVDs of the film in churches throughout the United States. The popular movie, currently ranked #1 on Amazon.com’s independent documentaries list, is critical of the irrational beliefs of Christians and asserts that Jesus Christ did not exist.

A total of 666 DVDs will be hidden like “Easter eggs” in sanctuaries, church yards and other holy areas by Beyond Belief Media’s national team of volunteers. The DVDs will be slipped into hymnals and other locations where they are likely to be discovered by unsuspecting worshippers.
BEYOND BELIEF MEDIA LAUNCHES PREEMPTIVE STRIKE ON EASTER – Press release, April 11, 2006

Apparently, Easter has provoked a host of controversies throughout history. In the Quartodecimanism controversy in the 2nd century AD the churches of the East in Asia Minor and the Church of Rome fought over whether Easter should be on the 14th day of Nisan, the Jewish Passover, or on the Sunday after Passover.

These days, another controversy (besides the “War on Easter”) rages – over the authenticity of the pagan roots of Easter:

In his ‘De Temporum Ratione’ the Venerable Bede wrote that the month Eostremonat (April) was so named because of a goddess, Eostre, who had formerly been worshipped in that month. In recent years some scholars (Ronald Hutton, P.D. Chantepie de la Saussaye, Elizabeth Freeman) have suggested that a lack of supporting documentation for this goddess might indicate that Bede assumed her existence based on the name of the month.

Jakob Grimm took up the question of Eostre in his Deutsche Mythologie of 1835, noting that Ostaramanoth was etymologically related to Eostremonat and writing of various landmarks and customs related to the goddess Ostara in Germany. Again, because of a lack of written documentation, critics suggest that Grimm took Bede’s mention of a goddess Eostre at face value and constructed the goddess Ostara around existing Germanic customs which may have arisen independently.
Etymology and Pagan origins of Easter traditions, Wikipedia

As the Wikipedia article points out, both Bede and Grimm were noted historians, and involved in recording oral traditions that were quickly disappearing. So the fact that there are no other records of these traditions would have been the reason they were interested in them.

Another interesting point about the colored-egg tradition is that Catholics were (are?) prohibited from eating eggs during Lent. In the “olden days” when everyone had a bunch of chickens, they boiled them and saved them. So on Easter, everyone had piles of eggs, and they had to get eaten ASAP.

Well, anyway happy Spring Equinox, happy Passover, and yeah – happy Easter!

Food safety researchers have conducted more tests on soda pop involving heat and UV exposure, and they found clear evidence that even short exposure of soda to heat increases the levels of benzene, a human carcinogen. This is caused by the presence of two common preservatives in the soda: sodium benzoate and ascorbic acid.

“Heat is a major factor” in the formation of benzene in drinks, according to Mike Redman, a scientist with the American Beverage Association and who also represented the industry in meetings with the FDA over benzene in 1990.

Redman told BeverageDaily.com that soft drinks firms reformulated drinks in 1990, mainly by adjusting the levels of sodium benzoate and ascorbic acid, to reduce and control the potential for benzene traces to form.

Still, the continuing presence of soft drinks containing benzene above drinking water standards has led to calls for sodium benzoate to be taken out of drinks formulas.

“What are we to tell consumers? ‘Product contains cancer-causing substance, drink immediately, do not store in a warm environment or near sunlight?’ Preferably benzoate should not be used in combination with vitamin C (ascorbic acid) or added juice,” said the scientist involved in industry testing for benzene 15 years ago.
Heat tests key for benzene in soft drinks, By Chris Mercer, BeverageDaily.com, 4/11/2006

I found out about this a month ago, and I went cold turkey on my beloved Mountain Dew. These days, when I don’t drink beer or wine, I tend to stick to water, juice and Ice Tea. Instant Ice Tea is not any worse than soda, and it contains much less weird chemicals. And if you really need a caffeine kick, you can just make it more concentrated.
(Hat tip to Revere)

Last weekend my dad visited us and since we were doing a bit of sight-seeing, I figured a trip over to Chapel Hill would be fun. I had not visited my alma mater in a long time and this time of year the old campus at UNC is just gorgeous (despite a huge amount of construction everywhere).


Pretty day too – even the sky was Carolina Blue!

The Old Well is a key landmark of UNC’s Chapel Hill campus.

New Google Brain to Keep “Golden Copy” of Your Deepest Hopes, Fears, Secrets

Today Google introduced a new product, Google Brain. Building on its popular Google Goggles, a headset that records users’ audiovisual sensory input and uploads it to Google’s servers, the Brain attachment will build and transmit to Google a constantly-updated computer model of the user’s mind. Users will be able to access their brains from any computer using their Google Account and a nifty AJAX interface.

“Storing your precious memories and deepest darkest secrets in your own gray matter is an unnecessary inconvenience and leaves users’ minds vulnerable to disease, blunt objects, and substance abuse,” said Google spokesman Joe Orwellian. “But with Google holding a copy of your brain, you know it’s safe! And just imagine the customized user experience Google will be able to offer when your every dream and nightmare is being scanned by our ad-bots.”

In response to privacy concerns voiced by EFF, Orwellian replied: “They just don’t understand: sometimes you have to give up a little privacy for convenience. Besides, the copies of users’ brains on Google servers will be encrypted to prevent snooping.” Asked if Google itself would have the key and be able to decrypt brains at the request of law enforcement or civil litigants, Orwellian responded, “Well, duh.”

Don’t forget to check zeitgeist.google.com to see what Google Brain users are thinking about right now!

via the EFF – those guys crack me up!

… at least not when it’s time fo my triple bypass, because you’d increase my chance of experiencing complications during recovery by seven percentage points, according to a recent study:

Percentage of Patients Having Complications After Surgery:
52% – Patients who were receiving prayers and did not know this.
52% – Patients receiving no prayers and not being told anything about prayers taking place anywhere for anyone.
59% – Patients knowing they were receiving prayers

Does this mean that knowing people are praying for you is bad for your health? Some say that the stress of thinking ‘I must be really ill if people are praying for my health’ may have contributed towards the health complications.
Praying Doesn’t Help The Sick Get Better, Christian Nordqvist, Medical News Today, April 1, 2006.

No, this is not an April fools joke – they really did this study, and the results are about to be published in the April 4 issue of the American Heart Journal. The John Templeton Foundation shelled out $2.4 million (!) for this study, where Harvard Medical School researchers divided 1,802 bypass patients at six hospitals into three groups. Two groups were uncertain whether they would be the subject of prayers. The third was told they would be prayed for. Too bad for them, because they had the highest rate of complications.

OK, so if you must pray for me, do me a favor and keep it to yourself.

The BBC reports on a weird trend of people taking their mobile phone to their grave. The origin of this idea was fear of being buried alive, according to Martin Raymond, director of international trend-spotting think-tank, The Future Laboratory. However, that does not explain cremations with cell phones:

“We came across this in places like South Carolina in the US – people were being burned but unknown to the crematorium, they had left the phones in their jackets,” Mr Raymond said.
“If you heat a mobile phone battery, it tends to explode, and the first reports were about explosions, and that’s how they started noticing this trend.”
BBC NEWS | Handsets get taken to the grave, Wednesday, 29 March 2006.

Besides the exploding crematorium, wouldn’t it be weird if you were walking alone in a graveyard past a fresh grave, and you’d start hearing the beeps or a chirp or ring-a-ling of a phone from the general direction of that grave?

To be clear: I still think Bush is Nuts, but I do agree with the shrubman on the guestworker issue. For different reasons, but I do agree with removing millions of hardworking immigrants from the legal twilight zone of being “undocumented” or “illegal” aliens. On this issue, the racist, anti-immigration wingnuts are the real nutcases. Build a frigging wall along the border to Mexico? These people are crazy. Before you know it they’ll want to invade countries in the Middle East to secure access to oil … uh, never mind …

The immoral system of quasi-slavery and exploitation under which so many immigrants suffer is one of the great human rights crises on this continent. The only way to deal with it is to give everyone who wants to come to this place to work a reasonable way to do so legally. That’ll put the coyotes out of business, and it’ll make it much harder to smuggle drugs into the US via the southern border.

AMNESTY MAKES AMERICA SAFER because it reduces the incentive for crime along the southern border. Authorities will KNOW who comes into the country and where they are. A guest worker program will make it possible to control smuggling, because the existing resources can be focused on what illicit activity is left along the border.

AMNESTY MAKES AMERICA SAFER because law enforcement can concentrate on fighting the real bad guys when police officers and sheriff’s deputies don’t have to fill in for the alien chasers from the DHS. I mean, do our law enforcement folks need yet another unfunded, and possibly unconstitutional, mandate? Besides terrorism watch, disaster preparedness, now also immigration enforcement? No, I want them to fight crime and enforce traffic laws.

If you care about the quality of life in America and reducing crime in this country, and if you care just the slightest bit about tradition and the “American Way” then you really have to support amnesty for all immigrants. Because their struggle to make a difference, to take care of their families, and to better themselves is the same struggle that brought all those Irish, German, Russian, Polish and — uh … Swiss — immigrants over here. That struggle is a big part of America, and if you are of European extraction, you better shut up about “those illegals” because chances are, some of your ancestors came over here with nothing but their clothes on their backs in the bowels of a ship. If your ancestors came here as economic refugees, you are in no position to turn around and slam the door on the new arrivals today.
(crossposted on my other blog …)