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“There may be some short-term gain from this,” said Linda Chavez, who served in the Reagan administration and is now chairwoman of the Center for Equal Opportunity, a conservative public policy group. “But in the long term, it is disastrous for the Republican Party.”

“I think it’s bloody for the Republicans,” said Antonio Gonzalez, president of the William C. Velasquez Institute, a Latino-oriented research and policy organization with offices in San Antonio and Los Angeles. “The Democrats said pro-immigrant stuff, and even if they didn’t support it, it was because they said it wasn’t good enough. The Republicans said anti-immigrant stuff and so now they are going to get killed with this.”

The real fall-out is that this has dealt a massive and probably enduring blow to Republican efforts to at least compete for, if not win over, the growing hispanic electorate. The model here is then-Gov. Pete Wilson's (R) 1994 reelection campaign in California -- a set of events that played out somewhat more amorphously but to real effect across the country in the mid-1990s.

Briefly, Wilson successfully rode the anti-immigration issue to victory, in particular through his embrace of Prop. 187 -- a successful ballot initiative to deny social services to illegal immigrants and get local cops into the business of policing people's immigration status. It helped Wilson get reelected. But it also basically destroyed the California Republican party. Destroyed may be too strong a word. But it put the state's rapidly growing hispanic population firmly into the Democratic camp and played a big part in making California into the solidly Democratic state it is today. (People forget, it didn't used to be that way.)

[. . .]

This whole episode has branded the Republicans as the anti-immigrant party. And that's not good for a party that wants to compete for the votes of America's largest bloc of new immigrant voters.

January 18, 2009: Bush pardons everyone in his administration for any and all criminal acts that they may have committed.

January 19, 2009: Bush resigns.

January 20, 2009: In his last and only act as president, Dick Cheney pardons George W. Bush.

One dollar from the sale of each shirt is being donated to charitable organizations that assist families of fallen U.S. troops. As of early June 2007, we had donated $2,120 to such charities.

• Warrantless wiretapping was a crime.
• The President ordered a crime be committed.
• By ordering the crime, the President himself is guilty of the crime.
• Forget the subpoenas, move straight to impeachment.

Labels: impeachment, wiretaps

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The "All-American Presidential Forums," which are moderated by Tavis
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I hope you will watch the "All-American Forum" this evening and tune
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More than half of Americans between 17 and 29 years old — 54 percent — say they intend to vote for a Democrat for president in 2008. They share with the public at large a negative view of President Bush, who has a 28 percent approval rating with this group, and of the Republican Party. They hold a markedly more positive view of Democrats than they do of Republicans.

Not too long ago, Mister Bush made a scary fool of himself in front of some of his friends by thumping his chest three times and saying, "I am the President." From a Psych 101 point of view, that apparently wild-eyed scene is more understandable now.

Because if George W. Bush is certain of one thing, it's that he's not the President. Not the Decider. Not the Commander Guy. When it comes to important matters on every subject of importance, Mister Bush is not the hand, he's the sock.

While Barton Gellman and Jo Becker's series in the Washington Post firms up the suspicions of those who have been paying only cursory attention, anyone who reads blogs or the alternative press or John Nichols or between the lines of the lamest elements of the megamedia has known for years that the real chest-thumper in the executive legislative branch of government that goes unmentioned in the Constitution is none other than Richard Bruce Cheney, the man who the keen observer dday has taken to calling Fourthbranch.

I have to disagree with Kevin Drum. I don't find it even mildly surprising that Dick Cheney was spying on his White House colleagues. Disgusting, yes. Surprising, no. It's part of his fundamentally totalitarian mind-set.

What I do find surprising is Condoleeza Rice's passivity in the face of this interference in her communication with her own staff. Anyone with an ounce of self-respect would have gone to Bush and said, "This stops from right now or I'm out the door."

Elizabeth Edwards, starring at the kickoff event of San Francisco's Gay Pride Parade, came out in support of legalized same-sex marriage Sunday -- taking a position that she acknowledged is at odds with her husband, presidential candidate John Edwards.

"I don't know why somebody else's marriage has anything to do with me," she said. "I'm completely comfortable with gay marriage."

No one could have predicted that training and arming a bunch of people who hate each other and us might have led to them killing each other and us with greater efficiency.

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