Yeah, by him I mean former New York Mayor Ed Koch, a Dem left over from the years before the far left bought and paid for the Democratic Party. Granted, he’s somewhere on the liberal side of things, but he doesn’t lick the hind quarters of the anti-America crowd like most of the other Democrats do these days.

In a September 22nd editorial, The New York Times renewed its opposition to the construction of a fence to deter illegal crossings from Mexico to the United States.

The Times speculates that the current decline in border arrests “could be because of the bad economy as much as the fence.” They are probably right. What I object to is the Times’ insistence that a better solution to the problem of illegal immigration is “for Congress to reform the nation’s immigration laws. No fence can keep a determined immigrant out or absolve Congress of that responsibility.” The Times’ version of reforming our immigration laws means providing amnesty and a path to citizenship to the estimated 12 to 20 million illegal aliens now living in the U.S.

The Times refuses to use the words illegal aliens when referring to people crossing our borders without permission. Instead, it calls them “immigrants,” or “migrants.” If people entered The New York Times building without permission and squatted there, would the Times call them migrants? Or would it call them trespassers and have them evicted?

If people entered The New York Times building without permission and squatted there, would the Times call them migrants? Or would it call them trespassers and have them evicted?

Have ‘em evicted, of course. Do as we say, not as we do, right?

The pro-amnesty liberals are, after all, the same people who live in gated communities that won’t be having any of these amnestied aliens living in them, anyway, so they can wish whatever they want on the rest of us.

I oppose the granting of amnesty except in cases demanding a compassionate response, e.g., children who are American citizens whose parents are illegals. My solution to illegal immigration is prison for American employers who knowingly hire illegals. I do not support jailing the aliens, but I would support paying their transportation costs back to their homelands. If their own countries want to give them a preference in applying for U.S. citizenship and allow them to jump ahead of those who have patiently waited in line, I would try in some way to accommodate that action. I doubt that will occur.

If such amnesty is offered again, as it was in 1986, it will make a mockery of our laws. The illegals will continue to come, hoping and expecting a subsequent amnesty. The Pew Research Center, according to the September 23rd Times, reported “one-third of Mexicans say they would move to this country if they could, and more than half of those would move even if they did not have legal immigration documents.” Those Mexican citizens seem to agree with the Times on open borders.

Personally, I agree with Koch that the Reagan amnesty of 1986 was a mistake (which only goes to show that even the greatest among us make a mistake now and then), but I disagree with the former mayor about anchor babies. If the parents are here illegally to begin with, the child shouldn’t have automatic U.S. citizenship. It’s a piss poor system that allows such flaws as the opportunity for people to use the creation of human life for the purpose of exploiting the legal system, not much different from a welfare mother who keeps on cranking out babies for the sole purpose of milking more money out of the taxpayer to support her drug or alcohol addictions.

The Times’ editorial is correct, however, to criticize the cost of the fence. It also tells us that “Investigators from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office report that the larger, actual fence-covering a 600 mile-plus stretch between San Diego and Brownsville, Tex.-cost $2.4 billion to build and will cost an extra $6.5 billion in upkeep across two decades.” It also notes that “Auditors reported last week that the high-tech, 28-mile “virtual” section of the fence was running a mere seven years behind this month’s planned opening.”

Ridiculous. Somebody, probably a lot of people, should be fired for incompetence. That is why when government officials tell us they intend to fund a new program like health care and save money by eliminating waste, fraud, and incompetence, nobody believes them. This single example explains why, but there are many others. The purpose of this article is to sound the alarm so that we can gird our loins and prepare for the next congressional battle over immigration which is likely to take place in the election year 2010.

The above emphasis is my way of shouting “Right On!!!!” from the rooftops.

Read the entire column.

Remember when B. Hussein Obama promised that his administration would be transparent?

Well, it certainly is…Profoundly transparent in its falsehoods. The man speaks through both sides of his mouth at once, blatantly (and yes, transparently) lies.

For example.

“Our alliance is based on shared interests and shared values. Those who threaten Israel threaten us. Israel has always faced these threats on the front lines. And I will bring to the White House an unshakeable commitment to Israel’s security…I will ensure that Israel can defend itself from any threat - from Gaza to Tehran.… Across the political spectrum, Israelis understand that real security can only come through lasting peace. And that is why we - as friends of Israel - must resolve to do all we can to help Israel and its neighbors to achieve it.”

[Obama Speech at 2008 AIPAC Policy Conference, 6/4/08]

While his website hands us one thing, his deeds demonstrate something entirely different.

From Atlas’ post:

The United States called on its close ally Israel on Tuesday to conduct credible investigations into allegations of war crimes committed by its forces in Gaza, saying it would help the Middle East peace process.

Michael Posner, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, said that Hamas leaders also had a responsibility to investigate crimes and to end what he called its targeting of civilians and use of Palestinian civilians as human shields in the strip.

The U.N. Human Rights Council was holding a one-day debate on a recent report by Richard Goldstone, a South African jurist and former U.N. war crimes prosecutor.

His panel found the Israeli army and Palestinian militants committed war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity during their December-January war. Israel did not cooperate with the U.N. inquiry and has rejected the report as biased.

“We encourage Israel to utilise appropriate domestic (judicial) review and meaningful accountability mechanisms to investigate and follow-up on credible allegations,” Posner said in a speech to the Geneva forum.

“If undertaken properly and fairly, these reviews can serve as important confidence-building measures that will support the larger essential objective which is a shared quest for justice and lasting peace,” he said.

Pure and simple, the gist is that any Israeli effort at self defense of any definitive nature is “disproportionate”. If x number of Palestinians are killed in the course of such an enterprise, then x number of Israelis have to be killed as well. Meanwhile, it’s perfectly acceptable for Hamas to fire rockets into Israeli cities and towns, destroyiong property and killing innocent civilians.

Going back to a meeting between B. Hussein and a couple of his Islamic butt buddies:

Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama privately expressed his support for a new Arab state within Israel’s current borders, including eastern Jerusalem, during his meeting with Palestinian Authority Chairman and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah this summer.

According to a report published Tuesday in the Lebanese newspaper al-Ahbar, Obama told Abbas that he supports a PA state, and Arab “rights to east Jerusalem” as well. The sources said Abbas and PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad “heard the best things they ever heard from an American president” during the meeting. However, said sources quoted in the report, the candidate asked them to keep his declaration a secret.

East Jerusalem has no holy standing for Muslims like certain anti-Israel revisionists would have us believe, but Obama’s got that covered by grouping it in with the West Bank, rendering it a part of the “real estate” dispute.

The man attended an anti-Israel, pro-Islamic terrorist church in Chicago for over twenty years.

By backing Hamas and friends here against our old and faithful ally Israel, he is showing us, also, that no matter how hard the liberal media that got him elected tried to cover it up, the President’s name tells us exactly where he’s coming from and where he truly belongs (I’ll give you a hint: They have camels there — moooo!).

His words on one level call the Israelis friend, while on another level, along comes the kick in the groin.

Could it be that Barack Hussein Obama’s actual ambition for all of us is something like this?

…and see a more secure America.

From 2 August, 2009:

The Obama administration is looking at creating a courtroom-within-a-prison complex in the U.S. to house suspected terrorists, combining military and civilian detention facilities at a single maximum-security prison.

Several senior U.S. officials said the administration is eyeing a soon-to-be-shuttered state maximum security prison in Michigan and the 134-year-old military penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., as possible locations for a heavily guarded site to hold the 229 suspected al-Qaida, Taliban and foreign fighters now jailed at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba.

The officials outlined the plans — the latest effort to comply with President Barack Obama’s order to close the prison camp by Jan. 22, 2010, and satisfy congressional and public fears about incarcerating terror suspects on American soil — on condition of anonymity because the options are under review.

The best way to satisfy public fears about incarcerating terror suspects on American soil would be to leave them incarcerated at Camp Delta, Guantanamo Bay, and try them there, as well!

Getting that bit out of the way,

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the Obama administration is working to recover from missteps that have put officials behind schedule and left them struggling to win the cooperation of Congress.

Even before the inauguration, President Obama’s top advisers settled on a course of action they With four months left to meet its self-imposed deadline for closing the U.S. military prison at were counseled against: announcing that they would close the facility within one year. Today, officials are acknowledging that they will be hard-pressed to meet that goal.

The White House has faltered in part because of the legal, political and diplomatic complexities involved in determining what to do with more than 200 terrorism suspects at the prison. But senior advisers privately acknowledge not devising a concrete plan for where to move the detainees and mishandling Congress.

Truncating…

Craig said Thursday that some of his early assumptions were based on miscalculations, in part because Bush administration officials and senior Republicans in Congress had spoken publicly about closing the facility. “I thought there was, in fact, and I may have been wrong, a broad consensus about the importance to our national security objectives to close Guantanamo and how keeping Guantanamo open actually did damage to our national security objectives,” he said.

the importance to our national security objectives to close Guantanamo and how keeping Guantanamo open actually did damage to our national security objectives

Is that convoluted thinking, or what?

One of the chief concerns in the whole “what to do with the terrorists imprisoned at GITMO” kerfuffle is a typical liberal concern, of course: Other countries, particularly European countries, disapprove of our holding them there.

American liberals, for the most part, are more concerned with the approval of the European Union than they are with what’s actually in the best interests of the American people. Shame on them!

Durn, I forgot — liberals have no sense of shame.

However, I haven’t read anyplace where the EU countries have pledged to take the detainees off our hands and accept them into their own societies.

Q:Why is that?

A:Old fashioned good sense!

Maybe our President needs to GITMO of that!

Wolf here.

As Seth and Chuck are out and about on some skullduggery or other, I may as well pick up the slack, here. The sacrifices we make…

Just kidding.

Before I get started, here, a quick note on the Obama economy. Yes, well on the way to 12 Trillion smackers, there, with all kinds of expenditures on far left agendas, much of which will bounce back at election time to finance Democrat campaigns. Yeah, I mean the Obama Administration ripping off the taxpayer to bolster campaign warchests on the left side of the political picture. That would be considered a felony, except that the lefty media goes out of its way to ignore that sort of thievery, seeing as it’s being perpetrated by a liberal administration. God help a Republican president if he did the same thing!

There, now, with that out of the way, let’s move on to an article at CNSNews by Terence P. Jeffrey.

Even though the Border Patrol now reports that almost 1,300 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border is not under effective control, and the Department of Justice says that vast stretches of the border are “easily breached,” and the Government Accountability Office has revealed that three persons “linked to terrorism” and 530 aliens from “special interest countries” were intercepted at Border Patrol checkpoints last year, the administration is nonetheless now planning to decrease the number of Border Patrol agents deployed on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Why? Because funding that could have been used to keep the Border Patrol up to adequate strength is prioritized, instead, for those above mentioned sleazy, treasonous, criminal liberal agendas.

Border Patrol Director of Media Relations Lloyd Easterling confirmed this week–as I first reported in my column yesterday–that his agency is planning for a net decrease of 384 agents on the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal 2010, which begins on October 1.

More money, measurable in metric tons, was allocated to now discredited ACORN (only discredited because even the Mighty Mainstream Media couldn’t keep a lid on the recent release of videos in which certain ACORN employees showed their true colors), than they’d need to keep those agents on our southern border.

Easterling said the Border Patrol would be able to maintain the current number of miles under effective control on the Mexico border with fewer agents deployed there thanks to “force multipliers,” including new fencing, roads and other infrastructure that has been built in recent years. He also cited the assistance the Border Patrol receives from local police and sheriffs departments and community watch groups.

What a buncha’ bullshit!

But even if the Border Patrol is able to maintain or marginally improve on the current level of security on the U.S.-Mexico border, most of the border will remain effectively open to smuggling both contraband and persons.

Yeah, my emphasis.

The article, in its entirety, is here.

Wolf out.

As we know, in most states, when a senator leaves office prematurely, such as by death or “abrupt retirement”, it falls upon the governor to appoint his or her replacement.

Those liberals in Massachusettes were okay with that until a few years ago, when they had a Republican governor (Mitt Romney) and they fretted, “What happens if Teddy suddenly kicks the bucket? This governor might replace him with a Republican! We can’t have that!”

Being a lefty state, they figured they’d be safe if they left the replacement of a senator to the voters, so they changed the law.

Now a senator has to be replaced by someone elected by the voters.

Or so the law says.

However, fickle that they are, now that Ted’s gone and they have a Democrat governor at the moment, they feel that, after all, rules are meant to be broken.

Gov. Deval Patrick named former Democratic Party chairman Paul G. Kirk Jr. to the late Edward Kennedy’s Senate seat Thursday and said the rushed, temporary appointment was necessary because the issues before Congress were “too important to Massachusetts for us to be one voice short.”

“too important to Massachusetts for us to be one voice short.”

Of course it is.

Had Romney been governor and the same thing happened, with him appointing a Republican as interim senator, there would have been one hell of an explosion in that state legislature, since in that case a prompt appointment wouldn’t have been all that important, after all

Patrick’s appointment means Kirk will serve in the interim post until voters pick a replacement in a Jan. 19 special election. Kirk said he would not be a candidate in the special election.

This week, lawmakers gave Patrick the appointment power, five years after taking that power away when Republican Mitt Romney was in office. The legislation did not take effect immediately, so Patrick had to sign an emergency letter Thursday to make the appointment right away.

These liberals are so transparently hypocritical and so obviously hold the intelligence of the voting public in profound contempt that one has to wonder how anyone with an iota of said intelligence can take them seriously enough to vote for them.

…and thought I’d share this Wesley Pruden Column that was there, since it’s so spot-on.

Manhattan will be a dangerous place this week for President Obama, where the terminally envious of the world are waiting at the United Nations with envy, arrogance and outstretched begging bowls.

That’s forever the case, isn’t it? Beg us for money, then badmouth us the rest of the time.

The diplomats representing the envious countries, some of them little more than tribes with flags and an embassy in a rooming house on a side street in Washington, have cooked up an interesting week to blunt the skepticism of a growing number of scientists who are finding the courage to say what they believed all along, even as Ban Ki-moon, the secretary-general of the United Nations, and others insist that time is running out to make the sun change its spots, the tides recede and the weather behave itself.

Heh…

The London Guardian reports that the U.N. chief and global-warming negotiators “say that unless they can convert world leaders into committed advocates of radical action it will be hard … to avoid the most devastating consequences of climate change.”

If true, that’s good news for the rest of us, because “the most devastating consequences” would be enactment of Al Gore’s nightmare vision, to give the bureaucrats of the world all the taxes they can spend while bankrupting the most productive countries of the West.

The ambassador of the European Union to the United States is in particular need of a shot of Midol and a nice lie down until he feels better. Sen. Harry Reid’s disclosure that the U.S. Senate won’t take up cap-and-trade legislation, the centerpiece of “controlling” the effects of global warming, until next year has thrown the Europeans into a royal pout.

The only real urgency involved in the timely enactment of man-made global warming legislation is that they need to get all bills passed quickly, before the world learns that the entire anthropogenic global warming kerfuffle is one big scam.

“Sometimes in this country,” says EU Ambassador John Bruton, the greatest deliberative body in the world acts as though it is the only deliberative body in the world, and we should wait until it gets health care passed. The … world cannot wait on the Senate’s timetable.”

The world damned well better wait on the U.S. Senate! If they don’t like it, let those who feel they can’t wait go panhandle elsewhere.

A new book by an Australian geologist, Ian Plimer, professor of mining geology at the University of Adelaide, argues that scientific fact has overwhelmed the doomsday scenarios of sinking islands, rising temperatures and collapsing ice shelves. He argues that global warming, which has naturally occurred over the billions of years of the Earth’s life, has often been a cycle of wealth and plenty. The Romans grew lemons, limes and oranges as far north as Hadrian’s Wall.

This naturally causes heartburn in certain labs and faculty lounges.

“They say I rape cows, eat babies and that I know nothing about anything,” he says. But the professor is not susceptible to the usual smear that he is a right-wing religious nut. He’s actually a member of the Humanist Society and wrote an earlier book attacking creationism, making him at one with the atheists, infidels and heretics who wear unbelief as scientific credentials.

This naturally causes heartburn in certain labs and faculty lounges.

Particularly those lounges occupied by far left liberals, and those labs run by “scientists” receiving federal grants, who would lose them if they admitted that man was not creating global warming.

My favorite paragraph in the entire OpEd:

American presidents always get grief abroad for looking out for American interests. Life was tough for Gulliver, too. But Lilliputians in every age are merely irritants, like ticks and mosquitos. President Obama should keep that in mind this week in New York.

AMEN to that!

At least I’ll assume (I know, assume makes an “ass” out of UME), to judge by the sense of logic, patriotism and common sense Obama has demonstrated as POTUS to date, that the graduate of the corrupt Chicago machine won’t heed the advice of these former DCIs. After all, the Obama credo is “politics before the people.”

Seven of the 10 living former CIA chiefs Friday urged President Obama to overrule his attorney general and not reopen investigations into CIA employees who may have abused detainees during the George W. Bush administration.

The former directors warned that further investigations would demoralize current CIA officers and might also lead allied intelligence services to suspend or scale back cooperation with the United States because the judicial probes could disclose joint operations and activities.

Why should Obama care about compromising methods and personnel? His good fiends friends at the New York Times certainly didn’t care about that kind of thing during the Bush Administration, when they blared every counter-terrorist program or strategy they could get their teeth into in order to play politics at the peril of the American people, just as Mr. O would likely have no qualms about.

If I’m wrong, I’m wrong, but to judge, as a horse handicapper might say, from Past Performances, it’s a good bet I’m right.

On Aug. 24, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. appointed a federal prosecutor, John Durham, to review cases against CIA officers suspected of exceeding Justice Department guidelines for interrogations of terrorist suspects following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The decision to reopen the cases was controversial in part because the Justice Department under the Bush administration had already considered the charges and declined to prosecute the officers.

In a letter released Friday, the former directors of the CIA, who included Democratic and Republican appointees, wrote: “If criminal investigations closed by career prosecutors during one administration can so easily be reopened at the direction of political appointees in the next, declinations of prosecution will be rendered meaningless. Those men and women who undertake difficult intelligence assignments in the aftermath of an attack such as September 11 must believe there is permanence in the legal rules that govern their actions.”

The entire article is here.

While we’re visiting the Washington Times, anyway, I’d like to direct your attention to the picture of Nancy Pelosi in this article.

Doesn’t she look like she uses the same cosmetic surgeon as the late Michael Jackson?

Wolf Here.

Thank you, Congress, for finally getting something right.

It’s about time some common sense prevailed, even though it took some undercover video to make this happen.

House Democrats on Thursday unexpectedly abandoned their longtime ally ACORN, joining Republicans in an overwhelming vote to end all federal funding for the embattled liberal activist group.

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) watched its last bastion of support in Washington crumble a week after hidden-camera investigative videos surfaced that showed its workers advising a supposed underage prostitute on how to cheat on taxes and loan applications.

On the Democrats’ part, this was, of course, not a decision based on morality or patriotism, Lord only knows they’ve shown us, over the last couple of years, that with the domination of their party by the far left, that they’ve abandoned such things in favor of politics.

And that’s what it was, pure politics: There was no way they could sleaze around “the facts” like they do when one of their number is caught with his hand in a cookie jar or some other appendage in something of a more biological nature.

The latest setback followed a decision by the Obama administration to cancel plans for ACORN to work on the 2010 census and a Senate vote to block funding for ACORN in the 2010 housing appropriations bill.

The Republican-sponsored measure, dubbed the Defund ACORN Act, passed on a 345-75 procedural vote as part of an unrelated student loan reform bill. Two Democrats voted present.

The final tally was a startling rebuke from congressional Democrats, who in the past steadfastly supported ACORN in the face of conservative criticisms that the organization skirts tax laws, violates election rules and commits other crimes while heavily supporting Democratic candidates and liberal causes.

The group also had strong ties to President Obama, who prior to his political career worked as an organizer for Project Vote, which later became affiliated with ACORN. One of ACORN’s numerous sister organizations was paid to do work for Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign last year.

My emboldening of a line, there, not that it’s any news: The existence of Acorn is in anything but the best interests of America, and that can also be said for the Obama Administration.

Wolf Out.

Knowing how much I detest liberal interference in what was once among the best systems of education in the world, Seth forwarded the following material to me awhile ago, from Red State.

While we are all focusing on H.R. 3200, the House Democrats’ health care plan, we should at least glance at H.R. 3221, the House Democrats’ plan to kill off higher education access. (PDF)

The legislation is opposed by many major universities including Notre Dame, among others. Basically, the bill would shut down all private providers of student loans, drive up costs for universities, and become a bureaucratic nightmare for institutions of higher learning. The professors may be leftists, but the administrators have to pay attention to the bottom line.

Incredible! It’s bad enough that today’s students are subjected to a course of liberal indoctrination during the span of their educations, now the lefties in Congress have decided that the government should decide, by controlling student loans, who gets, and doesn’t get, a college education?

In the process, putting the government in charge of something like this will create another big bureaucracy, one fraught with the same quagmire of ineptitude and the normal attached smothering taxation we always get from government usurpation of private sector functions. Prime example: The mess to which we’ll be treated if we are victimized by government run healthcare.

The Director of Student Financial Strategies at University of Notre Dame warns in a letter to Congressman Miller, “Any legislation that eliminates choice and competition and mandates that all institutions adopt an all-government run program for the 2010/11 academic year is filled with immense risk and would create massive confusion.”

Get that? The Democrats want an “all-government run program” to provide people access to money to pay for college. And if they do that, then they can force universities to comply with lots of new rules or deny students the right to use federal student loans to go to particular colleges.

But it gets better. Boy does it ever get better.

How!!!?

§ 343 of the plan creates a Green Schools Czar. No kidding. A Green Schools Czar (and committee naturally) would examine the impact of more environmentally friendly universities and find ways to create even more environmentally friendly universities. Oh . . . I have an idea . . . if students need financial assistance and they are forced to go through the feds, the feds can simply tell universities to become compliant or they won’t let students use their student loans to go there.

What is so funny is that §312 of Obama’s stimulus plan also sent money to schools to become more environmentally friendly. That was the carrot. Well, this new law will become the stick.

A green schools czar. Czars and more czars, all the better for the Obama Administration and the Kommie Left to maintain Kontrol.

Recapped today,

If you want an indication of just how radical the Democrats in Congress have become, consider the vote on H.R. 3221. The legislation, which I wrote about yesterday, shuts down all private lenders for higher education student loans, requires that colleges and universities adhere to a new federal bureaucracy, creates a new Green Schools Czar, and hints that any school not complying will see its students denied federal student loans.

The liberals now in firm control of our government will stop at nothing to change America into something entirely different than the great country in which we were born and raised.

We right thinkers had best enjoy it while there’s something left to enjoy.

…at the taxpayer’s expense, wherein the Democrats are misleading the American people (not a bad deal, bullshit people and make them pay for it!) about how the “Stimulus” is working.

They’re spending hundreds of billions of dollars to stimulate the economy, so Senate Democrats said Wednesday they might as well spend millions putting up signs to highlight where the money is being spent.

The road signs, which let motorists know the paving and construction projects they see are being paid for by the $787 billion economic stimulus program, have popped up across the country. In a 52-45 vote, the Senate decided the signs should stay.

Sure, why not? It’s just the taxpayer’s money, right? “Spend, spend, spend!” as the liberal credo goes.

“Why on earth would you want to hide from the American people the fact that the recovery package we passed is putting people to work?” asked Sen. Barbara Boxer, California Democrat, who took the lead in defending the expenditure. She said stimulus spending is beginning to improve the economy and charged that Republicans and Democrats who voted to strip out the funds are angry about that success.

“It’s my sense that there’s a frustration by the people who voted ‘no’ on the economic recovery act, the stimulus bill, there’s a frustration that it’s working. They predicted gloom and doom,” Mrs. Boxer said.

Campaigning at the expense of working Americans seems to be an institution that has really gained traction among Democrats of late, but then, it seems that the Obama Administration has set the stage for a new kind of government — kind of like one that can bill us for their spam and junk mail, a “we will like it!”

But Sen. Judd Gregg, the New Hampshire Republican who tried to excise the funds, called his amendment a no-brainer. He said it’s common sense to get rid of tens of millions of dollars in spending.

“These are self-congratulatory signs; they’re political signs. They’re so that lawmakers can pat themselves on the back,” he said. “But these signs cost money. Actually, when you add them all up, they cost a lot of money.”

Some localities have objected to the signs, arguing that they would rather spend the money on more projects. But Mr. Gregg said one community in New Hampshire was told no sign, no money for their original project.

Emphasis mine.

In the states’ rights department,

Also Wednesday, senators voted against allowing states to determine their own transportation funding priorities, such as repairing deficient bridges. A day earlier, the Senate voted against an effort by Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, to drop all of the pork-barrel earmark projects from the $67.7 billion transportation and housing spending bill and use the $1.7 billion slated for earmarks to modernize the nation’s air traffic control system instead.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, thanks largely to the liberals on the Hill, this country has come full circle, back to the same state of affairs good men died kicking out of here back in the 1770s.

Bummer.

Mr. Gregg acknowledged that this effort was as much a message as a cost-saving move. His amendment to the annual transportation spending bill would have banned putting up physical signs to tout stimulus transportation projects.

Five Democrats — Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Charles E. Schumer of New York — voted with all 40 Republicans to try to strip the money, but their support was not enough.

With typical dumbass, idiotic, mares-eat-oats, shallowbrained, downright stupid, aimed-at-the-gullible liberal reasoning,

Mrs. Boxer called the effort “anti-jobs” and said the signs are an example of government transparency.

Methinks this is time, once again, to recall a quote by a commenter at a blog I used to visit about 6 years ago: “Arguing with a liberal is like standing in a bucket and trying to pick yourself up by the handle.”