Penning Thoughts

A voice of reason has broken through the constant chatter about the metro area’s infamous HOT lanes. Instead of ‘High Occupancy Toll,’ they ought to be called what they will become, High Income Toll lanes.

Name it what you will, but this Bonus for BMW’s, or Cruises for Cadillac’s, or Lightning on a Lexus, will only speed the way for those who, in this economy and this region, have the bucks to shell out “an estimated trip cost of $5 to $6” per HOT trip. [ Virginia DOT ]. Think of a mom, on minimum wage, who has to get home fast to help a sick child. Can she afford to cough up that much? It may be chump change for some, but it can be food or electricity or rent to others.

And now, thanks to a suit filed by County Attorney, Sephen Mac Isaac, a court is going to have to consider what apparently none of the officials overseeing this new massive river of concrete on 395/95, took into consideration. That would be the deterioration in quality of the air it would shed on us Arlingtonians, who have a habit of breathing most days. [ Washington Post ]

Oh, we’re such complainers, aren’t we? Always caring about peoples’ health and economic problems. If only we were like the Town Hall screamers and trampled all over the rights of individuals in need, this mammoth rich-guys speedway would be within reach.

Fortunately for all of us, the work had to stop, because the economic crash (why aren’t any Wall Street bankers in jail?) has collapsed state revenue and ‘the market’ is skittish about buying the bonds to support this “private/public venture.” [ Washington Post ]

You won’t fund us shedding any tears. Yes, construction halts mean jobs lost, and that is terrible in any instance. But why not put those same workers along Columbia Pike to construct the long agreed-upon trolley [ Pike Transit ] that will surely cut down on the Pike’s daily tsunami of rush hour fumes.

So, thank you, County Board, for standing up for us to halt HOT, and for your continued work to weaken the movement to widen I-66.

In June of 1966 I was a religious ‘brother’ on my way to potential priesthood. All second year members of this particular religious order were allowed to visit their hometowns for two days.

This was after one year of a ’see no tv, read no newspapers, and observe-Grand Silence-most-of-every-day’ (you couldn’t talk to anyone) novice life; followed by my first year as a physics major at Loyola U. in Chicago.

When I got to Springfield, Illinois, my hometown, I said hi to my family and — after calling up my high school senior love and asking if we could talk — borrowed the family car to meet Mary Ann Templeton. I’d not been allowed to write to her, and we hadn’t seen or talked to each other since the night of our high school graduations, two long years before.

I think I probably picked her up at six in the evening. We drove to a park by Lake Springfield, parked the car, and talked till five the next morning. No kissing or hugging, no deep breathing, just talk … about how we felt about each other and what the future might hold.

At one point late in the night, we decided to walk to the empty, darkened playground. I reached over to hold Mary Ann’s hand, as we walked over a ditch, but she held back. She sat in a swing and we looked up.

There were the stars, the magnificent stars the way the sky used to look before ‘light pollution’ knocked out that stunning sight in most cities and towns.

We still talk about that night, and both of us say to each other, again and again, “Look at the stars.”

Milky Way on the Prairie

That’s a moment I’d like to have lasted forever.

As he lay on his cot at Carver U.S. General Hospital in Washington, D.C., Caleb Brewster of New York heard a knock on the door at the end of the ward. And when it opened, he saw the President, Abraham Lincoln, standing tall in the doorway. Caleb watched the President walk down the rows of cots, hat in hand, speaking to an occasional soldier.

Then he stopped at Caleb’s side and bent over to talk to him. And… well, here, you read the story, as told to Doc Hartley of The Kansas City Star in 1914 by Caleb.

Imagine. It’s 1864 and you’ve been shot at Spottsylvania Courthouse, just 70 miles south of Washington, by a ‘miniball‘ which has mangled your right hand.

You find yourself in a military hospital in Washington, far away from the home you left three years ago in New York. Outside a nearby window you’ve seen the President, sometimes alone, on horseback as he rode to his summer ‘cottage‘ at the Soldiers’ Home, three miles north of the White House.

One day, standing alongside your humble cot in the hot ward, that same tall, bearded President reaches to shake your hand. Your right having been damaged, you extend your left, and Preident Abraham Lincoln asked when you’d been hit, And after hearing of your wounding at Spottsylvania, he shakes his head sorrowfully as he stands to leave.

Growing up in Springfield, Illinois, I heard that story many times, and was able to read it, just as you see it in the link above.

Our mother, Jean Hartley Penning – the granddaughter of Caleb - took her six post-War children to visit Lincoln’s home on Seventh Street and his magnificent tomb at Oak Ridge Cemetery nearly every February 12, the date on which Lincoln had been born in 1809.

So, today has special meaning for all sons and daughters of Springfield. We honor his memory while we celebrate the presidency of Barack Obama, who opened his campaign on the steps of the old state capitol, where Lincoln had received visitors after learning of his victory. And where, on June 16, 1858, he delivered words nearly as applicable to our condition today:

“A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half-slave and half-free. … I do not expect the Union to be dissolved - I do not expect the house to fall - but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other.”

For President Obama seemed to speak similarly February 9:
“We find ourselves in a rare moment where the citizens of our country and all countries are watching and waiting for us to lead. It is a responsibility that this generation did not ask for, but one that we must accept for the sake of our future and our children’s. The strongest democracies flourish from frequent and lively debate, but they endure when people of every background and belief find a way to set aside smaller differences in service of a greater purpose. That is the test facing the United States of America in this winter of our hardship, and it is our duty as leaders and citizens to stay true to that purpose in the weeks and months ahead. After a day of speaking with and listening to the fundamentally decent men and women who call this nation home, I have full faith and confidence that we can.”

With President Lincoln as his guide, we must hope and pray our new President can equally bind our nation’s wounds and lead us from through this terrible moment in our history.

This is how I, as a great grandson of Caleb Brewster, will remember this day. One filled with the memory of Caleb and our slain 16th president; and with hope that our 44th will bring us together to meet the challenges of our own time.

##

Note: I now own the Carver U.S. General Hospital photograph. I purchased it on eBay February 10, 2009.

You know how it goes. A friend who ‘forwards’ lots of e-mails sends you this one: “HERE IS THE CHANGE!,” which dumps all over the Democrats, saying they’ve done nothing since the won the majority in ‘06. Don’t groan and delete it. Copy all those who’ve been sent the ‘forwarded forward’ and start your answer this way:

Think about it.

Sure, the Democrats got control of both houses in ‘06. But they hold the Senate by one vote, and that one belongs to McCain’s best friend, Connecticut’s former Democrat Joe Lieberman [ MSNBC.com ]. It takes 60 votes to do anything in the Senate, which must approve anything passed by the House before it can go to the President [ C-SPAN ].

So the Republicans have blocked nearly everything the Democrats have tried to move forward [ New York Times ]. Besides, we have a Republican president who threatens to veto or does veto everything the Congress may manage to put together that could have brought change [ About.com ].

For six of the past eight years we have ‘enjoyed’ an administration and GOP Congress which deregulated nearly every sector of the economy they could [ Google News Archives ]. The party had complete control of all three branches of government. Recall that the GOP-appointed members of the Supreme Court put George W. Bush into office… not the voters [ US News ].

Recall that in 2004 John McCain did a complete 180 and decided to throw his lot with Bush, after working against him for his first four years. There are photos of McCain — who stood by the President all through the 2004 campaign — embracing Bush [ msn/MSNBC.com ], the very man who tried to crush McCain and his credibility in 2000 [ The Boston Globe ]. McCain threw his former ‘maverick’ principles aside and welded himself to the pro-war, anti-regulation Bush agenda [ The Hill (D.C. newspaper) ].

And what did that deregulatory atmosphere bring us?

Economic collapse, the root of which came from a cleverly composed amendment by a Republican U.S. Senator, Phil Gramm of Texas, who quietly slipped his ‘hands-off Wall Street’ amendment into a must-pass bill at the end of the 2000 session of Congress [ The Texas Observer ].

That one move allowed Wall Street executives to concoct and trade and re-trade to one another ‘instruments’ — not tangible products — that led to the creation of a virtual ‘house of cards,’ as one stock analyst wrote in an e-mail [ New York Times ] , that finally began to collapse, as the free-wheeling, shaky ARM mortgages began to re-set starting in 2006 [ The Heritage Foundation ], leading to the economic disaster we’re now experiencing.

The Phil Gramm who made that move is the same Phil Gramm who said we are in a ‘mental recession’ and ‘a nation of whiners,’ as people lost their homes and then their retirement savings, and finally their livelihoods, as the stock market wizards swooned toward catastrophe. The same Phil Gramm who was ‘officially’ — and presumably still unofficially — John McCain’s top economic adviser [ The Washington Times ].

So, the Dems barely have control of the Senate, giving the GOP virtual control over it. The Dems have the House, but anything they pass is halted in the evenly-divided, filibuster-prone Senate [ McClatchy Newspapers ].

The choice, though difficult for some to consider, is becoming clearer every day. The stakes are too high to put at the head of our government a former ‘maverick’ — who turned into a Bush advocate — and his ‘heart-away-from-the-presidency’ v.p. pick, who is clearly not up to the job of assuming the duties of the Presidency, should McCain have a heart attack or his cancer recur [ The Independent-U.K. ].

She said the other night that the Constitution is ‘flexible’ when it comes to the duties of the vice president, yet the words of the Constitution could not be more precise: “The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no vote, unless they be equally divided.” Article I, Section 3 [ The United States Constitution, Cornell University School of Law ]. That is the only reference in the Constitution to the vice president, other than his or her election. He or she shall be the President’s successor in the event of the President’s death or incapacitation [ 25th Amendment ], and shall be President of the Senate. Period. No ‘flexibility.’

Times are too desperate to cast a purely partisan eye on this election. We have spiraled down terribly over the past eight years, and particularly over the past four years. “Getting government off the backs” of business [ The Idaho Statesman ] led us to this stage. Government had to step in, we have been told by the current occupant of the White House [ Associated Press via MSNBC ], because the unregulated system he nurtured fell apart. A new executive with an entirely different point of view is called for.

And on January 20th — the date that’s brought us too many scoundrels and 28 years of unhinged, wealth-tilted presidencies [ Time magazine ] — he will raise his right hand, saying, as stipulated in Article II, Section 1 of The Constitution [ The Constitution, Library of Congress, 1789 image ], “I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help me God.”

And this time we’ll have a president who means it.

So, on November 4, get up out of your bed, go to your precinct, and, together -– all across this immense land — we’ll get our country back again.

God save this great nation.

Purple Thumb.

It has become the shorthand for free, fair and first elections in emerging democracies and in U.S.-conquered nations. First used by Delaware’s Pete DuPont in the June 21, 2005, Wall Street Journal, “Iraqis held their third purple-thumb election last week …” the purple thumb represents the unsaid guarantee that a free and fair election has taken place.

That same electoral hue was later adopted by our President, when he spoke to the UN General Assembly in September 2006: “To the people of Iraq: Nearly 12 million of you braved the car bombers and assassins last December to vote in free elections. The world saw you hold up purple ink-stained fingers, and your courage filled us with admiration.” [
White House press office ]

Yet, the concept of an admired and fair “Purple thumb” election seems to mean nothing in our “We’re Number One! God Bless America!” country; where suppressed turnouts and election day equipment ‘shortages’ and ‘malfunctions’ have become the expected norm on our national polling days.

With the appearance of George W. Bush on the national stage, each presidential election -– upon which the stability of our nation and the world is dependent -– has been guaranteed to feature numerous attempts by his political party to throw every obstacle possible to prevent or discourage voting among certain classes of voters; usually the poor and minorities, particularly African-Americans. [ People for the American Way ]

Yet our current president -– widely noted as ‘the worst in our history’ [ History News Network ] -– called the June 25 Zimbabwe election “a sham,” adding, “The Mugabe government has been intimidating the people on the ground in Zimbabwe.” He termed this “an incredibly sad development.” [ PBS ]

Do you know what’s ‘incredibly sad,’ Mr. President? How about the black voters in north Florida, who in 2000 experienced outright police intimidation, as they approached many precinct polling stations [ Business Network ] …. And the reported examples of manipulated election 2004 results, caused by a deliberate low allocation of voting machines in high minority precincts. [ Fox News ]

In the President’s home state of Texas, the town of Prairie View — home of the historically black Prairie View A&M University — was the scene of a concerted attempt by white local officials to prevent Prairie View A&M students from voting in the 2006 elections. The area’s Waller County Justice of the Peace, DeWayne Charleston, told the New York Times, “The cold war’s not over — they just moved the fence from Berlin to the Texas border,” after he reported local election officials had not recorded thousands of black student registrations he had personally gathered prior to election day.

More often than not, these blatant attacks on U.S. citizens’ right to vote under our Constitution — the one Mr. Bush swore to ‘preserve, protect and defend’ — are successful; leading to another unfair, GOP-skewed final tally.

In 2000, as we all know, the Supreme Court awarded the presidency to Mr. Bush, following an extremely close count; twisted in his favor by a deliberately confusing ballot prone to miss-votes, the aforementioned police harassment in North Florida, and removal of alleged or redeemed felons from the voter registration rolls. [ Palm Beach Post ] All carried out under the jaundiced and cynical eyes of Republican Secretary of State (later Congresswoman) Katherine Harris. [ The Guardian-UK ]

In 2004 the down-to-the-wire ballot tampering took place in voter operations overseen by Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell. [ USA Today ]

Who knows what the Grand Old Party will have lurking in the wings this election, seen by many as the most crucial in more than a generation? [ The Guardian-UK ]

That’s why Senator Obama’s campaign and the Democratic Party are hiring attorneys and poll watchers to stake out polling places for evidence of harassment and challenge any precinct voter rejections and/or ballot counting missteps. [ South Florida Sun-Sentinel ]

Tragic, isn’t it, that the ‘greatest nation in the world,’ and the planet’s beacon for democracy cannot assure every eligible citizen that he or she will be able to vote; and can leave tens or hundreds of thousands (millions?) of its citizens with uncertainty as to whether his or her vote was counted.

If any nation on this globe needs purple thumbs, if any one country has a voting system that cries out for impartial international monitors, it is the United States of America. The Land of the Free, and home of the heretofore suppressed voter.

Help make sure this will not happen, not this time, not this election. Find out what you can do at the Verified Voting Foundation.

“The work begins anew. The hope rises again, and the dream lives on.” [ Senator Edward Kennedy ]

John McCain sees Russia’s invasion of Georgia as a gift from heaven, a chance to bellow and practice the art of Bush-warism.

In reality, it’s a complex picture well-described in The Nation magazine by its publisher, Katrina vanden Heuvel, who writes,

“I am heartsick at the violence and brutalities on all sides. Georgian, South Ossetian and Russian friends have all suffered. Yet commentary in the US media, almost without exception, has turned a longstanding, complex separatist conflict into a casus belli for a new cold war with Russia, ignoring not only the historical and political reasons for South Ossetia’s drive for independence from Georgia but also the responsibility of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili for the current crisis.”

Read this informed commentary in full at The Nation.

So, this is the legacy you want, John McCain?

You did not start the race division between the Republican and Democratic Parties, but you are feeding it generously. We can most likely find its birth in the moments after Lyndon Johnson had addressed Congress, advocating for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and uttering three words that transformed the political divide for the next 43 years.

He looked out at his colleagues and the nation and said, “We shall overcome.” [ LBJ video ] How’s that for guts? Could you have mustered such courage?

It didn’t take long for the Republican Party to take advantage of the racist backlash Johnson’s bold statement had caused in the once “Solid South.” Up to that point nearly every southerner had been a Democrat because of racism, since the defeated South had succumbed under a Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, whose worst ‘sin’ had been liberation of the nation’s slaves. [ Wikipedia ]

With local governments racist to the core, southern Democrats nevertheless could scarcely imagine embracing Republican beliefs.

South Carolina’s racist governor, Strom Thurmond, made the jump, in 1964, to the Republican Party [ About.com ] , which first didn’t know what to do with him, as the GOP had been dominated by moderate folks such as Nelson Rockefeller, Charles Percy, Edward Brooke, George Romney, Wayne Morse and Jacob Javits. [ American Prospect ]

By 1970 the Republicans knew exactly what to do with disgruntled southern Democrats, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan (yes, the late ‘liberal’ senator from New York), then a staff aide to Nixon, wrote him a memo in which he recommended Nixon adopt a policy of “benign neglect” of civil rights issues, leaving the slain Martin Luther King’s movement to carry on by itself, without presidential backing. [ Answers.com ]

This began Nixon’s opportunistic GOP campaign to politically ‘take over’ the South with his so-called ‘Southern Strategy.’ [ Washington Post ]

The GOP grip on the South was further cemented by the avuncular Ronald Reagan, who unashamedly announced his run for the presidency with a “state’s rights” speech in the small town of Philadelphia, Mississippi, infamously known as the scene of the vicious, terrorizing 1964 murder of three Civil Rights activists who had dared to drive south to register blacks to vote. [ Black America Today ]

Reagan gave us eight years of ‘welfare queen Cadillac’ [ Washington Monthly ] stories that led to the eventual end of federal public assistance for poor families — a policy destruction later sought and won by another southern governor, Bill Clinton. [ Washington Post ]

Republicans George Bush — both H.W. and W. — appointed right-wing justices [ TPM.com ] to the Supreme Court, which has delivered ever-growing racist decisions that weakened affirmative action, erased an African-American city’s gun-control laws, made school integration more difficult, and appointed an unelected George W. Bush president. [ Grolier ]

So now we have an inspirational African American running for president of these United States. He emanates wisdom, reflection and calm in the face of crises. He has organized a complex and brilliant campaign organization with its roots in communities, not board rooms. Bearing stellar academic credentials and an estimable record of private and public service [ Seattle Times ]; he has the unique ability to inject hope and steadfast faith into a nation haunted by doubt and growing despair.

With the economy hanging by a thread [ Akron Beacon-Journal ], thanks to years of unregulated Wall Street greed of the worst kind [ Mother Jones ]; Republicans now look to John McCain, heir to and admirer of past Republicans who cleverly drew their own so-called ‘race cards,’ which was particularly successful during the 1988 campaign of the current president’s father via his racist ‘Willie Horton’ ads. [ YouTube ]

This same John McCain, bearing few of the qualities we seek in a president, is grasping for anything to paint his opponent, who happens to have been born with deep brown skin, as an ‘elitist,’ a mere airhead ‘celebrity,’ who is ‘out of touch’ with the average citizen. [ CNN.com ]

And because he dared to say his face ‘doesn’t look like any of those other presidents on dollar bills,’ Barack Obama is now accused of himself ‘playing the race card’? [ Washington Post ]

How can a black man ‘play’ any kind of race card, when it is dealt to him every waking moment of every day; when he looks in the mirror in the morning, and when almost every white person he is near looks back at him with ‘that glance,’ which is more of a stare, that says, “What are you doing here?”.

He is black; McCain is not. And to inject race into any campaign is to insert a needle filled with poison used to infect the public with the racist elements that too many white citizens either have buried in our souls, or alive and flaming in daily thoughts and deeds.

McCain, once considered a ‘moderate maverick’ [ NY Times ] in the Republican Party, now seems just another cynical politician, who arranged a meeting for a criminal savings and loan executive with five United States senators [ Memphis Commercial-Appeal ], and who voted for a war when that action was exceedingly popular and knowingly wrong.

How will he react from his ‘Straight Talk Express’ seat when confronted with the well-established fact that at least one of his television ads is a cynical lie – the one in which the announcer states that Obama did not visit wounded soldiers in Germany, ‘because he could not bring a television camera with him’? [ Media Matters ]

How will he face his God and his conscience with his decision to allow vicious and racist attacks on an honorable man, who simply happens to have black skin?

Many of us, myself included, once thought of John McCain as an honorable man.

But when he tells an outright lie about his political opponent at this tenuous time in our nation’s history, when he gives the green light to television and radio commercials [ USA Today ] that belittle and disrespect a fellow public servant, when he seems to have sold his soul to win a prize; then he is not only not worthy of that prize, but he has also drug up from the slime of our past the one lasting evil stain on our national soul. And that act can only serve to divide us, when the need for unity is paramount.

It is not up to us to forgive his sin; it is up to him to absolve himself, and to refuse to rip this nation apart again, for the selfish sake of one more rich white man’s personal political gain.

You don’t need a flag pin to say “God Bless America.” But you should need decency and honor.

End this, Mr. McCain. Tell your crafty team that you’re better than the slime they’ve slopped on our kitchen tables and into our family rooms.

In the meantime, our hope is for a united country. And our prayer is “God help America. God be with Obama.”

The family of Robert Kennedy, reminded this spring that it’s been 40 years since they lost him, heard May 23rd that his tragic death had been diminished into a talking point in another senator’s crass campaign rhetoric. [Sioux Falls Argus-Leader transcript]

In 1968, having won California, Senator Kennedy’s life and his nation were struck, turning joyful hope into instant emotional chaos: [RFK assassination, live audio]

The following day, June 6, I had awakened on my parents’ couch to the sound of a news report from KMOX radio on Dad’s breakfast table, “Senator Robert F. Kennedy died at 1:44 A.M. today.” [New York Times] Mary Ann Templeton and I were to be married that afternoon, at 3:30.

Just weeks earlier, on March 18, he had spoken in Manhattan, Kansas, at the state university, of another war in another time, with words that echo in Barack Obama today:

“For it is long past time to ask: what is this war doing to us? Of course it is costing us money — fully one-forth of our federal budget — but that is the smallest price we pay. The cost is in our young men, the tens of thousands of their lives cut off forever. The cost is in our world position — in neutrals and allies alike, every day more baffled by and estranged from a policy they cannot understand.” [PBS American Experience]

Speaking in Fayetteville, North Carolina, nearly 40 years later to the day, on March 19, 2008, Obama evoked the message of the fallen Senator:

“This war has now lasted longer than World War I, World War II, or the Civil War. Nearly four thousand Americans have given their lives. Thousands more have been wounded. Even under the best case scenarios, this war will cost American taxpayers well over a trillion dollars. And where are we for all of this sacrifice? We are less safe and less able to shape events abroad. We are divided at home, and our alliances around the world have been strained. The threats of a new century have roiled the waters of peace and stability, and yet America remains anchored in Iraq.” [Time Magazine]

While Bobby’s death jolted many of us into political awareness, it also seemed to snuff out the dream for a better nation and world that he, his older brother and Martin Luther King — all gone in an instant — had held out in promise.

With dashed hopes, starting with Watts and culminating with the riots after Dr. King’s assassination [Atlanta Journal-Constitution], we watched our country morph into Nightly News maps with bonfire icons displayed on what seemed a dozen cities per night, a series of ‘long, hot summers’ [Time Magazine], turmoil that Kennedy and King had hoped to stop. [YouTube]

Why are we moved now, in this year, when idealistic former 22 year-olds, having turned into 62 year-old cynics, are grasping again for hope? Because we, finally, have before us a person, who holds within his and our grasp, the promise of a renewed dream.

As Caroline Kennedy, our only direct link to the Camelot of JFK, said in her January 27 endorsement, “Sometimes it takes a while to recognize that someone has a special ability to get us to believe in ourselves, to tie that belief to our highest ideals and imagine that together we can do great things. In those rare moments, when such a person comes along, we need to put aside our plans and reach for what we know is possible.”

She spoke for so many of us who had watched in disbelief as her father was carried to his grave [Britannica.com] , “I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president — not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans.”
[New York Times]

While our memories are filled with sadness, tinged with the news of Senator Edward Kennedy’s illness [Reuters] , we listen each day and read each day and hope each day that Bobby’s smashed vision YouTube, John’s call to service [Kennedy Inaugural] and Martin’s eloquent dream ["I Have a Dream"] now stand before us in the form of Barack Obama.

And, God willing, we will see a new America emerge next January 20.

He sums it up, when the Senator says, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for” [YouTube] , while we believe “He is the one we’ve been waiting for.” [YouTube]

We have the opportunity, this once in a generation opportunity, and we can’t afford to let him slip away. Not for your sake, and, 40 years later, not for my bride’s sake, not for our four daughters’ sake, not for our two grandsons’ sake, not for our nation’s sake.

Go to BarackObama.com.

Let’s make it happen.

Let’s get to work.

A year ago, illegal immigration stood out as the issue many of us feared would dominate the presidential campaign of 2008. First, there was Congress, where fiery speeches and anti-immigrant rhetoric soared in a fierce debate on whether illegal immigrants should be allowed access to public housing. Democrats pulled out all the stops to kill this Republican motion. While the GOP plan was defeated, the back-and-forth voting was so controversial that the chamber had the atmosphere of a near riot. [Congressional Record]

We had presidential candidates, early on, who blasted illegals [YouTube] and, as a result, the climate for immigrants, legal or not, became a fearsome one.

Our federal government was well on the way to building a non-stop wall between the United States, a land of freedom, and the United Mexican States, our poorer neighbor to the south. And self-styled ‘Minutemen’ patrolled the border “doing the job the federal government will not do”. [ BBC News]

Unfortunately, the trend in Europe continues in that direction with the recent election of Italy’s fiercely anti-immigrant Silvio Berlesconi. [Reuters]

And there’s the continued influence in Russia of Vladimir Putin, who was quoted last year as saying his decision to ban immigrants from food market stalls will “ease tension on the labor market and make it more civilized.” [New York Times]

Mercifully — thanks to the immigration reform policies of John McCain and Barack Obama — immigrants, particularly Latinos, won’t be bashed at the national level.

While the GOP presidential field did have an aggressive anti-immigrant player, U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., his defeat in the primaries, and the failure of anti-immigration rhetoric at the polls, demonstrated that “candidates with a hard line – ‘close the border and kick them all out’ — fared worse than those in favor of more nuanced reforms.” [Reuters]

State action is another matter.

And Virginia stands out as among the worst.

The Washington Post reported May 11 that Loudon County, Va., public schools have experienced a markedly slower enrollment growth in English as Second Language (ESL) courses, those provided for children who know little or no English. The Loudon Board of Supervisors last July passed a resolution to limit illegal immigrants’ access to county services. [Washington Post].

While decrease in construction activity in Northern Virginia was noted as a possible cause of the slump, Alessio A. Evangelista, supervisor of Loudoun’s ESL program, said, “”I suspect the decrease in [ESL] growth also has to do with the general appearances’ that Loudoun has become less friendly to immigrants.” [Washington Post]

On May 7, the voters in the town of Herdon, Va., re-elected their mayor and town council, all of whom backed a policy that removed the city’s job center for day laborers. [Washington Post]

The most anti-immigrant jurisdiction in Northern Virginia, Prince William County, April 30 revised its October “check immigration status of all ‘suspects’” policy [Washington Post] and put in place one that allows county police to question the citizenship of arrested persons only. The motive for the change was described as giving the county “better protection from potential racial-profiling lawsuits” at the suggestion of its County attorney.

But, when asked if this move was a change in Prince William’s vicious anti-immigrant stance, County Board Chair Corey A. Stewart responded, “We have not rolled back or repealed any portion of it.” [Washington Post]

Other examples of anti-immigrant policies include:

North Carolina, where the state’s Attorney General, Roy Cooper, “advised the [state’s] 58 community colleges to return to a 2001 policy that prohibited illegal immigrants from degree classes.” [Raleigh News & Observer]; and

Postville, Iowa, where, on May 13, according to the Des Moines Register, “federal agents conducted what they’re now calling the largest raid of its kind in the nation’s history” and arrested and detained 390 workers alleged to be illegal immigrants. [Des Moines Register]

The local school superintendent spent the day trying to help more than 200 immigrant children find out what happened to their parents. [Education Week]

Aren’t those of us who are ‘white’ lucky? We don’t have to go through the day wondering if the authorities will suddenly burst in and deprive us of our freedom.

While the presence of illegal immigrants from Latin America may be the most openly-expressed reason for these anti-immigrant policies, the unspoken reason could be a nationalist fear of the growing numbers of persons in the U.S. of Latin American descent. According to the U.S. Census, Hispanics are the nation’s fastest-growing minority, whose children are now one in four of all children under the age of five. [Washington Post]

Of course illegal immigration is a problem. But the way to handle it is to develop a “path to citizenship,” as Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain have proposed. [US News]

Looking at the origins of our nation, you have to agree that among our founding ‘fathers’ were persons who came here with no legal right to displace native peoples. They sailed into Massachusetts on the Mayflower and occupied what they chose to call “New England,” where native peoples already lived. They invaded Virginia and set up their own ‘illegal’ settlement at Jamestown. They conquered the West and Southwest with their invasion from Spain, illegally taking land from the Incas and Aztecs and well-established native nations of the area. And they illegally claimed all of the middle of North America in the name of the King of France, naming ‘their’ misbegotten land Louisiana.

So, who are the illegal immigrants among us? Ellis Island was established in 1892, long after these earlier invasions and occupations. [Bowling Green State University]

You see, we are not as ‘legal’ and ‘pure’ Americans as we would like to think. And those who also come here ‘illegally’ yearn for no more and no less than those who landed on this multi-nation continent prior to 1892. Imagine what emotions must tear at Native Americans when they hear us sing, “This land is your land; this land is my land.”

It is? Really?