Name one, John!

Seems to me if you're going to go on the record to condemn a bill for containing pork-barrel provisions, you ought to be able to name at least one such provision in said bill if asked to do so. You know, to demonstrate that you've at least read the bill that you're condemning. Otherwise, this may happen:

John Culberson (R-TX): ...it contains provisions that have nothing to do with our troop's survival and safety in the field. To burden our troops with pork, with tax increases, with special provisions that have nothing to do with the war, adds to, I think, the obvious misuse of the process and I urge members to vote against the pork and support our troops.

David Obey (D-WI): I yield myself 30 seconds...I'd like the gentleman from Texas to point out a single piece of member pork in this bill.

Culberson: Does the gentleman yield?

Obey: Yes.

Culberson: Mr., Mr. Chairman, there's a number of un-un-unnecessary provisions in this...

Obey: Name one.

Culberson: Well, why are we separating out, sir, why aren't we just passing...

Obey: (nearly yelling) Name one.

Culberson: Why are we...

Obey: (yelling, finger pointing) Can you name one or can't you? The fact is there is not a single piece of member pork in this bill. You ought to...

(pounding gavel, "time expired")

Culberson: (inaudible)...why are we passing provisions in this bill with tax increases?

There's video as well, so go see for yourself. Sometimes it's just too easy, you know? Oh, and support Michael Skelly. Among other things, he won't do that.

California Supreme Court rules in favor of gay marriage

Good for them.

The California Supreme Court decided today that same-sex couples should be permitted to wed, ruling that gay unions must be given the "respect and dignity" of marriage.

In a 4-3 vote, the court became the first in the country to apply the constitutional protections reserved for race and gender to sexual orientation. The Massachusetts high court struck down bans on same-sex marriage in 2003, but under a different legal theory.

The court held that people have a fundamental right to marry the person of their choice and struck down marriage laws limiting matrimony to opposite-sex couples as a violation of the state constitution's equal protection guarantees.

"One of the core elements embodied in the state constitutional right to marry is the right of an individual and a couple to have their own official family relationship accorded respect and dignity equal to that accorded the family relationships of other couples," wrote Chief Justice Ronald M. George, joined by Justices Joyce L. Kennard, Kathryn Mickle Werdegar and Carlos Moreno.

State laws that have limited gay unions to domestic partnerships "impinge upon the fundamental interests of same-sex couples," George wrote.

To me, this is a no-brainer. From a civil perspective, marriage is a contract that confers certain benefits on each partner, like inheritance rights and various tax breaks. It has nothing to do with morality or religion. If the Catholic Church or John Hagee or whoever want nothing to do with marrying same-sex couples, this ruling changes nothing about that. Isn't that how it should be?

The question, as Stace puts it, is whether this restores gays to the spot of #1 target for Republican candidates, or if immigrants remain in place as the new gays, politically speaking. Personally, I think the message of the special Congressional elections this year is that the voters aren't paying a whole lot of attention to this kind of campaigning - bigger issues, like the war and the economy and the price of food and gas, are higher priorities in their minds. Have the Republicans learned that lesson, or will they lean on old familiar ways? I wouldn't put it past them, that's all I know.

I have statements from Equality Texas and Freedom to Marry beneath the fold. Let's enjoy this win; it's well-deserved. E.J. Graff has more.

Statement of Paul Scott, Equality Texas Executive Director

Today's decision in California is a victory for all Americans who cherish fairness, due process, and equal protection under the law. The Court rejected the State's argument that domestic partnership law was an equal substitute, noting that marriage-like rights without marriage smacks of a concept long rejected by the courts: separate but equal.

While Texans are legally unaffected by this ruling, we are hopeful that same-sex couples in Texas will one day have the same opportunity to solidify and legally protect their families.

According to a January, 2008 study by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, approximately 50,000 same-sex couples were living in Texas in 2005. About 20% of these couples are raising an estimated 17,444 children. They deserve the same opportunity to legally protect their family relationships as all California couples now have.

Equality Texas will continue its ongoing efforts to help build strong Texas families, including those with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender family members.

Earlier today, the California Supreme Court handed down a historic decision upholding the freedom to marry in In Re: Marriage Cases. The second state high court to rule in favor of ending the exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage said, "in view of the substance and significance of the fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship, the California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right [marriage] to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples."

"This righteous decision of this most respected state high court will give Americans the chance to experience what they've begun to see for the last few years in Massachusetts, South Africa, Canada, Spain, Belgium, and the Netherlands - the lived reality that ending exclusion from marriage helps families and harms no one," said Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry and author of Why Marriage Matters: America, Equality and Gay People's Right to Marry. "California's sun will illuminate the nation."

The milestone California ruling comes as the country marks the 60th anniversary of another historic ruling, Perez v. Sharp. In Perez, the California Supreme Court became the first court in the country to strike down race restrictions on marriage, also by a vote of 4-3, at a time when polls showed 90% opposing interracial marriage. Wolfson noted, "Today, the justices of the California Supreme Court again lived up to their oath to uphold the Constitution for all, and as with their courageous past stands against discrimination in marriage, we will all be the better and history will vindicate them."

Noting that opponents of equality have submitted signatures that may trigger a November vote on an anti-gay measure aimed at amending the state constitution to bar committed same-sex couples from the equal freedom to marry, Wolfson said, "Thanks to the Court's just decision, voters will get to make an informed decision, having the chance to see actual married couples and realize it is wrong to put obstacles in their path."

Freedom to Marry salutes the leadership of National Center for Lesbian Rights, Lambda Legal, the American Civil Liberties Union, Heller Ehrman LLP and the Law Office of David C. Codell, and the City of San Francisco, who represented fifteen same-sex couples, Equality California, and Our Family Coalition in this case.

What's the matter with Dallas suburbs?

Farmers Branch. Irving. Now Carrolton.

A newly elected mayor near Dallas says his top priority will be ridding his suburb of illegal immigrants, the same focus that has drawn national attention in a neighboring city.

But Ron Branson said Carrollton will not simply copy the blueprint of Farmers Branch, where an ordinance barring apartment rentals to most illegal immigrants has been put on hold by a federal judge.

"I do not want to rubber-stamp what they did," Branson said in today's editions of The Dallas Morning News. "We want to make sure we're not profiling, we're following the law, and take advantage of ordinance opportunities."

The victory by Branson in Saturday's election gives Dallas neighboring suburbs with mayors who share a common goal of driving out illegal immigrants in their cities.

Is there something in the water up there? I just don't understand the obsession with this issue. And I know it's all tied up in anxiety about the war and the economy, because we had about the same number of undocumented immigrants in 2004 and 2005, back when the nation was still obsessed with gay marriage. But that "issue" ran its course, and we needed some other scapegoat for these more uncertain times, and so here we are, at least until the next batch of undesireables come along.

I hope some economist or sociologist is keeping track of these immigrant-hostile towns and doing a study on how they fare in the wake of these policies. It seems likely to me that their immediate effect will be to make their demographics older and whiter, as non-immigrant Hispanics who rightly perceive these policies to be threatening to themselves leave along with the undocumented folks that they hope to drive out. That doesn't strike me as being a good thing for the local economies, but who knows, maybe they'll draw new white-flight residents to counterbalance that. Like I said, I hope someone is studying this to see what happens with these places.

It should be noted that even though the anti-immigrant candidate won in Carrolton, it wasn't necessarily about that issue.

[Carrolton Mayor Becky] Miller had led by 9 percentage points in early voting, but those ballots were cast at least a day before a Dallas Morning News story delved into her background. She wound up losing by 9 percentage points.

[...]

Mrs. Miller had accused Mr. Branson of "dirty politics" for questioning her statements to colleagues that her brother died in Vietnam.

The mayor, who is white, gave Mr. Branson a soldier's name, but a check showed the young man was black and had been born within four months of her, so he couldn't have been her brother.

Mrs. Miller later said she deliberately misled Mr. Branson out of anger over his prying.

After her father said there was no brother who had died in Vietnam, she said her father has Alzheimer's disease. Later, she said the "brother" was actually an unrelated young man raised by her family. She declined to provide his name, citing painful circumstances.

Checks then raised questions about Mrs. Miller's statements that she sang professionally for Linda Ronstadt and Jackson Browne, had ties to the Eagles frontman Don Henley and attended Western Kentucky University.

Spokesmen said the three singers didn't know her, and a Western Kentucky official said the school had no record of her attendance there.

Mrs. Miller has since said she's not surprised the singers didn't remember her after 30 years. She insists that she did attend the college briefly.

Uh, yeah, sure. If you haven't figured out by now that being a public official with a phony resume is a recipe for disaster, I will have no sympathy for you when you lose. Even if it's to a xenophobe.

The "virtual fence" gains fans

Despite a bad review from the Government Accounting Office, the so-called "virtual fence" managed to impress some Congressfolk recently.

Sections of Texas' border with Mexico eventually could be secured by the same kind of high-tech "virtual fence" that's been deployed in Arizona, key legislators said Friday after touring the state-of-the-art surveillance network.

The comments by two subcommittee chairmen with the House Homeland Security Committee -- Reps. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, and Christopher Carney, D-Pa.-- followed an inspection tour Friday of the $20.6 million virtual fence near Sasabe, Ariz.

The project links high-tech surveillance towers, cameras, radar, ground sensors and unmanned aerial drones along a 28-mile section of the 1,947-mile international border.

"In Texas, there is an outcry and a great deal of conflict over installing physical barriers along the border," said Jackson Lee, chairman of the panel's subcommittee on transportation security and infrastructure protection. "What I have seen here today can be a very effective 21st century tool to secure our borders."

Carney, the chairman of the panel's oversight subcommittee, called the virtual fence "a tremendous concept" that's ready for eventual deployment elsewhere along the border "once we make sure the bugs are ironed out."

Carney, who toured the area with Jackson Lee and five other lawmakers, said the virtual fence was best suited for sparsely inhabited stretches along the border. "If we can ever get the technology to match the dedication of the Border Patrol personnel here, we'll have an impenetrable border," he said.

[...]

Jackson Lee said the lawmakers' inspection tour turned her from a skeptic into a believer that the blend of high-tech surveillance and targeted deployment of Border Patrol agents could intercept illegal immigrants and drug traffickers.

Flaws in the system have been slashed from 53 to just four, she said.

"I've changed my assessment because the technology did not work -- and now it does," she said.

I remain skeptical for now. I'll say again that given a choice between this and a physical fence, this "virtual" concept is a million times better, and likely to be a lot cheaper as well. It's still not a fix for what's actually broken with our immigration system, and as such I think it's a mis-prioritization of our resources. But if it helps to appease the fence fetishists out there, it's less objectionable than some other options. That's the best I can say about it at this time.

ICE versus employers

Jay Aiyer, who is an immigration attorney, has a suggestion for the process of verifying eligibility to work.

The reality is that the overwhelming numbers of businesses never knowingly hire anyone they believe is here illegally. They are required by law to inspect employment authorization and to determine if a person can legally work. One problem is that there is no realistic way to verify the authenticity of documents.

A possible solution would be to invest in a workable national database that can accurately determine the work authorization of workers. Instead, the government has decided to step up arrests and detention that cost millions more.

Programs like the "E-Verify" program are still too error-prone to be of assistance, and current law doesn't even require such verification. Moreover, while businesses must visually inspect documents, they run the risk of being accused of discrimination if they ask too many questions. Additionally, the documents themselves often can be easily duplicated and forged, making it even more difficult.

Businesses have a duty to inspect work authorization documents and maintain an "employment eligibility verification form" known as an I-9. For the most part, the majority of employers try their best to comply. But the federal government should not place the entire burden of enforcement on them. Instead the government needs to bring employers in as partners.

We all recognize that there are some employers out there who collude with document vendors to their advantage. That is where ICE's resources should be targeted -- not in random raids.

All businesses should conduct regular audits of their own hiring policies and procedures to make sure that all employees are properly filling out I-9 documents. However, federal authorities need to recognize that businesses ought to be encouraged and applauded for a self-audit process without potential penalties from ICE.

I'm a lot more skeptical of self-enforcing processes for businesses these days, given how things have been with the Bush administration. Still, there's a lot here that makes sense, and I do agree that the random-raids method of keeping businesses in line is not helpful. At the very least, I'd like to see more of the debate be along these lines. It's about finding practical solutions that can garner support across the spectrum.

Once again with the penny

As we know, one of the arguments for abolishing the penny (and the nickel) is the high cost of manufacturing them, due to the rising prices of zinc and copper. Congress has tried but not succeeded in passing a law to give the US Mint more flexibility to change the composition of these coins, and now they're trying again.

Surging prices for copper, zinc and nickel have some in Congress trying to bring back the steel-made pennies of World War II, and maybe using steel for nickels, as well.

Copper and nickel prices have tripled since 2003 and the price of zinc has quadrupled, said Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., whose subcommittee oversees the U.S. Mint.

Keeping the coin content means "contributing to our national debt by almost as much as the coin is worth," Gutierrez said.

A penny, which consists of 97.5% zinc and 2.5% copper, cost 1.26 cents to make as of Tuesday. And a nickel -- 75% copper and the rest nickel -- cost 7.7 cents, based on current commodity prices, according to the Mint.

[...]

On Tuesday, the House debated a bill that directs the Treasury secretary to "prescribe" -- suggest -- a new, more economical composition of the nickel and the penny. A vote was delayed because of Republican procedural moves and is expected later in the week.

Unsaid in the legislation is the Constitution's delegation of power to Congress "to coin money (and) regulate the value thereof."

The Bush administration, like others before, chafes at that.

Just a few hours before the House vote, Mint Director Edmund Moy told House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., that the Treasury Department opposes the bill as "too prescriptive" in part because it does not explicitly delegate the power to decide the new coin composition.

The bill also gives the public and the metal industry too little time to weigh in on the new coin composition, he said.

"We can't wholeheartedly support that bill," Moy said in a telephone interview. Moy said he could not say whether President Bush would veto the House version in the unlikely event that it survived the Senate.

Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., who is retiring at the end of the year, is expected to present the Senate with a version more acceptable to the administration in the next few weeks.

I guess I'm not sure why a President would care so much about how the Mint does its business. Perhaps the Allard bill will help me understand once I see the differences. Anyone know more about this?

RIP, Mildred Loving

Mildred Loving, one-half of the Virginia couple whose Supreme Court case struck down laws against interracial marriage, has died at the age of 68.

Loving and her white husband, Richard, changed history in 1967 when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld their right to marry. The ruling struck down laws banning racially mixed marriages in at least 17 states.

''There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the equal protection clause,'' the court ruled in a unanimous decision.

Her husband died in 1975. Shy and soft-spoken, Loving shunned publicity and in a rare interview with The Associated Press last June, insisted she never wanted to be a hero -- just a bride.

''It wasn't my doing,'' Loving said. ''It was God's work.''

Mildred Jeter was 11 when she and 17-year-old Richard began courting, according to Phyl Newbeck, a Vermont author who detailed the case in the 2004 book, ''Virginia Hasn't Always Been for Lovers.''

She became pregnant a few years later, she and Loving got married in Washington in 1958, when she was 18. Mildred told the AP she didn't realize it was illegal.

''I think my husband knew,'' Mildred said. ''I think he thought (if) we were married, they couldn't bother us.''

But they were arrested a few weeks after they returned to Central Point, their hometown in rural Caroline County north of Richmond. They pleaded guilty to charges of ''cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth,'' according to their indictments.

They avoided jail time by agreeing to leave Virginia -- the only home they'd known -- for 25 years. They moved to Washington for several years, then launched a legal challenge by writing to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, who referred the case to the American Civil Liberties Union.

As Rick Perlstein notes, what this obit doesn't mention is that Mildred Loving understood that freedom to marry is something that should transcend more than just racial barriers. Read on for her statement in favor of true marriage equality. Rest in peace, Mildred Loving.

Loving for All

By Mildred Loving

Prepared for Delivery on June 12, 2007,
The 40th Anniversary of the Loving vs. Virginia Announcement

When my late husband, Richard, and I got married in Washington, DC in 1958, it wasn't to make a political statement or start a fight. We were in love, and we wanted to be married.

We didn't get married in Washington because we wanted to marry there. We did it there because the government wouldn't allow us to marry back home in Virginia where we grew up, where we met, where we fell in love, and where we wanted to be together and build our family. You see, I am a woman of color and Richard was white, and at that time people believed it was okay to keep us from marrying because of their ideas of who should marry whom.

When Richard and I came back to our home in Virginia, happily married, we had no intention of battling over the law. We made a commitment to each other in our love and lives, and now had the legal commitment, called marriage, to match. Isn't that what marriage is?

Not long after our wedding, we were awakened in the middle of the night in our own bedroom by deputy sheriffs and actually arrested for the "crime" of marrying the wrong kind of person. Our marriage certificate was hanging on the wall above the bed.

The state prosecuted Richard and me, and after we were found guilty, the judge declared: ""Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix." He sentenced us to a year in prison, but offered to suspend the sentence if we left our home in Virginia for 25 years exile.

We left, and got a lawyer. Richard and I had to fight, but still were not fighting for a cause. We were fighting for our love.

Though it turned out we had to fight, happily Richard and I didn't have to fight alone. Thanks to groups like the ACLU and the NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund, and so many good people around the country willing to speak up, we took our case for the freedom to marry all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. And on June 12, 1967, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that, "The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men," a "basic civil right."

My generation was bitterly divided over something that should have been so clear and right. The majority believed that what the judge said, that it was God's plan to keep people apart, and that government should discriminate against people in love. But I have lived long enough now to see big changes. The older generation's fears and prejudices have given way, and today's young people realize that if someone loves someone they have a right to marry.

Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that I don't think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the "wrong kind of person" for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people's religious beliefs over others. Especially if it denies people's civil rights.

I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard's and my name is on a court case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight seek in life. I support the freedom to marry for all. That's what Loving, and loving, are all about.

That other border

Great article in Salon about how our current obsession with border security is damaging our relationship with Canada, and directly harming businesses on both sides of the US-Canadian border, which for years have thrived on easy crossings.

If the tighter border were just an inconvenience for strip-club patrons, sports fans and gamblers, its effect on international relations might be no big deal. But it's disrupting everyday life in Ameri-Canadian communities, where residents have always thought of themselves as neighbors, not foreigners. The Champlain, N.Y., fire department has a mutual-aid pact with a nearby town in Quebec. Last year, the Canadians were late for a blaze because Homeland Security stopped a truck to inspect the crew's papers.

Automakers that shuttle parts between plants in the United States and Canada now stockpile them in warehouses because truck inspection times have tripled since 2000. The delays cost $11.5 billion a year, according to a report by the Brookings Institution. Indian tribes are outraged about the prospect of having to carry passports to visit relatives and sacred sites across the border that divides their traditional lands. In January, trips from the United States to Canada hit their lowest mark since record-keeping began in 1972.

It's more difficult to measure the impact on American business because our weak dollar makes the border hassle worthwhile for many Canadian shoppers. Canadian visits are up 10 percent since last year, but an official with the Binational Tourism Alliance says that "15 years ago, when the exchange rate was last where it is, the numbers were three times what they are now." Overall, between 1995 and 2005, annual crossings from Canada dropped by half. Perhaps the stay-at-homes include a gentleman I met in Kingston, Ont., who told me he never goes to the states because "I don't want Uncle George looking up my butt."

In her day job as New York's junior senator, Hillary Clinton has pleaded with Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to cancel the passport regulations, fearing they'll damage upstate New York's already sickly economy. "I've been a leader on the [Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI)] issue," Clinton told Salon during a campaign stop earlier this year. "I have been opposed to what they've been trying to do. It'll interfere with recreation and tourism. I've spoken to Secretary Chertoff opposing the regulations requiring passports at the northern and southern border."

The new rules aren't just aimed at preventing another 9/11. They're also part of a crackdown on illegal immigration. But Canadians are not swimming across Lake Erie to escape socialized medicine and sane mortgage-lending laws. According to a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, the "vast majority" of people lying about their citizenship are trying to cross the southern border. And yet, the DHS is applying the same rules to the Canadian border as it is to the Mexican border, despite our vastly different relationships with the two countries.

"The U.S. government has been insulting in the way it's handled the border without consulting the Canadians," says Andrew Rudnick, executive director of the Buffalo Niagara Partnership, a business association of U.S. and Canadian companies. "They've been insensitive to life here."

In a weird way, I'm actually a bit gratified to hear. It's nice to know that DHS' complete lack of sensitivity, empathy, and common sense on this issue isn't limited to the Rio Grande Valley. At least we haven't been singled out for this kind of special treatment.

Way back in 1990, some buddies of mine and I won a bridge tournament called the Grand National Teams. (It was for Flight C, the lowest level, so don't be too impressed, but it was still pretty cool.) As the prize for our victory, we won plane tickets to the ACBL summer tournament to compete for the national championship. (We wound up losing in the semifinals to an inferior team, but that's another story.) The tournament that year was in Toronto, and it was a blast - the weather was gorgeous, the facilities were awesome, we all had a ton of fun - but I had a small problem. See, up till that point, every foreign trip I'd ever taken (one each to Europe, Canada, and Mexico) had been a school-arranged trip, which is to say ones where all of those fussy details had been taken care of for me by someone else. Nobody told me what kind of documentation you needed to get into and out of Canada from the US. I knew I didn't need a passport, which I'd had but hadn't been required to bring when I made the previous trip. That passport I'd had was expired by 1990, and I didn't have a copy of my birth certificate. (Actually, I did have a copy - my parents had sent it to me after I'd graduated college in 1988 - but it had gotten lost somewhere along the line. Which a few years later required me to navigate a cumbersome phone menu to request a new copy from whatever bureau handles that sort of thing in New York City so I could get a new passport for my honeymoon trip, but that too is another story.) And frankly, I didn't give the matter much thought. Hey, I was a citizen, right? I had photo ID, right? What could possibly go wrong?

So anyway. The day comes to fly to Toronto, and airline ticket agent asks me if I have a passport or birth certificate or something similar with me, and I said no. She gave me a funny look, advised me to lay hands on something better than my driver's license and Social Security card if I wanted to return home, and gave me my boarding pass. I got a similar look and piece of advice from Customs in Canada. Thinking that maybe they knew something that I didn't know, I called my dad from the hotel and explained my situation. After sighing heavily and reminding me that he'd already sent me my birth certificate, he said he'd think of something. And he did: A day later, I received a fax containing a sworn affidavit, written on official New York State Supreme Court stationery (Dad was a judge back then) swearing that I was his son and that I'd been born on Staten Island. He also included a copy of my baptism certificate, which was the next best thing he could find.

And when I arrived back in Houston and showed those documents to the Customs agents here, they had a good laugh at my story and let me in. One agent said the affidavit was more persuasive to him than the baptism certificate, but in any event, it worked. Needless to say, the kind of benign stupidity that I exhibited back then would exact a higher price these days.

Anyway, I hope that people can read this article and come to realize that all this focus on "sealing the borders" imposes high costs on the people and businesses who live and operate near those borders. It's entirely possible to me that an honest accounting of those costs would show them to be comparable to the ones supposedly being imposed by illegal immigrants, and that's before we consider what we're losing in good will and friendly relations with countries that are and should be close allies and trading partners. Unfortunately, I don't know what it's going to take to make people see it that way.

Give it away now

There's something deeply ironic about this:

U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., introduced the hearing, titled "Walls and Waivers," as a forum on the expedited construction of the border fence and its affect on the environment along the border. During the five-hour hearing, the conversation shifted to a more general evaluation of the barrier's merits.

"To examine the history, culture, economics of the border and then to decide the only solution is a 700-mile fence," Grijalva said in opening remarks, "is simply a failure of leadership."

U.S. Reps. Tom Tancredo, R-Col., and Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., both former 2008 presidential hopefuls, disagreed with Grijalva. Hunter referred to the success of a double fence in his district, on the border between San Diego and Tijuana.

"Our fence put the border gangs out of business because they lost their ability to move back and forth," said Hunter, who authored the Secure Fence Act of 2006.

Tancredo took issue with what he called "landowners' multi-culturalist views on the border."

"If you don't like the idea (of a fence), maybe you should consider building the fence around the northern part of your city," Tancredo said amid jeers from the audience.

Who needs to worry about the "reconquista" when you've got Tom Tancredo proposing to cede land to Mexico? It would be funny if it weren't so pathetic. Blogging All Things Brownsville and South Texas Chisme have more on this and on some hearteningly strong words from House Intelligence Committee Chair Rep. Silvestre Reyes. Story link via PoliTex.

If you don't have the cash, don't get the disease

This WSJ article is really scary.

Hospitals are adopting a policy to improve their finances: making medical care contingent on upfront payments. Typically, hospitals have billed people after they receive care. But now, pointing to their burgeoning bad-debt and charity-care costs, hospitals are asking patients for money before they get treated.

Hospitals say they have turned to the practice because of a spike in patients who don't pay their bills. Uncompensated care cost the hospital industry $31.2 billion in 2006, up 44% from $21.6 billion in 2000, according to the American Hospital Association.

The bad debt is driven by a larger number of Americans who are uninsured or who don't have enough insurance to cover medical costs if catastrophe strikes. Even among those with adequate insurance, deductibles and co-payments are growing so big that insured patients also have trouble paying hospitals.

The story is built around the case of a Lake Jackson woman who contracted leukemia and has had to pay tens of thousands of dollars in cash up front to MD Anderson Hospital to receive care. Read it and ask yourself what might happen to you if you were in her position.

On a related note, since many long-term illnesses are really disabilities of some kind, you might care to know what the Presidential candidates' positions are on the subject. Michael Berube explains it all to you, in detail. Check it out.

Workers Memorial Day

The following is an op-ed by Becky Moeller, the President of the Texas AFL-CIO, which I was asked to run as a guest column by Ed Sills. I thought it was interesting and timely, so here it is for your perusal:

On Workers Memorial Day, We 'Fight for the Living'

By Becky Moeller

President, Texas AFL-CIO

Monday, April 28 is the 20th commemoration of Workers Memorial Day, an observance that most Texans have probably never heard of. To working families, though, the subject is one of deep and lasting concern as the labor movement pauses to remember the victims of workplace fatalities and rededicate ourselves toward preventing future deaths on the job.

Legendary organizer Mother Jones summed up the spirit of the day: "Mourn for the dead and fight like hell for the living!"

In newly released Bureau of Labor Statistics figures covering 2006, Texas saw 489 workplace fatalities, just slightly below the 495 of the previous year. While Texas ranked 25th among the states in per capita fatalities, the number represents a rate of 4.5 deaths per 100,000 workers, which is above the national average of 4.0. Another 258,500 workers reportedly were injured or contracted occupational illnesses, the official statistics suggest.

Almost all the workplace fatalities involved transportation incidents (202), acts of violence (59), contact with objects or equipment (88), falls (60), exposure to harmful substances (54) or fires and explosions (23). A disproportionate number of worker fatalities occur among Hispanics and immigrant workers.

Monday also marks the anniversary of the Occupational Health and Safety Act, signed into law by the liberal President Richard Nixon and enforced since then with lack of gums, much less teeth.

The latest government figures show that Texas businesses experienced a grand total of 3,491 routine OSHA inspections in 2006. At that rate, it would take 148 years for the agency to visit every eligible workplace for a routine safety inspection.

It's not like there's nothing to be found. A recent round of OSHA inspections of Texas refineries found numerous violations. OSHA workers are conscientious and effective when given a chance to inspect, and they do a fine job when called in to probe deaths in the workplace. When it comes to prevention, though, they are simply without resources to do the job.

What can Texas do to stave off worker fatalities?

For some years now, the Texas AFL-CIO has advocated for a state OSHA to complement the federal agency and focus on industries that have a history of deadly accidents. We believe preventive care is always cheaper than post-disaster consequences: Witness the BP explosion of 2005, in which about $150,000 of repairs could have prevented a multi-billion dollar catastrophe. A state OSHA would encourage employers in the most dangerous industries to stay ahead of tragedy. It would save far more than it costs, both in lives and money.

Many Texas employers responsibly place safety first, but the state's mechanism for addressing the ones who don't is weak. Besides a measured increase in regulation, Texas workers need reasonable access to the justice system when irresponsible employers cause workplace harm.

This week, the House Business and Industry Committee and Senate State Affairs Committee will consider a range of issues involving access to the courts for workplace injury victims. Among the issues: A recent Texas Supreme Court decision that would have denied courthouse access to any worker injured anywhere if the premises owner carried the right kind of workers' compensation insurance - regardless of whether the worker is even an employee.

The Supreme Court wisely withdrew the unanimous decision in Entergy v. Summers after a bipartisan group of legislators argued that the justices had misinterpreted state law. But to protect the right of workers to seek justice when they are injured, the Legislature should consider clarifying the rights of all injured workers to encourage employers to maintain the safest possible workplaces.

The vaunted "healthy business climate" in Texas must include better incentives for employers to keep workers alive and well. That's a basic principle that would honor the memories of the 500 or so Texas workers who die each year on the job.

Becky Moeller is president of the Texas AFL-CIO, a state labor federation of approximately 220,000 affiliates that advocates in the Legislature and political arena for working people in Texas.

So much for the "virtual fence"

Why am I not surprised by this?

In a sign of the challenges facing the federal government's ambitious effort to police the country's border with Mexico, the Department of Homeland Security has ordered adjustments to a "virtual fence" project near Tucson that has been beset with technical problems.

A spokesman said Wednesday that the department will make modifications to the 28-mile project in Arizona. The changes include moving or replacing some of the nine surveillance towers and installing new equipment on them.

[...]

On Wednesday, Homeland Security officials defended their actions in Arizona, saying they had expected difficulties with the virtual fence prototype.

The initial project, known as P-28, "was never intended or purported to be the perfect, end-state solution," said Russ Knocke, a department spokesman.

[...]

The high-tech approach has not been without its problems. A February report by the Government Accountability Office pointed out flaws in the virtual fence. Inadequate software, it said, had been used and the project had been developed with limited input from the Border Patrol.

The report also cited complaints that it was taking too long for information detected by radar to be displayed on computers in a command center and that some of the radar systems were set off by rain or other environmental factors.

I had an earlier version of this story flagged originally. It had some more detail about that GAO report:

Less than a week after [Homeland Security Secretary Michael] Chertoff accepted Project 28 on Feb. 22, the Government Accountability Office told Congress it "did not fully meet user needs and the project's design will not be used as the basis for future" developments.

A glaring shortcoming of the project was the time lag between the electronic detection of movement along the border and the transmission of a camera image to agents patrolling the area, the GAO reported.

Although the fence continues to operate, it hasn't come close to meeting the Border Patrol's goals, said Kelly Good, deputy director of the Secure Border Initiative program office in Washington.

"Probably not to the level that Border Patrol agents on the ground thought that they were going to get. So it didn't meet their expectations."

The Border Patrol had little input in designing the prototype but will have more say in the final version, officials said.

Let that be a lesson: Never roll out a deliverable without performing usability testing first. You'll have a much lesser chance of looking foolish that way.

[S]ome critics of the government's approach said it confirms their fears that the feds are acting without adequate consultation with local residents.

Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., called the fence plans "a half-baked political response" to voter anger about illegal immigration that has resulted in the waste of millions of taxpayer dollars.

"The fence has become more political symbol than deterrence substance," he said.

[...]

The fences were part of a get-tough, anti-immigration measure pushed through Congress by conservatives in 2006 and approved by President Bush as a way of placating Republicans opposed to his plan for overhauling immigration law.

But the initiative has sparked controversy since its inception, especially in Texas.Those who live in its path on the Rio Grande have resisted efforts by federal authorities to survey their lands for the proposed fence. Others have complained the fence would divide not only their property but also wildlife refuges and university land.

Chad Foster, the mayor of Eagle Pass and chairman of the Texas Border Coalition, said many problems result from the federal government's pushing through the fence projects too quickly. "I think they should slow down a little bit," he said.

But the virtual fence, using high-tech equipment, has been hailed not only by Bush but also by Democratic and Republican presidential contenders.

Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama have said the surveillance equipment could reduce the need for physical barriers on the border.

Well, I'll say this much for a virtual fence: It's not as bad as the physical fence that DHS wants to build. At least it won't have the environmental impact of bricks and mortar, and it should be less costly to maintain. But it suffers from the same shortcoming as the physical fence in that it's a shortsighted and narrow-focused response that really isn't a solution to the problem it wants to address. A big reason why so many people are here illegally - and remember, a huge number of them entered by legal means, then overstayed their visas - is because we've created an artificial shortage of immigration visas, and we have such a time-consuming and burdensome process for getting those visas. If we allowed more people in, and we made it easier to go through that process, a lot of the black market that we helped materialize would dry up. This is not an intractable problem. It's a situation of our own making, and just as we made it, we can fix it.

But that requires leadership, and unfortunately there's a lack of that.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus denounced House Democratic leaders Wednesday as "spineless" and little better than Republicans for failing to take on comprehensive immigration reform.

Leaders of the all-Democratic caucus, which numbers two dozen, criticized their party leadership at a news conference for instead scheduling hearings on enforcement legislation and specific visa issues.

[...]

Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona called the Democratic caucus "spineless."

"Today my party wants to do what is easy, not exactly what is right," said Rep. Luis Gutierrez of Illinois.

The lawmakers were particularly incensed because hearings have been scheduled on a bill by moderate first-term Rep. Heath Shuler, D-N.C., that focuses on enforcement and would add border patrol agents.

If a Democratic majority can allow such a hearing, "then we are no better than the Republican majority we replaced," Gutierrez said.

I believe they are referring to the so-called SAVE Act, which would be fiscally irresponsible in addition to being bad public policy. And it's co-sponsored by the xenophobic Rep. Tom Tancredo; why any Democrat would want to associate himself with that guy is a mystery to me. I know I hoped for better than this when the Dems took over the Hill last year, but it's been nothing but disappointment on this issue so far. Stace and Marc Campos have more.

Border fence lawsuit update

Just an update on where the border fence lawsuits stand, as I missed a couple of stories recently. Here's one from Friday in which the judge gave permission to the federal government to enter the property of border residents who had refused to grant that permission before.

One of the last of more than 50 Rio Grande Valley property owners sued by the federal government to open their land to surveyors for the border fence lost her case in court.

U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen on Thursday denied Eloisa Tamez's motion to dismiss the government's condemnation lawsuit and ordered her to give six-month access to three acres of land in El Calaboz, part of a Spanish land grant to her family near Brownsville.

Tamez, a 73-year-old nursing program administrator at the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College, had fought the government since it sued her in late January. Her case, handled by the nonprofit Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law in Los Angeles, was the most time-consuming for Hanen.

Late Friday, Tamez said neither she nor her attorneys had had a chance to review Hanen's order, but that she would turn to her legislators.

"Apparently he's (Hanen) just going to give entry to everyone's land no matter what we do," Tamez said.

[...]

Hanen wrote, "the Court is quite sympathetic to both parties. Any landowner, not just Dr. Tamez, would like to know the exact details of what the Government will be doing on his or her property." But the government is in a "Catch-22" because it will not know the scope of its work until it is on the property, Hanen wrote.

"This is certainly a case where the parties are 'unable to agree on a reasonable price,'" Hanen wrote. So the condemnation was allowed to move ahead.

Hanen also ordered that the government consult with Tamez before going on the property about the timing of their visits and any ways to minimize their impact. Hanen wrote that he would be available to resolve disputes and previously in court had said that he owned boots and would be willing to use them for a site visit.

A countesuit against the feds has gained support among border mayors and activists.

A coalition of Texas border mayors and county executives stretching from El Paso to Brownsville decided to join a proposed class-action lawsuit against Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on Tuesday.

The Texas Border Coalition's executive committee voted to join the lawsuit filed in early February by Cameron County landowner Eloisa Tamez. A federal judge has not yet certified that lawsuit as a class action.

That lawsuit challenged the way Homeland Security went about suing property owners to get temporary access to their land to survey for the border fence.

"We are joining this lawsuit to protect the interests of communities across Texas and to minimize the impact the border wall will have on our environment, culture, commerce and quality of life," Eagle Pass Mayor Chad Foster said in a statement. Foster is chairman of the coalition.

Eagle Pass was the first municipality to be sued for access to city property.

It should be noted that some of the arguments being made in this proposed suit are the same ones that were rejected by Judge Hanen, so it's hard to say how effective this may be. But the activists are vowing to continue the fight anyway, and they may get a sympathetic ear from Congress.

Two congressional subcommittees of the House Natural Resource Committee will be holding a joint hearing on the border wall in Brownsville on April 28th. Tamez says she plans to attend. It will be held at the University of Texas at Brownsville. "Our congressional leaders have been absent and the landowners feel like we have been fighting this battle against the government on our own," says Tamez.

The hearing will center around Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva's Borderlands Conservation and Security Act, which would force Homeland Security to negotiate with landowners and would require the agency to follow federal laws when constructing the wall. The bill has been languishing in a subcommittee since last summer, however.

Since Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff waived 36 federal land and environmental laws two weeks ago, the bill has gained more co-sponsors but it still lacks Republican support.

The bill also repeals the section of the REAL ID act which gave Chertoff the authority to waive environmental, labor, and other laws to construct the border wall.

Grijalva told the Rio Grande Guardian in a story Monday that "The Real ID Act is an overreach, constitutionally. What we are asking for is to introduce another constitutional right - due process," he said. "We are not saying you cannot have national security on the border. Let's have a process whereby the public has some input. You must have consultation, you must have NEPA and the environmental assessments and you must look for alternatives."

Tamez says that Congressional leaders outside of Texas have done more for border residents in her community than local congressional leaders. "We want our congressional leaders to know what this border wall will cost for us," she says. "Congressman Bennie Thompson and Raul Grijalva have been more visible on this than our own Representatives."

Well, yeah. That's a damn shame, and maybe someday we'll see a primary fight or two over that lack of leadership. I said once that I thought this was a great issue for Rep. Henry Cuellar to run with, but apparently not. Other than electing Rick Noriega, there's not much that can be done about this in 2008, but it's not too late to start thinking about 2010. South Texas Chisme has more.

At long last, he unites us

Via State of Mine, the news story that most amused me today.

President Bush has talked a lot about being a modern-day Harry Truman: a president who makes tough but unpopular decisions that will be appreciated by history, if not by his American contemporaries.

Well, now, Bush has passed Truman to set an ignominious record. He has become the president with the longest consecutive stretch of job-approval ratings below 50 percent since scientific public opinion polling was invented.

At 39 months, Bush passed Truman, who was on the wrong side of the populace for the last 38 months of his presidency.

With the 43rd president hovering around the 30 percent mark for job approval, it seems highly unlikely that he will crack the 50 percent level for the final nine months of his second term.

In the new poll, Bush's approval rate stood at 33 percent, just 1 percent age point above his all-time low. The President's approval rating has been relatively stable in ABC/Post polling; he hasn't topped 36 percent since November 2006.

You've heard of the Mendoza Line? I think we have its political equivalent here. Dallas, you're welcome to him.

Breaching the fence

How do you beat a million-dollar border fence? It's easy.

Illegal immigrants armed with torches, hacksaws, ladders and even bungee cords are making it around a section of the border fence hailed as the most efficient way to stop them.

In the 10 months since the section was put up, the only method federal agents haven't seen is a tunnel -- "Yet," said Victor Guzman, the supervisory Border Patrol agent responsible for the stretch of close-together 15-foot cement-filled steel poles planted three feet into the ground.

Agents responsible for guarding the stretch of border here "almost immediately" started seeing cuts in the fence. The towering gray and rust colored posts are marked with bright orange spray paint in areas believed to have been breached, Guzman said.

Guzman, who has worked in the area for nearly a decade, said agents have found holes cut with acetylene torches, hacksaws and even plasma torches -- a high-powered tool that uses inert gas or condensed air to quickly cut through steel and other dense metals.

"We see it once or twice a week," Guzman said of the holes along the 1.5-mile stretch of fencing about 80 miles west of El Paso.

We've heard this sort of thing before. The joke about a ten-foot fence enhancing sales of eleven-foot ladders may seem like a sound bite, except for all the truth it contains. And in some cases, even the ladder - or hacksaw or torch or whatever - isn't needed.

But it's not just illegal immigrants worrying the Border Patrol. The fence itself -- built by the National Guard and Border Patrol -- is starting to settle into the ground and gaps between the posts are widening. In one spot, an average sized woman could wedge herself through one of the gaps.

That's for a fence that was completed last June, so it's less than a year old. Really gives you a feeling of security, doesn't it?

One thing I'm curious about: Did the money that was allocated to build the 670-mile fence include allowances for future repairs, or is that something that will have to be dealt with every fiscal year by Congress? Because, it seems to me, this is exactly the sort of cost that never gets taken into account initially, and winds up the responsibility of the operating agency, which then has to make cuts elsewhere to handle it. It'd be quite the irony if Border Patrol had to initiate a hiring freeze to be able to pay for fence repairs, wouldn't it?

By the way, the Sunday op-ed pages had three good pieces relating to immigration and the border wall:

Border barrier sends the wrong message

Last February, I found myself in the difficult position of explaining American insecurity to a group of Mexican undergraduates at a college in Matamoros, Mexico, just south of the border at Brownsville, Texas. I was taking questions after delivering a lecture on the long-term prospects of Mexican immigrants being accepted into U.S. society. A neatly dressed young man in the back stood up to ask a pointed question. "How," he said politely in Spanish, "could such a rich and powerful country be so self-centered as to build a wall on its border to keep people out?"

Build Mexico instead of putting up a wall

If the official minimum wage were 10 times higher in Chicago than in St. Louis, it's easy to imagine what would happen: Thousands of men and women would leave their homes and families and travel north in search of better wages and a higher standard of living. And Regardless of what Chicago did to "protect and defend" its borders, the city would find it impossible to stem the relentless tide of determined job-seekers.

Substitute Veracruz for St. Louis, and the hypothetical example becomes very real -- and points to the true source of our immigration challenges along the U.S.-Mexico border. With wages for semiskilled in Mexico one-tenth the level of U.S. wages, even workers who hold jobs in Mexico see working in the United States as the only realistic hope for pulling their families out of severe poverty.

If the root cause of Mexican migration to the United States is found in Mexico, then why do we continue to believe that 2,000-mile walls will solve the immigration problems associated with undocumented workers?

Western Union and the wall

Confronted with fortress Jericho, Joshua's forces let wail on ramhorns and, as the spiritual has it, "the walls came a-tumblin' down." Millennia later, it's possible that another communication device -- the ubiquitous cell phone -- may blow away the border barrier currently being erected between the United States and Mexico.

This possibility emerged in the unlikely -- and funny -- convergence of two press releases on April Fool's Day. Within hours of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff's announcement that he would invoke congressionally granted waivers to expedite 470 miles of security-wall construction across the American southwest, Western Union rolled out a new service targeted at U.S. Latino consumers that will enable them to transfer money to Mexico with but a few keystrokes from their mobile phones.

The latter was written by Char Miller, one of my history profs at Trinity University. Check 'em out.

If the law is in your way, ignore it

Outrageous.

Texas border land owners, mayors and wildlife groups blasted the Bush administration's sweeping plan to waive nearly three dozen federal laws to speed construction of a border fence by year's end.

Using authority granted by Congress, the Department of Homeland Security announced Tuesday it plans to issue two waivers to complete 670 miles of fencing in four border states. DHS says it has finished 309 miles of fencing, leaving 361 miles to be constructed by a December deadline.

''Criminal activity at the border does not stop for endless debate or protracted litigation," Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said in a statement. ''These waivers will enable important security projects to keep moving forward."

[...]

Two environmental groups, the Sierra Club and Defenders of Wildlife, in March asked the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that earlier DHS waivers of federal law are unconstitutional.

''The Bush administration's latest waiver of environmental and other federal laws threatens the livelihoods of the ecology of the entire U.S.-Mexico border region," said Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope.

The laws the governments seeks waivers for represent legislation such as the Clean Water Act and more obscure regulations such as the River and Harbors Act of 1899.

Can you imagine the outcry if, say, Metro or TxDOT were given the authority to ignore laws in the pursuit of building a rail line or a highway? Who's to say that couldn't happen some day if it's OK now for Homeland Security to do it?

Eagle Pass Mayor Chad Foster, who chairs a coalition of border leaders, expressed outrage at DHS for not having meaningful consultations with local officials. In January, a federal judge approved a DHS lawsuit to survey city land before Foster and the city had received a copy of the suit.

''I'm just a yahoo from Eagle Pass, Texas, but this is just the absolute height of folly," he said.

Foster said his city's top crime problem is an occasional Mexican shoplifter caught at the local mall. ''If shoplifting is a matter of national security, we have a problem," he said.

Indeed we do. The Texas Observer, who heard a rumor about this on Friday, and South Texas Chisme have more, while Rick Noriega has a statement on the matter as well.

The case against the penny

Here's an informative article that makes the case for abolishing the penny (and the nickel) based on the cost of minting them and their lack of purchasing power in today's economy. I'm a sentimentalist, I like my pennies and nickels (and we regularly roll coins to bring back to the bank, so we don't lose money through wastage), and even I found this compelling. It won't break my heart if nothing happens, mind you, but I can certainly see the merits of the argument. Of course, I can also see the merits of keeping the penny and dumping the nickel. That's actually a pretty creative suggestion.

Somewhat perversely to me, the countries that have successfully gotten rid of their smaller coins or are on the path to doing so also seem to be converting their small bills into coins. As you know, I am very much not a fan of that, and if that's a corollary of the anti-penny movement here, you can count me as a foe. Given the increase in demand for base metals, and the fact that replacing bills with coins will further exacerbate that, I don't understand why you'd want to invite future problems with negative seigniorage (read the article) like that. Maybe by the time that happened you'd have to consider doing away with all coins, but still. Why borrow trouble? Anyway, it's a good read, so check it out. Link via Yglesias.

Some border wall lawsuits dropped

I hope this is a good sign.

The U.S. government dismissed its border fence condemnation lawsuit against the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College on Wednesday and agreed to explore alternatives to a fence with school officials.

The agreement was reached just hours before a hearing was to begin in federal court.

It is no guarantee that the university's golf course and the rest of the threatened 160 acres of campus will not some day be on the Mexican side of a 15-foot fence, but the dismissal order requires the two sides work together.

The government has sued more than 50 South Texas landowners this year for temporary access to survey for the border fence. Many have complained that the access requested was overly broad and sought similar restrictions, but the university is the first to achieve it.

Upon signing the order, U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen said he hoped the agreement could be a model for other property owners, specifically the Rio Grande City Consolidated Independent School District, which shared similar concerns about disruptions to its campus and impact on its students during a hearing before Hanen on Monday.

[...]

Outside the courthouse, Juliet Garcia, president of UTB-TSC, said some of her intent in rejecting government access before reaching this agreement was to "plow the field" for other property owners.

Under the agreement, the government wins its long-sought access to the campus for six months. The university gets a promise from the government to explore alternatives "to a physical barrier" with the university and to get school consent before even mowing a blade of grass.

Barry Burgdorf, vice chancellor and general counsel for the University of Texas System, said the university will invest its own resources in developing alternatives to the fence. Neither Burgdorf nor the court order specify what those alternatives might be.

Good for UT-Brownsville. If this can serve as a model for other entities to get improved treatment from the feds, so much the better. South Texas Chisme is cynical about this, but I choose to be optimistic. We could use a little positive news here. I do agree that nothing about this makes the border fence a good idea, but in the event we can't undo the legislation that authorized it, anything we can do to minimize its negative impact is a boon.

Now that's a high-rise

Philadelphia shows what it looks like.

There is a proposal afoot to build what would be the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere and the second-tallest building in the world when stacked against existing buildings, at 18th and Arch streets, in Center City. A 2,000-foot-tall condominium building is under construction in Chicago.

The American Commerce Center, at a proposed 1,500 feet, would be 525 feet higher than the Comcast Center, now Philly's tallest building at 975 feet, a block away.

It would surpass the Empire State Building's 1,250 feet.

Phillyskyline.com waxed poetic in its description of what's happening:

"Your Philly skyline is about to change. About to incur a growth spurt. About to shatter any notion of Philadelphian reservedness, about to take A New Day A New Way to a whole other level."

Generating this excitement is the proposal to construct what would be a mix of retail, hotel and office space - and even a movie theater - in an $800 million, 2.2-million-square-foot skyscraper on what is now a parking lot.

I believe the proper expression here is "Wow". And in case you're curious, for I know I was:

The proposed building will need zoning adjustments, but it apparently has the backing of Mayor Nutter.

Through his press secretary, Doug Oliver, the mayor said he believes the building "would be a spectacular addition to Philadelphia's skyline. Sustainability efforts and building green continue to be hallmarks of this administration and the plans for this particular project are consistent with those goals."

The civic association that covers that neighborhood is watching and waiting.

"Obviously, when you drop something bigger than the World Trade Center into a neighborhood there are bound to be implications," said Rob Stuart, president of the Logan Square Neighborhood Association. "We will identify them and see if they can be mitigated. It is clearly out of scale with a lot of our neighboring buildings."

Stuart said his association was briefed a week ago by the developer and his team and "we are formulating a task force to work on the project."

"There are going to be a lot of discussions. The design might change as a result."

Not knowing a thing about Philly's politics and ordinances, I can only wonder what tools they have at their disposal to push back on whatever they don't like. I'll be curious to see if this thing goes forward. Link via Atrios.

El Paso puts up a roadblock to the border fence

The city of El Paso joins the resistance to the border fence.

The country's largest border city has decided to block efforts by federal authorities to use an access road that cuts across city property to work on existing border fencing.

The El Paso City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to block the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Albuquerque district, from using the access road.

The vote, which City Councilman Steve Ortega described as "symbolic," is the latest salvo by cities and property owners opposed to plans to build several hundred miles of new fencing in Texas.

"They haven't made a case of why we need a new fence," City Councilwoman Susie Byrd said after the vote.

Byrd said she was most concerned by what she described as the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's lack of cooperation with local communities.

"The first time we've heard from them was today," Byrd said.

The most likely outcome from this is to be sued by the feds, as they have done with other landowners who have refused to grant access for the fence.

The new fiver

Do you like the color purple? If you do, you'll probably like the new $5 bill.

Abraham Lincoln is getting a little color in his cheeks.

New $5 bills bearing the gaunt visage of the nation's 16th president - but with some touches of color added - are making their way to banks and cash registers near you.

The bill goes into circulation Thursday. That's when the Federal Reserve, the supplier of the nation's cash, starts shipping the bills to banks, which send them to businesses and eventually into the hands of people in this country and beyond.

[...]

To the naked eye, the most notable difference is color - splashes of light purple at the center of the bill that blend into gray near the edges.

Small yellow "05" numerals are printed to the left of Lincoln on the front and to the right of the memorial on the back. The Great Seal of the United States, which features an eagle and shield, will appear in purple to the right of the president's portrait. Arcs of purple stars border Lincoln and the seal.

The note also will feature an enlarged "5" printed in high-contrast purple ink in the lower right corner of the back of the bill. It also will have two separate watermarks and a number of other high-tech changes to make it harder for counterfeiters to knock off.

You can get a thorough look at the bill's new design features at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, which has the excellent URL of "moneyfactory.gov".

New penny coming?

Not that it was ever really worth much, but the penny is worth less than it used to be, at least compared to the cost of minting it. The nickel, too.

These days, your thoughts are worth 1.7 cents.

That's what it costs the government to forge a penny, thanks to the rising price of metal. A nickel costs 10 cents. Congress, in its infinite wisdom, has concluded that's a pretty bad deal.

A House subcommittee led by Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) convened a hearing Tuesday on a proposal to change the composition of both coins. Republicans and Democrats like the concept, particularly its promise to save taxpayers $100 million a year by using cheaper metals at the U.S. Mint. If the legislation clears the House and Senate and President Bush signs it, you could be plucking steel pennies off the street before year's end.

[...]

Until recently, Mint officials say, no American coin had ever cost more to produce than it was worth.

Global metal prices began rising in 2003, driven by increased demand for raw materials, particularly in India and China, according to Mint statistics. The price of copper quadrupled in the past five years. Nickel more than tripled, and zinc nearly did the same. The Mint lost $33 million on penny and nickel production in the 2006 fiscal year. In 2007, it lost $99 million.

"There is no indication," Mint Director Edmund Moy told the House Subcommittee on Domestic and International Monetary Policy, Trade and Technology in written testimony, "that copper, nickel and zinc prices will decrease over the short term."

Enter the Coin Modernization and Taxpayer Savings Act of 2008, the subject of Tuesday's hearing. It would give the Treasury authority to set the weight and composition of any coin whose production costs exceed its face value for five consecutive years. It also requires the Mint to start producing a primarily steel penny within 180 days of the bill becoming law, so taxpayers would save money almost right away.

The bill requires any new coin to work in existing vending machines. That's a concession to the National Automatic Merchandising Association, which opposed an earlier version for fear that it could force hundreds of dollars in upgrades to each of the nation's more than 6 million dispensers of soda, snacks and other items. An association lobbyist testified in favor of the revised bill on Tuesday.

Other concerns persist. Moy told the subcommittee that six months isn't nearly enough time to produce a steel penny and that the five-years-of-losses requirement would prevent the Treasury from stepping in early if the dime or quarter -- which currently run 7 and 10 cents to produce, respectively -- suddenly grow more expensive.

Several Republicans worried about Congress giving up coinage control to the executive branch. "It seems to me that the Mint has been the leader in slowing down changes to coin composition," said Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.), who introduced a bill last year that would have mandated a cheaper penny.

Paul called the current proposal an unconstitutional delegation of power and a symbol of "how far we have fallen" in monetary policy. America, he said, has failed to maintain a gold standard or silver standard for its currency. "Now," he said, "we cannot even maintain a zinc standard."

I realize Paul has this weird fetish with shiny metals, but are we really triggering a Constitutional crisis by changing the ingredients in our coins? I guess maybe if you believe that we can't have a real economy unless every dollar bill has a piece of gold sitting in Fort Knox with its serial number carved into it. Whatever.

Anyway. I don't have a particular problem with this. I had a couple of 1943 steel pennies when I was a kid, and I think it'll be a bit weird to see them return on a wide scale - maybe they can at least put enough copper to make them appear to be the same color. Being able to stick them to magnets again, though, that'll be cool.

Border wall lawsuit ruling

Missed this from last week.

After a one-month deliberation, U.S. District Judge Andrew S. Hanen has issued the most significant decision in the border fence's short judicial history. In a case against Eloisa Tamez, who owns property along the barrier's proposed path in El Calaboz, Hanen found that the federal government is authorized by the Declaration of Taking Act to condemn Tamez's land. But according to the ruling, negotiations must take place between the landowner and the Department of Homeland Security before property is seized.

Immediately after the decision was filed on Tamez's case, 25 previously pending cases -- pertaining to land in Cameron Hidalgo and Starr Counties -- were scheduled in Hanen's Brownsville court on March 17 and 19, making him a critical actor in the border fence's construction. Among the defendants in the next batch of cases are the Texas Southmost College District and the Rio Grande City Consolidated Independent School District.

At a Feb. 7 hearing, Tamez's lawyer, Peter Schey, of the Los Angeles-based Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, argued that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff had violated federal law by failing to negotiate with her over the value of her property before filing a land condemnation lawsuit.

In his decision issued late Friday, Hanen ruled that "Dr. Tamez correctly asserts that negotiations are a prerequisite to the exercise of the power of eminent domain." The ruling's conclusion also states that "There is contradictory and insufficient evidence before this court as to whether there has been bona fide efforts to negotiate with Dr. Tamez."

Michael Chertoff failed to follow federal law? Shocking, I know.

It is unclear what form the court-ordered negotiation will take. The ruling states only that the government and Tamez, a nursing professor at the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College, must "either partake in negotiations and/or provide this court with any relevant evidence they have concerning the existence of bona fide efforts to negotiate" by March 21.

If the parties do not agree upon a fixed price for the property in question, Tamez's land can be condemned under the Declaration of Taking Act.

"We welcome the court-ordered negotiations with the government and once those are concluded, we will demand that consultation take place with Dr. Tamez before any federal agents enter her land," Schey said.

He expects that the same negotiations will be ordered in subsequent border fence suits.

"The reassignment of cases to Hanen avoids the potential for decisions with different interpretations of the law," he said. "If (Hanen) believes that argument we made is right, he will apply it in the other cases."

For now, the court has refused to sign an expedited order allowing DHS to begin its survey of Tamez's land -- a preliminary step in the border fence's construction.

Background on the lawsuit is here. The Observer has more (they also had a cover story that featured Dr. Tamez recently). They quote Dr. Tamez calling this a victory, and in the sense that it forces DHS to follow the law, it is. Unfortunately, I don't see it as a barrier to the fence ultimately getting built, just a bit of a speed bump. The only way this thing doesn't ultimately happen is if Congress de-funds it, and I don't see that as a realistic possibility. So forgive me for not feeling too celebratory about this ruling. Story link via South Texas Chisme.

"The next slums"

Fascinating piece in The Atlantic about the subprime mortgage crisis and its longterm effects on the inner cities and far-flung newer developments.

Arthur C. Nelson, director of the Metropolitan Institute at Virginia Tech, has looked carefully at trends in American demographics, construction, house prices, and consumer preferences. In 2006, using recent consumer research, housing supply data, and population growth rates, he modeled future demand for various types of housing. The results were bracing: Nelson forecasts a likely surplus of 22 million large-lot homes (houses built on a sixth of an acre or more) by 2025--that's roughly 40 percent of the large-lot homes in existence today.

For 60 years, Americans have pushed steadily into the suburbs, transforming the landscape and (until recently) leaving cities behind. But today the pendulum is swinging back toward urban living, and there are many reasons to believe this swing will continue. As it does, many low-density suburbs and McMansion subdivisions, including some that are lovely and affluent today, may become what inner cities became in the 1960s and '70s--slums characterized by poverty, crime, and decay.

Link via TAPPED, which adds a few thoughts. I don't have anything to add to this right now, I just thought it was a provocative read and wanted to recommend it. Check it out.

Forward, spring!

Everybody remember to set their clocks ahead last night? While I don't care for losing the hour's sleep, I love Daylight Savings Time. I love having that extra sunshine at the end of the day. Darkness at dinnertime is depressing to me. Obviously, the days are getting longer as well, which is also a good thing as far as I'm concerned. Basically, DST says to me that spring is here, and that always makes me happy. How about you?

You can't put a fence through a golf course!

The Texas Observer asks a simple question.

As the U.S. Department of Homeland Security marches down the Texas border serving condemnation lawsuits to frightened landowners, Brownsville resident Eloisa Tamez, 72, has one simple question. She would like to know why her land is being targeted for destruction by a border wall, while a nearby golf course and resort remain untouched.

Tamez, a nursing director at the University of Texas at Brownsville, is one of the last of the Spanish land grant heirs in Cameron County. Her ancestors once owned 12,000 acres. In the 1930s, the federal government took more than half of her inherited land, without paying a cent, to build flood levees.

Now Homeland Security wants to put an 18-foot steel and concrete wall through what remains.

While the border wall will go through her backyard and effectively destroy her home, it will stop at the edge of the River Bend Resort and golf course, a popular Winter Texan retreat two miles down the road. The wall starts up again on the other side of the resort.

"It has a golf course and all of the amenities," Tamez says. "There are no plans to build a wall there. If the wall is so important for security, then why are we skipping parts?"

Because who you know and who you donate to is more important than that. Read the rest of the story and you'll see what I mean. South Texas Chisme has more.

Meet Antonio Villaraigosa

The following is an announcement from the Houston Democratic Forum:

The Houston Democratic Forum invites you to our Casual Discussion of Presidential Politics with a Very Special Guest

ANTONIO R. VILLARAIGOSA

Mayor of Los Angeles and National Campaign Co-Chair for Hillary Clinton for President
http://www.lacity.org/mayor/bio1.htm

Monday, February 18th, 6pm to 7:30pm

SoVino Bistro & Wine Bar
507 Westheimer, Downtown Houston

Cash Bar
You can valet park, and there is ample self-parking in area

RSVP: dannyd713 -at- yahoo.com or 713.417.5400

Mayor Villaraigosa is the 41st mayor of Los Angeles. The Mayor is known for his exception skill at building broad bipartisan coalitions and is considered one of the leading progressive voices in the country. Mayor Villaraigosa is national campaign co-chair for Hillary Clinton for President and has been traveling across the nation on her behalf. Please come by to hear from him about the presidential campaign, his work in Los Angeles, and the future of the Democratic party.


Finally, a competitive presidential primary comes to Texas.

Let's discuss.

Hope you can make it!

Suits and countersuits over the border fence

It's not just the feds suing property owners along the border. Property owners are suing the feds, too.

A lawsuit by University of Texas-Brownsville Professor Eloisa Tamez and San Benito resident Benito J. Garza claims the Homeland Security Department disregarded the law by filing "declarations of taking" before negotiating a price for their land.

The government sued both for six months of access to plot the fence.

During a two-hour hearing before U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen on the government's lawsuit, attorney Peter Schey said two acts of Congress prohibited the declarations of taking, or expedited condemnation, for the fence.

"The judge was very patient, very receptive," Schey said. "He made very clear that this was the first time anybody has brought this to his attention and he's really going to have to step back and contemplate."

After a previous hearing, Hanen granted government access the same day.

Tamez said she is a descendant of the Lipan Apache and Basque peoples and her acre of land has been in the family for 265 years.

According to the complaint against Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and Robert F. Janson, acting executive director of asset management for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 precluded the government from using expedited condemnation for border fencing. It says expedited condemnation was again ruled out by an amendment to the federal budget bill requiring consultation with locals.

The government's reply to the complaint, filed Wednesday, says government officials are seeking only "minimally intrusive, non-exclusive" temporary access to plan the fence.

"Whatever concerns might be applicable to the actual permanent taking of land in fee for fence construction are simply not relevant at this time," it says.

It'll be very interesting to see what the judge makes of this. Maybe it'll force the feds to be a bit more flexible about finding alternate solutions to the fence, which is already happening in some other counties.

The federal government and local officials in one border county announced today they had reached a compromise that would eliminate the need for the much-maligned border fencing there.

Private land in Hidalgo County border towns such as Granjeno, where dozens of homes could have been lost behind the fence in a no-man's land between Mexico and the United States, would no longer be threatened by a land grab, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said.

[...]

Since the Department of Homeland Security is responsible for border security and natural disasters such as flooding, the Hidalgo County solution to modify levees along the Rio Grande with an 18-foot sheer face on the river side satisfied Chertoff.

"When completed at the end of the year, they will serve both functions," Chertoff said at a border patrol station in Edinburg, the Hidalgo County seat. "It's a great example of where we are able to dovetail what we need with what the community needs."

Gov. Rick Perry, who with local officials has opposed the fence, thanked Chertoff for being receptive to local feedback.

Chertoff noted that a "legislative fix" allowing the local and federal funding contributions to the project would be required for the agreement to move forward.

It was the most conciliatory atmosphere between border communities and Homeland Security since the border fence dispute began more than a year ago, and an about-face from last month, when Chertoff said people worried about the impact of increased security on cross-border travel should "grow up."

[...]

Hidalgo County chief executive J.D. Salinas said the levee improvements would also save property owners who faced millions of dollars in insurance premium increases because of poor flood control in the area.

But most significant is that the border wall-levee system will stay along the river's edge. Earlier plans had the fence winding through towns like Granjeno as far as two miles inland from the Rio Grande, cutting off huge swaths of property into a no-man's land between the fence and the river. The fence also would have cut off water access to farmers and ranchers in the area.

"The people of Granjeno should not be concerned," Salinas said.

Residents and elected leaders throughout the Rio Grande Valley had bristled at the idea of a border fence, fearing both the loss of private land and the message it would send to their sister communities in Mexico.

But last fall, Salinas and his Cameron County counterpart, Carlos Cascos, suggested the levee compromise, figuring they could fix two problems at the same time.

"I think that's a big victory for all of us here," Cascos said.

That all sounds good, but there are some concerns as well.

The No Border Wall Coalition says the Department of Homeland Security should begin a new Environmental Impact Statement for the Rio Grande Valley if it intends to back the so-called "vertical levee" plan.

"We are concerned that DHS intends to push through the idea of a wall-levee combination in the Rio Grande Valley before it has been thoroughly evaluated," said NBW spokesperson Stefanie Herweck.

"If DHS is serious about their plan they must prove the efficacy and safety of the wall-levee combo with the appropriate engineering and hydrological studies."

[...]

Herweck said new engineering and hydrological studies on the levee-fence combo plan should be made available for public review in a new draft EIS for the Valley.

"Construction should not begin unless we can be assured that this will not put the safety of Texas residents at risk," she said.

"DHS should not start tearing the sides off of our levees, and possibly destabilizing them ahead of hurricane season, until they know how the wall will impact the levees' structural integrity."

Herweck said a cautious approach would see DHS abandon the plan to begin fence or levee-fence construction in the spring, so that Valley residents do not go into hurricane season with the levees in a compromised state.

Sounds reasonable to me. This whole process has moved much too fast anyway, so a little slowing down is in order. Link via South Texas Chisme.

Another Farmers Branch lawsuit

Another lawsuit has been filed against Farmers Branch and its continuing anti-immigrant assault, this one on the grounds that its City Council violated open meetings laws when it considered the new ordinance that banned undocumented aliens from renting apartments or houses but shifted the burden of proof from landlords to the city.

The new lawsuit, filed by the Bickel & Brewer Storefront on behalf of resident Guillermo Ramos, alleges that city officials improperly met behind closed doors about the new ordinance before the City Council adopted it Jan. 22.

The city has exhibited a "sustained and deliberate" course of conduct violating open meetings laws, said William A. Brewer III of Bickel & Brewer.

The firm and Mr. Ramos also filed state district court suits alleging open meetings violations in the city's consideration of two earlier versions of the rental ban. And Bickel & Brewer is representing apartment owners and tenants in a federal suit challenging the constitutionality of the version that voters approved last May.

The new lawsuit alleges that the ordinance couldn't have been drafted and presented without direction from the council and that, because that direction didn't occur during public meetings, it had to have happened in private consultation with attorneys. That, the suit says, was a violation of state open meetings law.

Lawyer Michael Jung, who drafted the newest ordinance for the city, didn't return phone messages seeking comment Tuesday.

When city officials announced Jan. 17 that the council would consider the latest rental measure, City Manager Gary Greer said that council members hadn't seen or discussed the proposal and that they had received copies of it just that day.

In addition to blocking the new ordinance, the suit asks the court to require the city to keep all council meetings, in their entirety, open to the public and to refrain from open meetings violations.

This is the second such lawsuit filed by Mr. Ramos and the Bickel & Brewer Storefront, also over the open meetings issue. The first one is still being litigated. Stay tuned.

The southern storms and how to help

With all the Presidential primary stuff dominating the news, you may have overlooked the stories of the devastating storms that ripped through several Southern states on Tuesday night, killing over 50 people. I know I didn't notice the accounts, but have since seen postings on various blogs pointing it out. As is always the case in disasters like these, relief organizations and local first responders can use all the help they can get. This blog has the details of where to direct your dollars to make the biggest and fastest impact. Please take a minute and take a look, and help if you can. Thanks very much.

A change of direction for the border wall?

This sounds encouraging.

WOAI news radio has learned that U.S Customs and Border Protection will likely combine their fencing plan with a levee improvement project. There would be fencing in some areas, and in other, the levee's would be built up, so they would act like a wall.

It's a plan that border mayors, like Richard Cortez of McAllen have been demanding.

"I think it makes all the sense in the world," says McAllen Mayor Richard Cortez. "It gives them a line of sight, it gives them a barrier and it helps us here."

The 180-mile levee system is in disrepair. Cortez says, in some spots, it could not protect the area from flooding if there were torrential rains.

He's happy the federal government is actually paying attention to their suggestions.

"I'm happy that the government is seeing some value that there could be some alternative solutions to just a physical barrier."

The Monitor also has a story about this, so this is a good sign. It doesn't make the wall a good idea, mind you, but it might mitigate some of the damage, and it's perhaps the first sign that Homeland Security has listened to anything the locals have been saying.

On a related note, Grits notes the not-new phenomenon of fake Fed Ex trucks being used by smugglers. Check it out.

Farmers Branch asks judge to okay new ordinance

As we know, the city of Farmers Branch passed a new ordinance to restrict undocumented immigrants from renting apartments, with the burden of verifying the applicants' status falling on the city. They did that in an effort to bypass the legal morass they had encountered with the first ordinance, which they are currently injuncted from enforcing pending the outcome of a lawsuit. They have now asked the judge to consider that new ordinance to see if it makes muster.

The ordinance, which the City Council adopted last week, would require all prospective tenants in the city to claim U.S. citizenship or legal immigration status when applying for an occupancy license. If a federal database check later showed any non-citizens were here illegally, they would lose their licenses and be subject to fines.

The judge, Sam Lindsay, is already considering an ordinance the city's voters approved last May that bars landlords from renting apartments to illegal immigrants. That ordinance has been held up by legal challenges.

The new ordinance is different in that it applies to houses as well as apartments. It also shifts enforcement responsibility from landlords to government.

"We are committed to getting a final resolution of the legal challenges ... in an orderly and timely manner," said Michael Jung, an attorney for the city.

The Chron has a bit more on this. What's fascinating to me is that Farmers Branch can't say for certain that they're approach of checking with the feds themselves is even doable:

While in Dallas on Monday, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services director Emilio Gonzalez said Farmers Branch first must seek an agreement with his agency to access the database. Then the agency would then consider whether the use is lawful and appropriate.

Obviously, that could render the whole matter moot. I suspect that because of that, Judge Lindsay will not grant Farmers Branch's request. But we'll see.

First round to the government in border access lawsuits

No surprise here.

A federal judge ordered 10 Cameron County property owners to open their land to the government for border fence surveying, but not before he denied the government the right to take the land without a hearing.

U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen in Brownsville ordered 10 of the 12 landowners to comply with the government's request for access to their land for 180 days. The other two were near settlements with the government.

But Hanen's order revealed he had denied a request from the federal government for a swift and private order like the one it received in a similar case in Eagle Pass. In filing its suit, the Justice Department asked Hanen to rule immediately without participation from the landowners, a legal maneuver that is allowed in eminent domain cases.

Hanen denied that request and ordered the government to inform all property owners of the hearing, held last Friday.

"This court will make itself available if needed for the resolution of any disputes, but it expects all parties to act cooperatively and with due concern for the rights and needs of the other parties in the implementation of this order," Hanen wrote in the order dated Friday and released Monday.

By contrast, U.S. District Judge Alia Moses Ludlum received the government's lawsuit against the city of Eagle Pass and issued an order before the city could respond.

Hanen, like Ludlum a Bush appointee, questioned the government's efforts at contacting landowners and heard from some property owners and their attorneys at Friday's hearing.

[...]

Hanen also ordered government contractors to work with landowners to make the intrusion as minimal as possible.

Hanen denied the government's request to access properties adjacent to those included in the order.

Well, at least this judge is giving the landowners a chance to speak first. We'll see what happens when the disputes move on to the next phase. Stay tuned.

Hooray for the No Call List!

Here's the best news you're likely to read today.

It wasn't very long ago that Americans often had lunch and dinner -- and sometimes even breakfast -- interrupted by phone calls from sales people.

Such nuisance calls were sharply reduced after the 2003 creation of the federal do-not-call list, which prohibits telemarketers from phoning those who have registered.

Despite the popularity of the registry, which has grown to more than 150 million numbers, there had been worries that some home phones could begin ringing again with sales calls this year because of a rule requiring consumers to re-register after five years.

Congressmen are working to fix that: Legislation passed by the House and Senate aims to make permanent the registrations on the do-not-call list maintained by the Federal Trade Commission.

Sen. Byron Dorgan, a Democrat from North Dakota who sponsored the legislation, said he expects the nearly identical bills to be reconciled and forwarded to President Bush for signature by the end of this month.

Dorgan pointed out that the do-not-call list "has to rank among the most popular programs in history." As he put it, "Not only did the American people respond to the original legislation -- they responded immediately, and en masse."

The new bill, he said, fixes a glitch in FTC rules.

"Certainly, people didn't want to have their names removed from the list and have to come back to the government to create a new list," he said. "That makes no sense."

The FTC has acknowledged the problem and pledged not to drop any telephone numbers based on a five-year limit "pending final congressional or agency action on whether to make registration permanent," according to testimony before Congress last fall by the FTC's director of consumer protection, Lydia Parnes.

The agency said the rule requiring re-registration every five years originally was adopted to try to keep the list as fresh as possible.

Since 16 percent of all phone numbers change every year and 20 percent of all Americans move each year, the thinking was that a re-registration requirement would help eliminate numbers no longer in use or that had been assigned to others.

But the FTC found that changes including "increased usage of cell phones and increased popularity of telephone number portability" had made that unnecessary. Also, a "scrubbing program" developed in cooperation with local phone exchanges automatically eliminates disconnected or reassigned numbers, it said.

Most importantly, it concluded: "The registry has enjoyed unprecedented popularity and helped enhance the privacy of the American people in a tangible way."

Amen to that. If you haven't taken advantage of this yet, go to www.donotcall.gov or call the toll free number 1-888 382-1222. You'll be happy that you did.

Farmers Branch does it again

We knew it was coming, and now here it is: Farmers Branch passed another ordinance aimed at undocumented immigrants and rental housing.

City officials whose previous attempts to keep out illegal immigrants have been blocked by the courts took another shot Tuesday, adopting an ordinance that would not only ban them from renting apartments but also from renting houses.

The City Council unanimously approved Ordinance 2952, which would require all renters to pay a $5 fee and claim U.S. citizenship or legal immigration status to obtain an occupancy license from the city.

Remember, the city will then have to verify the applicant's citizenship status, by checking with federal databases. Because that's a totally appropriate use of the city's resources.

I know it doesn't make sense to ask questions about a crazy person's motivations, but I can't help myself: Why just limit yourself to rentals? Why not make prospective house buyers undergo the same routine? Heck, why not make anyone who wants to buy anything in Farmers Branch acquire a citizen's license from the city first? That'll show 'em!

Ordinance 2952 won't go into effect until a federal judge rules on the constitutionality of Ordinance 2903, passed last January by the council and adopted by voters in May. Though nearly two-thirds of voters approved the ordinance, Judge Sam Lindsay issued a preliminary injunction halting the city from implementing it until a lawsuit is resolved.

Kris Kobach, a law professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City who has represented in court other cities that have tried to pass rental restrictions on illegal immigrants, helped draft the new ordinance.

He said Ordinance 2952 differs from 2903 in that the original sought to have landlords review documentation to determine whether someone was probably here legally.

Council member Tim O'Hare, the driving force behind the original efforts targeting illegal immigrants, said he believes Ordinance 2952 addresses the legal concerns raised in the lawsuits over Ordinance 2903 and will hold up in court.

But at least one lawyer said he plans to file legal action against the city and Ordinance 2952. William A. Brewer III of the Bickel & Brewer Storefront said the city continues to try to encroach on the federal government's exclusive authority to enforce immigration laws.

"It has even less of a chance ... of ever being enforced than did the ordinances that preceded it," he said.

And when that happens, one wonders what they'll try next.

At the other end of the spectrum, the city of Georgetown, TX, got a grip and rejected a proposed ordinance that would have required contractors hired by the city to offer proof that all their workers are US citizens. Elise Hu and Eye on Williamson have the details.

Feds blindside Eagle Pass, file other suits

Well, I suppose this is one way to hold down the costs of litigation: Last Monday, the federal government sued the border city of Eagle Pass for access to municipal land to do surveying for the border fence. Turns out that that suit was also decided that day, with no one bothering to tell Eagle Pass beforehand that this was going on. From the first story:

U.S. District Judge Alia Moses Ludlum ordered the city of Eagle Pass to "surrender" the 233 acres of city-owned land by Tuesday. The Justice Department had sued for access to the land on Monday. Ludlum's ruling came the same day, before the city could muster a challenge.

[...]

The judge's order, issued in the Texas Western District Court, Del Rio division, said the United States, the plaintiff, is entitled to possession or control of the property for 180 days.

"Well, that seems a little heavy handed," Eagle Pass Mayor Chad Foster said Wednesday.

Foster leads the Texas Border Coalition, a group of border mayors, city officials and business leaders who oppose Homeland Security's border fence plans and have complained that they haven't had enough input on the effects of the fence on their communities.

Foster said the city of about 25,000 was served with the lawsuit Tuesday but not told of the ruling that had occurred Monday.

Foster said he's confused by the "aggressive action" because his city attorneys have been drafting paperwork for an easement for federal officials to build a road and erect 15 light towers along the border on city land.

"Informing the city after the judge ruled that their land is already taken is not the Texan or American way of justice," said Monica Weisberg-Stewart, Texas Border Coalition committee chairwoman.

And from the second:

Foster and his city council colleagues thought Border Patrol was consulting in good faith over an alternative to the border fence plan that included clearing Carrizo cane from the banks of the Rio Grande so that Border Patrol agents had better line of sight to the river.

"What the government is doing, it's like a police state," said Brownsville Mayor Pat Ahumada. "They are dictating to the citizens. It's very anti-American."

On Monday, attorneys for the Justice Department asked U.S. District Judge Alia Moses Ludlum in Del Rio for permission to access for 180 days 233 acres of city-owned land in Eagle Pass. Because Foster and his city's attorneys did not know about the hearing they could not challenge the lawsuit. "The ironic thing is that Judge Ludlum went to school in Eagle Pass," Foster said.

[...]

San Juan Mayor San Juanita Sanchez said that as an attorney she could not understand how the government could get a court ruling on such a major issue without the other party being made aware of the lawsuit.

"Giving the other side notice sounds pretty basic to me. The government is not even following what our justice system asks for," Sanchez said.

Asked what she would do if she were the mayor of Eagle Pass, Sanchez said, fight.

"I think one of the things you do as a leader of a community is to raise the awareness of everyone in your community. Gather them together and you can make a big difference," Sanchez said. "That's something we did when we had that toll bridge, we got the community together now we are happy to announce great development coming in."

Monica Weisberg-Stewart, co-chair of the TBC's immigration committee, issued a hard-hitting statement on Wednesday.

"Even in the most egregious eminent domain cases, the party whose land is being taken is given his or her day in court. The people of Texas should be outraged by the sneaky, underhanded methods used by the Department of Homeland Security," Weisberg-Stewart said.

"Informing the city after the judge ruled that their land is already taken is not the Texan or American way of justice. It demonstrates again that we are losing our liberties to a federal government that is without restraint and out of control."

It gets worse.

The Department of Homeland Security refused to grant the Texas Border Coalition additional consultation meetings, to which the coalition responded with a letter reiterating their proposal and calling for more local community input in the border fence construction process.

Chad Foster, Texas Border Coalition chairman, said in the letter that he regrets that DHS has chosen to reject the consultation proposal made to assist DHS with the requirement of Section 564 of Public Law 110-161.

The provision, which was written into the Omnibus Appropriations Bill by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, R-TX, and Rep. Ciro Rodriguez, D-San Antonio, requires DHS to consult with local governments and communities located near the sites where the border fence will be constructed.

The law also says that no funds will be released for Border Security Fencing, Infrastructure and Technology until DHS has complied with the provision.

Foster said the rejection of the proposal appears to be based on the department's fear that it will require delays to the border fence timeline and that the "department fears TBC will seek to have veto power over operational assessments."

"We seek no veto and wish to assure your fears that our efforts are in no way intended to delay the project," said Foster. "We would suggest that a consultation based on cooperation and intent on exploring more effective measures to accomplish the mutual purpose of border security would more swiftly accomplish the goals we share."

In DHS's letter announcing the refusal to grant consultation meetings to the coalition, David Pagan, Advisor to the Commissioner, said that U.S. Customs and Border Protection has gone through great lengths to obtain public input.

"As part of these public outreach efforts, CBP has contacted almost 600 different land owners and held 18 town hall meetings," said Pagan. "CBP has also engaged federal, state and local government partners and members of the public as part of our ongoing consultations through the environmental review process."

The letter also referred to the "open house" hearings DHS held in McAllen, Brownsville and Rio Grande City in December as part of the Environmental Impact Statement process.

Foster said DHS's rejection is also based on the claim that comprehensive consultation has taken place and that the coalition's proposal for another meeting is redundant.

"TBC is concerned about the repeated claim that CBP has conducted 18 public town hall meetings and contacted 600 landowners as part of its consultation process," said Foster. "TBC is unaware of any DHS or CBP public town hall meetings to consult with the people of the Texas-Mexico border prior to publication of maps and plans for the wall in recently release