federal government

Originally Posted on Citizen Orange

I was excited to find out over the weekend that David Neiwart, through his own blog and a cross-post on Firedoglake linked to me and others in the pro-migrant blogosphere in the last post of his three-part series on immigration:

The blogosphere can have a role in this change as well. There is a wealth of blogs out there dealing with immigration and Latino issues on a regular basis, and many of them feature not just important perspectives that need to be part of the conversation, but compelling and powerful writing as well.

A sampling: Migra Matters, Latina Lista, Matt Ortega,Immigration Prof Blog, The Silence of our Friends, Citizen Orange, The Unapologetic Mexican ... well, the list is long, and this one is certainly incomplete. But you get the idea. [ Source :David Neiwart]

I encourage you to use my blogroll on the right to complete that list, but now that he's finished his series I thought I'd use it as an opportunity to insert my own commentary, and hopefully build or hone on what was a massive and ambitious undertaking for Neiwart. Neiwart wrote three posts. One introducing his series, a second debunking a lot of the anti-migrant myths that exist, and a third with proposals about how to move forward.

While the first two posts were informative, I'm going to spend my time on Dave's third post, "Immigration: Looking Forward". This post is the second major migrant manifesto to emerge out of the blogosphere, coming after Duke's post that garnered a front-page spot on Daily Kos. In his post, Neiwart outlines what a "liberal program for comprehensive immigration reform" would contain:

Thanks for Dick Cheney

Joel S. Hirschhorn

When someone in high elected office shows the nation how vulnerable our Constitution is, we should be thankful for the wakeup call. Like many ruthless dictators, evil kings, and monster generals, Dick Cheney is the leading practitioner of the ends-justify-the-means mentality, where only his vision of the desired ends counts. And if this means disregarding and disobeying the Constitution, torturing prisoners, killing thousands of American soldiers, disrespecting Congress, destroying our environment, embracing the invasion of illegal immigrants, increasing out national debt, and disregarding the will of the vast majority of Americans, so be it. Serving corporate interests rather than serving the people is Cheney’s brand of patriotism.

Cheney’s self-righteous ego is bigger than George W. Bush’s, and what makes Cheney more striking is that he is enormously smarter and more competent than Bush, his token boss. He is so dangerous and frightening that no impeachment of Bush effort ever stood a chance. Not as long as “President Cheney” enters your consciousness. Cheney became Bush’s shield.

When reality hits the fan we use the-lessons-learned approach to stay sane. With his finger-in-the-eye disdain for what anybody else (or history) thinks of him, Cheney offers a far better lesson learned benefit than the stumbles and fumbles of Bush-the-smirker. Bush is a joke. Cheney is a monster.