I interrupt this vacation to focus attention on the interview my guest host Ed Morrissey had with Senator Marco Rubio yesterday (transcript here) and on the looming, crucial vote on the “Cornyn amendment.”

Bottom line: Next week is the week we see if real immigration reform is going to pass the Congress –not the Senate, but the whole Congress– because next week looks like the week the amendment on border security being offered by Senator John Cornyn gets its vote.  That is what Senator Rubio seemed to be saying –that next week would bring the border security debate to its conclusion, good or bad.  The Cornyn amendment is the vehicle by which the reality of the commitment to border security gets tested for the conservatives who are willing to support immigration reform but only if it carries with it real and lasting, guaranteed border security.

Senator Cornyn is the #2 ranking Republican senator, a relaible, thoughtful conservative, and a border state senator.  His amendment will be serious, but because its language hasn’t been released, I can’t say if it will be serious enough for folks like me who think the border fence is the key to real border security, for all the reasons detailed below and frequently on this site over the past many months.

Assume that the Cornyn amendment mandates construction of many hundreds of miles of new, double sided-fencing –I think it should stretch at least half the border or more than 1,000 miles– and provides the money and the impossible-to-avoid mandate and authorizations trumping conflicting statutes such as the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act and NEPA, what then?  The trigger linking the completion of construction of X miles of new fence with the beginning of the green card process (not legalization, which will be complete upon Congressional passage of the bill, but the permanent residence status) would be the next issue for scrutiny along with the mandate on biometrics on entry and exit at ports.  There are thus three or four key aspects to the Cornyn amendment which will be scrutinized, and the promises of 100% operational control or 90% capture rates matter not at all.  That language is mostly window dressing for the MSM.  What matters are the tangible, mandated efforts and means, and chief among them the very real, very effective deterrent of double-sided fencing.

If the fence is there and the mandate real –not the mere reference to the 2006 law but impossible-to-escape mandated construction language– then the Cornyn amendment may pass because the Democrats will realize that the Cornyn amendment is really a test vote for where the House will come down on immigration reform.  If a “tough enough” Cornyn amendment fails, the dying of the big bill may take a long time, but the bell will be tolling for passage of immigration reform inthis Congress.  Conseravtives don’t need much out of this process, but they do need a fence.  A real one.  A long one.  A built one.  If the amendment doesn’t deliver the fence, the House won’t be passing it.  If the amendment does deliver the fence, Democrats and the pass-anything Republicans will face a choice of whether they really and truly want immigration reform.

So Senator Cornyn thus has to get the amendment tough enough and specific to attract national security conservatives willing to go a long way on all other issues to get the border secured.  His office’s press release last week was not reassuring, and the coverage of the amendment in The Hill and Roll Call has been very vague on the fence, which is odd since that is the only metric that matters to most outside-the-Beltway Republicans.  (Senator McCain, of course, campaigned for his Senate re-election on the prmise to “Finish the dang fence” so he knows the improtance of the border barrier.)

I hope Senator Cornyn posts a complete text of his amendment with enough time for conservatives to read and analyze it before the voting begins.  We don’t need a replay of “you have to read the bill to find out what is in it” from the 2010 Obamacare debate.  Any cross references to previous law liek the 2006 fence bill should be spelled out and the interaction between the old and the new language detailed.  In other words, the Senate should realize that this is the most crucial vote they will take this session and that the public is very, very interested in the details and deserves to be taken seriously in that interest.  If nothing else, senators facing re-election in 2014 and 2016 should want to know what conseravtives are saying about the Cornyn amendment before they vote on it, not object later that they thought it enjoyed conservative support when in fact it didn’t.

Some GOP senators are about to impact their long-term futures in the party, some for the better and some for the much, much worse. The debate on immigration reform moves to the Senate floor, and the major legislative moment of the next three years begins.

Senator Kelly Ayotte’s announcement that she would be supporting the immigration reform bill is not surprising as most center-right conservatives in the Senate are expected to do so.

The question is whether any of the Senate’s conservative leadership will support the final version of the bill, and not just the young “Tea Party” caucus of Ted Cruz, Mike Lee and rand Paul, but every GOP senator who nurtures a long-term hope for national leadership.

If the amended version of the Judiciary Committee version of the bill fails to attract enough conservative support, the bill will have practically no chance of passage in the House even if it garners 60+ votes, nor will anything remotely like it. The same certain defeat in the House will follow if Senator Marco Rubio refuses to sign on to the final Senate version.

This a moment for genuine leadership to be exercised, and a reputation for seriousness and ability to be earned.

Many partisan Democrats are hoping for the narrowest of wins –a Senate bill that passes with just enough support and that then crashes and burns in the House.  Partisans on the left are more than willing to sacrifice the legitimate hopes of pro-immigration reform forces if that means the GOP loses its chance to take majority control of the Senate in 2014, which could well be lost if the partisan Democrats combine with the strategically-challenged Senate GOP members to push a lousy bill to the House by the narrowest of margins.  Thus the key now is to strengthen the border security provisions so that conservatives are comfortable supporting the eventual bill.

This reality makes Senator Ayotte’s announcement puzzling because it reduces the incentives for Senate Democrats to bargain on the key provisions, all of which involve border security and the most important of which will mandate construction of a real, double-sided fence extending hundreds of miles along the passable sections of the southern border.  if Senate Democrats can get to 60 votes without serious border security –the fence– then the House will reject the bill and the GOP will take a huge hit.

My Monday Washington Examiner column reviews this basic reality as well as the disappointment most border-security conservatives felt when Senator Cornyn’s press release Friday failed to even mention the border fence.  For whatever reason, Beltway Republicans live in fear of talking candidly and in detail about the fence –why it is necessary, where and when it will be built and how much it will cost.

Good laws are easy to read and cannot be misunderstood, nor can their intended impact be postponed or avoided.  The fact that a border fence act passed in 2006 and very little came from it underscores the reason why conservatives are rightly very suspicious of any amendment package that doesn’t spell out the details; appropriate and bank the funding in an account accessible by the fence-builders; and back the authorization to build with the sort of “notwithstanding any other law” language that truly gets the roadblocks to construction out of the way, trumping all lawsuits brought by “environmental activists” citing the Clean Water Act or the Endangered Species Act and providing affirmation for use of the federal condemnation authority where private property is involved.

The country built the interstate highways.  It can build a fence.  if it wants to.  if the Congress truly directs that it be done.  If the path to permanent residence status begins when the fence building ends.  If the trigger is really and truly a trigger.

The Boeing effort to build a “virtual fence” collapsed in early 2011, which doesn’t mean that high-tech systems and the new favorite of every anti-fence head-faker, drones, cannot be part of a border border security effort.  Defense in depth along the border is the key, and the reason isn’t just to forestall a third wave of illegal immigration hoping to find work but to stop most of the crime and drug and human-smuggling and hopefully all of the terrorists that seek to use overland passages.  Boeing’s effort was making progress on such things as tunnel detection, and Israeli experts can be called on again to assist in the securing of the southern border.  The border can be made secure, or at least much, much more secure than it is today.

But as the Senate opens debate on the final version of its offering, it has to know that a bill without the fence is just doomed.  No conservative will join the effort to back immigration reform that leaves the border without a fence and dependent upon this Administration’s guarantees of future efforts and results.  To even talk about 90% control or even 100% control of 90% or even 100% of the border is just mind-numbingly obtuse, an invitation to reject the bill wrapped in such glop.

A serious border security amendment will be easy to read, specific as to location and construction design, and contain citizen-enforcement provisions.  It will appropriate all the money needed and transfer it and the authority to proceed to a new entity the sole purpose of which is to get the fence built.  It will provide citizen standing to people to sue and stop the regularization if milestones based on miles of completed construction are not met.  There are lots and lots of ways to guarantee that it gets done.

Opponents of regularization will say a fence isn’t enough to win their support, and opponents of a fence will say it doesn’t work, but a fence is enough for a crucial portion of the conservative movement, and it does work well enough for most conservatives.  It is a necessary part of any deal.

I discussed why some Beltway Republicans have such a hard time discussing the fence with Mark Steyn last week.  Here’s that part of the conversation (full transcript here):

HH: [T]his week, Marco Rubio came on the show and announced that he probably wouldn’t vote for his own bill unless it was amended. And that was good news, because it needs a lot of amendments. But then, John Cornyn’s amendment leaked, Mark Steyn, and there’s no fence in the leak. Now maybe it’s still in the bill, but what they gave Jen Rubin, I just said to myself, nobody cares about everything the Republicans talk about when they talk about border security. Nobody cares about 90% control of 95% of the sectors on seven out of eight days. Nobody cares about that. They just want a fence. But the Republicans won’t talk about a fence. Are we getting a giant head fake?

MS: Well, let’s put it this way. I mean, you’re a bigger fan of the fence than I am.

HH: Yeah, I know that.

MS: Because I think there’s actually quite a few problems with legal immigration that will arise from this bill. But you know why a fence appeals to people, and I think that’s partly why it appeals to you, is because you can see it. If you happen to be in Southern Arizona or Southern California, you will be able to see the fence. It will be something concrete that will be visible that has to be done, has to be made, has to be built. And so much of what government is, particularly at the federal level now, is mumbo jumbo. It’s about programs, it’s about targets, it’s about expenditures, but it’s not about anything you can actually see, feel, touch, know where the money’s gone, have something that’s objective and measurable. And I think the Democrats are obviously the best at this. I mean, Obama ramped up the national debt by $6 trillion dollars in his first term, and nobody can see where a dime of that money has actually gone. He spent $6 trillion dollars and left no trace. But the Republicans are prone to a touch of that, too, that they’d prefer a lot of these other so-called nebulous, amorphous, shadowy safeguards that no one is actually going to be able to nail down and say no, you failed to meet that deadline, no, this doesn’t exist, no, that’s a flop, too. And the Republicans are too attached to that.

HH: You have read me exactly right, and it’s because the fence is the visible expression of an invisible resolve. But what I hadn’t figured out until you just said it is that Republicans don’t want to be held to that standard, either. I’ve been trying to figure out if they think it’s bad politics, but it’s not bad politics. And it’s not ineffective, because Israel’s fence works. And the folks in Arizona know these things work. But you are probably right. They don’t want to be held accountable for when it doesn’t get built, and they all swear on a stack of Bibles that they were delivering something.

MS: Yeah, and I think that’s true, because it’s something where you’re delivering something that cannot be argued with. A wall is a wall. It’s either there or it’s not there. And almost everything they’re doing in Washington is unreal in that respect.

Conservatives are very, very skeptical of anything the president promises, and that cynicism is seeping into their assessment of the Beltway GOP as well.  There are some conservatives who are already completely distrustful of the “establishment” GOP, but their distrust is fueled at least in part by the amazing lack of candor and availability of anyone not named Marco Rubio and Rand Paul.  Those two both earn enormous leadership points for their willingness to wade into the fray and talk through the issues.  That is what Reagan did, from 1977 to his nomination in 1980, and it is what earns the respect of the base that is looking for leadership in 2016.

The next month will see some very important voices emerge and some very senior GOPers take big pratfalls.  If at the other end the southern border is on its way to genuine, visible security for the first time since it became a huge issue, the debate will have served the country and the GOP.

Conservatives eager for a comprehensive immigration reform bill to progress through the Senate know that it must, at a minimum, contain very explicit mandates concerning a very long border fence.  The border is 2,000 miles long, and a good rule of thumb is that at least half of it is passable on foot, so the necessary language will mandate hundreds of miles of new, double-fencing with access roads –the sort of fencing that has been extremely effective wherever it has been built.

Opponents of fencing –those who prefer a much more permeable border and thus a third wave of illegal immigration to set up a third regularization down the  road, or who simply do not understand the threats posed by an easily passed border– never say “No” to the fence, but they never say “Yes” either, and instead offer up a dozen different promises, guarantees, plans, whatever.  All glop.  All of it potentially transitory and easily manipulated.

A fence is very easy to see, very easy to track the construction of, and very difficult to “turn off” or redeploy –which can be done with various hi-tech border security solutions or increased numbers of border patrol agents.

The fence mandate –a real mandate, with funding, specified mapping and length, and authority to trump any conflicting law like the Endangered Species Act or Clean Water Act or National Environmental Policy Act– is thus central to garnering sufficient conservative support to pass comprehensive immigration reform. That mandate wasn’t in the first Gang of 8 bill.  It didn’t get added in the Judiciary Committee.

Senator Rubio –who continues to take the point on the debate and who is doing exactly what legislators in a representative government ought to do which is propose, engage, revise and amend– promised fencing would be coming in the amendments that would be offered on the floor.

Then Senator John Cornyn released a summary of his “border security” amendment package, and it doesn’t have a word about fencing in it.  It is an absolute disaster, in fact, telegraphing as it does an intention to avoid the fence issue and try and trick the GOP base into believing border security is there when it isn’t there.

This is a political disaster as well as a policy pratfall.  If the Senate GOP isn’t going to support a fence it should just say so, because then we can all understand that the Senate bill is simply not serious about border security, because the vast majority of people who care about border security understand that long, high double-sided fences work.  They work.  It is that simple.  When Senator McCain campaigned for re-election in 2012 he did so with the slogan “Finish the dang fence.”  He used that slogan because voters understand and want a fence.

It is close to infuriating to be condescended to by Beltway elites who simply will not answer the question on fencing.  It seems that the House can get ready to kill this bill, because the Senate GOP seems to have surrendered the only thing huge numbers of conservatives wanted out of the deal.  Opposition was already building, but the Senate bill is being managed in such a way as to guarantee a firestorm of anger about its provisions and a backlash against the GOP that allowed it to get to the House in such a form.  I didn’t think it was possible for the Senate GOP to screw this up and with it the prospects for 2014 and beyond, but it is doing so.

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On Friday I hosted in back-to-back interviews The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf –a critic of the NSA and PRISM programs– and Andrew C. McCarthy, the prosecutor of the Blind Shiek and author of key books on the Islamist threat including Willful Blindness, who is not joining the chorus of critics unless and until evidence of abuse of the data gathering appears.

The Friedersdorf transcript is here.

The McCarthy transcript is here.

Read together they provide a great overview of the debate on this very important controversy.  Add in Mark Steyn’s take here, Mark Levin’s here, and mine below and you have a good set of views on which to begin your own assessment.

Townhall’s Guy P. Benson did a fine job summarizes exactly the attitude an informed but nevertheless necessarily “in the dark” civilian should take on this controversy.  It seems to me that most of the folks who have had a real, hands-on job in the battle against terrorists and other enemies of the nation –folks like McCarthy– are much more willing for the government to assemble the data it needs to find the killers.  The most vociferous critics seem to me to be the folks with zero experience in the world of intelligence gathering or, more recently, this particular controversy.  I complimented Benson on the humility in his piece.  By contrast, one of the reasons that Mark Levin’s views deserve extra respect is that he worked at a very senior level inside the Department of Justice, held the key counter-intelligence clearances, and knows just how dangerous the government can become even as he understands just how real the menace is.

This isn’t to say that commentators without experience in the intelligence world don’t have the right to make their critiques.  Of course they do, and many like the estimable Mark Steyn or MSMers like John Burns, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Dexter Filkins, Joby Warrick and many other journalists have been so long around the game and reported from so many places alongside so many soldiers and spooks that they know of which they write.

But many of the commentators?  No, they don’t have a clue, neither about the technology nor the threat.

Pick your experts with care.  Getting this balancing wrong could get a lot of people killed.  As could the “journalists” who are convey belts for secrets.