Hewitt Blog

Great posts from MarkDRoberts, AlbertMohler and JohnMarkReynolds.

I suppose it is too much to ask MSM to do a little reading, but if someone from there wants some insight to all the fuss, start with these three theologian scholars.

Great crowd at the Borders booksigning today, including Eric Free and father and son bloggers 1 or 2 Thoughts and The Hosh.

Be sure to visit 1 or 2 Thoughts twice as often as The Hosh as older guys need more help.

Off to Demver for a book signing (details here) and then a speech at the Lincoln-Reagan Day Dinner of the Arapahoe County Republican Party.

Had the GOP Senate not blocked the son of McCain-Kennedy, it would have been a dreary affair.

But because the majority of the GOP refused to be rolled by Harry Reid and Dick Durbin, Ted Kennedy and Patrick Leahy, Barbara Boxer and John Kerry or rushed by John McCain, there is a hope --still faint-- that when the Senate returns it will return ready to engage the obstructionist Democrats on a daily basis for the next six months.

As I write in the book, McClellan's Disease runs deep in some parts of the GOP, and the refusal to stand up the obsturctionist Democratic minority in the Senate is the primary example of this faint-heartedness in GOP circles.

The GOP has two models for dealing with this obstruction: To throw up the collective hands, complain, and then take what the minority will allow.

Which is political suicide.

Or to stay in session, day after day after day, focusing the country on the fact that 45 Dems won't let the country's urgent business be attended to.

Social Securty, ANWR, judges, and now border security --all have faltered because Harry Reid and his colleagues and their radical activist wing don't want anything to happen.

The answer to this impasse is of course to re-elect the members of the Senate who stand for the idea that the Senate ought to get its work done --specifically Santorum of Pennsylvania and DeWine of Ohio--and to turn out Democrat incumbants in places like New Jersey (Menendez), West Virginia (Byrd), Nebraska (Ben Nelson), Michigan (the hapless Stabenow), Washington state (the clueless Cantwell), and North Dakota (Kent Conrad), while retaining (Tennessee) or winning )Minnesota Maryland) open seats.

The answer to the impasse is to deliver the Democrats an off-year rebuke that cannot be misunderstood, even though that party misunderstood the votes of 2002 and 2004.

When the Senate returns, we have to hope that its members have heard that the only way to win battles is to join them.

From today's broadcast from Claremont McKenna College, two links:

The Claremont Review, and

TheAngryFederalist

Ellen Goodman writes a typically self-serving bit of MSM posturing today, full of the now-commonplace MSM McCarthyite tactic of blasting unnamed conservative bloggers, this time for their treatment of Jill Carroll.

But she doesn't name anyone in particular, which gives the game away.

Goodman slams a group without the specifics that would allow her audience to judge the reliability of her accusation.

How Tailgunner Joe of her.

There may be bloggers guilty of the sin she describes, but she doesn't name even one of them.

How MSM.

She also neglects to mention that many of these conservative bloggers did their best to assist in the campaign to free Jill Carroll. While not very much, it was action completely contrary to the spin Goodman puts out.

For easy reference, here's my post from mid-March:

Jill Carroll

by Hugh Hewitt

The Christian Science Monitor has updates on the campaign to persuade her kidnappers to free Jill Carroll, including a video of the public service announcement running on Iraqi television.

The Committee to Protect Bloggers is urging that all bloggers link to the site and the public service announcement.

If you have not already done so, please do.

Goodman's dishonesty in her column today reveals that the sin she accuses unnamed bloggers of committing --exploitng Jill Carroll-- is exactly what she is doing.

Hypocritical, but not surprising.

UPDATE: RogerLSimon has more.

From his e-mailed column:

Opening Day: That's what it's all about

By Terry Pluto

Cleveland always has been an Opening Day town, even for Indians fans who don't live anywhere near the city.

For some of us who grew up during the dark decades of Indians baseball, Opening Day was a time to dream. It was a time to walk down the West Third Street Bridge...

I have some friends from out of town who have moved to our area and are sick of stories about going to games down the West Third Street Bridge.

I understand.

That little walk is not a part of their lives, as it is to many of us.

They didn't have a father who would put them on his shoulders, like my dad did. They didn't have the joy of feeling on top of the world as I looked at the vast, never-ending sea of blue that was Lake Erie.

Or the massive old Cleveland Stadium, a baseball palace to me.

Or the old, neon Chief Wahoo sign on the roof of the ballpark. He stood on one leg, holding a bat and spinning around until he seemed ready topple over, much like the teams of our youth.

Or the first sight of the incredibly green grass as you came up the old, concrete stadium ramps and caught first sight of the infield. Remember, this was a black-and-white, three-channel TV world for many of us, which makes the colors of the ballpark so vivid in our memories.

There is no reason for people from out of town to understand this any more than many of us would relate to the passion of sitting in the bleachers at Wrigley Field or paying homage to the Green Monster at Fenway Park. That belongs to Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs fans, and they have been romanticized in movies, novels and countless magazine and newspaper stories.

Being a Cubs or Red Sox fan and reveling in your team's losing long has been chic.

From the outside

To the outside world, being an Indians fan from 1960-93 just seemed stupid.

It's kind of like feeling nostalgic for the era before indoor plumbing. Why would anyone feel like that?

Many of us know better, especially on this day when the Tribe plays its first home game of the season.

Some of us will spend this day thinking of players long gone, names we thought we'd forgotten: Fred Whitfield, Fred Beene, John Lowenstein, Sonny Siebert, Tom Veryzer, Charlie Spikes, Daddy Wags, Sugar Bear Blanks, Super Joe Charboneau.

All this can be set to an old sound track of Herb Score, Jimmy Dudley, Bob Neal and Joe Tait -- those faint baseball voices of our past.

For so many of us, Opening Day is about bad teams and good memories. It's about my aunt, who listened to every baseball game for 50 years -- TV on with the sound down, the radio supplying the details. Aunt Pat never trusted Paul Shuey.

Maybe you had someone like Aunt Pat, an elderly, hardcore fan who hadn't been to a game in 30 years, yet never missed one on television or the radio.

Baseball happening every day often becomes reason enough to help them get through the final days of their lives, when the pain of age and the edge of loneliness can seem unbearable...

At least until the first pitch.

Perhaps you came to the Indians later, or your kids did. It's the Jacobs Field generation. They grew up with a sparkling ballpark, with winning teams, with packed stands and with the Bob Feller statue waiting to welcome them on East Ninth Street.

Read the whole thing. Send it to baseball fans everyhere, but especially to Tribe fans 45 years and older.

Favorite memory: My dad exasperated with Jack Kralick's pace (glacial) and Larry Brown's graciousness to a kid.

First, let me welcome Charles Krauthammer into the "fences and carrots" coalition:

My proposition is the following: a vast number of Americans who oppose legalization and fear new waves of immigration would change their minds if we could radically reduce new -- i.e., future -- illegal immigration.

Forget employer sanctions. Build a barrier. It is simply ridiculous to say it cannot be done. If one fence won't do it, then build a second 100 yards behind it. And then build a road for patrols in between. Put cameras. Put sensors. Put out lots of patrols.

Charles K's proposition is a chapter in my new book, and has been a much debated middle ground in the immigration debate for many years. (Hedgehog was an early enrollee with me in the coalition, but there are many others.)

The Congress of the United States could in fact get such a bill through both chambers and to the president's desk, and be remembered as a Congress that tackled and worked through one of the thorniest of all problems.

But it apparently won't. Because the Senate punted. The Senate "compromise" of yesterday --with its promise of a "process" that will lead to fencing in high traffic areas-- is just another security charade. There is no chance that the Senate bill would prevent the next 11 million from entering.

The legislation needed to put front and center the 700 miles of fencing the House authorized, needed to write "notwithstanding any other law" language to assure that environmental challenges wouldn't hamper construction, and needed to detail an explicit timetable for construction --beginning immediately-- along with construction parameters that assure it isn't a cyclone fence unrolled in an hour but is instead like the 17 miles of barriers that run from the San Diego coast inland: very effective.

Fences work. They aren't symbols of oppression. They are the reality of security.

The Senate needed to confront the rhetoric that would confuse a fence against entry with one prohibiting departure.

It needed to explain to the world, and especially the political left, that we can't be intimidated on our own security by false charges of racism.

In short, it needed to be serious. Instead of compromise, though, we got collapse.

I don't know who killed the fence, or if it can be resurrected, but I sincerely hope the GOP majority kills the compromise dead rather than hope for a rescue from the conference.

And if the Senate insists on this botched bit of patchwork, I hope Chairman Sensennbrenner --"Chairman 'Who'" according to the always gentlemanly Harry Reid, a man who, quite incredibly, is making the defeated Tom Daschle appear stong and principled-- kills it dead and explains to the American people that most of the GOP puts the country's security ahead of political gain.

BTW: Take a look at the results in the Powerline survey. Unscientific, of course, but interesting as a hint of the reality of opinion among the GOP base. (You can vote here, in the right column.)

I am not surprised that John McCain has a tin ear on such matters. But I am surprised the Majority Leader misjudged thematter so completely, and will watch with interest how George Allen votes.

I will be amazed if the the senator from Virginia signs on to the destruction of his presidential hopes.

It wasn't that hard to get right.

But the Senate got it very wrong indeed.

John Mark Reynolds joined me to shed a little light on the big story of the "new" Gospel of Judas, which was denounced as Gnostic heresy in around 129 AD, according to the good professor.

Still, it makes for good television specials.

(And check out the Wheatstone Academy for high school seniors in which professor reynolds is a key instructor.)

Mark Daniels has more on the Judas manuscript. (And an excellent series on Lent as well.)

UPDATE: See also The Recliner Commentaries.

Clues on the "compromise":

Minority Leader Harry Reid, talking to reporters with Mr. Frist at his side, said the proposal "is not perfect, but a big step in the right direction. We're looking like we may be able to dance this afternoon." However, even if Democrats and Republicans in the Senate reach an agreement on the compromise, it still would need to be approved by House Republicans, who are expected to reject it outright. Asked by reporters if Senate leaders had discussed the plan with House Judiciary Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner -- an ardent opponent of anything that smacks of amnesty -- Mr. Reid said dismissively: "Chairman who?" At that, Mr. Frist quickly adjourned the press conference with Mr. Reid.

Majority Leader Frist's blog:

Specifically, the latest bill proposes to:

Border Enforcement Specifics:

*Add nearly 15,000 additional border protection agents to augment the 20,000 Customs and Border Protection agents already on the job
Specifically authorize 1,250 border agents and 1,250 port-of entry inspection agents
*Require Defense Department cooperation on the border, e.g. unmanned drones
*Begin the process of securing every inch of our 1,951 mile border with Mexico by building walls and fences in high traffic areas and using sensors to let our Customs and Border Patrol Agents see and hear those who try and cross through low traffic areas
*Require fingerprint database connectivity between FBI and Border Patrol

Interior Enforcement specifics:

*Increase alien smuggling penalties with a mandatory minimum of 5 years
*Add criminal penalties for various immigration-related document fraud
*Mandate the use of expedited removal for aliens apprehended within 100 miles of the border and 14 days of entry

Employer Enforcement specifics:

*Establish nationwide, mandatory verification program for hiring workers
*Limit the number of acceptable hiring documents with REAL ID standards
*Authorize 2,000 new worksite enforcement agents and 1,000 anti-fraud agents

Sigh. When Hill sources had told me there was a fence, I believed that a real fence was included, but of course this is the promise of a fence. It is just not serious.

Much could be negotiated away in exchange for ewal border security, but this isn't it.

And the bill won't pass.

And those associated with it have damaged their political prospects greatly.

Mark Steyn. Tom DeLay. Christopher Hitchens. Colorado Governor Bill Owens. James Lileks.

All of them discuss the immigration compromise in the Senate.

All will be transcribed at Radioblogger.com.

PowerlineNews is running a poll on the Senate compromise. (It is in the right column.) It isn't "scientific," but it will provide a good sample of center-right reaction. Go take the poll.