KLo at The Corner has up a press release covering the new immigration bill that John McCain is pushing. The basic point? This bill pursues the enforcement-first strategy. In fact, unless I'm missing something, this is a bill that purely deals with enforcement.

While I am a supporter of comprehensive immigration reform, as a general strategy (if not quite in the form that the Senate came up with after tons and tons of amendments to the recent bill), I'm glad to see McCain (and Kyl, and Sessions, and Graham, and Cornyn) take this approach and here's why.

This bill does a great deal to step up security on the border and deal with the issue of deporting law-breaking illegals (by which I mean illegal immigrants who come here and then break laws-- I don't use Pat Buchanan definitions, as a general rule). For example, if the press release is to be believed anyway, the bill "requires hiring of 14,000 new Border Patrol Agents to secure the borders," "mandates construction of 700 miles of fence, 300 miles of vehicle barriers, 105 ground-based radars, and four unmanned aerial vehicles. Requires 45,000 detention beds," "contains a “Catch and Return” provision requiring DHS to detain illegal border crossers," "makes gang members inadmissible and deportable," and "mandates an electronic employment verification system to end hiring of unlawful aliens"-- among other things. As a side note, a large part of why I believe the bill does all of this, and more, and is going to be a tough secure and enforce type bill, is because Jeff Sessions' name on it.

Now, I don't agree with Jeff Sessions very often. And actually I've never been thoroughly convinced that securing the border is a 100% feasible solution (but hey, we'll set that aside for the moment). And that's exactly the point. There are tons of people in this country, who agree with Jef...

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According to the WaPo, Democrats have come up with a compromise, aimed at allowing the administration to continue its supposedly high value eavesdropping-- crap, did it again, I mean surveillance-- program.

The proposal, according to House and Senate Democrats, would permit a secret court to issue broad orders approving eavesdropping of communications involving suspects overseas and other people, who may be in the United States. That order would not be linked to an individual target but, rather, would be based on guidelines that detail how the government determined whether a target is overseas. The plan would have to be revisited by Congress in six months.

[...]

A Democratic aide familiar with the negotiations said that if communications are determined to involve U.S. persons, then their names would be removed before any transcript is disseminated unless they were relevant to a foreign terrorism investigation.

If further investigation were needed, "individualized warrants for Americans" would be required, according to a proposal by conservative House Democrats led by Reps. Robert E. "Bud" Cramer (Ala.) and Jane Harman (Calif.). It is unclear what would specifically trigger that requirement.

I'm inclined to think this compromise sounds fair. Yes, from what I can tell, it's not absolutely perfect-- amongst other things, before anyone signs off on this, they'd better figure out just what triggers the requirement for individualized warrants for Americans, and it better not be some gut feeling on Michael Chertoff's part, or that someone checked the Koran out of their local library, or whatever.

But, it's a darned sight better than the Attorney General making a decision, all on his own, to authorize wiretapping (which from what the Post says, sounds like it was the administration's preferred option). A...

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How fricking stupid is this?

The new rules, which were proposed by the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting, would require any group of two or more people who want to use a camera in a public place for more than 30 minutes to get a city permit and $1 million in liability insurance. The same requirements would apply to any group of five or more people who plan to use a tripod in a public location for more than 10 minutes, including the time it takes to set up the equipment. The permits would be free.

City officials said they would decide after next Friday whether to adopt the rules as they are, amend them or draft new rules and reopen the public review process.

To boot, the way the "rules" are drafted, they could actually apply to amateur still photographers, as well as those making films.

Welcome to hell, everyone. Oh, and be sure not to display too much public disgruntlement about it, because Bloomberg is filming you. Nanny-stateism indeed...

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