THE TENSION: The Decline and Fall of Western Civ for 17 May

The Decline and Fall of Western Civ.: Barbarians have Crashed the Gate

From alien abduction to alien amnesty
It's the end of the world as we know it...

Unable to simply enforce current immigration laws, key senators in both parties announced agreement with the White House Thursday on an immigration overhaul that would grant quick amnesty to millions of illegal aliens already in the U.S., reports The Associated Press and Reuters.

The Washington Post notes, to satisfy Republicans, the bill's provisions would come in force only after the federal government implements tough new border controls and a crackdown on employers that hire illegal immigrants. Republicans are demanding 18,000 new Border Patrol agents, 370 miles of additional border fencing and an effective, electronic employee-verification system for the workplace.

However, South Carolina Sen. Republican Jim DeMint's statement echoed many conservative's feelings on the issue and was linked on The Drudge Report:

"I hope we don't take a thousand page bill written in secret and try to ram it through the Senate in a few days. This is a very important issue for America and we need time to debate it."

"But the little we do know about the bill is troubling. According to reports, the bill contains a new 'Z Visa' that allows those who entered our country illegally to stay here permanently without ever returning home. This rewards people who broke the law with permanent legal status, and puts them ahead of millions of law-abiding immigrants waiting to come to America. I don't care how you try to spin it, this is amnesty."
On the issue of illegal immigrants, Selwyn Duke, writing at the SmallGovTimes.com sarcastically says, "Western civilization has become old, tired and decrepit; it’s a mere shadow of its former self, running on fumes and on empty. Perhaps its time for it to be euthanized." He says we should be outraged by the pandering to the illegal alien lobby, and further, that the three most important factors in immigration policy are deportation, deportation and deportation. Still, to focus our eyes narrowly on just illegal immigration is to lament only the salt thrown into the wound while accepting the wound itself. Illegal immigration is not the problem. It’s an exacerbation of the problem.

More from The Associated Press; Reuters.

While many liberals would have us mistakenly believe the U.S. is the most loathed nation on the planet, The New York Times points out immigration to America has caused for the first time the number of nonwhite Americans to move above the 100 million mark; demographers are identifying an emerging racial generation gap.

The Times, however, goes on, trying to make white Americans feel guilty, stating that the development may portend a nation split between an older, whiter electorate and a younger overall population that is more Hispanic, black and Asian and that presses sometimes competing agendas and priorities.

“There’s a fairly large homogeneous population 60 and older that may not be sympathetic to the needs of a diverse youthful population,” Dr. Mather said.
With Democrats holding both houses of Congress and the rise in minority population, perhaps it is time conservatives realize they are also now a minority and start acting like it.

Speaking of the majority party, who are the ones actually acting like a minority, The Politico reports Congressional Democrats are wielding a heavy hand on the House Rules Committee, committing many of the procedural sins for which they condemned Republicans during their 12 years in power.

"The Democrats have not made good on a single promise they made during 2006, especially when it comes to fostering a more open and deliberative House of Representatives," Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said. "Instead of making the House more open and deliberative, they've gone in the opposite direction, doing things we never even contemplated during our time in the majority."

Not satisfied with all the attention his crisis mongering has brought, former VP Al Gore writes of yet another crisis in his new book, "American democracy is now in danger." And this time it isn't from climate change. Rather, Gore says, America is is in danger from the "marketplace of ideas."

The former VP stumbles around his thesis, citing various polls and demographics to back his argument. In the end, Gore, like so many of us, simply misses that which is clearly right in front of us: An ideological template applied by the mass media shapes rather than reflects the public consciousness.

Reuters reports bullet analysis used to justify the lone assassin theory behind President John F. Kennedy's assassination is based on flawed evidence, according to a team of researchers including a former top FBI scientist.

A nude car wash offering an X-rated sideshow and topless cleaning in Australia's tropical Queensland state has been given the all-clear after police and officials said they were powerless to scrub it, according to Reuters.