(Cross-posted, in slightly different format, at Daily Kos.)

Sure, fine, okay-- global warming exists after all... but only to the extent that it's one more thing we can blame on the immigrants.

Such is the fascinating scholarship now offered to us by the brilliant minds at the Center for Immigration Studies.

Luckily, we have America's Voice-- a group I've had the pleasure of working with, a group doing everything it can to combat this inanity and work toward the sort of sensible, humane, comprehensive policy that American citizens have been calling out for.

In my first diary here about America's Voice, I wrote about the group's name. Then I wrote about one particularly odious band of racists who oppose our agenda...

There's more...

(Cross-posted on Daily Kos)

Last week I was here talking about America's Voice, with whom I'm working to  foster a dialogue about a sensible and humane immigration policy that works for everyone.

We got a pretty good discussion going in the comment thread, but it would have been great to get more perspectives involved.

Here's the thing: there are people who make the topic uncomfortable for civilized discourse because they speak with a snarl when they discuss immigration. They are bullies: they love nothing more than to shout louder than the next person to convince themselves they've won an argument. They speak as though there were something wrong with the people who come here to improve their lives and contribute to the wonderful tapestry of cultures that is modern American society. They've got their opinions, and they've got their anecdotes, and most importantly they've got their fear.

There's more...

(Cross-posted on Daily Kos)

Remember the 1990's? Those long-gone days when everybody had an opinion about both Clintons; when a coterie of right-wing media outlets splatter-blasted their centrally-determined talking points all over television and radio to rail against a fictive, ubiquitous "liberal media"; and when everybody had a next-door neighbor who would descend into hysterics at the mere mention of immigration?

Oh, that's right. Today is September 11-- the very day on which Gee-Dubya Bush believes the universe we live in fundamentally changed, 7 years ago-- and yet today also feels like Bill Murray's Groundhog Day in the sense that nothing ever changes. Our daily lives are still awash in a white noise sea of opinion-mongering vis-a-vis that fictive librull media and that inexorable topic of immigration.

But in the 1990's, the ascendant right-wing television outlet was called National Empowerment Television, and its slogan was "America's Voice". NET folded in '97, and it's beside the point to mention what rose out of its ashes...

There's more...