Lipstick on a Pig

Let me get this straight.

A bill, drafted by the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, included language that would make it a felony for a foreign national to be in the United States without a valid visa.

This bill passed the House in December where the Republicans hold the majority, and regularly exercise assertive, even manipulative, control over the legislative process.

House Republicans are regularly quoted in the media making alarmist, rabid and quasi-racist statements on immigration, and even Senate Republicans think they might have gone too far.

But now, after the House bill has brought hundreds and hundreds of thousands to the streets in protest, and gotten mild-mannered Catholic priests talking about breaking the law, somehow the problems with this bill are the Democrats' fault?

WASHINGTON — Republican leaders in the House and the Senate called Tuesday for removing a provision in the House-passed immigration bill that would make it a felony for a foreign national to be in the United States without a valid visa and blamed Democrats for the inclusion of the controversial language.

How? Well, after the (Republican) Chairman of the Judiciary Committee introduced a bill with the felony language, the (Republican) Bush administration got worried that dealing with 11 million felons might be a strain on the court system, and asked him to tone it down. So, the drafter of the bill, Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), introduced an amendment to change it from a felony to a misdemeanor.The rest of the bill would have stayed the same.

Here is where those evil obstructionist Democrats get involved. They seemed to think that, even if you put lipstick on it, it was still a pig, and they voted against the amendment. So the bill stayed the way the Republican drafter had introduced it.

But wait. Aren't the Democrats in the minority? Why, yes. So how was it that their voting against the amendment caused it to fail?

Here's the trick: 65 Republicans voted against it also! (Perhaps they didn't want their righteous pig all tarted up with whorish face-paint, finding it beautiful as it was.)

So, despite the fact that their President wanted the change, 65 House Republicans voted to keep the felony language intact.

And then, because the Democrats are a minority, the bill with the felony language in it passed the House on a Republican majority vote.

Meaning that the Republican leadership of the House brought the bill to a vote, despite White House concerns about it. They let their fellow Republicans know that it was OK to vote with the extremist 65 Republicans, and they all decided together as Republicans that making 11 million people felons was good and proper lawmaking, and passed the bill.

Obviously, it was the Democrats' fault. Blame them.