Inside Politics

Sham-nesty

Rep. J.D. Hayworth makes clear what’s so “onerous” about White House immigration policy. The Arizona Republican offered a point-by-point deconstruction of an explanation of the policy made by White House spokesman Tony Snow.

“Illegal aliens will have to ‘pay taxes’: That’s no penalty; they’re supposed to pay taxes. In fact, according to Sen. Chuck Grassley, under Bush’s plan illegals would have the option to only have to pay three of their last five years in back taxes,” Mr. Hayworth observed in the National Review Online yesterday.

“They have to ‘keep their nose clean’ : Big deal. So does everybody else.

“They have to get a tamper-proof ID card: Oh, the humanity!

“They’ll have to stay employed: But isn’t that why they came here, to do jobs Americans won’t?

“They’ll have to learn English: That’s a benefit to the illegal.”

Mr. Hayworth continued, “Most of these ‘benchmarks’ would be required of any legal immigrant. They are in no way burdensome, yet Tony Snow makes them sound almost oppressive. The only real punishment on the entire list is the fine. Know what it is? A measly $2,000 payable in two $1,000 installments. When you consider what illegals get for their two grand, it’s the deal of a lifetime.”

He concludes, “The American people see through the White House spin. They know an amnesty when they see it. And the president’s plan is an amnesty.”

Off the deep end

British leftist George Galloway has taken his opposition to the Iraq war to the point of saying that the assassination of British Prime Minister Tony Blair would be “morally justified.”

In an interview with GQ, the men’s fashion magazine asked him: “Would the assassination of, say, Tony Blair by a suicide bomber — if there were no other casualties — be justified as revenge for the war on Iraq?”

Mr. Galloway, a member of Parliament for the Respect party, responded, “Yes, it would be morally justified. I am not calling for it — but if it happened, it would be of a wholly different moral order to the events of 7/7,” referring to the deadly al Qaeda attacks on the London mass-transit system last year.

Mr. Blair’s assassination “would be entirely logical and explicable. And morally equivalent to ordering the deaths of thousands of innocent people in Iraq — as Blair did,” he said.

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