Those are all good points, but he says nothing about refusing amnesty or anything smacking of amnesty. I’d like to hear someone saying no amnesty ever to those who force their way in. If it proves we can’t get them to leave, that’s still no reason to grant them any benefits of citizenship, even should they live here until a ripe old age. They’ll still be free to go home anytime. If an amnesty plan does get enacted, then all those currently termed illegal are magically transformed into legal ‘guest-workers’, and most of them put on an express lane to citizenship. That sidesteps all except Lalor’s second point, and that is only as good as we make the border secure.

I don’t doubt Lalor has his head in the right place right now and is saying all the right things, but I would like to hear him say unequivocally no to amnesty also. Might he entertain amnesty later as a means of fulfilling a campaign promise (as so many others have done). Might he be avoiding any mention of amnesty because he recognizes its value as an escape hatch. After all, there is a certain perverse logic to amnesty that to some Republicans seems to answer a need, because it really is unpleasant turning desperate people away even when they rob someone else to get here. That’s not just a matter of pandering to the left, it is a real struggle of conscience; and the amnesty lobby is very good at attacking us where we live – in our consciences. Or, he may be parsing his language because, if too harsh, he’d never get elected and could, then, get nothing accomplished. Perfectly sound campaign logic, but it means we don’t get to know him as well as we’d like.

4-8 years in Washington awash in liberal voices and you genuinely begin to question deeply held convictions (and your sanity). So, the question is not whether he believes this now, it is whether those convictions are strong enough those voice won’t erode him and drown him out until he sees no other way. I’ve seen a lot of good men go down to Washington, with a lot of them deflated. Later, we rail at them as phonies and worse, but they aren’t. They are just men beating their gums against the same old mush until it all tastes pretty much the same. It takes a very tough sort to stick to his guns there.

Still, I’d vote for him if he were running in my district. He’ll be a good fighter for a term or two at worst, and a lot better than anyone who has been there that long. I wish him all the best.

It it my belief that 9/11 was in major part blowback for an unwelcome US presence in the MidEast. This is well documented going back to our installation of a puppet leader in Iran in the 50s. Then, Reagan funded Osama bin Laden in the 80s. Al Qaeda’s hatred of us came not from anything the American people did, it was because our government stationed troops in bin Laden’s “holy land” – this according to Al Qaeda’s leader.

Today, it’s time to regroup our military strength to prepare for our physical security here – not to pursue the security of our access to oil abroad. The decision to invade Iraq was pure triangulation of the 9/11 tragedy, orchestrated by the White House Iraq Team: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and Powell.

While we can win the Iraq conflict, it comes at a terribly high cost. Thousands of American GIs dead, many more injured or disfigured, and over a hundreds thousand more serving long lonely tours, including my brother Mike who is there as I write this. Let’s ask Mr. Lalor what the dollar amount price tag for this war will be and how it will affect our children for generations – if he even knows.

Our national debt has been doubled by the current administration and is nowhere among Mr. Lalor’s “negatives”? How much longer will we push this discussion under the rug? This is the typical Reagan Conservative, putting a happy face on one side of the balance sheet while ignoring the other. A Goldwater Conservative might say – when and how are we going to repay the national debt?

We also share our own responsibility for the immigration situation. Immigration enforcement is a federal responsibility and nothing has been done since 2000 to stem the physical flow. But in each of our neighborhoods, including Mr. Lalor’s hometown of Peekskill, we pocket savings almost on a daily basis coming from cheap immigrant labor, whether it’s landscapers, day laborers in construction, childcare, restaurants or even the largest factories. For example, Tyson Foods, one of the largest poultry operations in the US employed about 50% of it’s workforce illegally before being caught. How many Americans ate chicken on the cheap during these years?

Surely, if we did not hire undocumented workers they wouldn’t be coming in these numbers. The feds do not have the resources to hunt and deport 11 million, nor can they easily patrol our enormous borders – these are empty campaign promises that cannot be put into practice. But if all US citizens insisted on “buying American”, we would protect not only our borders but our economic security. The demand for cheap immigrant labor is why they are here – the border patrols have always been the same.

In summary, I always thought Conservatism was ties to sound ethics. I don’t see how interventionist foreign policies with black bag operations tie in with any kind of moral ethos, Christian or otherwise. I don’t see how handing enormous financial obligations to our children can be considered sound political or ethical practice – yet this is what we are doing.

Especially as “intellectuals”, we must take a demanding look at our own history and current philosophies for governing. Lalor’s stump promises sound as if he is hoping for the opposite – that NY voters will vote with their emotions – namely fear and anger.