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Fred Thompson Is In
Tweet Share on Facebook May 31, 2007 CommentThat's what Stephen Hayes is reporting in the Weekly Standard and Mike Allen in Politico. Last night I attended an off-the-record American Spectator dinner with Thompson and his wife, Jeri; George Will and Robert Novak were also there. I'm not supposed to say what was said there, but nothing I heard inclined me to think that Hayes and Allen have gotten it wrong. Thompson's exploratory committee will go into action June 4, collecting money and hiring staffers.
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Yet More on Immigration
Tweet Share on Facebook May 29, 2007 CommentHere is my U.S. News column this week, with my latest thoughts on immigration. Blogging will be infrequent in the days ahead, because I'm crashing on completing my manuscript for The Almanac of American Politics 2008.
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Immigration Enforcement: You Need to Mean It
Tweet Share on Facebook May 23, 2007 CommentThe Senate voted yesterday to keep the guest-worker provisions in the Kennedy-Kyl immigration bill. I think everyone who wants to pass something like this legislation should pay close attention to this analysis by pollster Scott Rasmussen. Key paragraphs:
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Digesting the Immigration Bill
Tweet Share on Facebook May 22, 2007 CommentSenate Majority Leader Harry Reid has wisely postponed any vote on the Kyl-Kennedy immigration bill until after the Memorial Day recess. This gives everyone time to examine the details of the legislation closely and to recommend changes, some of which may alter the thrust of the bill but others of which may simply make its provisions work more effectively.
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Scrutinizing the Immigration Bill
Tweet Share on Facebook May 21, 2007 Comment (1)My Creators Syndicate column this week is on immigration. I tend to support the approach taken in the compromise bill hammered out by Jon Kyl and Edward Kennedy, which in many ways should be more appealing to conservatives than the bill the Republican-majority Senate passed a year ago next week.
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The Immigration Bill
Tweet Share on Facebook May 18, 2007 CommentIt's going to be fascinating to watch the progress, or lack of progress, of the immigration compromise hammered out by Sens. Edward Kennedy and Jon Kyl. They're an interesting pair of partners. The first bill that Kennedy floor-managed as a senator was the immigration act of 1965, some 42 years ago. Last year, he and John McCain worked out the details of the bill that passed the Senate on May 25 by a 62-to-36 margin. That was described as a "comprehensive" bill, with border security, guest-worker, and legalization provisions. It was vocally opposed as "amnesty" by many on the right. Kyl voted against it. What Kennedy and Kyl appear to have agreed on--there's no text available yet, as far as I know--answers some of the objections on the right. Guest workers will be limited to two years and will then have to return to their country of origin for one year before they can come back for another two-year stint. Family reunification will be limited, at least in some circumstances, to the immediate family--no aunts, uncles, cousins, or grandparents. There are trigger provisions that keep the legalization sections from coming into effect until border security is improved in certain ways. And illegal heads of household would have to return to their country of origin--"touchback"--and pay a $5,000 fine before they could receive legal status.
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The Republicans Debate
Tweet Share on Facebook May 16, 2007 CommentI share the widespread view that Rudy Giuliani and John McCain helped themselves in the Fox News debate last night. For links to many comments, see Real Clear Politics.
Both Giuliani and McCain, in different ways, defended themselves ably on stands where they differ from the Republican base. Increasingly, those stands don't look like disqualifiers. Republican voters in this cycle, like Democratic voters in the 2004 cycle, seem worried that their nominee will lose and are willing to accept a candidate they disagree with on some important issues if he seems to have electability.
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Soak the Rich, and What Do You Get?
Tweet Share on Facebook May 14, 2007 CommentNot so much, argues the Urban Institute's Gene Steuerle in this E-mail.
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On Novak's Book and Colombia
Tweet Share on Facebook May 10, 2007 CommentMay 12 is the 50th anniversary of Robert Novak's arrival in Washington to work as a reporter for the Associated Press. He's had an amazing career, which he's chronicled in a fascinating autobiography called, inevitably, The Prince of Darkness: 50 Years of Reporting in Washington. I've read an advance copy, and it's a terrific book, full of fascinating revelations. The book, like Novak's columns over the years, alternately infuriated and delighted me. It's also an excellent lens to examine the past 50 years of political history, like three other books on longtime Washington journalists, Robert Merry's Taking on the World: Joseph and Stewart Alsop, Guardians of the American Century, and Ronald Steel's Walter Lippmann and the American Century, and Katharine Graham's Personal History.
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The Numbers Behind America's Population Shift
Tweet Share on Facebook May 9, 2007 Comment (1)There are not too many days when I can go out on my front step and pick up two newspapers with articles by me in them. Today was one of those days. Here's my Creators Syndicate column, as published in the Washington Times. Basic thesis: Our politicians are champing at the bit to do something about global warming, despite the fact that we don't know with any precision what the likely bad effects are, while they (Republicans as well as Democrats) are determined not to do anything about Social Security, though we know with unusual precision what the bad effects are.
And here's my article on the opinion page of the Wall Street Journal article, "The Realignment of America." It's based on an examination of the 2000 census results and the 2006 Census Bureau estimates of the population of metropolitan areas, with special attention to the census figures showing "net internal migration," which I refer to as domestic inflow or domestic outflow, and "immigration migration," which I refer to as immigrant inflow (actually, there's a microscopic immigrant outflow in one metro area, Norfolk, which I suspect has something to do with the large number of military installations there). I divide the 50 metro areas with more than 1 million population (in 2006) into four categories: Coastal Megalopolises, with big domestic outflow and big immigrant inflow; Interior Boomtowns, with big domestic inflow and smaller but significant immigrant inflow; Rust Belt, with small domestic outflow and negligible immigrant inflow; and Static Cities, with little domestic inflow or outflow and small immigrant inflow. Two metro areas fit into none of these categories: New Orleans and Salt Lake City.
I've been asked to provide the underlying data. Here it is; please notify me if I have made any mistakes in my arithmetic (sometimes I tote up these numbers late at night). The numbers are as follows: 2006 population, 2000 population, percentage growth 2000-06, natural increase (number of births minus number of deaths) as percentage of 2000 population, domestic inflow or outflow, domestic inflow or outflow as percentage of 2000 population, immigrant inflow, immigrant inflow as percentage of 2000 population. The minus and plus figures after 0.5 indicate whether you should round these up or down if you want to express the percentages as integers.
I also calculated the percentages for George W. Bush and John Kerry in 2004 for each of these metro areas and totaled up the groups. Here, to make things easier, I round off the election results to the nearest thousand, so the numbers reported here are slightly off-but almost never enough to make a difference in whole percentages for Bush or Kerry. The figures below show the Bush vote total, the Bush percentage, the Kerry vote total, the Kerry percentage and the total number of votes cast. The numbers let you see some interesting things. The Static Cities as a whole went 52 percent for Kerry. But almost all of the popular vote margin for Kerry came in the largest of those cities, Philadelphia. Among the others it was a wash.
A Couple of Small Items
Here's an E-mail exchange between me and Jeb Babbin. And, as a follow-up to my blogpost on the French elections, here, for those political junkies who would like to know which communes were bellwethers and which voted 100 percent for one of the candidates in the French election, it's all here in Figaro.
