I have never gotten much further on immigration issues than, why in the world is it legal or illegal to live anywhere? Why are people treated as government property? By birth, I am a Missourian - a somewhat arbitrary boundary thing, as all man-made boundaries tend to be. But, I've moved enough times to also have been a Californian, a Washingtonian, and now, a Texan (although they say here on Galveston Island that we are south of Texas, and further, if you are not born on the island, you are not to claim to be from Galveston - something that doesn't bother me, because I'm pretty sure this isn't even my home planet).
I was never illegal in any of those areas. Why should I be illegal if I move somewhere further away? I just think the whole idea is bizarre. Like having a license to be married. What's with that?
Anyway, The KC Blue Blog is calling for Missouri's governor to fire his chief of staff, Ed Martin, for this comment:
"I'll tell you what's available to every developer in order to figure out who's illegal. When there's a bunch of Mexicans out there, there's probably some of them who are not legal."
Racial profiling taken to its logical conclusion, I suppose.
And my choice for inane positions today comes from Rudy Giuliani.
Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani said illegal immigration is not a crime.[...]
"It's not a crime," Giuliani said Friday. "I know that's very hard for people to understand, but it's not a federal crime."
[...]
"I was U.S. attorney in the Southern district of New York," he said. "So believe me, I know this. In fact, when you throw an immigrant out of the country, it's not a criminal proceeding. It's a civil proceeding."
[...]
Illegal immigration shouldn't be a crime, either, Giuliani said: "No, it shouldn't be because the government wouldn't be able to prosecute it. We couldn't prosecute 12 million people.
[...]
He added: "My solution is close the border to illegal immigration."
Close the border to illegal immigration? How do we do that, Rudy? Let me guess. Rudy has stock in fencing material.
And if it's not a crime, why is it called "illegal"? If it's true that it's not a crime, then maybe we need to start talking about this issue in different terms. Telling everybody that Mexican immigrants are illegal when it's not a crime for them to be here is hazing up the issue.
Oh, wait. Let's let Glenn Beck clear up that point.
"It's a misdemeanor, but if you've been nailed, it is a crime." Ahem. I think a misdemeanor is a crime to begin with.
Anyway, levitation and invisibility aren't just for Harry Potter.
Professor Ulf Leonhardt and Dr Thomas Philbin, from the University of St Andrews in Scotland, have worked out a way of reversing [the] pheneomenon known as the Casimir force so that it repels instead of attracts.Their discovery could ultimately lead to frictionless micro-machines with moving parts that levitate But they say that, in principle at least, the same effect could be used to levitate bigger objects too, even a person.
[...]
Prof Leonhardt leads one of four teams - three of them in Britain - to have put forward a theory in a peer-reviewed journal to achieve invisibility by making light waves flow around an object - just as a river flows undisturbed around a smooth rock.
And speaking of marriage...
With liberty and justice....
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
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