Blue Crab Boulevard

Rasmussen Reports analyzes why the illegal immigration "reform" bill failed. If you have been reading here for any length of time and read Rasmussen, you'll feel your lips moving.

Elite newspapers and countless bloggers are writing their own explanations of why the compromise immigration legislation failed last night. Most of the write-ups discuss legislative tactics, an amendment offered by Senator Byron Dorgan (D), or some particular provision of the bill dealing with amnesty or guest workers.

The reality is much simpler and has nothing to do with legislative tactics. The immigration bill failed because a broad cross-section of the American people are opposed to it. Republicans, Democrats, and unaffiliated voters are opposed. Men are opposed. So are women. The young don’t like it; neither do the no-longer-young. White Americans are opposed. Americans of color are opposed.

The last Rasmussen Reports national telephone poll found that just 23% of Americans supported the legislation. When a bill has less popular support than the War in Iraq, it deserves to be defeated.

There is no mystery to why the public opposed the bill. In the minds of most Americans, immigration means reducing illegal immigration and enforcing the border. Only 16% believed the Senate bill would accomplish that goal.

It wasn’t amnesty or guest-worker programs or paths to citizenship that doomed the bill. Each of those provisions made it more difficult for some segments of the population to accept. However, most voters were willing to accept them as part of a true compromise that accomplished the primary goal of reducing illegal immigration.

The key to winning voter support was to accomplish that primary goal.

The Senators missed that point and that’s where the mystery resides in analyzing why this bill failed. It’s not unusual for political leaders to be out of touch with their constituents, but rarely this out of touch. How could something this unpopular with voters get so close to passage in a legislative body that is supposed to represent them?

From the beginning, the Senate approached the issue with top priority of addressing the legal status of the illegal aliens. They addressed concerns about guest-worker programs and questions about whether family or skill level should be more important when determining who could enter the country.

All of those are important questions, but they are not the most important question. Rasmussen Reports polling found that 72% of Americans believe it’s Very Important to reduce illegal immigration and enforce the borders. Just 29% said it was Very Important to legalize the status of those illegally living in the country today.

After ignoring the main point that voters were hoping to address, Senators should not have been shocked at the public reaction. But they were.

(Maybe because they are seriously in love with the sound of their own voices - which tends to drown out the voices of the people who sent them to Congress? Just guessing.) *Sigh*. They never listen. Ok, there are super-whamadyne, uber-guru political operatives who are paid big bucks for this, but I'll do it - again - for free. If you really want this fixed, fix the border issue first. Peel the border security off into a separate companion bill with serious poison pills that preclude undermining it with other legislation. Then pass the damned compromise. If the border is fixed, the rest can be dealt with. But the border is the damned key. Since you never listen to me, try listening to what Rasmussen just told you.

Because it is the same thing: BORDER FIRST. Everything else can then be dealt with.

Oh, you think we're making this up, don't you? Nope. It's absolutely true and the Hawaiian media - well that which hasn't been eaten yet, at any rate - is in hysterics over it.

A pest with a nasty sting has turned up at a nursery on Oahu, state agriculture officials said.

The stinging nettle caterpillar first turned up in Hilo in 2001, officials said. It came through an illegal shipment of seedlings from Taiwan, according to officials.

The problem has not been completely wiped out on the Big Island. Complaints are now coming in from home gardeners, officials said.

The major problem with the caterpillars is not so much the effect on plants, but on people.

"If you rub against the caterpillar, it has a very strong burn and that's why they called it the stinging caterpillar or nettle caterpillar, and it can burn for a few hours," said Neil Rheimer of the state Department of Agriculture.

State officials want to avoid alien species like these from gaining a hold in the islands.

Yeah, that Klingon infestation a few years back was really nasty. You have to spray repeatedly to get them to move along. (Video report here.)

Paris Hilton. The mainstream media. Don Henley says it all. Enough said.

Space shuttle Atlantis has launched perfectly from Cape Canaveral starting STS-117. NASA TV is running launch replays (nasa.gov). I have no idea how long that will go on.

Godspeed, Atlantis.

You almost have to read this twice before the absurdity actually hits you. It seems the the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has come down foursquare against cane toad golf. An Australian city, Townsville, had produced some tongue-in-cheek slogans for promoting the city about the most fun things to do while visiting. 

Animal welfare groups are outraged by an Australian city that has advocated the sport of "cane toad golf" - beating to death the country's most notorious pest with golf clubs, cricket bats or anything else that comes to hand.

The RSPCA has condemned Townsville, in Queensland, for encouraging cruelty to the toads, which were introduced to Australia 70 years ago to prey on sugar cane beetles.

To promote civic pride in the city, a gateway to the Great Barrier Reef, the council has produced a list of the best activities the city has to offer.

On promotional beer coolers, it ranked "cane toad golf" alongside eating mud crab sandwiches, encountering saltwater crocodiles on the local beach and "bagging a barra" - catching a wild barramundi fish.

Michael Beattie, a RSPCA spokesman, said that encouraging cruelty was "irresponsible".

"We accept that cane toads are a menace and they need to be eradicated. However, hitting them with golf clubs is inhumane and ineffective."

Read that last line again. Now, look, I wouldn't advocate playing cane toad golf, but I really have a hard time seeing this as anything but trying to be funny. Cane toads are basically killing every other living thing on the continent at this point and the Aussies are having to organize clubbing parties as it is. But for the RSPCA to say they must be eradicated then turn around and waste their credibility by denouncing what is a rather obvious joke is kind of silly.

Besides, everyone knows golf clubs don't work. Cane toad baseball is the way to go. Louisville Sluggers, baby. (Oh, darn, now I've gone and upset them, haven't I?)

Ok, we had no idea that following right on the heels of news that British police were worried about werewolves would there come an article about British vampires running riot through the countryside. But here it is. Worst of all, they had this low-grade Count Dracula in custody and lost him.

A dangerous blood-drinking mental patient dubbed 'The Vampire' sparked a 12-hour siege in a grandmother's house after escaping from carers during a swimming trip.

Mark Mawson, 40, was serving a life sentence for attempted murder when he ran away from staff at his medium security hospital and caught a taxi to the home of his former girlfriend's mother.

Armed police cleared nearby houses after he was spotting waving a weapon and had to disable him with a plastic bullet before storming the building.

Mawson was detained indefinitely in the 1990s after breaking into an elderly woman's home and almost battering her to death before drinking her blood.

It was in February this year that he escaped from staff at Chadwick Lodge Hospital in Milton Keynes who had taken him to a pool on the premises, which is reached by crossing a public road.

The facility has been repeatedly rocked by scandals involving violent offenders escaping while on shopping trips.

Mawson's criminal history?

It was in 1992 that Mawson broke into the north London home of 62-year-old Alison Da Costa.

After launching a brutal attack he drank blood from her gaping head wounds.

He was detained indefinitely and is said to have had a relationship with former nurse Beverly Allitt while at the high security unit at Rampton, Nottinghamshire.

Allitt, known as the Angel of Death, is Britain's worst lone female serious killer who was given 13 life sentences in 1993 for killing four babies and attacking nine others at Grantham Hospital in Lincolshire.

In April last year, Mawson was arrested following a siege at a secure unit in North Benfleet, Essex. He was subsequently moved to Chadwick Lodge where, it emerged, he was regularly escorted to the pool.

Look, I know I slap the Brits around quite a bit over some of their silliness, but folks over there should be going freaking nuts over this. Why was this man in a "medium security hospital" and not a maximum security lockup? This is the kind of protection the British government gives to its citizens?

Bob Hayden, one of the men who subdued two unruly passengers on a Minneapolis to Boston flight is profiled in the Hingham, Massachusetts Journal. More details about the incident are in this article than were in the wire service reports.

Bob assisted the flight attendants with subduing and handcuffing two out-of-control passengers, while Katie remained calm and did not blink an eye.

As the flight was ready to take off one of the two men – whom the couple described as of Pilipino extraction – became highly agitated but was coaxed back to his seat, Bob says. The plane took off as planned; but about 15 minutes into the air, one of the men jumped out and laid down in the aisle while the other man stood over him yelling. At one point one of the men opened the overhead compartment and threw a suitcase on the floor.

The flight attendants spent most of the flight trying to calm them down, he said. In the meantime, Bob did not sit back during the flight and hope for the best. He used the time to confer with the flight attendants, explaining he was a retired Boston police officer and former Lawrence Chief of Police. He also walked up and down the aisle observing other passengers. He was concerned the men’s erratic behavior might have been planned as a distraction, and could potentially be part of a plan for a larger incident.

Things got really “hairy” when the pilot announced the approach into Logan, Bob said. One of the men again jumped up and the other one started yelling. Bob said he then asked the man sitting across the aisle, who turned out to be a retired Marine, for help.

“The flight attendant waived the handcuffs (plastic ties), which was the signal we had agreed on and the Marine and I subdued both men; I cuffed one while he was on the ground,” Bob recalls. The men causing the disturbance were belted tightly into their seats and Bob and the Marine sat next to them until, after the flight landed, the State Police arrived and took them off the plane.

Thanks to Scott at Powerline for finding this relatively obscure article. As Scott points out, it seems odd that the major media has completely lost interest in this incident and is not following up on anything about it. What is the disposition on the two men taken off the plane? Was this just a mental problem? People actually would like to know about this kind of thing.

Well, it seems that the initial report that AFP released about Mark McGowan and his insatiable craving for corgi dog flesh was just a tad of a wee bit incorrect. They reported that McGowan had - excuse the expression - chowed down on the dog, live on a British radio program. They also reported that Yoko Ono was there as well. This turns out to be completely false. She was not there, nor did she taste any of the dog.

LONDON (AFP) - In a dispatch sent on May 29, Agence France Presse wrote that Yoko Ono, the widow of ex-Beatle John Lennon, was present on a radio show where a British artist and animal rights activist ate a corgi dog in protest after a group, including Queen Elizabeth II's husband Prince Philip, allegedly killed a fox earlier this year.

Ms Ono was not present and did not take part in the show. AFP has sent a letter to Ms Ono to apologise for any distress this may have caused her.

This, of course, means that McGowan was lying when he said Ono had sampled his feast, as he is quoted as saying in the original story. Perhaps his foray into mashed potato land is also less than truthful? One can never be sure. (We're waiting for the other shoe to drop and the revelation that the corgi was actually a Big Mac with extra cheese.) But nonetheless, we can predict one thing: Mr. McGowan will now be suffering from a very severe case of "Obscure Performance Artist Media Blackout Syndrome" in which he will not be able to buy the attention of a reporter. No matter how many potatoes are involved.

The space shuttle Atlantis is set to launch today at 7:38 pm, EDT. At this point, all systems are go and everything looks favorable for the launch.

Commanded by veteran spaceflyer Rick Sturckow, Atlantis' STS-117 crew is set to rocket spaceward at 7:38 p.m. EDT (2338 GMT) from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida after months of delay.

"This crew is very excited," Sturckow said this week of the planned space shot. "We've spent a long time training for this mission."

Sturckow and his STS-117 crewmates will deliver a pair of massive, girder-like truss segments and new solar wings to the starboard side of the ISS during their planned 11-day mission.

Joining Sturckow aboard Atlantis will be shuttle pilot Lee Archambault and mission specialists Patrick Forrester, Steven Swanson, Danny Olivas, James Reilly and Clayton Anderson. A late addition to the STS-117 mission, Anderson will stay aboard ISS to relieve NASA spaceflyer Sunita Williams as a member of the outpost's Expedition 15 crew.

Weather forecasts predict an 80 percent chance of favorable conditions at liftoff today, though mission managers will keep a close watch for afternoon thunderstorms anticipated around Atlantis' Pad 39A launch site, Kathy Winters, NASA's shuttle weather officer, has said.

I'll be keeping an eye on this - as usual.

Dan Balz of the Washington Post does his level best to frame the narrative of how the immigration "reform" bill collapsed. Sometimes you wonder who they are trying to convince, the public or themselves.

The collapse of comprehensive immigration revision in the Senate last night represents a political defeat for President Bush, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), the bill's most prominent sponsors. More significantly, it represents a scathing indictment of the political culture of Washington.

The defeat of the legislation can be laid at the doorstep of opponents on the right and left, on congressional leaders who couldn't move their troops and on an increasingly weakened president and his White House team. But together it added up to another example of a polarized political system in which the center could not hold.

The partisan blame game was already at fever pitch as the bill was going down yesterday. But to those far removed from the backrooms of Capitol Hill, what happened will fuel cynicism toward a political system that appears incapable of finding ways to resolve the nation's big challenges.

If Washington cannot produce a solution to the glaring problem of immigration, they will ask, what hope is there for progress on health care, energy independence, or the financial challenges facing Medicare and Social Security? Iraq is another matter entirely.

Voters wanted an immigration deal, Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) acknowledged as he pulled the measure after 9 last night: "The problem was on the inside of this Senate chamber."

And right there, we have a glaring misstatement of fact. Every poll I have seen says that voters want the illegal immigration problems fixed - but by no means did they favor this "deal". More than 2/3 of the citizens of this country want the borders secured first. It is really that simple - and that complicated. Was there a collapse of leadership? Of course there was. Reid did a miserable job of keeping his troops in line - it was a Democrat who managed to insert an amendment that required a sunset on the guest worker program. And even Trent Lott acknowledged yesterday that Bush's attacks on conservatives last week were not helpful. But the voters did not want the deal that was being forged in the Senate. People were very, very angry at this bill and they let their Senators know it. 

Again, and I will keep on repeating this, if the border is secured first, every, single other issue can be dealt with. We need that taken care of first.