Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer don't agree about Condoleezza Rice. I'm not surprised that Boxer is the one objecting because Boxer will mindlessly object to anything that comes from the other side of the aisle. While Feinstein votes in step with her party 85-90% of the time, Boxer votes right down the party line 98% of the time. Makes it seem like Boxer cannot think for herself.

Last night I heard a radio show talking about Pres. Bush's idea to grant amnesty to all illegal aliens.

When people talk about illegals or protecting the borders, I usually take their comments with a grain of salt because I think a lot is prompted by prejudice.

But I think the nature of illegal immigration has changed in recent history, and we need to make changes to U.S. policies.

For a long time, when people in California said "illegal aliens" they were talking about people who had sneaked over the border from Mexico and the issues were just about whether they were taking jobs away or bogging down the welfare rolls. Truth is, neither of those issues ever got me very bothered.

Today, however, I think illegal immigration has become much more organized. Russian mafia has made for more American crime. Asian sex traffickers bring over young women enslaved as prostitutes. Even illegal immigration from Mexico has changed as the Mexican border has become the main avenue for drug trafficking into the U.S.

We need to be more organized, too.

I think the first thing we need to do is counter-intuitive. We need to make it easier to come into the country legally. A lot of people are working here illegally because it is next to impossible to get permission to work in the U.S. and the process takes years. I think that was intentional in the past. It was like an unwritten waiting period so if someone caused trouble before the process was complete we have an easy remedy; we deport them. But a system that difficult forces people to break the law if they want to be productive members of society. And unresponsive disorganization is a poor excuse for a screening process.

That brings me to the second thing we need, which is a decent screening process. Something that will prevent someone else from coming into the country illegally, signing up for flight school in Florida and piloting a plane into a New York skyscraper. I couldn't even start to say how we would screen people, and I doubt there is an easy method, but it has to be done.

Once we have a simplified process that doesn't encourage people to break the law, and we have a decent screening process in place (assuming those aren't mutually exclusive), we need a better way of enforcing our immigration laws. There are all kinds of problems with the current enforcement. The worst I've seen are documented here.

Currently, I don't think we can force people to only come through the proper channels. But when we have a decent system, then we can start talking about cleaning up the other systems.

When we put a decent system in place, the bottleneck will open and the issue of amnesty for illegal aliens will become a moot point. And when those who are currently in the country illegally finally make it through a system, who knows what we might catch, and what kinds of future terrors might be avoided.

Between working two jobs I don't post very often, but I'm sick at home today, so the blog will finally get a little attention.

Decent piece over at chrisishardcore. Chris always does a good job of seeing the world of ideas as much richer than liberal vs. conservative. Yes, there are plenty of liberal republicans and plenty of conservative democrats.

Chris's post was based on a piece over at pandagon about how people have a hard time identifying themselves as liberal, even when they are. Of course, there's a reason. It's about image. For guys, conservative is the clean-cut, successful guy going to work with his briefcase. Liberal is your unkempt, frumpy college professor who explains the secrets of economics and then drives home in his sputtering '72 volkswagen. Even people who hate corporations identify with the conservative guy's hard work and success. And even people who thought their professor was brilliant don't want to grow up to be him.

For women, the image is similar. Conservative is the successful woman balancing career and home. Liberal is long, hairy armpits.