August 15, 2008

Oh, No! Arlen Specter Represents Me In The U.S. Senate!

After a month in my new Pittsburgh home, I’m settling in nicely with the not-so-slight exception of my rate of unpacking.

According to my movers, they transported 450 boxes. I’m opening them at a rate of three per day. If I maintain that snail’s pace, I’ll be done just in time for Christmas.

That would be good. But factoring in the inevitable days off to watch the World Series, eat Thanksgiving dinner or just loaf, the more accurate prediction is January 20, 2009—Inauguration Day.

Everything was going along so well for me in the lush environs of Allegheny County…until suddenly I was overwhelmed by the most frightening thought I’ve had in years.

Arlen Specter represents me in the U.S. Senate!

I’ve gone from California and the Dianne Feinstein frying pan to Pennsylvania and the Specter fire.

This may be advantageous for my VDARE.COM column-writing career. after years of brutally honest reporting about Feinstein, I felt I had relatively little new left to say about her. We expect the worst from Feinstein and she never disappoints us.

In recent years, Feinstein has evolved from an immigration reform moderate to one of the Senate’s worst. She relies on an increasingly transparent pack of lies in an attempt—thwarted, so far—to advance her personal immigration agenda of open borders via a no-ceiling agricultural guest worker visa scheme.

Let’s move on to Specter.

Luckily for us his resume, rich with bizarre behavior, provides some excellent laughs, in contrast to the dour Feinstein. When we’re dealing with the deadly serious business of immigration reform, humor is a welcome relief.

Here are a few examples from Specter’s portfolio:

Although the country is coming apart before our very eyes, e.g., immigration, inflation, recession, rising prices, falling wages, declining jobs, inflation and the home repossession rate, Specter is (by golly!) bound and determined to get to the bottom of that nasty NFL/ New England Patriot/Bill Belichick/ “Spy Gate” incident.

Professional football may be just a pleasant Sunday afternoon diversion for you and me. But Specter demands accountability—and right now!

When the FEC investigated Specter, it discovered that he broke every single campaign finance rule. That’s quite a feat for someone who has held public office for more than four decades.

During his 2004 re-election bid, Specter took a million dollars from people whose donation limits had already been met, failed to report hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from PACs, and missed a reporting deadline before the Pennsylvania primary deadline.

Upon his re-election, Specter was appointed Judiciary Chairman, a crucial position that holds enormous influence on immigration policy. Even after the dirty details of Specter’s finance campaign violations were exposed, his colleagues did not sanction him.

My personal favorite: according to Capitol Hill insiders, in 2007 Specter was scheduled to meet with porn star Jenna Jameson and her beau Tito Ortiz, the former Ultimate Fighting Championship light heavyweight champ.

The couple had been visiting Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Jameson, the “adult entertainment” queen, requested a meeting with Specter because, as her spokesman claimed, she as the daughter of a police officer shares Specter’s interest in “law enforcement.”[Sen. Specter Asks: Who Is This Jenna Jameson? By Mary Ann Akers, Washington Post, September 21, 2007]

An astute aide tipped Specter off, thus averting a public relations disaster.

Specter’s naiveté about porn could be construed as a good thing. After all, we would hope that our elected officials are not sitting around downloading porn—although we would not be surprised if they are!

More seriously: Specter’s commitment to amnesty, expanded visa programs in addition to his indifference to border security and interior enforcement are grave concerns.

Specter’s name ranks right up with his fellow RINO John McCain and Democrats Teddy Kennedy and Barack Obama as the most treacherous Americans.

Even looked at from the distance that two years provides, Specter’s record still shocks.

In the heat of the 2006 amnesty battles and the events that led up to them, here’s what Specter endorsed:

With Kennedy, the sale for $500 each to major American corporations of hundreds of thousands of additional work visas and permanent green cards to hire foreign workers for high-tech and professional jobs in the U.S. for periods of between three and six years.

Explained away as a mandated budget balancing measure, the visa fire sale would rob college students of whatever fleeting chance they may have to land a decent job but cost the corporations only pennies and would actually add to the deficit.

Amnesty for all. During the 2006 mark-up of his 300-page draft immigration bill that would include 1.14 million new green cards annually for employment-based, family-based and student immigrants, Specter when called on to make his opening comments said: “Our first job is to bring the undocumented workers out of the shadows.”

On the other hand, the same Specter bill did not contain the enforcement provisions from the House-passed Border Protection, Antiterrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act (H.R. 4437), which had included a border fence, more emphasis on state and local enforcement of immigration laws and mandatory work eligibility verification for all employees.

A summary sheet for Specter’s immigration priorities would show that he is 100 percent in favor of amnesty, more green cards for foreign-born workers, more visas for students and endless chain migration.

At the same time, Specter is 100 percent opposed to the rights of American workers. And even though he is a graduate of the Yale Law School, Specter is also against immigration law enforcement.

The good news about Specter is that soon we Pennsylvanians will have an opportunity to vote him out.

Even though Specter is old (78), sick (fighting a second battle with Hodgkins Disease) and a much too familiar face in the Senate (five terms covering nearly thirty years), he has vowed to seek re-election in 2010.

Let’s be honest.

On its very face, the idea that an individual as ailing and old as Specter could win one of the most important jobs in America is absurd. There is probably not another position of any sort in the nation that he would even be considered for.

But Specter is seeking a Senate seat. Disappointingly, voters across America have shown an incredible fondness for creaky, sickly old Senators—even when they have a treasonous streak in them.

Time may be running out for Specter, both literally and figuratively. Next week, I’ll examine why his re-election prospects may not be as bright as he thinks.

Joe Guzzardi [e-mail him] is the Editor of VDARE.COM Letters to the Editor. In addition, he is an English teacher at the Lodi Adult School and has been writing a weekly newspaper column since 1988. This column is exclusive to VDARE.COM.

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