Comments on: Joe Wilson is “passionate” about illegal immigrants

By: skeptic

skeptic — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 16:29:18 +0000

Re: 46

In theory, laws are equal. In practice, laws favor rich people first, well-educated middle- class people second, and poor people third. This include not just criminal laws but also immigration laws. It is this gap between theory and practice that is at issue here.

By: V.V. Ganeshananthan

V.V. Ganeshananthan — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 15:15:05 +0000

Another take:

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/aseem_shukla/2009/09/less_pluralism_more_dogmatism.html?hpid=sec-religion

By: Cha-Ching

Cha-Ching — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 20:33:16 +0000

At this point Wilson's democratic opponent has raised over $500,000 since the incident, so it seems that Wilson will bear some cost for his behavior.

Wilson hasn't fared too badly

With a political arms race in full force, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) has raised almost $750,000 in less than 48 hours since his shout of "You lie!" to President Obama during the Wednesday address to Congress, almost matching the Internet-fueled haul of his likely Democratic opponent.

By: Rajiv

Rajiv — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 01:13:56 +0000

Dems have made similar outbursts at GWB (his state of the Union in 2005).

http://www.mererhetoric.com/archives/11275877.html

By: jacob

jacob — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 23:01:58 +0000

fob -

AMEN

Love the name!

By: desiderata

desiderata — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 20:20:08 +0000

dharmachakra, I hear you. Governance in India is a theory and the country is crying out for electoral reform.

By: fob

fob — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 19:38:16 +0000

What Wilson did was vile, crude and disrespectful, but I have a question about the immigration debate. I am a legal immigrant (and generally a left-leaning liberal in most cases), but I don’t undertsand the view that illegal immigrants should get benefits of citizenship. They are here by subverting/defying the immigration/residency/citizenship laws, why should they not accept the consequences?

By: jyotsana

jyotsana — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 14:54:28 +0000

...this kind of innumeracy in terms of understanding actual contributions to the costs of healthcare in this country

Worse still is the belief that it is OK to have the world's most expensive system that delivers the worst outcomes among the rich countries, and even worse outcomes than one poor country - Cuba.

By: Milind

Milind — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 13:46:30 +0000

A couple of points:

1) Heckling is allowed in the British House of Commons, but there are still lines that members may not cross. Specifically, one MP may not call another (including the PM) a "liar." What Wilson did would have been outside the bounds of parliamentary behavior even in the UK.

2) The problem with including enforcement provisions in the bill, pertaining to providing health services to illegal immigrants, is that those provisions often affect the wrong people. I was listening to NPR yesterday, and they mentioned the following case. Back in the 80s, when we as a country went through one of our periodic bouts of xenophobia, Congress passed a law requiring that Medicaid beneficiaries prove their citizenship in order to continue receiving benefits. Across the entire country, just a handful of ineligible people were kicked off the rolls -- it turned out that not that many undocumented aliens were using Medicaid. On the other hand thousands of eligible citizens lost their benefits because they couldn't provide adequate proof of citizenship. The law was scrapped just a few years later.

By: GurMando

GurMando — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 08:09:11 +0000

First sentence of last post should say he ONLY apologized after being told to by his party – not on his own – nothing he should be patted on the back for.