The New York Times says Republicans are embracing an immigration policy known as "attrition." It's a policy of tightening the screws, in hopes the undocumented will just go away.

That amounts to relentlessly tightening the screws in workplaces and homes until illegal immigrants magically, voluntarily disappear.

Making it work would require far more government intrusion into daily lives, with exponential increases in workplace raids and deportations. It would mean constant ID checks for everyone — citizens, too — with immigration police at the federal, state and local levels. It would mean enlisting bureaucrats and snoops to keep an eye on landlords, renters, laborers, loiterers and everyone who uses government services or gets sick.

Worst of all, it’s weak on law and order. It is a free pass to the violent criminals we urgently need to hunt down and deport. Attrition means waiting until we stumble across bad people hiding in the vast illegal immigrant haystack. Comprehensive reform, by bringing the undocumented out of the shadows, shrinks the haystack.

Going through the list of Republican candidates, one is more reactionary than the next. As to the border fence, the Times calls it a "reject of history." [More...]

We've covered most of the stuff in this new Telegraph article about how Barack and Michelle Obama have attacked Hillary Clinton this week.

There's one comment by Barack Obama I missed though. Criticizing Hillary's statements in the last debate about the bankruptcy bill, he says:

He then poured ridicule on Mrs Clinton for saying in the debate that she had voted for a bankruptcy bill but "I was happy that it never became law".

Mr Obama could not conceal his mirth as he said: "What does that mean? No seriously, what does that mean? If you didn’t want to see it passed, then you can vote against it! People don’t say what they mean."

This from the guy who voted "present" on at least 86 bills?

An examination of Illinois records shows at least 36 times when Mr. Obama was either the only state senator to vote present or was part of a group of six or fewer to vote that way. In more than 50 votes, he seemed to be acting in concert with other Democrats as part of a strategy.

What a joke. No wonder he laughed as he said it.

Speaking for me only.

In what I can only term an absurd post, Markos writes that Democrats have had no ideas, it has been the GOP with the new ideas.

Setting aside whether "new" ideas for the sake of having something new means anything, it simply is false. "The new GOP idea`was the old GOP idea - cut taxes and strangle the government. Oh, and the most important GOP idea? Stop anything that comes from Dems, be it old ideas like Social Security and Medicare (see the 1995 government shutdown) to new ideas like universal health care and addressing climate change. Or how about the Earned Income Tax Credit? The largest tax reduction for the the poor working class ever given. Or raising the top tax rate on the richest Americans in order to balance the budget? How about those new ideas that the Republicans fought fiercely? Does Kos NOT know about those?

Because I have news for you -- those are the ideas that form the centerpiece of the Democratic agenda this election. They are not new ideas from Obama, Edwards or Clinton. These are Democratic ideas. Formulated in the last 15 years. By Democrats.

Kos has always said he does not pay much attention to policy. In this post, he proved it. And he does a great disservice to the Democratic Party when he buys the nonsense David Brooks is selling.

The Las Vegas Sun today endorsed Hillary Clinton for President. Some of their reasons:

Clinton has a long and substantial record of leadership fighting on behalf of working Americans and children, and it is this experience and her passion for creating a better country that would serve this nation so well.

Our country needs someone who can be president from Day One after taking the oath of office. Her steadiness and resolve certainly would aid us in reestablishing better relations with other nations after Bush’s go-it-alone foreign policy, not to mention a thoughtful and responsible policy regarding our combat troops in Iraq.

More...

Ezra:

[T]he much-promised "Anti-Hillary" vote never really existed. Democratic voters just don't dislike Hillary very much. Some may prefer her, some may prefer other candidates, but it was largely a press corps invention that the primary would be dominated by one faction of pro-Hillary Democrats battling it out with another faction of anti-Hillary Democrats.

Yep. Heck, the Media's hate of Hillary helps her with Democrats.

Hillary says:

"I have to say, you know, my leading opponent the other day said that he thought the Republicans had better ideas than Democrats the last ten to fifteen years. That's not the way I remember the last ten to fifteen years. "I don't think it's a better idea to privatize Social Security. I don't think it's a better idea to try to eliminate the minimum wage. I don't think it's a better idea to undercut health benefits and to give drug companies the right to make billions of dollars by providing prescription drugs to Medicare recipients. I don't think it's a better idea to shut down the government, to drive us into debt."

Obama Camp (interestingly NOT Obama)retorts:

“It’s hard to take Hillary Clinton’s latest attack seriously when she’s the one who supported George Bush’s war in Iraq, the most damaging Republican idea of our generation. While others were triangulating and poll-testing their positions, Senator Obama has been fighting for progressive ideals for over two decades.

So I guess there were some progressive ideas the last 2 decades. Fair point on Hillary' support for the war, but unfair to argue Obama has NOT supported Bush's Iraq Debacle. His voting record is exactly the same as Clinton's in the Senate. And Obama has had some kind words for Bush himself, including stating in 2004 that he basically agreed with Bush on how to conduct the Iraq war.

More interesting was both camp's refusal to say a bad word about Ronald Reagan. What is up with that?

Update [2008-1-18 18:47:20 by Big Tent Democrat]: From the turnabout is fair play dep't, via Geekesque, Hillary's favorite President's include Reagan and Bush 41.

A Collossus strode forth:

And held a press conference.

This is some funny stuff.

Robert Stein:

Half a century ago, after the Supreme Court desegregation decision, an Arkansas governor named Orval Faubus stood in the doorway of Central High School in Little Rock with National Guard members to keep African American teenagers out. Now Mike Huckabee is doing a Faubus impersonation in South Carolina.

“You don’t like people from outside the state coming in and telling you what to do with your flag,” the former Arkansas governor told a crowd in Myrtle Beach yesterday. “In fact, if somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we’d tell them what to do with the pole, that’s what we’d do.”

. . . If Huckabee believes he can win in South Carolina by going back to the past, he should take a look at the later career of Orval Faubus. A decade after the Little Rock standoff, he was managing the Li'l Abner theme park in the "Ozark Mountains, Dogpatch USA."

At a campaign event yesterday, Barack Obama said:

You won't hear me saying one thing one day to one audience and then saying something else another day to a different audience because I think it's politically convenient.

Um, perhaps Senator Obama can explain why he said one thing in Iowa about independent expenditures and something else in Nevada? How come Obama criticized union expenditures in the Iowa caucus campaign and refuses to do so regarding UNITE HERE's independent expenditures in Nevada? Could it be that there is a new rule for Obama? Is it ok if the expenditure is in support of his candidacy? Is it ok if it is "politically convenient" for Barack Obama?

As I have said, this is politics as usual. The problem is Obama pretends he is going to reinvent politics. He is not. He is just a pol. An extremely talented one. But still just a pol.

(Bumped: TL)

The Nevada polls are all over the place and we should probably ignore them . . . which is why I am posting the LV Review-Journal poll conducted by Mason Dixon:

On Friday the Review-Journal will publish the results of our statewide pre-caucus presidential preference poll conducted Monday through Wednesday by Mason-Dixon Polling & research.

On the GOP side former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney leads his closest opponent by 15 points.

On the Democratic side Hillary Clinton outdistances Barack Obama by 9 points.

Update [2008-1-18 8:58:4 by Big Tent Democrat]: Here are more details:

"Clinton's base is women and voters over 50, and she does well with Hispanic voters," said pollster Brad Coker, Mason-Dixon managing partner. "Those have been the national patterns, and Nevada, I think, is more reflective of the nation as a whole than either Iowa or New Hampshire." Obama dominates among black voters, favored by 65 percent to Clinton's 18 percent, but they make up just 10 percent of likely caucus-goers. Hispanics make up 15 percent of likely caucus-goers and favor Clinton over Obama by 50 percent to 29 percent. Obama, who has gotten a major boost from the Culinary union, also leads among union households, but by only 7 percentage points over Clinton. Edwards, despite his focus on the labor vote, is in third place in this and almost every other group.

The other thing to note is Mason Dixon has been polling in Nevada for many years with a very good track record. It appears this poll may carry more weight than the others.

In this AP story, "America's Most Wanted" host John Walsh complains that fugitives who flee from the United States into Mexico escape justice by evading the death penalty. Pursuant to treaty, Mexico (like Canada and other countries) will not extradite a fugitive who might be put to death.

"It's not about revenge. It's not so much about closure. It's about justice," [Walsh] said.

Obeying a treaty obligation isn't unjust. Death is an extreme punishment inconsistently administered in an imperfect criminal justice system. The treaty respects Mexico's sovereign right to make its own judgment about extradition while assuring a mechanism to return fugitives for trial and punishment. Doesn't that sound like justice to you?

Remember this?

Obama criticized Edwards for saying that he doesn't approve of 527s, while at the same time not disavowing a group, Alliance for a New America . . . "You've got these outside groups that are helping out candidates and it's a way of getting around the campaign finance laws. . . . [Y]ou can't say yesterday you don't believe in 'em, and today you have three quarters of a million dollars being spent for you. You can't just talk the talk. The easiest thing in the world is to talk about change during election time."

No kidding Senator Obama. You sure aren't walking the walk in Nevada: [More....]