I am seriously hankering to see intelligent discussion about immigration, and it must begin with sorting wheat from chaff. Here are the questions to begin with:

Are you concerned about all immigration or primarily that focused along the US-Mexico border?
Which immigration "question" are you primarily campaigning about?
----Terrorist risk
----Economics based on lost jobs for American workers
----Economics based on diverted social services for Americans
----The criminality arising from declaring an entire segment of the population "illegal"
Does your list of solutions including "building a wall"?

[snip]
"In Texas, for example, nearly seven percent of the state's population was comprised of undocumented immigrants in 2005. The state's health care costs for undocumented immigrants that same year were a mere $58 million. Yet state revenues collected from undocumented immigrants exceeded what the state spent on social services provided to these immigrants such as health care and education by $424.7 million.

[snip]
"In 2001, the Social Security Administration concluded that undocumented immigrants "account for a major portion of the billions of dollars paid into social security that don't match SSA records," which payees, many of whom are undocumented immigrants, can never draw upon. As of July 2003, these payments totaled $421 billion."

"Iraqi women were once the most emancipated in the Arab world," says correspondent Tom Aspell. "Educated, encouraged to work and vote; even allowed to divorce."

Women in US-occupied Iraq, in sharp contrast, are frequent targets of violence at the hands of Shiite militiamen and "religious zealots," according to the Iraqi government, especially in the southern city of Basra.

"I'm sorry to say that we've started to lose," says Iraqi MP Safia al-Souhail.

In Basra, over fifty women are known to have been murdered, often after being humiliated, but police are often too scared to investigate.

Says al-Souhail, a lot of women are killed for how they dress, wearing makeup, or for having jobs.

"We can't have different kinds law for different kinds of people," Spataro says, now exercised. "It's not only racist, it spells the end of any cooperation from the Muslim community."
"Relations between Italian authorities and Muslims in Milan have improved since the case against the CIA personnel was launched," Spataro says.
His critics, Spataro says, "see a trial in absentia of the Americans as an obstacle to fighting terrorism," meaning that it wrongly targets the CIA, one of the very agencies leading the fight against the terrorists.
"But we," he stresses, "see following the law as central to the fight against terrorism."

The DOJ found numerous cases so severe that they were determined to be civil rights violations and life-threatening, finding also that at least one death was directly attributed to these abuses.

The city of Seattle's reply was that they do not deny that the abuses cited by the DOJ occur, but that these abuses are not violations of anyone's civil rights.

In other words, the city argues that abusing prisoners to the point where their lives are endangered should not be considered a violation of their rights.

Therefore the city of Seattle maintains the right to abuse anyone merely accused of a crime since such abuses, according to them, are not in violation of constitutionally protected rights... if their argument is caried to it's ultimate conclusion at least.

Antoine di Zazzo, billed as one "of the biggest Taser representatives outside the US," tells AFP that, really, tasering's no big deal. "You cannot call it real pain," he said.

Sure, and Robert Dziekanski didn't really die. The RCMP put him on a plane and he's in Poland right now.

And Robert Knipstrom, 36, didn't die after cops used a taser, pepper spray, and batons on him because he was "acting erratically in a store." This follows the death of a Nova Scotian man while in police custody.

Governments all across the world apparently agree with Mr. di Zazzo because they are buying the damn things like hotcakes:

There are already about 250,000 of the stun guns in use, mainly in North America, but about 70 other countries are buying or trying Tasers -- including Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Australia, Singapore and New Zealand.
...

But apparently Mr. di Zazzo will not be satisfied until whole crowds are tasered. "Di Zazzo's French company is also developing a mini-flying saucer like drone which could also fire Taser stun rounds on criminal suspects or rioting crowds. He expects it to be launched next year and to be sold internationally by Taser."

Imagine the potential: thousands of protesters "stunned" into submission while they protest in their "free speech" pens.

So it begins. After years of obfuscation and denial on the length of the U.S.'s stay in Iraq, the White House and the Maliki government have released a joint declaration of "principles" for "friendship and cooperation." Apparently President Bush and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki signed the declaration during a morning teleconference.
...
A "democratic Iraq" here means the Shiite-led Iraqi government. The current political arrangement will receive U.S. military protection against coups or any other internal subversion. That's something the Iraqi government wants desperately: not only is it massively unpopular, even among Iraqi Shiites, but the increasing U.S.-Sunni security cooperation strikes the Shiite government -- with some justification -- as a recipe for a future coup.

Also from Ackerman today:

Could Congress stop a Bush administration-brokered deal to garrison U.S. troops in Iraq indefinitely? Not according to General Douglas Lute, the so-called "war czar." Here's Lute at today's gaggle:

Q General, will the White House seek any congressional input on this?

GENERAL LUTE: In the course of negotiations like this, it's not -- it is typical that there will be a dialogue between congressional leaders at the negotiating table, which will be run out of the Department of State. We don't anticipate now that these negotiations will lead to the status of a formal treaty which would then bring us to formal negotiations or formal inputs from the Congress.