May 15, 2007

GOP 5/15 debate live coverage

Rudy playing terrorism card, discussing Fort Dix Six... imagine the fake terror alerts we'd have if he were president...

America suddenly realizes: someone named "Tommy Thompson" is running for president...

Note to self: be sure to check gilmoreforpresident.com tomorrow...

HILLARY ALERT! Rudy plays "At least I'm not Hillary" card...

I have to say, the questions this time are better, although they haven't gotten around to immigration matters AFAIK...

John McCain just lied: he supports amnesty.

He may have lied again, saying that the Fort Dix Six "came here on visas that had expired". [UPDATE BELOW]

Chris Wallace calls Giuliani on his explicitly welcoming illegal aliens to NYC...

Overall, this was much better than the Chris Matthews embarrassment, but even so their questions about immigration didn't go much beyond the superficial talking points. Grilling Giuliani or McCain about their positions could have driven them out of the front range of candidates.

UPDATE: John McCain was wrong about the Duka brothers, unless he knows something that he's not telling us. However, I'm going to backpeddle a bit on calling him a liar on that issue, since they might indeed have had some form of visa at some time. According to this 5/12 article, three of the six Fort Dix suspects (the non-Dukas) were legal U.S. residents. However, the status of the three Duka brothers is unknown, other than that they were brought over the Mexican border as children:

What is known is that the brothers, from the town of Debar in what is now Macedonia, arrived as children with their parents in 1984. A lawyer representing one of the brothers said the family entered across the Mexican border. They spent time in Texas and Brooklyn, N.Y., before moving to Cherry Hill in 1996.

It is unclear whether they sneaked into the country, applied for asylum, or entered on a visa.

But some immigration experts say it would be unusual for the family to have sneaked into the United States more than 20 years ago without being legal - or at least trying to legitimize their status - at some point.

"My guess is they have had some kind of complicated immigration history," said Linda Bosniak, a professor at the Rutgers University School of Law at Camden, who teaches immigration and citizenship law.

UPDATE: Tell me more about this... Tommy Thompson person. He just took liberal fool Alan Colmes to task for his Democratic talking point that the immigration status of the Duka brothers doesn't matter because they came here when they were children, arguing with Colmes that they had been detained and even arrested several times. Unfortunately, Sean Hannity cut him off before he'd had a chance to reduce Colmes' already low credibility even further.

Posted to Temporary at May 15, 2007 05:23 PM