DEMOCRATIC PRIMARIES:
Still working on the site set-up. Meanwhile, some comments on the Democratic primaries:

John Edwards is by far my favorite candidate. My heart wants him to get the nomination, but that will make the choice difficult next November. I don't want to vote against him, or Bush either.

John Kerry would be a great man to vote against. Great wealth, unseemly ambition, cold personality, mediocre Senate career, the only thing going for him is his military biography. Part of me would be happy to see him get the nomination, because I think he would prove the least electable.

Howard Dean is a liberal bigot, the sort of man who makes me feel unAmerican for being a conservative. His apathy towards the freedom of the Iraqi people is chilling. Yet I find him personally appealing. To see him defeated, to see the position he stands for repudiated by the voters of this country, would be gloriously heart-warming.

IMMIGRATION:
I am a firm believer in open borders. I think the freedom to migrate should, in the course of the next generation, be recognized as a fundamental part of human freedom throughout the world, along with freedom of speech and freedom of religion. I support legal immigration and illegal immigration. Immigration laws are unjust laws and the proper response to them is resolute and highly public civil disobedience. Anyone who wants to come to this country to peacefully earn their living through honest labor will have my help, should they ask for it, even if it violates the "law" (I use the phrase in quotation marks to indicate that I do not consider immigration restrictions to be laws in a moral sense.)

Where does this radical pro-immigration position put me in the next election? I was thrilled when Bush announced his guest-worker proposal-- thrilled and amazed. Pro-immigration proposals are not good politics, because they don't have much public support, though I believe the public could be forced to change its mind if they had to confront this civil-rights issue as they did the civil-rights issues of the 1960s. Bush won my vote and my heart with the move.

But now the Democrats have a counter-proposal. So how does that affect my position?

Well, I'll be watching closely. For now, mostly I'm on the side of Bush. First, the Democrats are being opportunist, and since their bill won't pass, they're not risking much. They just want to be able to say Bush's plan is a "political ploy," and since they don't have a majority, the effect of their noncooperation would be to sink the whole thing and get no guest-worker proposal at all. I don't think the Democrats even want this kind of proposal. Why didn't Clinton make it?