The Comprehensive Immigration Reform legislation being considered by the House and the Senate are deceptive at best.

The frame "comprehensive reform" suggests that federal immigration laws are broken and need a top-down overhaul to make them work.

However, the laws are not broken; rather, they are being broken by illegal employers and illegal foreign workers, because the federal government has simply failed to enforce them until recently.

This is the week when moral resolve separates cowards from patriots. With a majority of Americans behind them, will the Democrats stand strong or will they capitulate to the politics of pusillanimity as Cheney expects them to do?

Paired with some measure of accountability, the supplemental appropriation bill moving towards the president's desk provides the money requested for ongoing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

To wit, the issue is not a time table, but whether Bush will veto funding for the troops.

If Bush truly needs the money as he claims, he must accept public accountability to receive it. In case Bush forgot, the Republican self-licking, rubber stamp for his blank check spending in Iraq was retired permanently last November.

What I want to know is why are so many liberals and Democrats supporting pro-corporate immigration reform policies that increase poverty and erode wages for native low-skilled workers?

Like the Republican elite, the reform rhetoric parroted by many liberals and Democrats blur the distinction between legal and illegal immigration. While legal immigration strengthens our society, illegal immigration divides it by race and economic opportunity. Conflating the two places liberals and Democrats in the untenable position of vanquishing the hope of economic justice for the most vulnerable members of the native workforce.

Dean rightly criticizes the Republican leadership, and Congressional and high-profile Dems repudiate him?

The establishments Dems, by and large, don't seem to give a damn about Dean's work to rebuild the Party in the states, nor about his relative fundraising and new membership achievements.

It seems to me that the establishment Dems want Dean to fail, and they appear to have granted the media tacit blessing to help them carry out the dirty deed.

Political pundits on FAUX, CNN, M$NBC, C-SPAN, etc., and these things that pass for journalists nowadays seem to relish smearing Dean with impunity in his new role as DNC Chair, painting him as some wild-eyed liberal extremist who is hurting the Party every time he opens his mouth. Even bottom feeder local programs like Derek McGinty's "Eye On Washington" are getting in on this false story line.

So, why is this happening?