Bush's Immigration Speech and Lybia.

Being a bad president should be enough. We as a nation just shouldn't have to put up with a bad president who gives boring speeches. Especially in prime time.

But it really makes no difference because it's all in the hands of Congress now. And will Congress give Bush what he wants?

Whatever gets signed, I'll be willing to bet that a slap on the wrist will be the biggest penalty that the employers of illegals will get.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush said Monday night he would order as many as
6,000 National Guard troops to secure the U.S. border with Mexico and urged
Congress to give millions of illegal immigrants a chance at citizenship, as he
tried to build support for a major overhaul of the nation's tattered immigration
laws.

"We do not yet have full control of the border and I am determined to change
that," the president said in pressing for his $1.9 billion plan in a 17-minute
prime-time address from the Oval Office.

Bush gave strong support to a plan that would give many of the 12 million
illegal immigrants in the United States an eventual path to possible citizenship
- a move derided by some conservatives in his own Republican Party as amnesty.
He rejected that term.

The Mayor of Larado, TX isn't impressed with the Bush plan.

LAREDO, Tex., May 15 -- For years, Mayor Elizabeth G. Flores has been asking
Washington for more help in controlling not only illegal immigration but also
drug trafficking here at the nation's second-busiest border crossing. More
Border Patrol. Better technology. More federal resources.

But militarize the border with National Guardsmen? That is where she draws
the line.

"We have over 300 Border Patrol officers from here serving in Iraq. Why
doesn't [President Bush] bring them home to do the job they were trained to do?"
said Flores as she walked inside City Hall, which overlooks Texas and U.S. flags
out front and the Mexican flag about a quarter-mile away at the border. This
seat of government sits in one of "los dos Laredos," the two Laredos, as locals
say -- Laredo and Nuevo Laredo, through which 4.4 million pedestrians, 6.3
million vehicles and 1.4 million trucks pass yearly.

She won't be getting any calls to become part of Team Bush.

Bush's immigration plan has even upset the normally laid back Canadians. You don't want to upset the Canadians because every time we tried to take over Canada, they kicked our butts. But Bush thinks that history is a waste of time and you can see it in his job performance.

TORONTO, May 15 -- Every 4.7 seconds, on average, a cargo truck rumbles
across the border from Canada to the United States. More than 6,000 passenger
cars cross to the United States every hour. Inspectors on both sides wave
through nearly 70 million visitors a year.

Officials in both countries fear that President Bush's tough new measures on
the Mexican border will increase calls for tighter restrictions on movement over
the bridges and highways leading in and out of Canada. Canadian officials
already are trying to fight a U.S. plan to require a passport or a new identity
card for travelers at the land border by Jan. 1, 2008.

Bush might have ticked off our closest neighbors, but Lybia is waiting in the wings and is about to be welcomed into Mr. Bush's Neighborhood. Two little trumped up dictators, this could be the real deal. Particularly since one of them has oil.

CAIRO, May 15 -- The normalization of U.S.-Libya relations is a natural marriage
of an American administration desperate for friends and oil in the Middle East
and a government that needs to open its economy to the outside world, Arab and
exiled Libyan observers said Monday.
The announcement was called proof
that promotion of democracy is no longer a top priority of the Bush
administration, which is grappling to hold Iraq together and has turned
attention toward building alliances against a hostile Iran over its nuclear
program. Libya has been ruled by Moammar Gaddafi since he seized power in 1969.

The greatest thing about Bush's immigration plan, and yes there is something great about it. It will put the GOP is the position of either pissing off the Hispanics or the Religious Right. See where pandering gets you.

President Bush once saw the immigration issue as an opportunity to expand the
Republican Party by attracting more Hispanic voters with a message of tolerance
and inclusion. His nationally televised speech last night was an admission that
the issue has now become a problem that, if not managed carefully, could quickly
become a historic liability for his party.

The immigration debate that reopened in the Senate yesterday offers
Republicans an unpalatable political trade-off. Disappointing conservative,
anti-illegal-immigration forces could demoralize a crucial constituency and
depress turnout in the November elections at a time when every vote appears
important to the GOP. Energizing only those conservatives risks destroying the
president's long-sought goal of building a durable Republican majority by
normalizing his party's relations with the rapidly growing Latino community.