Jennifer Youssef has an article in The Detriot News on efforts to help veterans enter or reenter the civilian labor market after years and sometimes decades of service in the Armed Forces. The degree of difficulty faced by veterans is the nature of the job market in their state, and Michigan has one of the nation’s toughest job markets. What surprised me a bit was a line in the article about a veteran who failed to get a job in Texas. I was, and remain, under the impression that hiring is pretty good in the Lone Star State.

Anyway, take a minute or two to read Youssef’s article.

Well, that was disappointing. Disappointing and more serious than some of the surprisingly upbeat and even breezy commentary I’ve seen on may right-wing blogs.

The Republican party took a beating, lost the House, will probably lose the Senate and lost six governorships. Geographically, the party is being squeezed into the South, which will soon be its only area of strength if the trends that have been growing for up to decades (in the Northeast) aren’t turned around.

It is true that Iraq probably cost the party the election, along with the scanals and a perception that President George W. Bush’s administration has limited competence when it comes to governing the nation and its federal bureaucracy. While it may be possible for an energized Republican party to hold the White House and retake Congress in two years, it is also possible that voters decide the Democrats are pretty OK. Bear in mind that many voters probably associate Democrats with the happy go lucky years of the Bill Clinton Administration rather than with the dismal, bloody and costly failure of the Great Society.

Bob Laurence, TV critic at San Diego Union-Tribune reveals a certain lack of knowledge about Fox News:

I’d like to offer a couple of possible reasons for the lack of attention given to the kidnapping of the two guys from Fox:

One is that, sadly, they are far from the first to be kidnapped, injured or killed. They are, alas, only the most recent two of many. The kidnapping or targeting of journalists in Iraq isn’t the story it once was.

Second, Fox has deliberately set itself apart from other news media. Starting at the top with Roger Ailes, the Fox sales pitch has been to deride other media, to declare itself the one source of the real truth, the sole source of ‘fair and accurate’ news reporting.

Only “the two guys from Fox” - Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig - were kidnapped in Gaza, not Iraq, and the Fox News Channel slogan is that Mr. Laurence is thinking of is “Fair and Balanced,” not “fair and accurate.”

We have decided that your reporting on this matter is sub-par, Mr. Laurence.

Washington Post’s probably most left-wing op-ed columnist Harold Meyerson doesn’t like that the Republican controlled Congress is doing what it can to not increase the federal minimum wage. Here’s what he has to say:

So the solutions for national problems get kicked downstairs. To date 23 states have passed minimum-wage standards higher than the feds’ — and none of them in statutes designed to subvert themselves or play gotcha with the opposition party. States have begun to enact universal health insurance plans, while cities are passing living-wage ordinances.

That’s exactly how the Union is upposed to work, in my opinion: States and municipalities tackle the issues they confront, rather than have the federal government tackle issues it sees in some places but not others. The fact that a majority of states don’t have minimum wage rates that tops the federal rate suggests that the latter isn’t as out of whack with most of the state labor markets as Mr. Meyerson seems to think.

There is a strong and perhaps unstoppable push for an increase in the federal minimum wage. Republicans have tried to stall it by tying it to an extension of the estate tax cut in the House of Representatives, but it could well be that Congress in the end finds itself compelled to increasing it.

Republicans should not go along with an increase in the federal minimum wage at this time. Instead, they should support increases in the state minimum wage rates as they find appropriate.

One of the many preposterous assumptions of the Senate’s Judiciary Committees illegal alien amnesty bill is that the Department of Homeland Security is somehow capable of performing meaningful background checks on millions of people. I don’t believe it, nor does Mark Steyn:

We’re now expected to believe that this system will be able to stop hassling 68-year-old cello players long enough to process an extra 10 million-plus immigration applications, and that furthermore an agency that keeps no reliable records of legal entry into the United States will somehow be able to determine on the basis of utility bills whether this or that undocumented alien falls into amnesty-eligibility category.

Sure, believe that if you want to. It’ll be good practice for swallowing the amnesty for the next 40 million circa 2025.

(HT: The Corner)

There is much belly-aching that a wall along our border with Mexico would be a “Berlin Wall.” Apart from the boneheaded analogy - the wall, or fence, would be more like Hadrian’s Wall - 7 million of America’s household live in gated communities, according to a U.S. Census survey refered to by USA Today in December 2002:

* More than 7 million households — about 6% of the national total — are in developments behind walls and fences. About 4 million of that total are in communities where access is controlled by gates, entry codes, key cards or security guards.
* Homeowners in gated communities live in upscale and mostly white developments. But renters, who are more ethnically diverse and less affluent, are nearly 21/2 times as likely as homeowners to live behind gates or walls.
* Whether they own or rent, Hispanics are more likely to live in such communities than whites or blacks. That may be partly because there is a large Hispanic population in the West and Southwest, areas with the largest concentration of gated communities.
* Affluent African-American homeowners are less likely to live in gated communities than whites and Hispanics, even in metro areas such as Atlanta and Washington, D.C., which have a large black middle class. Experts theorize that after centuries of exclusion, blacks may be reluctant to embrace such a lifestyle or to live in predominantly white developments.

The article also claims that “[a]bout 40% of new homes in California are behind walls.”

Michelle Malkin has an expansive post detailing the incompetence, ineptitude, and cronyism that plagues our Department of Homeland Security and other critical elements of border and immigration enforcement.

Hispanic pressure group La Raza (Spanish for “the race”) fears “patriotism and traditional American values language in a way which is potentially dangerous to our communities” according to an email from the group.

I guess one should appreciate that they did write the email in English

Click here to read the message.

Expected, yet sad.

I guess this is what President George W. Bush calls “immigrants shaping our identity.”

Or as Kansas Senator Sam Brownback tells the New York Times:

But when he wrestled with the issue, Mr. Brownback decided that he could not join the ranks of those who wanted simply to push out illegal immigrants. “This is also about the hallmark of a compassionate society, what you do with the widows, the orphans and the foreigners among you,” he said.

His colleague Lindsey Graham is about as clueless:

“Where is home?” Mr. Graham asked his colleagues Monday. “Their home is where they’ve raised their children. Their home is where they’ve lived their married lives.”

“Whatever we do,” he added, “we have to recognize that for several generations people have made America their home.”

But now they’re making America their Mexican home.

Meanwhile, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is cutting back on enforcement:

Federal officials told immigrant advocates in a letter made public yesterday that government immigration agents would discontinue using undercover sting operations involving health and safety programs to round up illegal immigrants.

Such an operation generated a storm of protest in July when federal agents arrested 48 workers at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina on illegal immigration charges after the agents tricked the workers into attending what was billed as a mandatory training session sponsored by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

TownHall.com is publishing plenty of pro- and anti-amnesty pieces by conservative pundits. Go check them out. Weekly Standard’s website, on the other hand, has totally checked out of the immigration debate over the past week, save for a single piece by Jonathan Last in which he pats America on the back for having Mexican rather than Muslim immigrants.

The L.A. Times has an article on the omnipresence of the Mexican flag:

Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, said many young people feel a need to defend their Mexican heritage.

“Their identity has not always been respected,” Salas said. “It’s a wonderful time for them to say, ‘I’m proud to be Mexican.’ “

I have no doubt they are.