Hello, 2011!

One of the political victories of 2010 has to be the failure of the DREAM Act. It was nothing but semi-disguised amnesty in the form of a plea to help illegal immigrant children up to age 35 who were brought to the U. S. as babies to gain a path to citizenship.

Up to age 35? Now, that is funny! It’s ridiculous when we are expected to cater to kids (kids?) who are illegal and have parents who are also illegal all of whom are living illegally in the U. S. Somehow, I didn’t see the kids wanting to serve two years in our military or do two years of college. As simple as this would have been for them, this would have been a great dodge. How about a bill sending the parents and kids back to Mexico and letting them start over the right way?

The bill was an attempt to gain votes from the Latino community in the next election and nothing else. Defeating it was the right thing to do. Seal the border; then we can talk some more.

I don’t see the big deal about “Don’t ask, don’t tell”. Gays have been in the military for a long time. When I was serving Uncle Sam for four years in the 1960’s, we had at least ten gay guys in our barracks. One of them was a roommate of mine and he knew that I knew he was gay. However, neither he nor any of the other gay guys had confrontations about their sexual preferences that I ever heard of. They went their way and we went ours, no big deal.

Now, a can of worms has been opened with the repeal of DADT. Why they didn’t let sleeping dogs lie on this, I will never know unless it is just another typical attempt by this government to endorse a certain lifestyle in their never ending push for votes. I wonder how Clinton feels about his legislation from 1993 being repealed by Obama.

Anyway, 2011 is upon us so Que sera, sera. It will have to go a long way to beat the events of 2010.

Jim McAllister writes for the Arizona Republic in Scottsdale, AZ. To leave a comment or read the 39 other comments, click "Jim's azcentral blog" in the right column under links. You will not receive a virus.