BS.

You don’t afford the same “polite” considerations to non-liberals, Independents, conservatives, or Republicans.

’34. Anon’ doesn’t know a bigot even with a mirror.

Funny how that works.

THE FACTS ( which I had previously thought scientists relied upon ) are poor enforcement and even prosecution of local enforcement of immigration laws. The federal government is not trying to find a solution to the problems that illegal immigration is causing, they are seeking to benefit from those problems.

To call people looking for substance in their solutions bigot is the highest form intellectual slight of mind and political masturbation. Your ‘side’ is lucky the press are nothing but willing voyeurs for this type of spectacle. But in case you haven’t noticed, as Carl Sagan once said: ” The old appeals to racial sexual religious chauvinism and to rabid nationalist fervor are beginning not to work.”

But you should have added, “… with the glaring exception of Mexican Americans.”

Telles and Ortiz, two Mexican American UCLA sociologists have performed an impressive multi-generational study of Mexican-American assimilation.

They write:
“Despite sixty years of political and legal battles to improve the education of Mexican Americans, they continue to have the lowest average education levels and the highest high school dropout rates among major ethnic and racial groups in the United States. …

Telles and Ortiz statistical models show that the low education levels of Mexican Americans have impeded most other types of assimilation, thus reinforcing a range of ethnic boundaries between them and white Americans.”

Telles and Ortiz report, the third and fourth generations of Mexican Americans do not continue to close the gap relative to non-Hispanic whites: “In education, which best determines life chances in the United States, assimilation is interrupted by the second generation and stagnates thereafter.”

This is really as clear-cut as, say, homeopathy being bogus. It would be nice to have the sceptical community in the States be a bit more forthcoming regarding basic political shortcomings (not the issues themselves). It’s not just a “matter of opinion”, just like it’s not a matter of opinion whether homeopathy works or GRT is correct. After all, what point is there in convincing the majority when this majority can’t even pass a law?

Edit: Just to clarify, I’m not being sarcastic. I’m glad you’re happy with the path you took.
On the intertubes, sometimes we tend to assume sarcasm. And I’m certainly guilty of authoring multi-paragraph sarcastic screeds myself.

snarky response: It could be because it only takes one Kyl, Corker, DeMint, Cornyn, etc. to hold up all legislation, and the supermajority rule is not a filibuster (technically and practically). But that wasn’t your point, was it?

Think about the following: what is the percentage of graduate students in the top universities who are American citizens? I am a faculty at one of them and we find it increasingly difficult to attract American students who are as qualified as our international applicants.

The beneficiaries of the DREAM ACT are essentially high achievers (not only of Hispanic origin) that will enlarge the potential pool of recruits into our engineering and science programs.

To Engineering Dad:

’1. Hispanic’ is not an ethnic group (go and see people from Latin America and you will see all kinds of ethnicities represented within the ‘Hispanic’ population)

2. Differences between ehtnic groups have to be controlled for socioeconomic background. Population geneticists have already discarded ethnic background as the DOMINANT factor for academic performance or intelligence metric (look at the continuous upward trend in average I. Q. over the years).

3. There is no such thing as a pure ethnic group.

4. About PISA scores:

It turns out that the U. S. (whites, blacks, hispanics included) scores rather badly (bottom half, third and fifth in reading, math and science) when compared to other oecd countries. Are American whites intrinsically (i. e. genetically) inferior to Fins or Koreans?

Yes, Mexico places last in all of the rankings but Mexico has suffered from significant social inequalities for most of its history (I am originally from Mexico). In Mexico, asking a child to do well in school when he/she is only thinking on whether he/she will eat that day is a bit unrealistic. Now, we have only to blame ourselves as a country for our failure to improve our condition but our ethnicity does not have anything to do with our problems. Afterall, we are perhaps the most ethnically-mixed country in Latin America.

the public doesn’t care one way or another about a filibuster. Polling bears this out. And yes, the Democrats have no party disicipline, and the Republicans have a ton of party disicpline. There is no Democratic equivalent to the Club For Growth, and groups like EMILY’s list and NARAL will just endorse all incumbents, even some Republicans.

So yes, right-wing Republicans dominate the Republican party, while very, very moderate Democrats hold all the leadership positions in the Democratic party (could you even imagine a pro-choice Republican heading the Republican Senate coalition? Harry Reid is pro-life).

And as an aside, yes, it is shocking that not one Republican was willing to vote on the nationalization of the policy that was the centerpiece of Mitt Romney’s run for the Republican Nomination. Kinda strange, really.

Rather than sniping at Republicans for filibustering. Ask yourself why a party with 59 votes has such a hard time breaking a filibuster?

Eighteen years ago, little high school space nerd was figuring out how to be an astronaut. Option A: join the military. Option B: become a civilian scientist.

Little space nerd was in heavy denial about her crush on little poet girl. Little space nerd had no idea that the brand-new “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” was aimed squarely at her. Little space girl could have chosen A, and signed up for two decades of fear.

But little space nerd also thought the Hubble Deep Field was pretty. So she didn’t join ROTC, and she never flew a plane. But she didn’t have to spend two decades lying, either.

@23 Neil:
Win!

@#20 Escuerd: Excellent points. I do think that acceptance of gays in the military by other servicemembers could conceivably vary widely depending on the national/local culture. Of course the patriot in me is optimistic that our guys are at least as openminded/mature as folks in other countries So yeah, hopefully you’re right.

Yeah, you’re overstating them. Unless you think that there’s some reason that the U.S.’s military will have special problems not encountered by the British Armed Forces, much of Europe, the Israeli Defense Force, the Australian Defence Force, etc.

Now, it’s always possible that the U.S. will prove to be fundamentally different, but why are people acting like we’re going into this with no data and like we’ll have to wait and “see fairly soon” as if we didn’t already have a pretty good idea what to expect?