The Massachusetts legislature has passed a law which would enable the State of Massachusetts to help enforce immigration law.  This just shows that the canard about how “immigration is a federal issue and the states cannot do anything about it” is just political blather designed to fool the public.

Individual states can and should do a great deal to enforce immigration law. They can mandate that employers use the E-Verify system to ensure that their employees are US citizens or legal residents with valid social security numbers and not illegal immigrants. And they can make sure that social benefits designed for US citizens do not go to illegal immigrants.

From the New York Times — NY Times: Massachusetts Seeks to Help Enforce Immigration Law:

The Massachusetts Senate on Thursday approved a series of measures to tighten immigration enforcement, reflecting election-year unease over the issue in a Democratic-controlled Legislature that has spurned such crackdowns in the past.

The measures, which passed 28 to 10 in an amendment to a budget bill, would require state contractors to confirm that their workers were here legally and prohibit the contractors from doing business with the state if they were found to employ illegal immigrants.

The changes would also codify into law an existing state policy that bars illegal immigrants from qualifying for resident-tuition rates at state colleges. And they would require public housing agencies to give legal residents priority for subsidized housing.

In addition, the state attorney general’s office would be required to set up a hot line for people to anonymously report businesses that hire illegal immigrants, and to investigate any such reports….

A Suffolk University/7 News poll released Wednesday found that 84 percent of voters want the state to require proof of citizenship before awarding benefits like public assistance….

Massachusetts shows the way!

The Massachusetts senate race divides between Dem voters who believe in entitlement and Pubs who trust democracy.

Liberals are worried about the election three days from now. This is what they are up to!…..

Organizing for America

There’s a crucial Senate election in Massachusetts in just three days. We need your help to win it.

The polls are tightening as right-wing money floods the state, and one even shows the race to be a dead heat between progressive champion Martha Coakley and her extreme opponent. The truth is, special elections often have very low turnout and are notoriously unpredictable.

The stakes are just too high to leave Martha’s victory to chance.

If we lose, Sen. Ted Kennedy’s seat will be in the hands of someone who opposes everything he fought for. We’ll lose a key vote for the President’s agenda in the Senate — and put all the progress we’ve made toward health reform at risk.

That’s why OFA is putting together a massive voter turnout effort to make sure Obama voters get back to the polls this time around…

OFA is going all out in Massachusetts — we’re sending organizers, knocking on doors, and making phone calls by the tens of thousands to make sure that folks know how to participate.

It’s a huge effort, it’s expensive, and time is short. But with the outcome uncertain and the stakes sky high, I don’t want to wake up the morning after the election thinking that we could have done something more….

Mitch Stewart
Director
Organizing for America

Notice that the Dems still believe that the US senate seat from Massachusetts is privately owned and not the people’s seat.

Scott Brown has a fighting chance in the special election to fill Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat from Massachusetts.

At first, it didn’t seem very likely that he could break the “filibuster-proof” Democratic majority in the Senate. Ted Kennedy won reelection in 2006 with 69% of the vote. In 2008 Barack Obama beat John McCain 62% to 36%. But the times are changing.

Since he tossed his hat in the ring, Republican Brown has closed the traditional gap with Democratic opponent Martha Coakley. By January 5, Rasmussen reported:

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of likely voters in the state finds Coakley ahead of Brown 50% to 41%.

That’s likely voters. But there’s more:

Special elections are typically decided by who shows up to vote and it is clear from the data that Brown’s supporters are more enthusiastic. In fact, among those who are absolutely certain they will vote, Brown pulls to within two points of Coakley.

This is beginning to be doable. It is time, as they said in the days of steam railroading, to “pour on the coal.” And Coakley comes with dubious baggage — her negatives have been thoughtfully documented by Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion, an excellent blog authored by Cornell law professor William A. Jacobson:

Martha Coakley’s Secret Bank Account  (12/31/09)

Martha Coakley’s Secret Bank Account – Part 2  (1/1/10)

Martha Coakley’s Political House On Fire (1/2/10)

“What’s Martha Afraid Of?” (1/3/10)

Coakley Glances at Her Watch – For Six Days (1/4/10)

What’s Martha Afraid Of? Part 2 (1/6/10)

We encourage our readers to visit Jacobson’s blog — it has an exciting “you are there” ambiance and he really covers the ground. The opposition is resorting to all sorts of dirty tricks — phony “push polling”, SEIU and MoveOn skullduggery — and he covers it all.

And here’s one more reason for the ladies to support Brown. Forgive me, dear readers, but I just couldn’t resist. When Scott Brown was a 22-year-old law student at Boston College, he posed nude for the centerfold of Cosmopolitan magazine.

There. That should drive our traffic numbers up today!

Related:

American Power — Scott Brown Within Reach in Massachusetts

UPDATE, 9PM: Public Policy Polling is now reporting that the race is a toss-up.

The Massachusetts Senate race is now a toss up.

Buoyed by a huge advantage with independents and relative disinterest from Democratic voters in the state, Republican Scott Brown leads Martha Coakley 48-47.

Here are the major factors leading to this surprising state of affairs:

-As was the case in the Gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia last year, it looks like the electorate in Massachusetts will be considerably more conservative than the one that showed up in 2008….

Dems are down one critical Senate seat until January, due to their own Machiavellian ways. Don’t you just love it when their “chickens come home to roost?”

After the last election, Dems assumed virtually dictatorial powers, because they controlled the presidency, had a majority in the House of Representatives, and had a filibuster-proof majority of sixty seats in the Senate.

With the passing of Ted Kennedy, they have lost that critical edge by one senate vote. Now the governor of Massachusetts is a Democrat, Deval Patrick, and under normal circumstances, as it is in most states, he could appoint a Democrat to fill the remainder of Kennedy’s term. But the Dems have already shot themselves in the foot.

Back in 2004, incumbent US president Republican George W. Bush was running for a second term. And John Kerry, a sitting Democrat senator from Massachusetts, challenged him. If Kerry had been elected president, that would have left his Massachusetts Senate seat vacant. And that would have been a problem for the Dems.

Massachusetts is a heavily Democratic state. Seldom has the state gone for a Republican president — Dwight Eisenhower in 1956 and Ronald Reagan in 1980 in recent memory. But there was a rare period from 1991 to 2007 when the state had Republican governors (due to successive Democrat administrations running it down into junk bond ratings).

• William Weld from 1991 to 1997
• Argeo Paul Cellucci from 1997 to 2001
• Jane Maria Swift from 2001 to 2003
• Mitt Romney from 2003 to 2007

So in 2004 Mitt Romney, a Republican, was governor. And he could have filled Kerry’s seat with a Republican. Not wanting to allow that normal political process to unfold, Ted Kennedy strong-armed a law through the heavily Democratic Massachusetts legislature to take the appointment power away from the governor and not allow a vacant seat to be filled by appointment:

Prior to 2004, the replacement would serve out the remainder of the term of that Senate seat and also be eligible to run for it at the next regular election. The 2004 law, now in effect, does not allow a temporary replacement to be appointed and instead requires that a special election be held within 145 and 160 days….

In the summer of 2004, the law taking away the governor’s power and providing for a special election was approved by the House 122-30 and the Senate 31-7. It was supported overwhelmingly by all but seven of the House Democratic representatives and senators and opposed by all Republicans. Democrats at that time feared that then Republican Gov. Mitt Romney would have the opportunity to appoint a Republican to fill Sen. John Kerry’s seat if Kerry won the 2004 November presidential election. That GOP appointee, under the pre-2004 law, would have served in the U.S. Senate for four years until the regular Senate election in 2008.

During debate on the 2004 law, supporters of repealing the appointment power said that the temporary appointment system was archaic and takes power away from the voters by allowing a governor to make a political appointment that could last for several years….

So under the current law, which the Dems themselves voted in specifically to disadvantage the Republicans, the Dems cannot get back their sixty Senate seats before January. And this just at a time when they are trying to ram their unpopular health care bill down the American throat.

But now, in a revealing display of crass opportunism, the Dems are frantically trying to get legislation passed to allow the Massachusetts governor appointment power once again. We shall see. Even if they manage to manipulate the system one more time, it will take awhile, and that will be time taken from the health care battle.

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An interesting sideshow will be the choice of appointee. Ted Kennedy had designated his second wife Victoria Reggie Kennedy as his successor in the family seat. If she is not interested, Ted’s nephew Joseph P. Kennedy II is a possibility.

Outside the family, names mentioned include US Rep. Stephen F. Lynch, US Rep. Michael E. Capuano, and Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley. Former US Rep. Martin Meehan has also been suggested.

If a Kennedy offers, all bets are off, of course. The family seat is regarded as hereditary, such is the mentality of Massachusetts.

There is apparently a chair in the United States Senate with a brass plaque on the back engraved “Kennedy.” It belongs to one of the two Senators from Massachusetts. And it functions just like those pews in old colonial churches that were endowed to be used by members of a particular wealthy family, with ordinary folk relegated to the balcony.

From 1953 to 1960, John Kennedy sat in that chair. On December 22, 1960 he resigned to become President of the United States. At that time, younger brother Teddy was not old enough to serve in the Senate. So loyal Democrat Benjamin A. Smith II, the Democratic Mayor of Gloucester, was appointed to keep the chair warm for two years. When the election of 1962 rolled around, he dutifully retired, so that Ted Kennedy could have the chair.

Ted Kennedy has occupied the family chair from 1962 until the present — forty-six years. Now, faced with his own mortality, as patriarch of the Kennedy clan it falls to him to appoint a successor. The New York Daily News reports that Teddy has selected his wife Vicki:

Multiple sources in Massachusetts with close ties to the liberal lion say his wife of 16 years has long been his choice to continue carrying the family flame in the Senate….

“There’s no question that he’d like Vicki to continue in his seat,” said one Massachusetts Democrat with ties to the Camelot clan who spoke to Kennedy recently, before his health crisis.

“She’s smart, and smart politically.”

The 54-year-old Victoria Reggie Kennedy, a former hotshot Washington lawyer, is a Louisiana native and the daughter of a politically active judge….

By favoring his wife, Kennedy, 76, is bypassing his late brother Robert Kennedy’s eldest son, Joe, a former congressman….

Some commenters have protested that Senators should be ELECTED, not SELECTED. But that’s a moot point in the People’s Republic of Massachusetts.

Note the arrogance here. This is not a dying man saying, “Golly, gee, it would be nice if my wife could have my Senate seat.” No. This is an oligarch deciding between his wife and his nephew regarding a franchise he is sure that his family owns.