I commend Senator Delph for his service to our country and for his devotion to enforcing the laws of our land. This issue is not about whether we like or dislike illegal immigrants, it’s about enforcing the rule of law and that is a basic principle that is absolutely necessary for any society.

Since you value “rules of law”, I am surprised at this post.

In a democracy, it is important that the military protect our system of democracy. To do that it is important that the military supports the will of the government as opposed to forcing it’s will on the government. (Which is true in many military dictatorships in the world.)

Therefore one of the rules of the military is that people in uniform should not be advocating. If military personnel want to advocate, they can as a civilian in civilian clothes.

As a person who values “rules of law”, I would think you too would have an issue with Lt. Col. Mejia advocating in uniform. Also since Senator Delph should have also been aware of this rule, then he at least had a lapse of judgement.

I would think it is important that a high ranking military person and elected state Senator would see the value in obeying the “rules of law” instead of acting as if they might be above the “rules of law”.

David Wene, Gary Welsh, and the Indianapolis Star are right on this one.

Any number of times I could have appeared in Uniform at the Statehouse as a proponent for the rights of gay citizens. But a military officer is well aware that the military has no business engaging directly in the political process on behalf of one political perspective or the other. That’s military 101.

There’s an interesting difference between the young man who testified against the amendment while in uniform: he violated code and was prepared to pay the price.

But Delph and Mejia are basing their whole campaign on the idea of supporting the law because it is the law. The hipocracy is indeed telling, and points up that they aren’t about the rule of law at all.

And, Sikma and Jezierski, you have joined the wing of the Republican Party that opposed immigration completely. In the late 1800’s, I’m sure you are aware, the Democratic Party was the party of immigrants, while the conservative nativist movement therefore identified with Republicans, wanting nothing to do with Foreigners. Lincoln, of the abolitionist wing, had no sympathy with the nativists.

If Republican nativists had their way in the mid 1800’s, there would have been no more immigrants whether legal OR illegal, and you wouldn’t be here. Now that you’re families are well established in America, you’re no different.

If it was about law and order, you would want the law and discipline to come down hard on Delph and Mejia for violating a basic principle of government, rather than apologizing for them.

Joel, boy are you right.

The Republican Party today is in a fight over what the Republican Party stands for… Liberty, free trade, capitalism, individualism, and a strong defense — or — Big Government, get-in-your-life, tell people how to live, “Do as we say not as we do”, watch-me pray-while-I-run-poor-Hispanics-out-of-country hipocracy.

I’m one of those people who didn’t have to get my autographed Ronald Reagan photo by bidding on E-bay. Ronald Reagan was the Chief Individualist in opposition to Communist over-bearing Government. The Republican Party needs to go back to what it was… a Party of the Bill of Rights.

We need to get go back to a day when we didn’t try to get people to the polls by drumming up contempt and animosity for fellow human beings, which is all this campaign against immigrants has been. I’m not sure I would be so displeased to see the rabid right depart the Party, so we can re-capture the brand as it once existed.

I’m for reasonable immigration controls and a realistic method of escorting the 11,000,000 plus immigrants, upon whom our economy has come to depend, into legal status, ala President Bush and Senator McCain.

And I’m for Republicans who tout the rule of law while violating military code finding a seat so they don’t continue to embarrass us.

1. You mean, Brian, what it means to live in a land of Freedom? What it means to live in a land in which everyone is treated equally under the law? I don’t think you have the first clue.

2. I also don’t think you have any idea whether your ancestors actually came here legally, even if they did come through Ellis Island. Think Great Great Great Grandfather having traveled all that distance would have been honest with an inspector about his, his wife’s, or child’s fever contracted on the boat?

You’re what? 20? 23? You may face circumstances in which you learn life isn’t so simple. You’re fortunate… born in a great land to a family of at least minimum means… not in a hovel, with no education and a family desperate for money…. With U.S. visa quotas low and requirements high, but your family starving, you might very well consider that there is a higher law and a higher morality that calls you across the U.S. border in the dead of night.

3. As for us, the Douglas family broke the law at least three times, so far as I’m aware. First, they backed the wrong pretender to the throne and were packed up and shipped out of Scotland. Second, they ignored the prohibitions of the Crown and passed through the Cumberland Gap to seek farmland in Kentucky before the Revolution, and there in combination with Israel Boone under the leadership of Daniel, fought the British laws of the land.

Third, the Douglas family in Indiana, who became Republicans as the Party formed, ignored the rule law and shepherded escaping slaves through their farm in Flat Rock Indiana north as part of the Underground Railroad. You know the Underground rail road, don’t you? That was an illegal means by which generally religious Northerners assisted people living in subhuman conditions to travel across borders to someplace they might have a chance for freedom, dignity, and prosperity unavailable to them to the south.

Totally illegal. Tsk tsk.

But then David Douglas (the family’s first Hoosier Republican) had an odd moral outlook, and before the Civil War was establishing a series of houses of worship in Indiana that discounted the role of tradition and emphasized instead individualism and progress consistent with philosophies of the Scottish Enlightenment. The New Light movement was a sect of a larger religion that in some hands emphasizes compassion for people less well off. The founder of that religion took a dim view of enforcing laws that created suffering. That larger religion of compassion is called Christianity…. you might look it up.

Scott, it isn’t just business.. it’s our economic health and standard of living which, according to most economists conservative and liberal alike, depend upon a significant and increasing amount of immigration. Overwhelmingly, the illegal immigrants who are here are contributing to our future more than they detract. They should be guided into legal avenues.

But let’s be real. The animus that is being drummed up against immigrants is identical to the animus drummed up again and again in American history against immigrants… to the “yellow peril”… to the Irish…. to the Italians…. to the Germans…. It is merely being disguised as a concern about the “rule of law”… which is why Delph’s mistake became so telling.

I’m fast coming to another conclusion about immigration, by the way. I’m beginning to wonder if the influence of cultures in which the individual is not traditionally valued is turning out to be where the greatest threat to America comes from. Democracy came from the ancient classical world, but it was unchecked. The Magna Carta, in which individuals had rights in the face of the King and country, was an English document, and provided the foundation of Western individualism. It’s clear to me that we are suffering a surge of influence by people who haven’t the least interest in the heritage of the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights that flowed from it. In Europe, the threat to Liberty may indeed be the absolutism of Radical Islam. In America, I fear the threat to Liberty and to Constitutional restraint is home-grown.

Joel, seldom in the history of these anti-immigrant movements have the leaders owned up to being blatantly anti-whatever-nationality it is they are drumming sentiment up against. Now that civilization has expressed its opinion of blatant prejudice through the civil rights laws, drumming up and riding anti-immigrant sentiment for the purpose of political gain must be more carefully strategized.

I am amused at this morning’s paper in which Delph now casts his argument in terms of a concern for human rights… Like Romney learning each approach isn’t earning him the acclaim he expected, and then recasting it, Delph is having to repackage his effort. As if the immigrants who have traveled so far and at such peril to find employment would prefer not to be employed here.

Fred was not “pandering”. He was expressing what he believes. His traction problem had to do with his campaign and not his positions.

Chris, you are quick to say what people are THINKING when you do not know them. In fact, there are very few comments that you make that are not filled with attributing various motivations to people where you have no possible way of knowing them. You would do well to begin to give people at least a bit of credit as desiring what is best for the country.

Occasionally my parents hire a lady to help us with our house cleaning. This is perfectly all right. But if this lady forced her way into our house started cleaning and demanded payment, we would not pay her, simply because her tortious actions of breaking and entering would not demand that we hire her. It is the same scenario with the illegals, these illegals are entering the US without permission, why should they be given work, why should they even be allowed to remain, any normal person would immediately eject and intruder from their property why not eject the intruder on a country?