Comes from the President of the United States. He is trying to calm the heated emotions about the proposed immigration bill:
Senators writing an immigration bill broke from the House's get-tough approach by refusing Monday to make criminals of humanitarian groups or individuals who help illegal immigrants with more than emergency assistance.
Catholic clergy, immigrants and other groups rallied over the weekend in Los Angeles and other cities and again Monday at the Capitol against a bill the House passed in December that would make such assistance a felony.
Meanwhile, President Bush used a naturalization ceremony swearing in 30 new citizens from 20 countries to warn critics of his proposal to let some illegal immigrants remain in the United State against stoking anti-immigrant feelings.
"The immigration debate should be conducted in a civil and dignified way," the president said as the Senate prepared to tackle the hot-button election issue of what to do with the nation's estimated 11 million illegal immigrants this week.
The Senate Judiciary Committee rejected a proposal Monday from Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, to require humanitarian groups providing food, medical aid and advice to illegal immigrants to register with the Department of Homeland Security.
This is not the deep thought, not yet.
This is:
"No one should play on people's fears or try to pit neighbors against each other," Bush said.
An excellent piece of advice, though Bush only intended it to apply to the immigration controversy. Too bad that this is the very basis of most Republican policies in the last five years: playing on people's fears. Could it be that the fear-based administration is beginning to regret going down that road? This isn't the first consequence they might not have anticipated, this wave of demonstrations and protests across the country. We saw the first unintended result in the Portsgate where the fear of terror couldn't be switched off just on the president's say-so. Running a party political agenda on the basis of fear and loathing can be tricky.
Well, if you sleep with the dogs you are likely to wake up with fleas. Or so they say.