The mass amnesty proposed by the Bush administration—the most discredited government to preside over this country since the late days of Richard Nixon—flies in the face of what most Americans want. The Center for Immigration Studies has shown that most Americans, regardless of race, creed, or political party, want to reduce the number of immigrants into the U.S., raise the skill and educational levels of those who are admitted, and secure this country’s borders.

The Bush bill accomplishes none of these popular goals, and instead offers a virtually free pass to legal status for 12 million illegal immigrants, along with half-hearted measures to secure a few hundred miles of our massively porous southern frontier. Criminal gangs have already used this border to smuggle dozens of Middle Easterners into the U.S.; indeed, as little old ladies get strip-searched in airports across the U.S., the entire cadre of Al-Qaeda could wade across the Rio Grande, unmolested.

With the approval, no doubt, of that bullying coward Rudolph Giuliani, who as mayor of New York forbade his police to turn in illegal immigrants to the feds—making the entire city a sanctuary for the likes of Mohammed Atta. This is why Rudolph “I heroically stood at a microphone on 9/11” tends to be opposed by the people who actually were affected by the Sept. 11 attacks—such as NYC firemen, and the families of 9/11 victims—even as he wins plaudits from gullible Republicans who watched the attacks on TV. As a native New Yorker who had close friends affected by the attacks—one narrowly escaped death, while another watched from the street as bodies fell from buildings a few hundred feet away—I cannot understand how Giuliani has become such an icon of “security” and “toughness” on Terror…except for the simple fact that Giuliani was visible on TV throughout that fateful day, even as Dick Cheney stared at oil maps of Iraq in an undisclosed location, and President Bush cowered in a bunker somewhere reading the rest of My Pet Goat.

In response to the massive grass-roots opposition to this amnesty swindle, the cashiered political hack Trent Lott is telling the New York Times: “Talk radio is running America. We have to deal with that problem.” I’m not sure how Lott plans to deal with the “problem” of voters expressing their opinion. Perhaps it will involve water-boarding.

The elites who dominate both the Republican party and the conservative movement will not let go of this amnesty bill, but will keep on twisting arms and pulling strings until they get it through the Senate. To them, cheap labor and bribes from business lobbies are vastly more important than the safety of our country or economic opportunity for native born Americans. These elites will have worse luck in the House, where the Republican congressmen who survived the 2006 bloodletting caused by Bush’s disastrous meddling in Iraq live in fear of their outraged constituents.

We need to keep that outrage good and hot, until this dishonest, double-dealing bill that’s longer than the Bible is buried with a stake through its heart. Its provisions represent a betrayal of government’s first and most sacred duty: to secure a nation’s borders against invasion. The bill also feeds into the abusive system of affirmative action which subjects millions of Americans to systematic discrimination.

Here’s one aspect of the amnesty which no one is talking about: The moment each of these illegals receives his walking papers, he will be eligible for affirmative action preferences over every white male in America. Including veterans of the Iraq war.

Instead of guarding the U.S. borders, our men are patrolling the frontier between Iraq and Syria, attempting to tamp down a civil war between two equally murderous sects of Islam. Meanwhile, bloodthirsty neocons like Joseph Lieberman are demanding that the U.S. launch a Pearl Harbor-style pre-emptive attack on a sovereign state, Iran, which poses no threat to us whatsoever. The pilots who (God willing) return from bombing Iranian cities into powder will find that lawbreakers who snuck into their homeland and used forged documents to work have more rights than Caucasian veterans.

The fault for this disgraceful administration and its policies lies not with the Left but with the Right. It wasn’t Michael Moore or Ward Churchill that handed the Republican nomination in 1999 to a dry-drunk incompetent frat boy who’d weaseled out of combat in Vietnam. It was lazy Republican primary voters, and the hacks who lead them. The same people who just might hand the nomination over to a pro-abortion, anti-gun, pro-gay marriage, cross-dressing open-borders adulterer. Unless, of course, the D.A. from “Law & Order” enters the race.

In that case, all bets are off. The Democrats will panic at the prospect of loyal NBC, USA, and TNT voters lining up behind a familiar face and trustworthy voice. The Democratic field will fade away, as party leaders see that they have no choice but to nominate Kiefer Sutherland.

John Zmirak is author of The Bad Catholic’s Guide to Wine, Whiskey and Song.