Reply from Congressman Emanuel Cleaver concerning Orphan WorksActof 2008

[Leo Mauler]

--- On Thu, 8/14/08, Jeffrey Watts <jeffrey.w.watts at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Aug 14, 2008 at 3:32 AM, Leo Mauler
> <webgiant at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> > There's just no getting around the fact that 
> > until a law is repealed, the activity prohibited 
> > by that law is an illegal activity.  Trying to 
> > pretend that the law doesn't exist, prior to 
> > its repeal, just makes you look stupid, and 
> > puts you in the same category as Paris Hilton, 
> > who several months ago drove with a suspended 
> > driver's license, at 75MPH in a 30MPH zone, and 
> > in the dark with her headlights off, all at the 
> > same time.  She, too, stupidly tried to pretend 
> > that unrepealed laws did not exist.
> 
> I get your point, but the Paris Hilton example is a straw
> man.  It's not a valid comparison.

Of course its a valid comparison.  Illegal immigrants don't want to have to obey the law like everyone else.  They want *what they want*, *when they want it* and don't want to have to *obey the law* like everyone else.

In many ways illegal immigrants are poor versions of Paris Hilton: they're *snooty people* who think *the law shouldn't have to apply to them* just because they're *poor* and want to live somewhere else.
 
> If the law is bigoted and stupid, it's okay to not 
> like the law and not care if it's violated.  It's 
> okay to advocate for a change in the law, and to
> argue that violators be forgiven or accommodated.

Absolutely, but if you break the law before you repeal it, its stupid to demand that you not be punished for your actions.

> Jim Crow laws.  The Draft.  Sodomy laws.  All of 
> which were bad laws, were violated by good people, 
> and were overturned or repealed once society came
> around.

And those good people who violated those laws violated them knowing darn well they would be prosecuted for violating them.  In fact the entire point of those "civil disobedient" people was that they be prosecuted, so that the cases could cause the laws to be repealed through court precedent.

Then we have illegal immigrants who want to have their cake and eat it too: they want the laws repealed and to not be prosecuted for violating those laws prior to the repeal of said laws.  This isn't "civil disobedience", this is Paris Hilton-style snobbery.

> I believe our immigration laws fall into those
> categories.

Not so much.  "Jim Crow" laws had no basis other than the oppression of black people.  Same for sodomy laws oppressing homosexuals.

Immigration carries very real threats with it, among them communicable diseases and violent criminal records.  Immigration laws require that incoming immigrants prove they aren't a threat to existing U.S. citizens, and unlike the racism about blacks and the homophobia about homosexuals, the threats are real and not imagined.

The Draft isn't so much a "bad" law as a badly-implemented law, originally created for good reasons (WWII) and exploited for bad ones (Vietnam).

> Until we stop looking the other way at businesses 
> violating labor laws, until we address the imbalance 
> and inequity in our immigration quotas, and until we
> secure the border in a meaningful way I can't condemn
> those that choose to break them.

So because other people break one set of laws it is O.K. for you to break another set of laws?  Explain to me how this is the statement of a rational person who believes in the rule of law.

Incidentally, here in the U.S.A. a man is breaking and entering, and trespassing, if he enters my home without my permission, **even if my door is unlocked**.  With your attitude about trespassing requiring "breaking into a house through a locked door", you may want to not let anyone know where *you* live, just in case one night you accidentally leave your door unlocked...