Unabashedly Unhyphenated: Worth repeating

There have been a few crucial points in the long pieces I've written over these past few days of fleshing out the immigration reform debate. There are things worth keeping in mind that I'm afraid are being buried as time passes. Here are three key snippets that I feel need to be repeated:

Subject: Amnesty

The first amnesty in U.S. history was offered by President George Washington, in 1795, to participants in the Whiskey Rebellion, a series of riots caused by an unpopular excise tax on liquor; a conditional amnesty, it allowed the U.S. government to forget the crimes of those involved, in exchange for their signatures on an oath of loyalty to the United States.
So class, the very first United States AMNESTY was one with CONDITIONS placed upon it. It appears, historically, our leaders have placed conditions upon amnesty and actually had the gall to CALL IT AMNESTY!

I didn't look to the dictionary, I looked to American history to find this incontrovertible proof that the president and our leaders are lying to us. It is that simple...and that scary.

Subject: Who we are

Having people who live Inside The Beltway decide on their own what this nation's character will be, and let's not try to deny that our nation's character is what is really most at stake in this immigration debate, is akin to having pedophiles designing playgrounds. We don't know for sure what the outcome will be, but it is a very good bet that it won't be a safe one.

Subject: Letting Foreign Born Serve In Congress

The more I think about my own Senator Martinez, the more I loathe the fact that we ever let those who were not born here serve in Congress. This SOB does not represent me, or my family. He's more interested in helping the very sort of folks who expected us to assimilate to their culture in South Florida and led us to the conclusion that we had to move from our home town in order to raise our family in a place that had some resemblance to America.