The science is settled, LA Angels at Cleveland Indians postponed due to rain

6/18/14, "Cleveland Indians grounds crew members roll out the tarp in the middle of batting practice, as Tim Donovan, middle, and A.J. Woolen, right, keep an eye on the batter, before the game against the Los Angeles Angels on June 18, 2014 at Progressive Field. Batting practice was shortened due to rain." The Plain Dealer

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Green billionaire Vinod Khosla blocks public from California beach he says belongs to him. Stunned Calif. surfer says he thought Khosla was green and therefore a 'good guy.' Khosla co. exec says 'government money we attract' is key to success. Obama dines at Khosla's house

"To some, Mr. Khosla’s actions seem particularly surprising because he has been closely identified with advocating green technology.

“I thought Khosla was going to be a good guy,” said Mr. Caughlan of the Surfrider Foundation, who once posed with Mr. Khosla for a photograph in an environment issue of Vanity Fair with a group of men on the California coastline. “When he bought Martin’s Beach, I thought, ‘Oh great, an environmentalist bought that beach.’ And then he cut off access to everyone and we went, ‘What? Where did that come from?’ ”" 

"Company executives have been quite clear that one important measure of corporate success is the amount of ‘government money we attract.’" 

6/15/14, "It’s Privacy vs. the People in the Battle for Martin’s Beach," NY Times, Adam Nagourney, Half Moon Bay, Calif.

"The Pacific Ocean glistens in the distance, past the rolling bluffs that rise beyond the electric gate that blocks off Martin’s Beach Road. The road leads to Martin’s Beach, once a revered hideaway for surfers, fishers and beachgoers drawn by its isolation, dramatic cliffs and sweep of soft sand.

But these days, the future of this hidden beach on the San Francisco Peninsula is being fought in a courthouse 25 miles away, in a battle that has become the latest class-charged standoff involving a wealthy entrepreneur in this polarized part of California. Vinod Khosla, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, paid $37.5 million in 2008 for a 53-acre parcel of ocean land that includes the beach and the road — and proceeded to close the gate, posting armed guards and signaling that he was prepared to spend what it takes to keep the public off what he contends is private land.

“People are saying, ‘Talk about entitlement: Rich people think they can get away with anything,’ ” said Rob Caughlan, the former president of the Surfrider Foundation, the nonprofit organization that brought the suit. “All we want is to get Khosla to follow the same law as everyone else does.”

Mr. Khosla, who is best known as a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, declined a request for an interview. One of his lawyers, Jeffrey Essner, said the have-and-have-not argument had hijacked, at least in public perception, what he described as a cut-and-dried case about private property rights. 

“It’s being sensationalized in the media to focus on populist sentiments and the 1 percent,” he said....

The lawsuit being fought at the San Mateo County Courthouse — a decision is expected in the summer — signals the latest stage in a five-year flurry of litigation, protests, civil disobedience, indignation and arrests, aimed at forcing Mr. Khosla, who does not live on the property, to let people back on the beach (which is variously called Martin’s Beach and Martins Beach). His opponents contend he is defying the State Constitution, state law and the mind-set of “the beach belongs to everyone” that is fundamental to many Californians.

Compelled by a judge to testify, Mr. Khosla said on the stand: “If you’re asking me why any gate is locked, it’s to restrict public access. That’s a general statement about gates.”

While the previous owner of Martin’s Beach gave people access to the beach for a fee, Mr. Khosla has put up a forbidding gate, albeit a low one that can be sidestepped. While a few surfers and bathers do trespass and use the beach, some have been arrested, the surfers say, though fewer recently as the dispute has heated up.

The fight has moved to Sacramento as well. Last month, the California Senate approved a bill that would permit the state to use the power of eminent domain to seize enough land to provide a public passageway to the beach. Next, the bill will be considered by the Assembly, where it faces an uncertain future. “The coast is protected, and when somebody does something that’s going to affect that, there’s going to be a reaction — and a strong one,” said the sponsor of the bill, Jerry Hill, a Democratic state senator from San Mateo.

An earlier court challenge to Mr. Khosla failed when a San Mateo judge ruled that the Constitution, which declares that all property below the mean tide line is public, and a 1976 law mandating that property owners provide access to these beaches were superseded by the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The treaty ended the Mexican-American War by requiring that the United States recognize Mexican land grants, including one that awarded rights to this plot well before the Constitution was adopted.

This latest case is in some ways more narrow: The Surfrider Foundation contends that under the Coastal Act of 1976, Mr. Khosla was required to obtain a permit from the California Coastal Commission before he blocked access to the beach.

“This is not a rocket-science case,” said Joe Cotchett, the lawyer representing the Surfrider Foundation. “This is a case all about arrogance. This is a case where a multibillionaire — not a millionaire, a billionaire — has just decided to build a castle on that beach, and the public is going to be barred.”

Mr. Khosla said at the trial that he did not have a plan in mind for the property. Dori L. Yob, another of his lawyers, called the case “a property right issue just like any other — just like you or I would want to protect our private property rights.” She added, “Just because where your house sits used to be a public beach doesn’t mean people can walk through your backyard while you are having breakfast.”

The presumption of opening the beach is powerful in California. About six miles up the road from the beach, the Ritz-Carlton, a lush complex of golf courses and high-end living overlooking the Pacific, provides free “coastal access” parking and a marked trail leading to the beach.

Down south in Malibu, outside Los Angeles, beach advocates fought successfully with David Geffen, the billionaire who owns a home on Broad Beach, to force him to open a gate leading down to the ocean. Jenny Price, one of the leaders of that coastal access battle, said, “It’s tricky, because I realize this is private property, but the Constitution requires that the public have access to the public beach.”...

To some, Mr. Khosla’s actions seem particularly surprising because he has been closely identified with advocating green technology.

“I thought Khosla was going to be a good guy,” said Mr. Caughlan of the Surfrider Foundation, who once posed with Mr. Khosla for a photograph in an environment issue of Vanity Fair with a group of men on the California coastline. “When he bought Martin’s Beach, I thought, ‘Oh great, an environmentalist bought that beach.’ And then he cut off access to everyone and we went, ‘What? Where did that come from?’ ”"

======================

1/11/13, "Strange Bedfellows? Not on K Street, as Khosla Hires Condi,"

Breitbart, Wynton Hall

=================================

Obama has dinner at "Green Guru" Vinod Khosla's house:

6/8/13, "Indian-American venture capitalist Vinod Khosla hosts dinner for Obama," Times of India, Chidanand Raijghatta, TNN

"It's not every day that the US President drops by for dinner at the home of an ordinary resident, much less an Indian-American entrepreneur, but Vinod Khosla is no regular Joe. The famed Silicon Valley venture capitalist, co-founder of Sun Microsystems and initiator of many green enterprises, hosted President Obama at his Portola Valley home on Thursday night amid a political firestorm in Washington over US government surveillance of private citizens.

The intimate dinner with New Delhi-born Khosla, his wife Neeru, and selected guests that included three key US Senators, was part of Obama's fundraising for Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. It cost the exclusive attendees a small matter of $32,400 per head. Earlier in the evening, the President stopped by at the Palo Alto home of Flipboard CEO Mike McCue, where entry was a more modest $2500 per head.

Khosla, a green guru, now a well-known figure in Washington DC circles, is obviously in with the Democratic Party."...


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California and Hawaii have over-supply of solar panels. Hawaii is refusing to hook up new panels to the grid in some areas-BBC

"Rooftop solar panels don't just produce electricity at the "wrong" time of day, they also produce it at a low voltage, which, according to the German renewable energy entrepreneur Alexander Voigt, means it is effectively trapped at the level of the local community."...

6/13/14, "Vanadium: The metal that may soon be powering your neighbourhood," BBC World Service, by Laurence Knight

"Hawaii has a problem, one that the whole world is likely to face in the next 10 years. And the solution could be a metal that you've probably never heard of - vanadium.

Hawaii's problem is too much sunshine - or rather too much solar power feeding into its electricity grid.

Generating electricity in the remote US state has always been painful. With no fossil fuel deposits of its own, it has to get oil and coal shipped half-way across the Pacific.

That makes electricity in Hawaii very, very expensive - more than three times the US average - and it is the reason why 10% and counting of the islands' residents have decided to stick solar panels on their roof.

The problem is that all this new sun-powered electricity is coming at the wrong place and at the wrong time of day.

Hawaii's electricity monopoly, Heco, fears parts of the grid could become dangerously swamped by a glut of mid-day power, and so last year 

it began refusing to hook up the newly-purchased panels of residents in some areas.

And it isn't just Hawaii.

"California's got a major problem," says Bill Radvak, the Canadian head of American Vanadium, America's only vanadium mining company.

"The amount of solar that's coming on-stream is just truly remarkable, but it all hits the system between noon and 4pm."

That does not marry well with peak demand for electricity, which generally comes in the late afternoon and evening, when everyone travels home, turns on the lights, heating or air conditioning, boils the kettle, bungs dinner in the microwave, and so on.

What the Golden State needs is some way of storing the energy for a few hours every afternoon until it is needed.

And Radvak thinks he holds the solution - an electrochemical solution that exploits the special properties of vanadium.

Back in 2006, when Radvak's company decided to reopen an old vanadium mine in Nevada, electricity grids were the last thing on their minds.

Back then, vanadium was all about steel. That's because adding in as little as 0.15% vanadium creates an exceptionally strong steel alloy.

"Steel mills love it," says Radvak. "They take a bar of vanadium, throw it in the mix. At the end of the day they can keep the same strength of the metal, but use 30% less."...

And because vanadium steel retains its hardness at high temperatures, it is used in drill bits, circular saws, engine turbines and other moving parts that generate a lot of heat.

So steel accounts for perhaps 90% of demand for the metal.

Vanadium's alloying properties have been known about for well over a century. Henry Ford used it in 1908 to make the body of his Model T stronger and lighter....

Today, vanadium mainly goes into structural steel, such as in bridges and the "rebar" used to reinforce concrete.

It is a small and sometimes volatile market. Supply is dominated by China, Russia and South Africa where the metal is extracted mostly as a useful by-product from iron ore slag and other mining processes.

China - which is midway through the longest and biggest construction boom in history - also dominates demand.

A recent decision by Beijing to stop using low-quality steel rebar has bumped up forecast demand for vanadium by 40%.

Yet the biggest source of future demand may have nothing to do with steel at all, and may instead exploit vanadium's unusual electro-chemical nature....

Vanadium "redox flow" batteries are indeed stable. They can be discharged and recharged 20,000 times without much loss of performance, and are thought to last decades (they have not been around long enough for this to have been demonstrated in practice).

They can also be enormous, and - in large part thanks to their vanadium content - expensive. The smallest of the "Cellcube" batteries that American Vanadium is producing in partnership with German engineering firm Gildemeister has a footprint the size of a parking bay and costs $100,000....

The BBC's headquarters in London - home to 7,000 employees - would need one the size of two 12-metre trailers, Radvak says, perched up on the roof or perhaps buried underground. 

His firm is providing the batteries' key ingredient, the electrolyte (the fluid in the battery)....

Radvak says that among his target customers are large corporate electricity consumers such as the Metropolitan Transport Authority, which runs New York's subway, and with whom his firm has just signed a pilot deal to supply Cellcube batteries.

Such companies are facing ever higher charges for the electricity they use during the peak hours of the day, and the Canadian claims they can cut their bills by a quarter if they use a battery to draw down the daytime electricity they need during the night, when it is cheapest.

By flattening out demand between the daily peaks and troughs, the batteries also help out the electricity companies.

One of their biggest expenses is investing in the extra power station capacity that is only ever called upon for a few hours each year when the weather, holidays and the time of day all conspire to produce the biggest peak in electricity demand.

That challenge of balancing electricity supply and demand is set to get a whole lot more difficult as ever more solar and wind energy is added to the grid.

Which brings us back to Hawaii.

Rooftop solar panels don't just produce electricity at the "wrong" time of day, they also produce it at a low voltage, which, according to the German renewable energy entrepreneur Alexander Voigt, means it is effectively trapped at the level of the local community.

"Our traditional electricity grid is built in a way that the energy flows from the high voltage to the low voltage, and not the other way round," he says.

That means the solar energy can only be shared among the few households - typically just a village or a town neighbourhood - that happen to share the same transformer station that plugs them into the high-voltage national grid.

Voigt helped set up the vanadium battery company that was later bought up by Gildemeister. He foresees the batteries being built next to transformers, where they can store up each community's daily solar surplus, before releasing it back again in the evening.

It is a rosy image, but it does prompt two obvious questions.

First, why should vanadium batteries be the technology of choice? 

For example, there is a glut of cheap lithium batteries these days, after manufacturers built out their capacity heavily in anticipation of a hybrid and electric cars boom that has yet to arrive.

Lithium batteries can deliver a lot of power very quickly, which is great if you need to balance sudden unexpected fluctuations - as may be caused by passing clouds for solar, or a passing gale for wind.

But a lithium battery cannot be recharged even a tenth as many times as a vanadium battery - it's likely to die after 1,000 or 2,000 recharges.

Nor can lithium batteries scale up to the size needed to store an entire community's energy for several hours. By contrast, vanadium batteries can be made to store more energy simply by adding bigger tanks of electrolyte. They can then release it at a sedate pace, unlike conventional batteries, where greater storage generally means greater power.

At the other end of the scale, there are also plenty of large-scale energy storage systems under development, such as those exploiting liquefied air, and the 1,000-fold shrinkage in the volume of the air when it is cooled to -200C.

But these systems take up a lot of space, Mr Voigt says, and are better suited to the very largest-scale facilities that will be needed to serve for instance a large offshore wind farm plugging into the high-voltage national grid.

The second really big question for vanadium is whether the world contains enough of the stuff. The immediate challenge is that the birth of the vanadium battery business is coming just as China is ramping up its demand for vanadium steel.

But there is also a longer-term problem - the quantities of vanadium added to steel alloys are so tiny that it is not economic to recover it from the steel at the end of its life. So for the battery market, that vanadium is effectively lost forever.

But Mr Voigt remains optimistic. 

"Like with all raw materials, it's always a question of how stable is the need of the market, and how big are the incentives for the industry to set up new mines."

With demand on an upward trend, American Vanadium is not the only one trying to fill the gap. 

For example, rival battery-maker Imergy has developed a cheap ways of producing vanadium electrolyte from iron ore slag and the fine ash produced by coal-burning.

Over the longer term, demand for vanadium steel could be met by melting down and recasting old vanadium steel rather than making it afresh, so that freshly mined vanadium could be channelled into the energy market instead.

And in the very long run, perhaps we will harvest vanadium from sea squirts - there are plenty of them in the Pacific."





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'Mr. Boehner and Mr. Cantor did not lead, did not fight, and let us down. Not for weeks, not for months, but for years....People want to know: Who is orchestrating and masterminding the illegal influx of tens of thousands of children unaccompanied by parents across the border into America?' Rabbi Aryeh Spero

6/12/14, "Cantor Fell Because He Wouldn't Fight the Good Fight," American Thinker, by Rabbi Aryeh Spero

"Tuesday night, David Brat, an economics professor at Randolph-Macon College, right outside Richmond, accomplished something stunning: defeating the House Majority Leader, Eric Cantor, something never done before in American history. 

Some are trying to pigeonhole Mr. Brat as a Tea Party candidate, but the truth is that, while he appeals to the Tea Party constituency, he is what a bread-and-butter Republican is supposed to be: a believer in free markets, limited government, strong defense, and a morality based in our Judeo-Christian ethos.
 

I first met Mr. Brat years back when he invited me to speak at Randolph-Macon College on the topic of “The Morality of Capitalism” based on an article I had published in the Wall Street Journal. He is well grounded in the fundamentals of American political philosophy.  

 

The issue of immigration played heavily in the last two weeks ofthe campaign: specifically, the unacceptable daily phenomenon of illegals walking across the border and almost immediately becoming wards of the state by taxing hardworking American citizens and too-quickly finding loopholes for them to vote and determine America’s destiny. Americans are afraid they are losing their country and are being made powerless to stop it.

Mr. Cantor, as House Majority Leader together with Speaker Boehner, did not seem to share the alarm that many of us do. In effect, an invasion is happening to America and the weapons are not bullets but the ballot box: Democrat leaders are orchestrating an influx of illegals to use the ballot box to install socialism and permanently maintain the power of the Democrat Party. Their eligibility to vote is often suspect, but legitimate challenges are shot down by invoking the tried-and-tested accusation of racism.

The boast by Mr. Obama that he would transform America is happening through a willful demographic invasion designed to nullify the votes of hardworking, patriotic Americans in their own land. People want to know: Who is orchestrating and masterminding the illegal influx of tens of thousands of children unaccompanied by parents across the border into America?

Mr. Cantor lost not because people decided to “throw the bums out.”  He lost because he, in this particular primary race, became the national symbol of a Republican Party unwilling to represent our people in our need to stop a corrupt and dictatorial President and his party. 

Never in our lifetime have we witnessed such atrocious violations of the Constitution and assaults on freedom, decency, and the sacred code of American fair play than in the last couple of years wherein the IRS audited the president’s enemies, our people were killed in Benghazi and the circumstances covered up, the failure at the VA, the green light for Iran to go ahead with its bomb-making, and the willful release of five Taliban terrorists who certainly threaten our safety.  During all this, while conservative Americans looked for leaders to vigorously and passionately stand against such tyrannies, the two men most entrusted to do so, Mr. Boehner and Mr. Cantor, did not lead, did not fight, and let us down. Not for weeks, not for months, but for years. 

Their inaction made us feel powerless. Their dispassion made us wonder if they were on our team. The country is burning and they seem oblivious. Their career goals do not seem to coincide with who we are, what we cherish, and our principled beliefs in Americanism."...

Three images above: 6/5/14, "Leaked Images Reveal Children Warehoused in Crowded U.S. Cells, Border Patrol Overwhelmed," Breitbart Texas, Brandon Darby 

 
 



3/16/09, Trash on Arizona-Mexico border, Now Public, Rape Tree in background

Fans in Cincinnati desperately seeking some global warming drought, 2 hour rain delay v Dodgers

6/10/14, "Fans in ponchos leave the stands in the rain as they wait for the start of the baseball game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Cincinnati Reds in Cincinnati," AP. final 6-1 Dodgers, after 2 hr. and 5 min. rain delay

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2014/06/11/5890586/beckett-balance-equal-dodgers.html#storylink=cpy

No drought in the Heartland, Yankees rained out in Kansas City, Missouri

6/9/14, "Large drops of rain currently in Kansas City. Forecast bad. Very bad pic.twitter.com/ufEWGClacc," Erik Boland twitter. Yankees at Kansas City Royals rained out 6/9/14, resked Aug. 25

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Federal records show Haley Barbour as agent of Mexican government was key in effort to allow illegal aliens to obtain legal US residency by just paying a fine, putting them ahead of those waiting to get here legally. Barbour denied this when questioned in 2011. His firm was paid $402,000 by Mexican gov.

3/23/2011, "Records contradict Mississippi governor on lobbying work for Mexico," LA Times, By Melanie Mason and Maeve Reston

Illegals, June 2014

"Haley Barbour's firm listed him as a key member of the team that promoted a path to citizenship for Mexican illegal immigrants. He said Saturday that he wasn't involved."

"Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour's assertion that he did not personally work for the government of Mexico when his lobbying firm represented the country a decade ago is contradicted by the firm's own federal filings, which describe him as a leader of the team assigned to the account.

During an appearance Saturday at the California Republican Convention in Sacramento, Barbour denied a reporter's statement that he once "lobbied for the government of Mexico on the issue of amnesty and a path to citizenship."

 

 

Illegals, June 2014

"Your facts are incorrect," Barbour said, adding, "I didn't do the work in the firm; one of my partners did." The Republican governor said one of the issues his firm worked on was a law that would have allowed legal immigrants to renew their visas without leaving the country, though he added, "Don't hold me to all the details."

In fact, the firm lobbied in support of bill that would have allowed illegal immigrants to obtain legal residency by paying a fine, instead of having to return to their home countries before applying for legal entry.

According to paperwork filed by Barbour Griffith & Rogers with the Justice Department, the firm represented the Mexican Embassy for 16 months, with Barbour listed as one of the key members on the account.

Illegals, June 2014

In an Aug. 15, 2001, letter to Mexican Ambassador Juan Jose Bremer confirming the agreement, Lanny Griffith, then the chief operating officer of BGandR, outlined a plan in which the lobbying firm would assist the embassy on several matters, including "immigration/human capital" and "treatment of Mexican citizens who cross the border."

Griffith told Bremer in the letter that the firm had "designated a team of professionals who will concentrate on your work."

"Haley Barbour and I will lead the BGand R team," he added. Griffith did not respond to requests for comment.

The embassy paid BGandR $35,000 a month plus expenses. In all, BG&R received $402,500 to represent the Mexican government between August 2001 and December 2002, according to the filings. Barbour was chairman of the lobbying firm until he became governor in January 2004.

In May 2002, according to Justice Department filings, the firm lobbied in support of "a bill related to Section 245(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act." That provision, first created in 1994, streamlined a path to legal residency by allowing unauthorized immigrants to legalize their status in the United States, as long as they were eligible for an immigrant visa and paid an additional fine. Previously, those seeking permanent residency were required to return to their home country to get their visas.

Arizona border, 3/16/09

The measure, up for renewal in 2002, was backed by the Mexican government. Then-President George W. Bush supported it as well, but the provision's detractors characterized it as a form of amnesty and said it rewarded those who broke immigration laws.

The provision was not renewed. Since then, most Republican leaders have opposed a path to citizenship. Asked his view on allowing illegal immigrants to win legal status, Barbour demurred.

"Well, look, the first thing we have to do is we have to close the border," he said Saturday. "Once we have a closed and secure, controlled border, then you can start talking about what should we do and what shouldn't we do.""

Top three images: 6/5/14, "Leaked Images Reveal Children Warehoused in Crowded U.S. Cells, Border Patrol Overwhelmed," Breitbart Texas, Brandon Darby

"Breitbart Texas obtained internal federal government photos depicting the conditions of foreign children warehoused by authorities on U.S. soil on Wednesday night. Thousands of illegal immigrants have overrun U.S. border security and their processing centers in Texas along the U.S./Mexico border. Unaccompanied minors, including young girls under the age of 12, are making the dangerous journey from Central America and Mexico, through cartel-controlled territories, and across the porous border onto U.S. soil."...

Fourth image: 3/16/09, Trash on Arizona-Mexico border, Now Public, Rape Tree in background

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Barbour said his background as a registered agent for foreign governments would be an asset if he ran for President in 2012 but didn't mention that as a registered agent of the Mexican government he lobbied to obtain legal status for illegal aliens in the US:

2/13/2011, "What Haley Barbour Didn’t Tell Fox News: He Lobbied For Mexico On “Amnesty”," Time, Michael Scherer

Illegals, June 2014

"Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour made the case Sunday on Fox News that his career as a high-powered federal lobbyist for domestic corporations and foreign governments would be an asset if he ran for President in 2012.

"I can tell you what we did when I was there. We represented Switzerland. We represented Macedonia because the Clinton administration asked us to because of what was going on in the Balkans. But I am perfectly glad to look at the clients that I worked with when I was there. But let me just make this very plain. I’m a lobbyist, a politician, and a lawyer. You know, that the trifecta. And I am willing to have my record in front of everybody."

Barbour may be eager to showcase his record, but one of Barbour’s foreign lobbying clients could cause him some troubles in the 2012 Republican primary, if he decides to run. According to a Justice Department filing by Barbour’s former lobbying firm, The Embassy of Mexico decided to retain Barbour’s services on August 15, 2001, to work on, among other things, legislation that would provide a path to citizenship for foreigners living illegally in the United States—what opponents of immigration reform call “amnesty.”

“Haley Barbour and I will lead the BGandR team,” wrote Lanny Griffith, Barbour’s former business partner, in the filing. According to subsequent filings, Barbour’s work included “building support in the legislative branch for passage of a bill related to Section 245(i) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.” As part of that work, Barbour’s firm arranged meetings and briefings with “Senators, members of Congress and their staffs, as well as Executive Branch Officials in the White House, National Security Council, State Department, and Immigration & Naturalization Service.”

Barbour’s firm charged Mexico $35,000 a month, plus expenses.

At the time, Mexico was seeking an extension of a provision that allowed undocumented immigrants living in the United States to receive legal visas or green cards without returning to their country of origin, provided they pay an additional fine. In practice, the provision generally helped out undocumented family members of legal immigrants or undocumented immigrants who were eligible for visas based upon certain job skills. Without the provision in place, undocumented immigrants who received legal papers had to return to their country of origin, for three or 10 years, before returning to the U.S. The Congressional Research Service estimated that an extension would benefit about 300,000 undocumented immigrants.

At the time of Barbour’s lobbying, the 245(i) effort was referred to as “mini-amnesty” in conservative circles.“This amnesty loophole allowed aliens who broke our laws to pay a $1,000 fine and go to the head of the line in front of prospective immigrants who complied with our laws,” opined Phyllis Schlafly, founder of the Eagle Forum, in a 2002 column.

Among the other supporters of extending 245(i) was President George W. Bush, who had called for an extension of the provision before meeting with then-Mexican President Vincent Fox in 2002.

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted out the extension, but in the post-September 11 atmosphere, the extension failed to win approval in the Senate.

The late Sen. Robert Bryd, D-WV, led the charge to sink the measure. “Reviving the 245(i) provision reopens another crack in the system through which a potential terrorist can crawl,” Bryd said, in a speech on the Senate floor on March 18, 2002. “It is lunacy—sheer lunacy—that the president would request, and the House would pass, such an amnesty at this time.”
.
The 245(i) provision expired in April of 2002. Since then, Barbour has maintained his support for providing a path to citizenship for those immigrants who are now living in the U.S. illegally. Last year, in an interview with the Hoover Institution, Barbour laid out a view of immigration that sounds entirely consistent with the work he did in 2001 and 2002 for Mexico.

"I don’t know where we would have been in Mississippi after Katrina if it hadn’t been with the Spanish speakers that came in to help rebuild. And there’s no doubt in my mind some of them were here illegally. Some of them were, some of them weren’t. But they came in, they looked for the work. If they hadn’t been there — if they hadn’t come and stayed for a few months or a couple years — we would be way, way, way behind where we are now. . . . A lot of it is just common sense. And common sense tell us we’re not going to take 10 or 12 or 14 million people and put them in jail and deport them. We’re not gonna do it, and we need to quit — some people need to quit acting like we are and let’s talk about real solutions."

Whether such arguments play well among the Republican primary electorate is another matter altogether.

Here’s the video of Barbour’s comments last year (video at link):...For a screen shot of one of the relevant filings, see here."

================

Image above from 6/5/14, "Leaked Images Reveal Children Warehoused in Crowded U.S. Cells, Border Patrol Overwhelmed," Breitbart Texas, Brandon Darby

""Results of this mismanagement are thousands of individuals living in inhumane conditions for an indeterminate period of time, as well as exhausted and overwhelmed Border Patrol agents and CBP detention facilities," Longmire continued. "The Obama administration's band-aid fix has been to ship a good portion of these immigrants — many of whom are weak, emotionally vulnerable, sick, and confused — to other sectors as far as San Diego county in California and release them with no obligation other than to show up for a hearing in 15 days.

“Most of those released will abscond and never show up for their hearings, taking their chances that ICE won't have the time or resources to go looking for them," she added. "Until they can get to where they want to go, they're overwhelming local community resources.""...










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