From Thursday’s press gaggle:

Q The new Italian Prime Minister says that the President’s invasion of Iraq was a grave error. As the new kid on the block, can you give me the latest rationale the U.S. has for invading Iraq?

MR. SNOW: There has only been one rationale, as you know, Helen, and this that Saddam Hussein had resisted — what is the proper number, 17 United Nations resolutions — and had refused repeatedly to permit weapons inspectors to do their work, and consistent with that. And also we had cited other concerns in terms of democracy and human rights. That case has never changed.

Also the case laid out and voted by the United States Senate —

Q He finds that as a justification to invade a country where we had choke-hold sanctions, satellite surveillance —

MR. SNOW: Helen, I’m not going to get in another argument about the — this is a three-year-old argument and you’re trying to re-argue the case. The President made his case back then. The United States Senate voted overwhelmingly.

Q He did not make the case.

MR. SNOW: Well, in your opinion he didn’t make the case. He made the case. He laid out his reasons.

Q He made the case, in your opinion?

MR. SNOW: Yes.

This is exactly why old media is dying.

Following his recent declaration that Republicans need to scaremonger and run on populist Democratic campaigns to win in ‘06, Dick Morris is at it again proving his boneheaded analysis was no fluke. In his latest column, the former Clinton advisor has declared that Bush “got it just right” on immigration. Bzzt, wrong. Mr. Morris incorrectly states that the Bush speech “had all . . . he needs to keep his base in order”. One can’t help but wonder if Mr. Morris actually bothered to talk to someone in the conservative base.

Meanwhile, the latest Rasmussen polling confirms what we already knew, that conservatives are not going to be placated by a phony show of border security and slight of hand trick to get amnesty through. Rasmussen shows that “Just 39% of voters agree with the President’s approach” and only “35% believe the President’s approach will reduce illegal immigration”. Not only that, but the generic congressional poll has titled further towards the Democrats following Bush’s speech and the President’s approval has continued to drop as well, with “just 65% of Republicans” approving of how the President is doing his job.

I think what this shows is that Bush has finally bought into the media nonsense of taking the “middle ground” instead of simply doing what’s right. Democrats don’t care if you “reach out”, Mr. President. We’ve been telling you for years now that all they’ll do is bite your hand off. No amount of pandering is going to get them to be tough on immigration. We have the majority, not them. Do what we know needs to be done and ignore the inevitable media attacks, as you are usually willing to do when it comes to the war on terror.

Tony Snow gave his first press briefing Monday. Nothing spectacular happened, most of the briefing dealt with Bush’s immigration speech and the USA Today telephone records story, though there were a few interesting exchanges.

First we have the usual Helen Thomas blowup.

Q The President today denied he’d ever broken the law in terms of wiretaps. He also indicated that anything that was looked into, any calls, had some sort of foreign aspect either to or from. And he has said he’s always obeyed the law. Are all of these stories untrue that we’ve been reading for the last several days that millions of Americans have been wiretapped?

Oh boy. I’m not sure what fantasy land Helen Thomas is living in (okay, I lied, I am sure…it’s liberal fantasy land) but no one has claimed that “millions of Americans have been wiretapped”. If Helen Thomas doesn’t understand the different between a wiretap and simple phone calling records, she needs to start looking into retirement. But let’s get to Mr. Snow and see how he handled this.

MR. SNOW: Okay, let’s try to segregate the stories here. What he’s said about the terror surveillance program is that these are foreign-to-domestic calls and they were all done within the parameters of the law. He has not commented on the —

Q He, himself, has said he didn’t obey that law.

MR. SNOW: No, he didn’t. What he said is that he has done everything within the confines of the law. The second thing is, you’re mentioning a USA Today story about which this administration has no comment. But I would direct you back to the USA Today story itself, and if you analyze what that story said, what did it say? It said there is no wiretapping of individual calls, there is no personal information that is being relayed. There is no name, there is no address, there is no consequence of the calls, there’s no description of who the party on the other end is.

Q Privacy was breached by turning over their phone numbers.

MR. SNOW: Well, again, you are jumping to conclusions about a program, the existence of which we will neither confirm, nor deny.

Q Why? Don’t you think the American people have a right to know —

MR. SNOW: Because — what’s interesting is, there seems to be a notion that because the President has talked a little bit about one surveillance program and one matter of intelligence gathering, that somehow we have to tell the entire world we have to make intelligence gathering transparent. Let me remind you, it’s a war on terror, and there are people — I guarantee you, al Qaeda does not believe —

Q He doesn’t have a right to break the law, does he?

MR. SNOW: No, the President is not talking about breaking the law. But al Qaeda doesn’t believe in transparency. What al Qaeda believes in is mayhem, and the President has a constitutional obligation and a heartfelt determination to make sure we fight it.

Q — to obey the Constitution —

MR. SNOW: Absolutely right.

Q — the Fourth Amendment —

MR. SNOW: Absolutely right, and he believes in obeying it.

Not bad, Mr. Snow, not bad.

Skipping ahead, I want to call attention to this short, but interesting response to a question.

Q Tony, going back to Peter and Suzanne talking about race, some are questioning if this guest worker program is divisive. It pits people with color against black Americans. And Congresswomen Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas says that black Americans need to be brought to the table when you’re talking about this issue.

MR. SNOW: I don’t precisely — I don’t understand — I don’t want to be foolish, but how on earth would it pit willing workers —

Q Okay, then according to the President’s proposal those who — employers are allowed to give jobs to immigrants, those jobs from people — it keeps giving those jobs to people — the immigrants because others won’t take those jobs. Others — and some are saying those others are African Americans.

MR. SNOW: No, you know —

Q Vicente Fox said that.

MR. SNOW: Well, again, I’ll let President Fox defend his comments. I’m just not going to go into that.

Q Don’t you think that African Americans — and not just African Americans, but black Americans need to be brought to the table? Congresswomen Sheila Jackson Lee is making this request.

MR. SNOW: She’s a member of Congress; of course, she’s at the table.

This answer really impressed me in it’s simplicity. Don’t argue with the liberals on their false assumptions or pander to them, point out the error of those assumptions. This question came from the liberal concept that African Americans are not otherwise represented in our governmental process and need special recognition. This is utterly false, they have a vote like anyone else. They are represented the same as any other constituency and their elected representative, whether they supported them specifically or not, have the same vote on this debate as anyone elses. A question asking if they need to be “brought to the table” wrongly implies they aren’t there now. Very effective response, Mr. Snow.

So claims the House Republican from Texas, Ted Poe.

Mr. Speaker, I received several cases of bricks from an individual down in Texas. With the cases of bricks that he has sent me this letter, “I am sending you these bricks in support of an increase in the border security of the United States. These bricks should give you a start in building a wall. The American public demands some solutions to our open borders. A comprehensive border plan must include a security wall in some places, better technology, more funding of personnel for Border Patrol, and overall increased security presence on the southern border. When our borders are secure, then we can discuss the aspects of illegal immigration issues. We are tired of open borders, uncontrolled immigration, terrorist infiltration, criminal alien gangs, and all of the other horrors that arise due to our defenseless borders and unenforced immigration laws.”

Mr. Speaker, the voice of America continues to cry out for us to enforce the rule of law, protect the dignity and safety of the American people. Government’s number one job is public safety, and public safety starts at the border.

We have an obligation to stop the illegal invasion and stop the colonization of our country and homeland by foreign nations. Failure to do so will result in America being lost to foreign nations without even firing a shot. And that’s just the way it is.

That’s exactly the way it is.

When reality thumbs its nose at your rhetoric, change the way you measure reality. That’s the new demand from Ohio’s kook Democrat, Dennis Kucinich. Along with his usual socialist sensationalism, he made this hilarious demand:

We need a new way to measure our economy, as in how many people are working at good-paying jobs and have job security, and how many have health and retirement benefits.

No doubt Kookinich’s new economic measurements would rate France’s floundering workers paradise higher than America.

Republican Senator Mike Enzi offers a refreshing bit of fiscal sanity on the hill.

Mr. President, I wanted to take this opportunity to discuss why I made the difficult decision to vote against H.R. 4939, the Emergency Supplemental Appropriations Act for Defense, the Global War on Terror, and Hurricane Recovery.

The United States is involved in operations overseas while dealing with natural disasters such as Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. On May 4, 2006, I voted against a $109 billion spending bill that was $17 billion more than what the President originally requested. Of course, on occasion, times call for emergency spending, but this bill goes far beyond what anyone would call emergency spending.

Many items in this bill do not constitute “emergency” spending. The bill would funnel millions of dollars to a road in Hawaii, millions of dollars in grants for research not related to emergencies, and still millions more to subsidize the volunteer work program AmeriCorps. Are these projects necessary? Possibly, but they are not an “emergency.” These spending proposals should go through the annual authorization and appropriations process. Congress must tighten the definition of what qualifies as an emergency. The use of supplemental spending bills must be saved for the true emergencies. True emergency funding is being bogged down with nonessential projects that have no business being in an emergency supplemental spending bill.

We must not saddle our children, their children, and their children’s children with debt that we incurred because we did not properly restrain our spending. My very first speech in the Senate Chamber was on the need for a balanced budget. In 1997, I said that the Federal Government must learn to live within its means. Without any restraint on spending, we are simply adding onto our Nation’s enormous debt. Unfortunately, this is still true today.

I recently visited American troops stationed in Kuwait. I always have and will continue to support our troops. I appreciate the sacrifices they make and the sacrifices of the families, friends, businesses and communities they leave behind.

Our American service men and women should have the financial resources they need to fight this crucial war on terror. This bill should be about voting to provide financial stability that allows the U.S. Government to support our troops and our veterans into the future. It is unfortunate that other nonemergency spending projects made their way into an important bill that included vital funding for our troops. I wish that the Senate would have followed the President’s proposal and only included funding for real emergencies.

Incredible ignorance coming from House Democrat Jim Moran yesterday:

Mr. Speaker, today’s record gas prices are the direct result of 5 years of failed policies by the Bush administration and this Republican Congress.

We seem to be more interested in giving still more tax breaks to oil executives than providing real relief to American consumers. Rather than proposing policies that would aggressively confront our energy challenges, Republicans are once again pushing to drill in ANWR. They neglect to say that drilling in ANWR would not be possible for another decade and would only provide about 6 months of oil for the American consumer.

House Republicans are also suggesting waiving environmental laws to encourage new refinery construction. But all of the major oil companies have already testified that environmental laws are not what is preventing them from building more refineries. It is more personally profitable to pay out lower-taxed-dividends than invest retained earnings in refineries.

So along with the silly $100 rebate, this is another proposal from House Republicans that will do nothing to reduce prices at the pump today. But the American consumer is beginning to realize it is time to try something new. It is time for a change in leadership.

Today’s record gas prices are the direct result of several factors, such as the world price of crude oil and our lack of domestic development, none of which are the creation of the Bush administration. Yes, drilling in ANWR would take a long time to start, and that’s exactly the poor excuse Clinton used when he vetoed ANWR drilling in 1995. If Republican efforts at the time had been allowed to proceed we’d have much more crude oil on the market today, and thus lower prices.

His claim that ANWR holds 6 months of oil is true if we use ANWR oil and only ANWR oil. In other words, ANWR could supply our entire oil usage for 6 months. That does not help his point, as we use a lot of oil, and 6 months of it is not some insignificant amount. And if we had combined that with development in the Gulf we wouldn’t be seeing such a tight market right now. Those are Democrat created problems.

His claim about environmental regulation is just dishonest. No one is saying environmental regulations prevent development in the legal sense, but that they raise the cost such that it outweighs the benefits. He unwittingly admits this in his attempt to demonize oil companies.