Obama: 'There may not be an appetite' to tackle immigration this year
By Debbi Wilgoren
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 29, 2010
President Obama said late Wednesday that "there may not be an appetite" to overhaul the nation's immigration laws this year, even though he believes there is a pressing need to do so. "It's a matter of political will," Obama said during a rare visit to the press section of his presidential plane. " . . . This is a difficult issue. It generates a lot of emotions . . . I need some help on the Republican side." Obama has called repeatedly for comprehensive immigration reform, saying he wants to tighten control of the nation's borders but also chart a path to citizenship for millions of immigrants who are in this country illegally. Sen. Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said last week that he wanted to push forward with legislation regardless of whether lawmakers can forge a bipartisan compromise. But he later backed off that pledge, and Obama told reporters on the plane that he is willing to wait in order to work with Republican senators. On Wednesday, the Associated Press reported that Reid and Democratic Sens. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) and Robert Menendez (N.J.) are forging a proposal that would call for more border security measures before expanding citizenship options. In his remarks to reporters, Obama cited the bruising battle over healthcare and the current debate on financial regulatory reform and an energy bill, as well as November's mid-term Congressional elections, as reasons an immigration bill might have to wait. "We've gone through a tough year, and I've been working Congress pretty hard," the president said. "So I know there may not be an appetite immediately to dive into another controversial issue." Obama applauded negotiations on immigration legislation between Schumer and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and said he would like to see a working group of lawmakers from both sides of the aisle craft "serious legislation that solves the border problem and solves the wide range of issues that we face under immigration reform in a way that can garner the support of the American people." He did not address the reported effort by Reid, Schumer and Menendez. Obama condemned a tough new immigration law signed last week by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R), which criminalizes illegal immigration by defining it as trespassing and allows local law enforcement agencies to question people they suspect of being undocumented. "That carries a great amount of risk that core values that we all care about are breached," the president said. The White House and the Justice Department are weighing whether to sue Arizona in an effort to prevent the law from being implemented. At the same time, Obama said he could understand the frustration that many Americans feel about seeing large numbers of people enter this country without permission, especially during hard economic times and in…

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 Times Square: Axles of evil, part deux I’ll say it again: We’re lucky terrorists are such boneheads.For every Carlos the Jackal, there are scores of guys like the 1993 World Trade Center bomber, who demanded a $400 deposit back from Ryder after blowing up its truck. It didn’t take the FBI long to trace an axle part it found in the Trade Center to the bombers (although it would take awhile to get the ringleader).Then there are the seven Afghans in the Najibullah Zazi case last year, who tried to rent a truck at a Queens U-Haul without credit cards or IDs. The manager, a bit suspicious about the bearded ones, called the police.The latest entry in the annals of terr-perp stupidity comes from Times Square this weekend. Somebody connected to the Nissan Pathfinder carrying the bomb, police say, tried to file off the SUV’s VIN, or vehicle identification number -- as if it couldn’t be easily recaptured or found elsewhere. “They make a lot of mistakes, even when they’re successful,” Mike Sheehan said to me Sunday afternoon. In the 1990s, Sheehan headed the counterterrorism operations of both the NYPD and the State Department.In his 2008 book, “Crush the Cell: How to Defeat Terrorism Without Terrorizing Ourselves,” he devotes an entire chapter to the general idiocy of these guys. With one big exception, he says -- the Sept. 11 attacks, brilliantly executed -- Islamist terrorists succeed not because they’re such evil geniuses, but because we’re just not paying enough attention.Take the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombing in Nairobi.One of the bombers jumped out of the truck and ordered the guard to open the gate, but he forgot his weapon. The driver, meanwhile, ran away with no money, passport or plan to escape Kenya. If the truck had gotten inside the compound, the damage and death toll would have been far worse.“Due to bungling on the part of several of the terrorist operatives immediately before and after the attack, it was determined within days that this plot was the handiwork of an organization, little known outside of the intelligence community, called al Qaeda,” Sheehan writes.

It was only a matter of time before the plotters were rolled up.Sheehan also cites the USS Cole attack, in Aden in October 2000. The first terrorist boat, overloaded, sunk. Lax security procedures let the next one slide right up to the hull.Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, of course, showed that stupidity is not confined to jihadis.After his lethal artwork, McVeigh checked into a motel in Junction City, Kan., where he had rented the truck for his bomb under his own name.

"FBI agents traced the truck to a Junction City body shop that leased it after they recovered its vehicle identification number from the truck's rear axle, which was blown a block away from the blast," the…