Maryland state Sen. Joan Carter Conway “doesn’t want to hear about the Constitution.” Hey, those are her words, not mine. Carter is the chairwoman of a Maryland Senate’s Health, Education and Environmental Committee that heard testimony on a proposed bill to let children of illegal immigrants pay in-state tuition rates to attend the state’s public colleges and universities.
During a testy exchange with two of her fellow senators, Carter, who favors the bill, made her remark. According to a news story on the Web site www.wbal.com, Carter “add[ed] that when it was first ratified, the Constitution allowed for slavery until it was abolished by the 13th Amendment.”
Huh?
You know Democrats are desperate when they whip out the slavery card to bolster their arguments. Carter, a black woman and a Democrat from Baltimore, supports the bill.
Not satisfied to slap the slavery card on the table, Carter tried another tactic, the crime card. According to the www.wbal.com story, “[Conway] noted that ultimately these benefits will prevent crimes in poor immigrant neighborhoods, noting it is more expensive for taxpayers to build prisons.”
When a Democrat tells John Q. Taxpayer she’s interested in protecting the money in his wallet, old John Q. had better check and sure it hasn’t been stolen.
Memo to Conway: Here’s a way to really protect the taxpayers’ money: Kill this bill. Children of illegal immigrants aren’t being denied access to Maryland’s public colleges and universities. They just pay the same rate as students from the other 49 states who happen to be American citizens pay.
Now if the parents of those children are so hot to pay the in-state tuition rate, here’s what they should do: Return home, enter our country LEGALLY, and then ask to attend a Maryland public college or university and pay the in-state tuition rate.
You have to wonder where Carter dredged up the chutzpah to bring up the crime issue. What we’re talking about here are people who are ILLEGAL immigrants. That means they’ve BROKEN THE LAW. They’ve already committed a crime.
Now, Carter tells us, to prevent them from committing even more crimes Maryland taxpayers should shell out $3 million – the estimated cost of the proposed bill – to people who haven’t been held to account for the first crime.
Why does that smell of blackmail to me?
“If you want to spend the money on crimes,” Conway continued, “if you want to spend the money on gangs, that’s what we’ll do, if that is the will of the legislature.”
Sen. Norman Stone of Baltimore County had a quick retort for Conway’s remark about crime.
“Madame Chairman, the problem is we have the gangs now.”
Indeed we do. In Los Angeles, some of those gangs – their numbers bolstered by illegal immigrants – have targeted blacks in what amounts to a mini race war in Southern California that’s been going on for years.
Black Democrats, liberals and other assorted leftists seldom, if ever, talk about that. One of the victims in the Los Angeles race war was a 14-year-old black girl named Cheryl Greene. When President Obama was making his historic run for the White House in 2008, an e-mailer asked me if I thought Obama would bring up Greene’s death during his campaign.
“Sure he will,” I answered. “About half past when hell freezes.”
Raymond Hawkins, like Carter, is a black American. But he sees the issue drastically different than she does.
“My message to the committee is that to pass this bill will negatively impact [historically black colleges and universities] in the state of Maryland.”
I wonder how slavery-card-whipping Joan responded to that.
Examiner Columnist Gregory Kane is a Pulitzer nominated news and opinion journalist who has covered people and politics from Baltimore to the Sudan.
