Tony Snow had his first official briefing yesterday and he wasted little time in demonstrating how fit he is for the job.  I will post the full transcript here.
Go Tony!  It is clear he loves what he is doing, and he is damn good at it.
Press…

MR. SNOW: Does it have to? The President laid out exactly what he thinks is necessary, and keep in mind, Carl, what he was saying is you cannot do one thing at a time. You have to do it all at once, or it all falls apart.

- See this is the major disconnect with the President and Capital hill Republicans on the one side, and the majority of Americans on the other.

- We want these two issues divorced, and theres a good reason. The last time this whole issue was supposidly “fixed” we went through the same exact process and debate. What happened was the citizen aspects were implimented, although largely ignored by most illegals, and the border patrol side was all but dropped, with just a few pitiful concessions.

- Secondly there is no enherent reason they need to be inter-locked from an effectiveness standpoint, unless you look at the possible political motives.

- The Reps are trying to “balance” this issue, by offering what amounts to “slow amnesty” to throw a bone to the voting hispanic block, to offset the border enforcement side. Great for the politicians, but not so great for the border state citizens.

- Normally I wouldn’t have a problem with smart politics. But this time its more than just political expediency, because by tying them together you run the risk of repeating 1986. Even if things are done better, it opens up the whole process to too much foot dragging, and I can tell you from personal experience the rush is already on. Every day counts. an estimated 7000 Illegals come across every day, and that number is also growing, now that the issues are out in the open. It will become a litteral flood as people become more and more desperate, believing they can beat some sort of deadline. I don’t get the feeling that they are really aware of this problem inside the beltway, and I don’t thinl the Pres. making a single trip to Arizona is going to change that very much.

- Long winded negotiations, bills that bounce back and forth ad nausea from committee to comittee, is exactly what we don’t need.

- I think its buying time to avoid dealing with the basic border issues head on. The citizenship issue could take years to iron out, but even 6 months is way to long.

- Maybe the 6000 NG will open the door for a real step forward, leaving aside the little extra comment of the Pres. today that sounded like they were leaving room for “slow deployment” of the NG which sounded like a trap door, but tying them together smacks of pure political gaming. Its the only reason I can think of for the stubborn way they’re clinging to that idea.

- The Dems are basically MIA. they see this as a win/win for their side, if they just let the Reps carry the water, and snipe and obstruct from the sidelines as usual.

- What the Dems don’t want middle America to know is they don’t want any kind of border control. They’re also playing it from the political angle, just injecting as much confusion as they can. You can see that echoed in the weird sorts of articles coming out of the left-wing press like the NYTrash, where they keep referring to and “effective” immigration program, which they never define, typical of the left these days, while they snipe at every proposal Bush comes up with.

- I don’t know which is worse. The Reps for ignoring the wishes of the public, or the Dems for practising chaos for purely partisan gain. I guess I expect it from the Dems who showed long ago they care more about power than the people, but the Reps have me really disgusted at this point, because they know what the majority of Americans want, but they’re ignoring it.

- Bang

- Bang

Today, Tony Snow gave his first formal press briefing. Of course, Helen Thomas had her insanely-spun loaded garbage question:HT: The President today denied he’d ever broken the law in terms of wiretaps. He also indicated that anything that was looked