Kate’s right about the Chertoff comments. I was on the panel after Chertoff’s at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, and he did not call for the expulsion of all illegal aliens. This is what happens when you send an AFP reporter to do a real reporter’s job – what Chertoff said was that he was working toward making sure every non-Mexican arrested on the Mexican border was detained and removed. This is, of course, a good thing, though only because what we’ve been doing up to now is releasing the non-Mexicans in to the country with a note asking them to come back to the border for a hearing (as you can imagine, few do).

BTW, my written statement from the hearing, and all the other statements, are here. I have to say, for all that I don’t like some of Arlen Specter’s politics, he was cordial and decent to me, despite the fact that I was the skunk at the garden party, with everyone else saying unskilled foreign workers are the greatest thing since Neils Bohr.

Kennedy, on the other hand, wouldn’t deign to acknowledge my presence.

I was expecting that the White House would say something more substantive about what it wants regarding immigration, but neither Chertoff nor Labor Secretary Chao said anything substantive about that. I spoke afterward with former congressman Bruce Morrison, who used to chair the House Immigration Subcommittee, and his take was the White House will never commit to any details, because its goal is to sound concerned about immigration, to stroke business and Hispanic activists, but never to get too specific, so as not to further anger conservatives. At this point, that seems likely, which is good news, extent that the president isn’t likely to actually put any muscle behind a push for amnesty.