Rep. Lamar Smith’s battle with Markos Moulitsas (of Daily Kos) continues. Rep. Lamar Smith has very, very thin skin. He does not like to be criticized, nor does he allow any critique of his flawed E-Verify legislation go unrebutted. The problem for Smith is that he’s got no facts to back up his position, practically handing off yet another win to Markos.
This week, Smith decided to challenge Markos Moulitsas’ recent column in The Hill on E-Verify, titled “A Failed Experiment.” Markos made two key points: E-Verify doesn’t work and requiring E-Verify has led to major problems in Georgia. Smith couldn’t help himself and wrote a letter to the editor of The Hill.
Yesterday, Markos sliced and diced Smith’s letter in a must read post titled, E-Verify: Lamar Smith’s Fact-Free Defense.
A week ago I wrote in The Hill about Georgia’s failed e-verify experiment, with hundreds of millions of crops rotting in the fields because farmers can’t get enough workers to harvest them. In fact, the situation is so dire that the state has even tried to get criminal probationers to fill the gap left by thousands of undocumented workers, all to no avail.
Texas xenophobe Lamar Smith, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, has committed to bringing Georgia’s failed e-verify experiment national, so that we can have billions of crops lay rotting in the fields, decimating fragile rural economies and raising prices at grocery stores for consumers.
Why? So he can take a bat to “illegal” brown people.
Smith has now responded to my column.
Markos uses his post to offer a line-by-line rebuttal of Smith’s so-called defense. It’s excellent, and the conclusion nails it:
It’s interesting that none of the “facts” pushed by Smith rebut my main two points — that the E-verify experiment in Georgia has led to economic catastrophe, and that the system doesn’t even work to begin with.
Republicans are obsessed with punishing those “illegals.” The only question is, how much collateral damage will Americans suffer as a result? Because there’s no painless way to remove “illegals” from our economy.
