So your proposition is that the taxpayers of the United States should be compelled to give their money to aliens illegally resident here because said aliens want to go to community college?

I haven't heard two things in a row that I liked about Davis, but this veto strikes me as a sane and sober idea.

BTW you said that he's "pissing on [the party's] most vulnerable constituents." Hello? Illegal aliens aren't consituents. They aren't citizens. I have relatives with green cards who have been here for over 30 years, and they don't vote. Anything we do to benefit the population of illegal aliens is purely a sign of our humanitarianism, since we're perfectly within our law and international law to deport them at any time.

OK, thanks for the responsive update. I don't suggest that illegal aliens should have no rights, or that our current legal system offers them no rights. Of course they are protected from arbitrary deprivation of their life, liberty, or property, and so forth.

That question you raise about who is counted for the purposes of apportionment is an interesting one, and I wonder if you have have any actual case law to suggest that illegals are to be counted for that purpose. (Obviously they are, since the census doesn't even ask if you're illegal.)

But it's not clear to me that being counted as a resident in a district, or having basic civil rights, makes one a consituent. So a quick trip to dictionary.com gives me these definitions:

2 A resident of a district or member of a group represented by an elected official.
3 One that authorizes another to act as a representative; a client.

(2) suggests that your view is correct, anyone in the district is a constituent. (3) suggests that the meaning of the word is as I thought it to be, as one who is represented by another.

For the record, no, by my understanding of the word, a child would not be a constituent. A person with the legal qualifications to vote for the office held by the representative in question, would be.

Perhaps I misread your tone, but "A bit of constitutional education" seems a trifle snooty for an argument that doesn't actually bring up anything in the constitution or in supreme court decisions that definitively uses the word as you suggest it should be used, and instead relies on assuming the proposition in question, that "persons" are "constituents", to prove the proposition true. Maybe I should call this post, "A bit of logical education."

Hey, "constitutional education" was snooty or at least snarky (I was reacting partly to your Greenpeace post where you were equally snarky on the constitutional issues).

But the history of America is that voting early on was quite restricted, often to only white male property owners, but the assumption was always that everyone in a district was a "constituent."

The Supreme Court has repeatedly dismissed cases challenging the fact that the census counts undocumented immigrants for reapportionment. See here.

On "snarky" - fair enough. I do get a bit exercised too.

I appreciate the link showing that representation is apportioned with the inclusion of illegal aliens, which clearly supports your view of the word constituent.

I still think that it's not a wrong for the US to fail to provide for illegal aliens in the same way that we provide for actual citizens. My mother is a naturalized citizen, it's not an easy thing to do. I think people who want to enjoy the benefits of citizenship should also have to accept the duties, and illegals don't. Also, I think our society should be able to make decisions about whom we do and do not welcome to our community, and this wholesale abrogation of the law does not allow such a process.

phispiral - Care to list some of the "duties" undocumented immigrants aren't accepting? They pay taxes. What other "duties" are required of citizens and legal non-citizens? Jury duty? Offhand I can't think of any other tasks the state has asked of me lately.

Besides, you make it sound as if these people could easily be legal, but choose not to do so because of all those pesky duties. For goodness' sake, it's not as if green cards are freely available in the weekly coupon clipper. What they're choosing to avoid is being deported.

Well, fair enough.

One duty of a citizen is, as you say, to sit on a jury if called. Another is to serve in the Armed Forces, if called.

In a broader sense of the word, I think a citizen of the US has a duty to become familiar with the traditions and philosophy of governance that is represented in our founding documents, to vote, and in general to be civic-minded.

It's a gripe I have with some of my extended family, some of whom as I mentioned have lived here for decades on a green card. But at least all of them speak English, participate in the larger community, etc. They don't segregate themselves into small Balkanized enclaves, living and working only with people like themselves, coming out only to ask for more handouts from a foreign government whose laws their presence violates. (Ugly sentence, sorry.)

Nathan, if you consider talking out of both sides of your mouth "fight like hell" then yeah maybe you are right.

I don't know where you live but wherever it is you must watched a different recall campiagn. Because while unions spent money and time in the last five weeks. They also, as usual, tried to force him to sign 2 or 3 bills (one of which that might have cost him the race) and asked local unions to stopped phone banking voters for a while and phone bank the governor. He had said more than once he would saign SB2, there was no need. You even had a great post on how many peices of legislation Davis had passed. Instead like many unions did just before the election in 2002 they started pulling back for while.

As for this specific bill ... you might want to do your research ... very little if at all financial aid exists for the $18 a credit community colleges. This would be a new program to help for the $85 a course community colleges. The community colleges opposed it (the bill not the concept) as did other progressive organizations.

The reason why he lost was because his left demanded he be a bill signing machine and his right demanded he do anything but. when he tried to comprimise he came under fire from both sides. We'll never have another Demcoratic Governor in California until people becomed disciplined and stop acting like kids in a candy store.

Kevin- I'm interested to hear what groups opposed this bill, since the Faculty Association of Community Colleges supported it along with the immigrant rights community.

And while I'm happy Davis signed a bunch of the bills, he's vetoed a hell of a lot over the years, which is one reason the enthusiasm for him was so low. And the bills he signed where largely under pressure of the recall-- he probably would have vetoed SB2 without his need to get labor support.

Now that the recall is over, he's vetoed a number of progressive bills. He just vetoed the statewide living wage law, a bill near and dear to my heart.

Davis is an asshole. I'm sorry Arnie is there-- I wish Riordan had run and been the one to take over from Davis.