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[H/t scarce]

I get the low mordant chuckles whenever I hear Republican strategists complaining that [sniffle] it's so unfair that Democrats enjoy a significant advantage among Latino voters right now. Especially because I know that nativist wingnuts like Rep. Steve King will always be around to remind those voters exactly why they would never want to vote Republican, as he did yesterday:

Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, compared immigrants to dogs at a town hall meeting yesterday, telling constituents that the U.S. should pick only the best immigrants the way one chooses the “pick of the litter.”

King told the crowd in Pocahontas, Iowa, that he’s owned lots of bird dogs over the years and advised, “You want a good bird dog? You want one that’s going to be aggressive? Pick the one that’s the friskiest … not the one that’s over there sleeping in the corner.”

King suggested lazy immigrants should be avoided as well. “You get the pick of the litter and you got yourself a pretty good bird dog. Well, we’ve got the pick of every donor civilization on the planet,” King said. “We’ve got the vigor from the planet to come to America.”

This is nothing new for King. He's previously compared Latino immigrants to cattle, as well as farming commodities like beans and corn. It's all part of his longtime record of mainstreaming hateful rhetoric and demeaning falsehoods when discussing Latino immigrants.

Of course, Mitt Romney is out there trying to mend fences with Latino voters right now, in the vain hope that they'll forget he used vicious anti-Latino rhetoric during the GOP primaries. Indeed, the whole GOP outreach to Latino voters is not going very well right now.

And it just got measurably worse.

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So Sen. Harry Reid, having won his election thanks to a wave of motivated Latino voters, is now planning to push for a vote on the DREAM Act in the lame-duck session of Congress.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who was re-elected last week with strong support from Hispanic voters, will make one last push in the final days of the 111th Congress to pass legislation allowing illegal immigrants who were brought to the United States as children to earn legal status if they attend college or serve in the U.S. military.

Advocates of the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act - better known as the DREAM Act - say Reid has a better chance of passing the bill in the "lame duck" session than he would when the new, divided Congress is sworn in this January.

Nancy Pelosi is on board in the House, and there's also substantial popular support as well:

The DREAM Act enjoys strong support across party lines. After hearing a brief description, sixty-six percent of voters support the DREAM Act, including majorities of Democrats (81%), independents (60%), and Republicans (57%).

All of which means, of course, that the American Right will throw a hissy fit and do their damnedest to shout the bill down. Leading the shouting, as always, will be the chief organ in their propaganda Wurlitzer: Fox News.

With Jon Scott doing a "fair and balanced" report yesterday on Happening Now, we got a sample of what we've come to expect from Fox's reportage on the DREAM Act: falsehoods and distortions, particularly from Iowa's favorite nutty nativist, Republican Rep. Steve King, who was permitted to lie blatantly about what the act would do.

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Well, the immigration hornets were a-buzzing with consternation at Fox this morning over Stephen Colbert's remarkable testimony on migrant workers -- probably because he got to utter the immortal line: "Turns out even the invisible hand of the market doesn't want to pick beans."

Megyn Kelly and Rep. Steve King -- yeah, the same Steve King who empathizes with nutcases who fly their planes into IRS buildings -- were particularly nettled by the satirist's powerful counterpunch to the kind of nativism they love to revel in. Both proclaimed it a waste of taxpayers' dollars, and King even tried to claim that Colbert had "lied" about work he did alongside migrants.

Well, as Faiz Shakir at ThinkProgress ably limns, Colbert was telling the truth.

More important, he actually illuminated a larger truth about immigrant labor in America: Migrant workers really are doing work that Americans won't do anymore.

And there's nothing wrong with that. It is, in fact, a product of the American Dream.

Let me illustrate this with a story of my own:

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Rep. Steve King really can relate to Joseph Stack's attack of the IRS building in Austin because he too was audited. A Media Matters staffer told TPM that King made these outrageous statements about the suicide plane attack at CPAC, Saturday night:

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) told a crowd at CPAC on Saturday that he could "empathize" with the suicide bomber who last week attacked an IRS office in Austin, and encouraged his listeners to "implode" other IRS offices, according to a witness.

King's comments weren't recorded, but a staffer for Media Matters, who heard the comments, provided TPMmuckraker with an account.

The staffer, who requested anonymity because she's not a communications specialist, said that King, an extreme right-winger with a reputation for eyebrow-raising rhetoric, appeared as a surprise guest speaker on an immigration panel at the conservative conference. During his closing remarks, King veered into a complaint about high taxes, and said he could "empathize" with the man who flew a plane into an IRS building last week

.

This is a man that is supposed to serve and protect America. He's a Congressman for God's sake.

Think Progress caught up with him later on and this is what he said.

TP: Do you think this attack, this terrorist attack, was motivated at all by a lot of the anti-tax rhetoric that’s popular in America right now?

KING: I think if we’d abolished the IRS back when I first advocated it, he wouldn’t have a target for his airplane. And I’m still for abolishing the IRS, I’ve been for it for thirty years and I’m for a national sales tax. [...] It’s sad the incident in Texas happened, but by the same token, it’s an agency that is unnecessary and when the day comes when that is over and we abolish the IRS, it’s going to be a happy day for America.

TP: So some of his grievances were legitimate?

KING: I don’t know if his grievances were legitimate, I’ve read part of the material. I can tell you I’ve been audited by the IRS and I’ve had the sense of ‘why is the IRS in my kitchen.’ Why do they have their thumb in the middle of my back. … It is intrusive and we can do a better job without them entirely.

These are the people that will be holding hearings on Capitol Hill if the House goes back toe the republicans. You can bet on it. The treatment ACORN received when they weren't in power is a prelude on things to come. People who don't mind nut-jobs from killing Americans like suicide bombers.

Michele "miss me yet?" Bachmann would actually be in a position of power too...

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Sean Hannity's desperation in his dire quest to keep up with Glenn Beck by getting a White House scalp in the form of safe-schools advocate Kevin Jennings has now gone from simply fabricating stories out of distorted evidence to outright gay-bashing.

Last night he brought on Rep. Steve King of Iowa -- one of the nation's leading bigots, the guy who predicted Al Qaeda would love Obama and claimed that the hate-crimes bill would protect pedophiles but not veterans. And it quickly became clear what their chief objection to Jennings really is:

He's gay.

King objects to having someone "pushing the homosexual agenda" in charge of advocating safety in schools -- even though one of the primary forms of violence within our schools involves bullying gay students. But then, King is a guy who objects to including gays and lesbians in hate-crimes protections on free-speech grounds -- which is to say, he thinks that beating up gays is a First Amendment right -- so it fits.

And Hannity chimes along. Because, like Inspector Javert, he is a man possessed ... of the need to beat Glenn Beck. He doesn't mind whatever casualties pile up along the way.

Following up on an item from yesterday, Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), easily among the top five looniest members of the chamber, successfully forced a resolution onto the House floor, putting the House on record stating that Christmas and Christians are important. Last night, as expected, it passed easily.

As it turns out, not everyone was impressed with King’s spiteful stunt. When the Christmas-is-important measure came up last night, nine Democrats voted against it. Moreover, 10 voted “present” — including one Republican — which is exactly how King voted on the Ramadan and Diwali resolutions.

King is more than a little peeved, and went on quite a tirade on Fox News this afternoon. (video available at ThinkProgress)

“I recognized that we’re a Christian nation founded on Christian principles, and we’re coming up to Christmastime…. It’s time we stood up and said so, and said to the rest of America, Be who you are and be confident. And let’s worship Christ and let’s celebrate Christmas for the right reasons.”

I found it interesting that King kept talking about “we” during his diatribe — “we” have to stand up, “we” should worship Christ, “we” have to celebrate Christmas. Who is “we”? Americans? Fox News viewers?