Yesterday, the Senate voted overwhelmingly to pass SBX 3-1, a bill that would repeal SB 60, the bill that would grant driver licenses to illegal aliens. Ironically, SBX 3-1 was pushed in part by Senator Gil Cedillo, who sponsored SB 60. That should be the first red flag. Why would Cedillo lead the charge to repeal his own bill? The answer, I believe, is twofold.

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Justene links to a World Net Daily article concerning the lawsuit filed yesterday by the Pacific Legal Foundation challenging the Driver Licenses for Illegal Aliens Act, a.k.a. SB 60. PLF’s brief is also available online, in PDF format. The Orange County Register has more on teh story, as does the Daily Monopoly. The three principal bases of the suit are that SB 60 (1) intrudes on the power of the federal government to determine immigration policy, (2) facilitiates voting by illegal immigrants as a result of motor voter (auto fraudo), and (3) illegally restricts information-sharing with federal authorities. In my opinion, none of three arguments are likely to overturn the statute.

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John and Ken will be broadcasting live tomorrow from Ayres Hotel in Seal Beach (12850 Seal Beach Blvd.) from 3:00 to 7:00 p.m. If you are in Southern California and haven’t signed the petition for the referendum yet, this would be an excellent opportunity to do so. Click here for driving directions.

C’mon, people, these signatures aren’t going to gather themselves. We’ve come a long way in gathering signatures to repeal the Driver Licenses For Illegal Aliens Act (SB 60), but we’ve got a long way to go. Contrary to popular opinion, one governor can’t “un-sign” a bill signed into law by his predecessor. Governor-elect Schwarzenegger says he wants to repeal SB 60, but he can only do that if he can persuade the same Legislature that enacted it to turn around and repeal it. Pigs will fly before that happens. Politically, the best Arnold the Governator can hope for is to broker a messy compromise in which our rogue Legislature will hold almost all of the cards. We the People have a much more powerful tool at our disposal: the referendum, which will allow us to effectively veto the bill in its entirety. Let’s use it.

If you haven’t signed the petition yet, sign it today. If you don’t have a copy of the petition, request one now and sign it as soon as it arrives.

Apparently, Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano has yet to learn from Gray Davis’s mistakes. Perhaps it’s time for another recall?

I’ve signed the petition for the referendum, have you?

Also, I’m puzzled that they don’t have a downloadable version of the petition form on their site. Yes, it needs to be double-sided, on legal-sized paper. Yes, I realize that not everyone has that set up. But is there any earthly reason not to offer it for download to those who do? Unless somebody convinces me that this would be a bad idea, I may scan and host a copy here.

UPDATE: There seems to be an emerging consensus that readers may not follow a warning that says “do not print this out on anything other than a double-sided, legal sized piece of paper, and even then, look at the damned thing before signing it.” My guess is that most voters who are that stoopid are unlikely to support this referendum anyway, but I don’t want to take any unnecessary chances. So instead of scanning or posting the petition here, I’m going to urge everyone to visit the web site or call (626) 357-8237. They’ll send you two petition pages, so sign one and send it in right away. If you have access to a copier that can make clean, crisp, double-sided, legal-sized copies of the remaining petition, use it. If you don’t, or if you aren’t sure, you can still save the California Republican Assembly time and money by taking it to Kinko’s. Then again, they’re not hurting too badly for funds, so if you’d rather just keep calling them to get more copies, that’s fine too. The main thing is to send the completed petitions to the CRA, not the Secretary of State. The CRA will then review the petition for errors, prior to sending the forms in and risking an issue with invalid petitions. If you’ve lost or used the pre-printed envelope, the mailing address is:

Save Our License
A Project of the California Republican Assembly
P.O. Box 877
Monrovia, CA 91017-0877

Mickey Kaus suggests that the solution to the illegal aliens problem may be to separate the functions of driver licensing and identification by issuing driver licenses to illegals but also having the federal government issue a national ID card. Kaus asks rhetorically whether such a proposal would diminish support in the Latino community for driver licenses for illegals, or whether it would be “a good idea for an Austrian whose father was a Nazi to make this somewhat authoritarian and un-American proposal.”

I think it would be a bad idea for Arnold to propose such a thing, but not for the reasons Kaus suggests.

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If you are a California resident who is as angry as I am over SB 60, be sure to sign up today to help collect signatures for the referendum. Referenda, like initiatives, require only 5% of the vote in the last gubernatorial election (see Cal. Const. Art. 2, Sec. 9(b)), less than half of what is required for recalls of statewide officials (12%, per Cal. Const. Art. 2, Sec. 14(b)). However, proponents of a referendum have only 90 days to collect the requisite number of signatures. As SB 60 was signed on Friday, September 5, that means that all signatures must be turned in no later than Thursday, December 4. This will probably put it on the March, 2004 ballot.

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