In a new op-ed on his congressional web site dated 11/24/2007 (a week from this coming Saturday), Peter Roskam trumpets that “The time for mandatory employee verification is now.” That left me scratching my head for a minute but I have since regained my composure.

Roskam, reaching for votes from the xenophobic right while trying to scare the rest of us into supporting a bad law, goes on to conflate the issues of undocumented immigration and airport security, and, if that wasn’t enough, to blame the failures of George Bush’s incompetent Department of Homeland Security on Governor Blagojevich.

That the Bush Administration can’t get airport security (or much of anything else) right is no excuse to victimize thousands of ordinary workers, documented and undocumented alike, who just want to provide for their families.

E-Verify doesn’t work. As many as one in ten “ineligibles” will be a false-positive, potential denying a United States citizen the right to work. And even if it did work, its blanket application would be just plain mean-spirited. There are higher laws than the immigration code to which we must answer.

So Peter Roskam has endorsed John McCain, war hero and everybody’s favorite kooky Grandpa, for the Republican nomination. I have to admit that I think Peter made the right call on this one. Don’t get me wrong - I don’t really want to see John McCain anywhere near the oval office but I think he’s a person of substance, unlike the front-runners, and I can’t help but wonder if we wouldn’t be much better off as a nation if McCain and not Bush had won in 2000. I disagree with him more often than not but I like his independence. He’s way too much of a hawk for me, but then so is Hillary Clinton. There are two other Republican candidates I like and respect: Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee, but I’m neither a Baptist nor a Libertarian and I find their views too extreme. So, as much as it pains me to admit it, I think Peter chose wisely. McCain seems the least bad of the Republican contenders. Maybe he’s just less scary because he’s a known quantity. It kind of warms my heart too, to know that James Dobson would never vote for him.