I Didn't Know Lincoln Was Even There

From Milbank's piece in the Post the other day (too lazy to link):

Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who included a guest-worker provision in his legislation, said it is necessary to bring 11 million illegal aliens "out of the shadows."

But the very notion enraged his colleague Grassley, who called Specter's plan "a wink and a nod to amnesty" for illegals. "If it looks acts and smells like amnesty then it is amnesty," he protested, saying the program "denigrates the value of citizenship." In addition to his tirade about "Main Street Washington," he railed against "Bahama-like mailbox corporations."

At the end of his stemwinder, Grassley observed that his end was missing. "I see my staff took the bottom line away from me, because I probably shouldn't have said it," he confessed.

Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) pleaded for understanding, reminding Grassley that "there are four of us who are first-generation Americans" on the committee.

This produced a round of me-too statements. "My grandparents came here as immigrants," volunteered Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) "My great-great-great-great-grandfather was an immigrant, I'm proud to say," offered Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.). "The last one got here about 1850."

"Did they miss the Civil War, Senator?" Specter inquired.

"Lincoln killed one of them at Antietam," the senator from Alabama rejoined.

A friend pointed this one out to me. There's your modern Republican party, folks. The Republican party that describes its own greatest president as a killer.