Time of Death: June 28, 2007 11:04am

I must admit to complete surprise today when I heard that the cloture vote ended in favor of a stake through the heart of the wretched amnesty bill. With a vote of 46-53, the Senate pronounced the zombie amnesty bill that wouldn't die DEAD (for now). Those of us who were very much against this bad piece of legislation will rest a bit easier tonight knowing our voices were finally heard.

Evidently, Mitch either miraculously regained his ability to hear or one of his constituents sent him a hearing aid because his Nay vote today was a pleasant surprise! Or, more realistically, could it be that he suddenly remembered he would need us to gain re-election in 2008? Whatever the reason, I'm grateful that we were heard by Senator McConnell. I'm extremely pleased that he has remembered for whom he actually works... for his constituency, not for the Chamber of Commerce and certainly not for the President. Thank you, Mitch. Nice to have you back!

Again, I must thank Senator Bunning who deserves the thanks of all Kentuckians for making us proud -- he came through vote after vote with flying colors. There was no need to call, fax, or email him because he had his head screwed on straight from the very beginning. Thank God. I am grateful we have him in DC!

Roy Beck at NumbersUSA did a fine job recapping and thanking the grassroots for defeating amnesty today. It was interesting to read the way he sees this victory. It's been many years since I've thought of myself as being "anti-establishment!

DEAR HARD-WORKING, TENACIOUS ACTIVIST CITIZENS OF THE NUMBERSUSA ACTION NETWORK,

For at least five months, most newspaper editorial boards, the majority of columnists and news stories and pronouncements from the other elite institutions of America have told you that a "comprehensive immigration bill" would inevitably pass the Senate this year.

That only caused most of you to fax, phone and visit Senatorial offices all the more often.

Most national religious leaders who spoke out on this issue said the moral high ground was in rewarding the U.S. businesses and foreign labor who broke our immigration laws.

But in the pews (and quietly in most of the parsonages), the overwhelming majority of the people of faith stayed grounded in the values of justice and freedom, and stood against massive new flows of foreign labor that are at the expense of our society's most vulnerable citizens. You stood against this massive government-coerced population explosion that is so destructive of the natural habitats or our country that stand in the bulldozers' path.

In the last week, several venerable warriors from past decades of massive legislative battles such as this one have gloomily proclaimed that when The Establishment almost totally unites for something, the grassroots never prevail.

But the nearly HALF-MILLION activist members of the NumbersUSA Action Network just devoted even more time and energy to leaving no doubt where the quantity, the quality and the passion was among each Senator's constituency.

YOU NEVER GAVE UP -- DESPITE MANY TWISTS AND TURNS THAT WERE DEMORALIZING.

YOU NEVER GAVE UP -- DESPITE VICIOUS SLURS THROWN AT YOU BY U.S. SENATORS, THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES AND MAJOR NEWS MEDIA FIGURES.

THE ESTABLISHMENT lost today.

The average American citizen won. You disproved the cynicism (born of great experience) in this town that this kind of victory was impossible.

53 U.S. Senators actually paid attention to what you had to say, felt enough pressure to wonder if there might be validity on our side of analysis, and concluded that through combination of political wisdom and policy wisdom they should vote the way the majority of their constituents believed proper -- rather than be swayed by all the power, money and prestige of The Establishment.

That may not be a miracle, but it is a mighty cool breeze of representative democracy on a hot, humid, sticky mid-day in the marble chambers sitting atop the swamps along the Potomac!

Just to make sure you don't miss the context of your victory, consider this:

In recent months, the pro-amnesty, pro-globalized-labor forces had assembled this Establishment Goliath of support for their "comprensive immigration reform" concept:

Pres. Bush
Senate Democratic Leaders
Senate Republican Leaders
House Majority Democratic Leaders
U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Dozens of other corporation lobby groups
The largest philanthropic foundations
Perhaps 90% of the newspaper editorial boards that weighed in
The Washington offices of most major religious denominations
Nearly all ethnic advocacy groups
Most of Washington's think tanks

As the L.A. Times said on its Sunday front page, NumbersUSA activists were probably the largest and the loudest going up against that formidable force.

But you all were also part of an incredible chain-reaction type of civic involvement that used the internet and talk radio to multiply the message along with dozens of other citizen groups.

And we were greatly assisted by the fact that a handful of significant sources of power joined the citizen revolt of bloggers, talkers and forwarders. Among them:

The American Legion
The AFL-CIO (somewhat timidly)
The National Review on-line magazine
CNN's Lou Dobbs

Your power was not in just being loud and persistent. It was that you knew the issues. You knew the many ways this bill was bad for America.

It is trite to say but the exclamation of the boy in the crowd that "The Emperor Is Wearing No Clothes" describes so well what you did.

Thank you to those who have acted almost daily since Congress returned in January.

Thank you to those who recently have acted several times a day. Incredible.

Thank you to those who had so little time to give, but stepped in once or twice a week.

And thank you to the 78,343 "replacements" who only joined since June 1 but have been so important in overwhelming the Senate with our message.

We will even lavish praise on the 6,733 of you who joined yesterday and made your first calls and sent your first faxes!

At this moment, there are 444,496 of you who are registered, proven activists using the NumbersUSA tools! What an army you have been. But you are not MY army, or OUR army. You are YOUR OWN army -- 444,496 separate individuals working in collective, cumulative power, saying just what you want to say, writing just what you want to write. That is the power that won the victory today.

I only caution that what we did today was forestall disaster.

Our future, the next generation's future, depends on our marshalling these same forces together to begin to make improvements in immigration policy, one piece at a time, starting tomorrow.

Roy, I'd like to thank you for your strong and active leadership on an issue that is so very important to our national security. Without NumbersUSA and your communications, it would have been impossible to have made the impact we made to win this battle. Well done, Roy, and thank you, thank you to everyone at NumberUSA!!