Thread: Political Theater at Pro-Illegal Alien Press Conference

From "'Heard on the Hill" in Roll Call:
June 18, 2007

Empty Promises. They don't call it political theater for nothing. Staging a good press conference often requires a script and some props.

At a pro-immigration rally Thursday, a group of politicians including Sens. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) and Rep. Joe Baca (D-Calif.) addressed reporters while picturesquely standing in front of an impressive tower of boxes they said contained letters from a million supporters of comprehensive immigration reform.

The letters were supposedly generated from a campaign by Univision radio personality Eddie "Piol’n" Sotelo.

As the Members repeatedly referred to the letters and gestured toward the boxes allegedly containing them as evidence of the support for the immigration bill that is struggling in the Senate, a crack Roll Call photographer on hand at the event began to grow suspicious. He could see light shining through the handles of the boxes, indicating that they weren't full.

Sure enough, a quick check revealed that the boxes were, indeed, completely empty.

Carlos Sanchez, spokesman for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, which helped coordinate the event, said that actually bringing the 310 boxes full of the real, dead-tree letters that Sotelo collected would have presented a security headache in a box-spooked world. "We didn't want to put Capitol Police through the stress of having hundreds of boxes out there," he said of the event's Russell Park location.

Turns out, figuring out what the heck to do with the boxes is tougher than you'd think. Sotelo traveled with them in an 18-wheeler across the country to deliver them, but they couldn't just be dumped at the Capitol. Now, nonprofit groups are divvying them up and will spend the next weeks sorting them by Congressional district for delivery to the proper Hill offices, Sanchez said.

HOH is shocked - shocked - to learn that in politics, as in theater, all is not as it seems.

One of the boxes may have contained the 10 letters from actual US citizens.

Were these pre-printed letters that just needed to be signed (or X'ed)??

John and Ken (KFI 640 - Los Angeles) talked about this story at length and said they doubt that they received anywhere near a million letters. And a caller said that she saw stacks of pre-printed letters being handed out. I'm not sure if she was referring to this (non) batch of letters, but you get the drift - pro-illegal alien special interest groups are apparently handing out pre-printed FORM letters for illegal immigrants to sign.

We need confirmation on this.

Can anyone find any links to other major online news groups that are picking this story up? I have the writers contact info and can verify in the morning if nobody can find the goods tonight.

We have to verify this before we can release it.

W