Do any of you remember when Harry "The Body" Reid, in a final desperate attempt to get a few more votes to gain passage of the cloture vote, took to the Senate floor and gave that sob story about a phone call he had received from a Nevada constituent named “Tommy?"

While standing and addressing the whole of the Senate, Reid stated that he was withholding the last name of Tommy for fear of the government would look him up and possibly deport him. (He assured us he had is last name, though.) Tommy had called the leader of the Senate to urge him on to pass the immigration reform bill so that he (or was it "Tommy's" friend ?) would not have to live in fear any more.

So, perhaps one of you Nevada residents on the board can find out what happened to Tommy? Inquiring minds want to know.

Mark Steyn, one my favorite columnists, has this theory. I like it.

More artfully, the Democrats' leader, Harry Reid, instead of insulting his old base, invented a new one. Among the torrent of calls from racist intimidatory talk-radio listeners who don't know where Gulfport is, Sen. Reid had somehow managed to get through to the one constituent worth staying on the line for, a man who supports the bill. Who is he? Well, according to the Senator Majority Leader, his name is, er, "Tommy."

Tommy Hilfiger? Tommy Lasorda? Tommy Dorsey and his Orchestra with vocal refrain by Jo Stafford and the Pied Pipers? Tommy Lee in the director's cut, where in the hitherto deleted scene right at the end he says to Pamela Anderson, "Sorry, honey, I'd love to carry on for another 20 minutes but I gotta call Sen. Reid in Washington. If you hardworking Canadians are going to do the jobs Americans won't do, I need to get your X-visa sorted out"?

Ah, but Sen. Reid explained that he couldn't identify the Tommy in question in case he was arrested and deported. This Tommy has to stay "living in the shadows," like Tommy Lee in the bit where he's partly obscured by Pamela's embonpoint. Alas, this heartwarming vignette left many cynics unmoved.

On the radio, Laura Ingraham suggested that "Tommy" might be entirely fictional and merely Harry Reid's imaginary friend. I proposed to Laura that "Tommy" might like to start dating John Edwards' "coatless girl," whose Dickensian tale of woe figures in every Edwards stump speech: Apparently she goes to sleep shivering every night because her daddy was laid off at the mill and she can't afford a winter coat. If Tommy and the coatless girl married, he could buy her a coat for $9.99 at Wal-Mart, and she could fill in a routine Spousal Application form with U.S. Immigration, which only takes 10 years to process, as opposed to the cumbersome and time-consuming 24-hour instant amnesty visa for seasonal fruit-pickers and seasonal jihadists contained in the Senate bill.

http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/op ... 749152.php