With George Bush’s approval rating in the low thirties, Republicans are stampeding away from what is shaping up as the worst presidency in American History. And while no one wants to be identified with the most corrupt and inept administration this side of Uganda, Mayor Michael Bloomberg surprised many by expanding the Big Apple’s food stamp program. The Liberalism, though, was fleeting –- Bloomberg abruptly reversed course and sacked Human Resources Administration official Bob McHugh for allowing, “The city expects everyone to do their fair share when taking any form of public help, but we recognize that some people have barriers that make it impossible, or very difficult, to find a job.” After the high-level leaks and requisite cabinet shake-up, Gotham again resembled the White House. Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs did little to attenuate the redolence when she stated that forcing the homeless to rummage through dumpsters is “consistent with the mayor’s goal of helping New Yorkers become self-sufficient.”

The impulse, these days, is to paint all Republicans with the same brush, yet Bloomberg’s legacy faces its own compositional challenges. A freedom-of-speech lawsuit brought by designer Marc Ecko claims Bloomberg has “waged a personal war against graffiti artists, fueled by [his] subjective distaste for the art form.” At the opposite end of the visual arts spectrum, the Metropolitan Museum is reluctantly deaccessioning two dozen pieces from its antiquities collection. The items were looted from archaeological sites in Italy and their repatriation has other countries such as Egypt, Turkey, Greece and Peru lining up to reclaim disputed objects. “If this does not stop,” lamented one Baruch College professor, “museums will become empty shells.” What will be left of history, then, might dismiss the two former NYPD detectives, Louis Eppolito and Steven Caracappa, who were convicted earlier this month of carrying out mob hits while still on the force, but there is no way it will avert its gaze when Barry Bonds usurps Babe Ruth’s (2nd) place in history. It’s bad enough that the Bambino’s achievements are being washed from our collective memory one syringe of anabolic steroids at a time. Now, with the recently approved destruction of Yankee stadium, the mayor appears determined to erase the impression of Ruth altogether.

The trick for end-of-term Republicans is how to snatch votes while at the same time distancing themselves from Scooter, Shooter, DeLay, Ryan, Cunningham, and, well, a long list of others. Imagine bobbing for golden apples in a backed-up truck stop toilet. While some float venerable election year fodder like gay rights and flag burning, others dump on Karl Rove’s new Willie Horton tableau, otherwise known as the Dirty Sanchez. With an eye towards November, our summer mailboxes are sure to be inundated with circulars complaining of overcrowded schools and dire warnings of lettuce pickers as vectors of avian flu. Fortunately for Georgia residents, Governor Sonny Perdue isn’t waiting around — he already signed the state’s Security and Immigration Compliance Act that denies services to illegal aliens and punishes employers who hire them.

Would-be citizens, however, are not going quietly into the night. Emboldened by the recent success of French layabouts, millions of immigrants (legal and otherwise) are marching through U.S. streets in an attempt to wrest back public opinion. Americans (i.e. those of us with passports) are sharply divided by issues of sealed borders, guest-worker programs and amnesty, and remain, at the same time, befuddled by the calculus of whether the tidal wave of wetbacks is more burdensome (swamping our schools and ERs) than beneficial (providing cheap labor that pays into, but never collects, social security). With 17 million illegals already here (2 million more than passed legally through Ellis Island) and another 60,000 sauntering in each month, the problem is basically insurmountable. Any solution, however flawed, cannot rely solely on concertina wire and labor regulations. It must include a component inexplicably overlooked by the commentators and pols, namely repeal of the 14th Amendment:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the state wherein they reside.

In other words, by virtue of his mother sneaking into Arizona and parturating on the linoleum floor of the local clinic, Paco Jr. becomes as much a citizen as George Fucking Washington. What kind of country would enact such a stupid law? This Amendment was ratified in 1868 as protection for ex-slaves, and its intent was plainly delineated two years earlier by Senator Jacob Howard: “Every person born within the limits of the United States…is a citizen. This will not, of course, include… foreigners [or] aliens.”

Perhaps the larger issue is that, in the West, broad-scale civil unrest has become an accepted if not expected reply to even the smallest of political slights.  (In the mid East, it is the suicide belt that has becomede rigueur.)  In France, the student barricades were fashioned out of the smoldering cars and broken storefronts left behind by rampaging Muslims.  In other words, within the (swollen) ranks of unemployed French, disaffected outsiders catalyzed privileged indigenes.  So we are not only facing the millions protesting against immigration reform, but also those who follow in their wake.  Just the other night, a routine traffic stop in Brooklyn quickly conflated into an uprising outside a police station.  After the rabid mob torched a patrol car, the riot squad was brought in and dispersed several hundred militant… Orthodox Jews??  More than just another headache for Mayor Bloomberg, the episode is a touchstone: when rioting spreads into the Hasidic community the trend has clearly gone too far. There are, in my estimation, certain things these folks just shouldn’t do: rock climbing, professional wrestling, or eating a Honey-Baked ham, for example.  Judging by the Matisyahu CD I inexplicably bought at Barnes and Noble the other day, maybe they should stay away from rap too.