President Obama met with a bipartisan group of national figures Tuesday afternoon to discuss the nation's immigration laws.
According to press reports, among those invited to the confab were former Florida U.S. Senator Mel Martinez, New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, and Tucson, Arizona Police Chief Roberto Villaseñor, who has been critical of his state's passage of the controversial SB1070 illegal-immigration legislation from a year ago.
In a statement issued late Monday, the White House said the president was holding the meeting to discuss the importance of fixing the nation's "broken immigration system" to meet the country's 21st century economic and national security needs.
But let's go back to Martinez, who this blog has been critical of for quitting his job back in the summer of 2009 for no apparent reason, other than he missed hanging out his family after the Democrats took over Congress.
But we come here not to praise nor to bury the former Orange County Mayor and first Director of Housing and Urban Development for George W. Bush, but to understand what he could possibly bring to the table in discussing what needs to be done with the nation's immigration laws, which are definitely broken, no matter where you stand on the issue.
Martinez, you might recall, ended up with double duty back in 2006-2007, when he was named chairman of the Republican National Committee, in addition to his duties as Senator, but he lasted less than a year on the job.
No doubt that it was surely a large load to take on that full time gig while still serving as Florida's junior Senator.
This article appears in Apr 21-27, 2011.