ObamaOdrama

The AP reports that Hispanic groups are calling on Obama to keep his promise and pass immigration reform or risk “the future of the United States.”

WASHINGTON - Saying traditional census outreach will not be enough, Hispanic groups on Wednesday urged the Obama administration to follow through now on its pledge to pass immigration reform or risk an undercount of millions of people.

The National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, Univision Inc., the League of United Latin American Citizens and SEIU announced a grassroots campaign that would supplement Census Bureau efforts to reach the traditionally hard to count Hispanic community. An estimated 1 million Hispanics, or about 3 percent of the U.S. population, were missed in 2000.

“Make no mistake about it: The census cannot succeed if Latinos are not fully counted,” said Arturo Vargas, executive director of NALEO, noting that Hispanics make up half of the nation’s percentage growth. “We are the future of the United States.”

He said a halt to immigration raids is not enough and referred to President Barack Obama’s pledge on immigration reform.

“That needs to be decided today, not in the 2010 census,” Vargas said.

Ruben Keoseyan, publisher of La Raza newspaper, expressed concern about a mixed message where Hispanic groups work to build trust in immigrant communities only to have it destroyed if the government conducts a raid days later. “The federal government plays an important role in augmenting what we are doing,” he said.

Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, who addressed the groups Wednesday, stressed that all personal information in census forms will be kept confidential. He noted that Obama would soon nominate a new census director.

“We all recognize what is at stake,” Locke said.

On Tuesday at a U.N. conference on Afghanistan, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that Taliban members who abandoned extremism must be granted an honorable form of reconciliation.

“We must also support efforts by the government of Afghanistan to separate the extremists of al Qaeda and the Taliban from those who have joined their ranks not out of conviction, but out of desperation,” Clinton said at an international conference on Afghanistan in the Hague.

“This is, in fact, the case for a majority of those fighting with the Taliban,” she told delegates from more than 70 countries at the meeting.

Clinton’s comments echo those of U.S. President Barack Obama who said this month that he was open to the idea of reaching out to moderate elements of the Taliban.

“They should be offered an honorable form of reconciliation and re-integration into a peaceful society, if they are willing to abandon violence, break with al Qaeda, and support the constitution,” Clinton said.

On Wednesday, a top spokesman for the Taliban rejected the U.S. offer for “honorable reconciliation” calling it a lunatic idea and saying the only way to end the war was to withdraw foreign troops.

I would agree the Taliban spokesman is dead on about the lunatic part….