As part of our Sunday diversion, we look in on CBS anchor Bob Schieffer and his hosting duties on Face the Nation. Today, he talked immigration with Xavier Becerra and Tom Tancredo. It was a brief interview, and no one was able to finish his sentence except Bob.

He also talked to GM boss Rick Wagoner, asking him basically what he was going to do now that he’d run the corporation into the ground.

This week, perhaps, he just should have stayed it bed.

read my show notes below the fold…

BOB AND TOM TANCREDO AND XAVIER BECERRA. Bob Schieffer first interviewed Representatives Tom Tancredo (R-Colorado) and Xavier Becerra (D-California). It was a ten minute interview with no back-and-forth and no time for either side to score points.

“Right to it.” Schieffer declared that the Senate saw the problems and “decided to punt and go on vacation.” He asked Tancredo if anything would happen by year’s end. Tancredo said that there was a 60-40 chance against a bill “getting out of the Senate.” Schieffer pointed out that the Senate bill would probably include a guest worker program, which the House would reject, and he asked Becerra what he though. Becerra said that there was plenty in the Senate bill “for people to hate” and for “people to love,” but “the far right” had destroyed it.

Tancredo insisted that “guest worker program” was a “euphemism for amnesty.” He insisted that Republicans were for enforcement only and a fence.

Schieffer asked Tancredo, warning that this would be a question asked by a naïve schoolchild, what was wrong with amnesty. Tancredo said that it sent a terrible message to people who seek to enter the country in the right way: “It’s a slap in the face of everyone who obeys the law.”

Becerra, in response, explained that this was not amnesty. He talked about the hurdles and requirements written into the Senate bill. Schieffer asked him about the 700-Mile fence. Would that work? How do we get the current illegals out? Becerra explained that the House bill was “unworkable.” The benefit to those who want to come to the United States to work is too great for a fence to stop them.

Tancredo insisted that this had nothing to do with the dictionary definition of amnesty, that the dictionary definition was inapplicable, so he made up his own definition: “Amnesty is when you let people stay here who have broken the law.” Schieffer then cut him off, as time had expired.

BOB AND GM BOSS RICK WAGONER. Schieffer repeated the old Truman saying that what’s good for General Motors is good for the country, and he made the case that GM is in terrible shape and needed a bailout. Wagoner said that bailout and bankruptcy were not good things. Schieffer insisted that they needed a Chrysler-style bailout, and what would they do otherwise? Tax credits, government help? Wagoner said they are working to solve their problems themselves, negotiating with the unions to fix the country. He wants GM “back on a winning track” in America as it is in other countries.

Schieffer declared that Americans like Japanese cars better than GM. What are the Japanese doing right that he’s doing wrong? Wagoner said that it was inaccurate to say that they’re not producing products that Americans do not want.

Schieffer told Wagoner that profits have gone down under his leadership, the bonds have gone junk, and that his critics say that it is time for him to resign. Wagoner said he would not “be in this job if I didn’t think I was the guy to do it.”