I have previously reported on Republican Minority Whip Jon Kyl - second ranking Republican in the Senate - and his effort to pass an amendment to an omnibus bill for the purpose of ensuring that “None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be available to resettle Palestinians from Gaza into the United States.”

I wrote then:

“Kyl actually wants the Senate to pass a resolution that would prohibit the United States from aiding Palestinians from Gaza immigrate to the United States. This resolution is a relic of the Nativist laws of the past that prevented Eastern Europeans, for instance, from immigrating to the United States. Nativist laws also prevented many Jews seeking refugee from the Holocaust into entering the United States. To purpose that one group of people, simply due to ethnicity, geography, religion or another other innate factor cannot move to the United States based solely on that criteria is nothing more than shameful bigotry.”

[The Senate’s #1 Hateful Douch! MSNBC.]

The amendment was attacked by Judicial Committee Chairman Senator Patrick Leahy [D - Vermont]:

One of them bars Palestinian refugees of Gaza from resettling here, because they come from a “terrorist” land, as Leahy characterized the legislation. The senator then compared the Palestinian experience to his own ancestors in Ireland. They too were called terrorists once, because they were “fighting to keep their land,” fighting for their votes and freedom, religion and language. And “hunted” for doing so– “hunted because they had fought to practice their own religion... hunted because they wanted to keep their land...

“Thank goodness the United States had open arms for them.” The amendment, Leahy says, “goes against everything we stand for.”

And Republican Judd Gregg of New Hampshire - one of the best Senators around - also jumped in and criticized Kyl’s unfiltered bigotry:

“This blanket approach that nobody can enter the country is really over the top and far too broad a brush to paint on the entire population of an area.”

Well, it turns out that Kyl has decided to withdraw his amendment while acknowledge that the rumors that the United States was seeking to relocate Palestinians in Gaza were all, alas, just rumors.

“Mr. KYL. [The amendment] was a response to a news story which gained a great deal of attention from my constituents related to the January 30 order by the President, ordering $20 million for urgent relief efforts to provide migration assistance to Palestinian refugees. That has gotten a lot of attention from folks. They wanted to know what we were doing.”

But Kyl is still a bigot. He is only withdrawing it because he knows there is no effort to relocate Palestinians into America, but if there was Kyl would still be supporting his hateful amendment. No he deserves no credit.