According to the information I have heard about the attempted resuscitation of the immigration bill, Leader Reid will use what is called a “clay pigeon”.

Yesterday I heard it described this way: First the Senate will try to get cloture on the bill. This in itself is doubtful and if cloture is not reached the bill goes to the grave.

If cloture is passed then each amendment (some 21 I heard) will be voted on separately with just a simple majority passing or rejecting any of them.

At the end of the votes for the 21 amendments the entire bill as amended will be voted on with a simple majority required to pass or reject the bill.

Kay Bailey Hutchison and now Charles Grassley have added their names to the no side of cloture.

It’s not often a politician admits to making a mistake, but that’s exactly what Sen. Charles E. Grassley says he did when he voted for the 1986 amnesty for illegal aliens.

Twenty-one years later he has become one of the most steadfast opponents of amnesty and the strongest critic of the federal government’s ability to handle a new legalization program.

“I was fooled once, and history has taught me a valuable lesson. Amnesties just don’t work,” the Iowa Republican wrote in a letter to his colleagues yesterday, telling them he is fulfilling a “duty to warn you of the mistakes” of passing yet another bill that would put illegal aliens on the path to citizenship — this time for an estimated 12 million to 20 million, far more than the 3 million from 1986.

This time around he has also become one of the new Senate bill’s most dangerous foes, offering an amendment that threatens to splinter the fragile “grand bargain” underlying the bill. His proposal would remove some of the obligations of businesses to check the legal status of their workers, and limit immigration authorities’ ability to obtain information from other government agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service.

Mr. Grassley said he thought he had agreed with the secret negotiators to protect IRS data. But when the bill was introduced, his provisions were gone.

Asked whether he was worried his amendment would be a deal-breaker, he said that was a problem for the negotiators.

“The deal break was when I left the rump sessions they were having back there in April or early May,” Mr. Grassley told reporters yesterday. “I thought I had a compromise on the table, and when the final document comes out it puts every taxpayer in this country’s privacy in jeopardy.”

Read the rest to see how this amendment could be the deal breaker.