As for the cherry tree
You will note I deleted that remark after I re-read your post and realized your recognition of your own "straw man" comment. My apologies. No doubt you composed your post without seeing my edit, or even while I was editing.
As for the House proposals, like the Canadian amendments, I really don't care, I know little about them. Those are just administrative details as far as I'm concerned. What I, and others here, are talking about is the remarks by Trump, Carson and other Republican Presidential candidates which are, well, I hate to be politically incorrect by invoking the N-word) nothing but pure Nazi anti-Semitism. (Arabs are, after all, a Semitic people). Even some Republicans have found these offensive.
You see, our racist lunatics are not just “proposing appropriate checks”. They are proposing much, much more than that, and they are running for President.
I have no objections to the principle or the concept of re-aligning the existing regulations to new concerns, as my posts above should make clear. That's what the Cuban rant was about. But proposals like shutting down Mosques or placing religious tests on immigrants are totally unacceptable, as well as are the fascist swine that propose them.