The original article cites these reasons, summarized for your reading pleasure by Blonde Sagacity:

1. The Obama presidency is out of touch with the American people

2. Most Americans don’t have confidence in the president’s leadership

3. Obama fails to inspire

4. The United States is drowning in debt

5. Obama’s Big Government message is falling flat

6. Obama’s support for socialised health care is a huge political mistake

7. Obama’s handling of the Gulf oil spill has been weak-kneed and indecisive

8. US foreign policy is an embarrassing mess under the Obama administration

9. President Obama is muddled and confused on national security

10. Obama doesn’t believe in American greatness

Article here.

Glad you’re finally catching on.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I’ll say it again:

Change is running on the other guy’s weaknesses and not your strengths, and hope is awfully hard to legislate.

The gist of the case related in this article is that a guy was pulled over, was suspected of DUI, and was informed of the rule requiring him to take an alcohol breath test or he’d lose his license. The problem? He didn’t understand the rule in either English or Spanish, so he lost his license because he refused the test.

The court overturned the license suspension because the guy wasn’t informed in a language he could understand.

This is so wrong on so many levels.

First, this country has not bothered to take the time to establish English as its official language. Why not, I don’t know. All of our legislation takes place in English. The laws are published in English. English is the primary language spoken by the vast majority of the population. And yet we’re too lazy or sensitive to make it our official language. As Andrew Dice Clay once said…

Second, I do not understand the necessity to stoop to the lowest common denominator when arrest or restriction of freedoms (driving on public roads is not a right, you know) is involved. Why do we have to “Mirandize” a suspect? Why does the suspect of DUI have to be informed of “implied consent?” Yes, I understand there’s a difference between breaking the law and, you know, breaking the law, but if I screw up on my taxes, it’s my fault for not knowing the all the law, not the Congress’ fault, not President Obama’s fault—nobody’s fault but my own for not knowing it all. I don’t get informed of all the intricacies of whatever it is I screwed up—that’s my responsibility to know. If I’m out driving at 45mph in the left lane on the NJTP, it’s my responsibility to know that I’m breaking the law. I must also know that it is illegal to wear a bullet-proof vest while committing a murder in New Jersey.

Bottom line, it’s our job to know our laws. And yet if we can’t somehow communicate one or two pieces of the law which, if they were taught in public schools and immigration classes as being the most important bits of the law that everybody should know (They must be… they’re said during every arrest, right?), every police officer wouldn’t need to know every language spoken in Parsippany, NJ.

There are about 150 languages spoken in NJ. That presents a bit of a problem.

Finally, the ruling says that the suspect must be read the rule in a language that he understands. Hoo, boy! I can’t wait for the first application of the Google Translate defense (as it will be known) because Google doesn’t quite speak perfect Azerbaijani. It’s a no wonder why the New Jersey Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers filed a brief in support of the ruling. Yay, billable hours!

Again, the majority finds itself kowtowing to the few. And because we haven’t decided that all public business will be conducted in English or American Sign Language, it’s our own fault.

The complete text of her response is reported by the Three Sonorans.

I am sorry that the US is wasting my Federal tax money on suing Arizona, and I’m especially sorry that it’s a double waste for Arizonans whose State tax money is being wasted in defense of this frivolous suit, too. When Arizona wins, I hope it sues for legal fees.

While the Obama administration is fighting this one based largely on hype and on the theoretical, Constitutional level, her response makes it clear that it’s the practical that matters here, and that Arizona is doing its damnedest to be fair, open and transparent in its implementation.

So whether this theoretical argument holds water or not, bully for her, and Yay! for Arizona. You’ve got a governor with brass ovaries, and there are a lot of states who’d do well to have a governor as good as the one you’ve got.

It doesn’t matter the source of the news. When it’s this stupid, it deserves recognition.

Nancy Pelosi believes that unemployment checks are creating jobs. To save you the clickthrough, I’ll summarize: if the US Government gives you unemployment benefits, you will spend the money on things which will create demand which will create jobs.

Sounds pretty good. Except…

She ignored a pretty important fact: unemployment benefits don’t generally cover much more than rent, food, gas, etc. There isn’t much room for discretionary spending. So, while unemployment benefits are good for keeping your landlord off your back and a roof over your head, they aren’t likely to cause you to rush out and buy the latest iPhone or a new car or, well, much more than you need. You would, in fact, be better off with a job which would give you the ability to spend beyond your needs.

I expect Pelosi and Obama to team up shortly to explain her new math to the American public. They’ll give it a fancy acronym and then blame the Republicans for not supporting it, which of course will cause the failure of Western civilization.

According to this CNN report, the ACLU has issued a “travel alert” to people who might be going to Arizona for the Fourth of July weekend.

The money quote:

“Although the law is not scheduled to go into effect until July 29, the ACLU is concerned that some law enforcement officers are already beginning to act on provisions of the law,” the ACLU said on its website.

Nothing like a little fear, uncertainty and doubt to really help make your case. Where possible, eschew logic and even observance of the space/time continuum.

My dad corresponds often with a friend from his high school days who is now a border rancher in Arizona. Bud, as he is known, has this to say about things in his part of the country, and forwarded on an article from the Tucson Weekly. It’s worth the read. Take your time, digest it all.

(Another good article can be found here.)

Dear Folks,

It was a few years ago that Leo Banks, Wall Street Journal, wrote a very accurate piece about his interview with me regarding the border situation on the ranch. I have forgiven him, in that he referred to me as a former Marine General. [He’s a retired Army General. /B] The article was accurate and without the fluff that is rampant in some of the pieces that have been written about our situation. The persons named in the below article are or were in Rob Krentz case all friends and neighbors of mine. Dr Gary Thrasher is my veterinarian, John Ladd and I are both on the U S Border Patrol advisory committee, and Larry Dever is a close friend and our Sheriff. This piece HITS THE MARK!!!! The BP is held back from making an aggressive positioning close to the border. All the ranchers who have livestock along the border are carrying weapons of some sort just to guard our investment. Until our leaders realize the severity of this condition and get off their rear ends and make constructive movement to defuse this situation…….it is just a matter of time before another incident raises its head. I am sending this to those who have expressed an interest other than the fluff you are seeing in the press.

Bud

The Krentz Bonfire

by Leo Banks, Tucson Weekly, April 29, 2010, article source here

A little more than a month has passed since the death of Cochise County rancher Rob Krentz, and the emotion generated by his murder, the pure shock of it, has ignited a bonfire that still burns across Arizona’s borderlands—and all the way to Washington, D.C.

Now everyone is demanding troops. Now, with Gov. Jan Brewer’s signature on a tough new illegal-immigration law, the nation is embroiled in a loud debate about racial profiling. Now everyone has a multi-point plan for bringing some control to a border so porous that anyone who wants to get into the country can eventually do so, as Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever last week told the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Will anything change now?

When the bonfire cools, will we be able to look back and say, as the heartbroken Krentz family hopes, that Rob’s death wasn’t in vain?

Last week, Rob’s brother, Phil, described how surprised and heartened the family has been at the outpouring of support they’ve received from around the country.

“It has really woken people up to what’s going on,” he says. “But I don’t know if anything will be done about it. It’s too early to tell. Meantime, we’re coping any way we can.”

Rob’s sister, Susan Pope, says, “This has really taken legs, and I think some things will change for the better. But I don’t think it’ll ever get to where we feel secure.”

The Popes’ home in the Chiricahua Mountains has been broken into three times. Susan works as a bus driver and teacher at the one-room Apache Elementary School, which has been hit so often that nothing of value remains inside.

“When was the last time you felt secure?” I asked.

Susan let out a joyless laugh and said, “I can’t remember, honestly.”

What has to be noted first is the inevitability of what happened. Something like the Krentz murder was coming, and everyone knew it.

Life in the Chiricahua Corridor north and east of Douglas, as the Tucson Weekly has been reporting for two years, has become a nightmare of break-ins, threats, intimidation and home invasions.

The stories residents told this newspaper, the frustration they feel trying to keep property and family safe in smuggler-occupied territory, were like a freight train in the night. Down the tracks, you see a faint light, coming closer and closer.

On March 27, in Cochise County’s big country a mile west of Paramore Crater, the train arrived.

The aftershock has been so powerful, because the killing exploded the lie about a secure border that Washington, D.C., has been working hard to promote.

In the days and weeks before Krentz’s murder, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, on TV and in speeches, had been telling the American people that conditions on the border had improved enough to proceed with amnesty.

“The security of the Southwest border has been transformed from where we were in 2007,” she said. It was a sales job meant to push a political goal.

This is the same homeland security secretary who, in April 2009, told CNN it’s not a crime, per se, to cross the border.

How committed can our government be to securing the border when the person charged with doing so—a former governor of Arizona, no less—doesn’t know it’s a federal misdemeanor to enter without inspection?

Now, back up a moment.

Yes, arrests are down across the Border Patrol’s 262-mile-wide Tucson sector—from 378,239 in 2007, to 241,673 last year.

Welcome news. But understand that the people who got away outnumber arrests by about 3 to 1.

Yes, the feds have built fencing along the Southwest border, boasting that 628 miles are now in place.

But as Glenn Spencer of American Border Patrol notes, only 310 miles of that is people fence, and some of that is next to useless. The remainder—318 miles—consists of vehicle barriers that don’t deter anybody on foot.

I’ve written before of the Tortilla Curtain, an invisible barrier that filters the facts about the border through various lenses—race, culture, civil rights, politics—so that by the time the information gets to the power centers in Washington and New York, it looks nothing like the truth.

The Tortilla Curtain’s stoutest pillar is our own government, and no, it wasn’t much different under George W. Bush.

But now, even big-media conservatives like Michael Barone and Charles Krauthammer, lost behind the Curtain, are trotting out arrest numbers and fence numbers, dutifully falling in line behind Napolitano.

These guys need to come to Arizona and get their suits dirty on the trails.

Around Nogales, where arrests are down 20 percent, Susie Morales—who lives 2 1/2 miles from the line in the national forest west of Interstate 19—has seen no letup in crossings.

As she cooks dinner in her kitchen, she can look out and see mules backpacking drugs on a trail 75 yards from her front door. Another trail runs 50 yards behind her house.

These trails are so close that when Susie spots incursions, she runs into her bathroom with her cell phone and shuts the door. She has to keep her voice down so the crossers can’t hear her calling for help.

“There are more Border Patrol agents around, but the tide hasn’t abated,” says Morales. “It’s amazing. They’re still coming. We need active-duty military here, because we’re just outnumbered.”

She carries a .357 magnum everywhere she goes.

Foot traffic still pours over the Huachuca Mountains, south of Sierra Vista, to the tune of 1,500 a week, according to a citizen who places game cameras on trails there and counts crossings.

East of the Huachucas, John Ladd tells me that in the 18 days prior to April 10, he counted some 350 illegals on his San Jose Ranch. Every one had climbed the fence.

Ladd’s property near Naco has been fenced since 2007, with the barriers ranging from 10 to 13 feet. But fencing just west of Ladd’s, across the San Pedro River, stands 18 feet tall, so why would anyone bother with an 18-footer when you can walk east and climb a 10-footer?

“I’m on the phone to Border Patrol on average three times a day, seven days a week, to report groups,” Ladd says. “I don’t know what normal is anymore. I’ve become cynical, untrusting and pissed off.”

East of Ladd’s at Douglas, drug-laden ultra-light aircraft fly up from Mexico—right over Border Patrol headquarters, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement headquarters, every night of the week.

Arrests in Douglas are up 25 percent this year, and the danger has never been greater.

As one resident told me, “We’re under the gun all the time. There are people watching us all the time. The smugglers have scouts on hills, watching us, watching customs, watching Border Patrol. They’re terrorists, very militaristic, and they get a high out of it. As long as they can get away with it, it’s OK. That’s their mentality.”

Do you think DHS changed its song after Krentz’s death?

On April 4, The New York Times quoted DHS spokesman Matthew Chandler saying the agency “will continue to ensure that we are doing everything necessary to keep communities along the Southwest border safe.”

Continue to ensure? If our border communities were safe, Krentz would be alive. Continue to ensure. Imagine having the cojones to say that after Krentz’s murder?

They spun before Krentz’s murder, and they’re spinning now. And word out of Washington is that President Obama plans to push ahead soon with comprehensive immigration reform.

The sense of abandonment in the Corridor is palpable, and no one expressed it better than Roland Snure, a doctor who grew up in the area and knew Krentz well.

“I cannot understand how a government that takes, and takes, and takes, could not provide the only thing it has to do—protect its citizens,” he said.

If you want to talk transformation, life in Southeast Arizona has been transformed over the past month. But not in the way Napolitano claims.

Now, when men go out to work at their corrals, sometimes miles from the house, wives follow along, afraid to be home alone.

Up in Rodeo, N.M., Tess Shultis no longer allows her two boys to play outside the house.

“Not unless me or their dad is with them,” says Shultis, a clerk at the market in Rodeo. “It’s too dangerous.”

Transformed.

The most dangerous thing you can do on the border now? Reach for your cell phone. Forget you even own one. Keep your hands visible. No sudden moves.

If you encounter the wrong guy, and he thinks you’re calling Border Patrol, he might start shooting. That’s likely what happened to Krentz.

It’s supposition, but his killer probably has a criminal record, and rather than get arrested for it, he opened fire. For good measure, he shot Rob’s cow dog, too, breaking its back. The animal had to be put down later.

The killer’s tracks led to Mexico along Black Draw, a heavily used smuggler trail through the San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge. The shooter is still at large.

The Cochise County sheriff has released a photo of a person wanted for questioning in robberies around Portal, in the Chiricahua Mountains. Some suspect a connection to the Krentz murder.

The man, Alejandro Chavez-Vasquez, was arrested in Southern Arizona’s Santa Cruz County in early May 2004; the following month, he was charged with felony re-entry after deportation, according to federal court records. To earn that charge, he’d likely been caught crossing the border multiple times. In a plea agreement, he got 36 months of supervised release and a fine of $100.

Cochise County sheriff’s spokesperson Carol Capas says Chavez-Vasquez also has convictions in this country for theft, sexual assault, motor-vehicle theft and narcotics possession, and has used multiple birthdates in dealing with police. Capas said some of his crimes occurred in Nevada, but she could not name other states in which he might’ve been active.

Krentz’s killer, whoever it is, might’ve been jacked up on something. Many smugglers take meth or some form of speed to keep moving.

Anna Magoffin, who lives along Geronimo Trail, finds needles and discarded steroid vials on her horseback rides across the borderlands. “These guys aren’t just walking,” she says. “They’re bumped up on something.”

Not surprisingly, sympathy for illegal crossers has cratered.

“I’ve detected a hardening of hearts,” says Lynn Kartchner, who co-owns a gun shop in Douglas. “People who used to give them water and a sandwich and let them sleep in the shade, now they’re going to run them off at gunpoint.”

In the days since the murder, Kartchner’s business has boomed. Some of his new customers are bird-watching lefties from Portal who’ve suddenly become sudden Second Amendment converts, now that grim reality has hit them, too.

And what of our government’s talk of comprehensive immigration reform? Of amnesty? It has made the crisis worse.

The words have been all over Mexican TV and radio, and the result is a rush to the border, same as it ever was, says Magoffin.

During the Bush years, she could look south from her house to a highway in Mexico and see big white buses unloading people. They’d line up single file and march into the country.

“It was like a long snake of people walking through the desert,” Magoffin says. “The amnesty talk today has the big loads going through again.”

Transformed.

But the polite border-crossing worker—some are still out there—has given way to the bad hombre. In the Tucson sector, 17 percent of those arrested by the Border Patrol have criminal records in the United States.

The most alarming reality is the takeover of people-smuggling operations by the drug cartels. Now, a group of 15 from, say, Chiapas, Mexico, with jobs lined up in Chicago, can’t get into the country without dealing with the drug operations that own the trails.

To cross around Douglas, the going rate is up to $2,500 per person. When the Chiapas guys say they don’t have it, the coyote hands them his drugs and says, “Carry this, and you can come in for free, and we’ll guide you”—and up they come.

The coyote is accompanied by another fellow, also armed, who serves as muscle to make sure the workers turned mules don’t drop the product and bolt.

If Border Patrol happens to jump the group, a few of the workers might get rounded up while the coyote and his muscle disappear into the mountains, armed and dangerous—and good luck finding them.

They know the trails like their own faces in the mirror, because they make those runs over and over again.

When I visited Ladd recently, he uttered a chilling remark that Dever echoed in his testimony in Washington last week: “I guarantee that every group coming across that border today has a gun behind it.”

We can have a discussion about open labor markets, about legalizing drugs, about our insatiable demand for drugs, about the skill of the cartels at getting their junk into the country and how that creates more demand than there otherwise would be.

But that’s for another time. The immediate issue: How do we protect American citizens from this imminent danger?

The worst thought of all is that maybe the federal government is incapable of doing it. Maybe the bureaucracy is too big to do much of … anything.

The communications issue inspires zero confidence.

Susan Pope’s husband, Louie, has worked closely with the Border Patrol, even volunteering to show young agents how to work the terrain and the trails. He likes some of what he sees.

“They’re good kids, and they damn sure want to work,” says Pope.

But he has also watched the agency regularly put two men on a trail to track a group of 20, without maps, night-vision equipment or radios.

Veterinarian Gary Thrasher tells of being flagged down on an isolated ranch road at night by an agent left there to track a group alone—again, with no radio.

If he needed backup, the agent was told to use his personal cell phone. But the battery had gone dead, and he asked to borrow Thrasher’s cell.

For years, at every meeting with the Border Patrol, residents of the Chiricahua Corridor have pleaded with Border Patrol to fix its communication problems.

The corridor runs along a seam between the agency’s Douglas and Lordsburg sectors, and the two sectors have been unable to communicate with each other.

Border Patrol agents stationed at forward operating bases out on Geronimo Trail, east of Douglas, can’t radio back to headquarters in town.

Residents along Geronimo Trail can’t call the forward operating base. Rancher Bill McDonald says if trouble brews at his place, he has to drive to the base, 5 miles away on dirt roads.

After Krentz was shot, Border Patrol agents and sheriff’s deputies worked the area looking for clues, but they couldn’t communicate with each other.

Close observers say Krentz’s killer was likely back in Mexico well before Rob’s body was located, so bad communications probably didn’t play a role in his escape.

Within days of the murder, after Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords contacted DHS about the sorry state of communications in the corridor, satellite GPS radios arrived.

But it took a death, and a congresswoman raising hell, to get the bureaucracy to finally move.

Another loud plea, widely heard, is that the Border Patrol needs to be on the border itself, not tracking people five miles north of the line, or 30 miles north.

Thrasher, who travels the borderlands daily in his work, has made this his signature issue, and his view reflects the cynicism some feel toward the Border Patrol. He says the fall-back strategy cedes American land to the gangs and puts citizens at risk.

“There is no interest among the higher-up in stopping this at the border,” says Thrasher. “Instead of being preventative, they’re reactionary, because then they can show all the wonderful things they’re doing. Look at how many arrests we made. Look at all the pot we caught.

“The border should be our line in the sand. That’s where we need to stop them before they get to any citizens.”

In fairness, Border Patrol has always said they don’t have enough manpower to form a blockade at the border, and backing up allows more time to make arrests. They make a similar argument with fencing, saying it pushes illegals out into remote areas and gives agents days rather than hours to make arrests.

But that bothers Thrasher, too. Stop them at the line, and nobody dies in the backcountry.

“We push them way out and give them a two-day head start, then run them down,” says Thrasher, who played football for Woody Hayes at Ohio State. “Rob’s murder was terrible, and the danger everybody faces is terrible. But all of us out here are sick of seeing the bodies (of illegals), too.”

The one that haunts him the most, oddly, was one he never saw. But a rancher in the Chiricahuas told Thrasher the story.

A woman had died up in the mesquite and had been there long enough for the coyotes to get to her. When searchers went out to bag the body parts, they found her head here, some guts over there, a scatter of limbs.

When the rancher picked up an arm, he noticed the Timex watch on the woman’s wrist still ticking.

The idea of ceding American ground to the cartels is the pulse point of this crisis, because fundamentally, this is a fight for land. It’s going on in this country and on ranches in northern Mexico, where a lot of good folks there have it even worse than we do.

Every trail on our border is either bought or won through blood. The profits are great, and no gang that controls valuable land is going to give it up willingly.

As John Ladd says, “Nobody has tried to stop them yet. But if we do, it’s going to be a battle.”

Do we have the political will to take it on now, after Krentz?

A telling sign will be the rules of engagement under which troops, should the president decide to send them, will operate. Giffords and Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl have called for the immediate deployment National Guard troops.

Will they be allowed to stand their ground if challenged? Will they have bullets in their guns?

Remember back in January 2007, when unidentified armed men approached a National Guard outpost on the border near Sasabe, southwest of Tucson, and the soldiers followed orders and fled?

All across that section of the border, you could hear residents wailing, “No! Protect us! Why are you here if not to protect us?!”

If that was a probe by the cartels to see if the gringos were finally serious, they got their answer.

We can’t do that again.

As Susan Pope says, “If we don’t stop it now, God help us, because He’s the only one who’ll be able to. It’ll send a message to the cartels, ‘Hey, it’s a free for all. Come on up.’”

Let’s take this crap apart, point by point, shall we?

From CNN.com

Editor’s note: Ruben Navarrette Jr. is a member of the San Diego Union-Tribune editorial board, a nationally syndicated columnist and a regular contributor to CNN.com.

San Diego, California (CNN) — Don’t be surprised if, any day now, you read that the People’s Republic of Arizona is in the market for nuclear warheads to put an end, once and for all, to illegal immigration on its southern border. After all, it’s the next logical step for the rogue state.

Look in the dictionary under hyperbole and you’ll likely find this guy. Nuclear is the next logical step? Already, he’s proving himself a nutcase.

I should quit. This is going to be too easy.

This week, to advance the narrative that Arizona has no choice but to do its own immigration enforcement because the federal government is asleep at the switch, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer called for air support. Brewer requested helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles from the White House to patrol the border region with Mexico. In a letter to President Obama, Brewer asked that the National Guard reallocate reconnaissance helicopters and robotic surveillance craft to the “border states” to prevent illegal immigration. The governor also requested the deployment of unmanned drones, including possibly the Predator drones used in Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, in her letter, Brewer even mentioned those foreign wars as examples of where the drones have been effective.

Good for Gov. Brewer. Nothing like calling the federal government out on what it says it should do.

What’s the matter with Arizona? Isn’t it a little early in the year for the folks in the desert to be suffering from sunstroke?

Rhetorical question: Nothing’s wrong with Arizona. And apparently it wasn’t too early to start drinking when you wrote this article.

I guess this is par for the course. Brewer just signed SB 1070, a disgraceful anti-immigration and pro-racial-profiling law, to give local and state cops throughout the state the chance to suit up and play border patrol agent. Why shouldn’t she get the chance to suit up and play general?

I object to the use of the terminology “racial profiling” in conjunction with SB 1070. If, for example, you saw this young woman at a basketball game, you would not assume she’s an illegal immigrant because she’s Hispanic. No, you’d think, “Hey, she looks like she belongs here. Not likely illegal.”

But if you saw her hanging out with these guys (who have been harassing schoolgirls in Hayward, California), you might think twice.

This isn’t racial profiling. This is situational profiling. Put these guys in ringside seats too and nobody’d give them a second glance.

After all, like the United States, Arizona is currently involved in two wars. There’s the hypocritical war against the very illegal immigrants that the state has spent the past 15 years providing with gainful employment by allowing them to do jobs that Arizonans wouldn’t do. And then there’s the rhetorical war with the Obama administration, which Arizona wants to portray as negligent in stopping illegal immigration, which forced Arizonans to take matters into their own hands.

“…that Arazonans wouldn’t do.” I’m trying to understand why he thinks Arizonans are so dead-set against working. Unemployment is currently 9.4% in Arizona. Think those 9.4% of people are above working in the jobs that the illegal immigrants are doing?

“…the rhetorical war with the Obama administration” is anything but rhetorical. Fact is, the Obama administration, along with the administrations before it, Republican and Democratic alike, have all been negligent in enforcing the laws they passed and are supposed to be enforcing.

The argument that the federal government isn’t actively engaged in border enforcement is both dishonest and reckless.

Cite a source here, Ruben. I’m unable to find anybody on record saying that the federal government isn’t actively engaged in border enforcement. Oh! Wait! There’s a site… no, that’s just your own drivel. Sorry for the false alarm.

Putting words into the mouths of Arizona officials (and others) is dishonest. I don’t know if it’s reckless or not.

It is dishonest because it’s not true. I’ve visited the U.S.-Mexico border a dozen times in the past 10 years: in Texas, Arizona and California. I’ve interviewed countless border patrol agents and supervisors. I’ve also been up in a Border Patrol helicopter flying above the border, which offers a unique perspective on border security.

Precisely! They’re doing something. But it’s not enough.

So I can tell you what the border patrol agents on the ground would tell you: The U.S.-Mexico border has never been more fortified. There are now more than 20,000 border patrol agents on the federal payroll. That’s more agents than any other federal enforcement agency, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Those agents apprehend people and deport them at a feverish clip. In fact, it was recently announced that the Obama administration deported more people last year than the Bush administration during its final year in office.

Again, not enough. And if somebody doesn’t do more, then it will get worse, hence Arizona’s need to take the matter into its own figurative hands.

It is reckless because—when this law is hauled before a federal judge, as it will be—opponents will argue that the measure violates the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution by usurping federal authority to enforce immigration law. And that’s the very thing that proponents seem to be admitting in their bravado. In fact, it might not be a bad idea for Arizona officials to pipe down and stop bragging about how they’re doing the job of the federal government in terms of immigration enforcement, since that’s a no-no under the Constitution.

Interesting: First, you’re going to use your crystal ball and tell us where this yet-to-be-filed case will end up. If you’re so good, get into the stock market and out of journalism. Second, the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution is N/A here. Now, I’m just as much an attorney as you are (that is to say, we’re not attorneys), but I doubt that laws which do not contradict or conflict with federal law, as the Arizona statute appears not to (Have you read it? Give it a read!), will ever make it that high.

George Will is in agreement with Gov. Brewer, and he’s mostly correct when he says:

What the Arizona law does is make a state crime out of something that already is a crime, a federal crime.

Back to Ruben:

If the federal government does take border enforcement seriously, critics might ask: Why are there still people trying to enter the United States illegally? Simple. We can dig a moat, deploy an army, build walls or call in an airstrike, but desperate people will always find a way to go around, under or over any impediment in their path to a better life.

Ever heard of Berlin? It had a wall at one point which was remarkably effective. Not a whole lot of people found ways to go around, under or over it. It was pretty damned effective. Bullets were involved.

This isn’t to condone illegal immigration. My views—in support of deportations, workplace raids, giving more resources to the Border Patrol etc.—are well known. I’m just telling you what Border Patrol agents tell me: that it doesn’t make any sense to focus all our attention at the border while turning a blind eye to employers in the interior. That’s like trying to fill a bucket with teaspoons of water without first plugging the hole at the bottom.

Well, at least we agree on one thing: illegal immigration is illegal. But what Ruben’s telling us is that if we make it unattractive for the illegals to find employment in Arizona that they’ll stop entering the US? They’ll just stay home because there’s nothing to do in the US? Oh, Ruben…

Sigh.

We give them damned near everything they could want already. They have tax-free jobs. They have racial profiling to hide behind if they get caught. They have free education if they need it. They can come back if they are deported. And if the Obama administration has its way, they can obtain legal immigrant status and pay taxes on their income if they just happen to get caught and want to avoid a trip back and forth. (Whoopee!) So those people who are hiring the illegal immigrants will continue to hire them as well as their documented counterparts which will just continue to take the jobs from Americans.

They won’t stay home. They’ll turn out in droves.

Now Obama has fallen into that same trap. He is reportedly ready to announce that he is sending 1,200 National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to help control illegal immigration and quell some of the violence. That’s a far cry from the 6,000 troops that Arizona Sen. John McCain had requested, and congressional Republicans seem miffed that Obama stole their thunder.

It’s not a trap: 1,200 is a good start. Maybe Obama is listening for a change and not trying to drive his liberal agenda down the throats of Americans and through the hearts of their values.

Still, as long as the troops follow the protocol laid out in 2006 when George W. Bush launched Operation Jumpstart—that they’re unarmed and act only in a support capacity to the Border Patrol by fixing vehicles, monitoring surveillance equipment, repairing fences—I think sending the National Guard is a fine idea. It’s just not the magic bullet that the most enthusiastic proponents of the idea would have us believe. There’s only one of those. It involves fining, arresting and prosecuting the employers of illegal immigrants, including people who are, this election year, streaming into fundraisers for McCain, Brewer and other tough-talking Republicans vowing to solve a problem that many of their backers helped create.

National defense, as viewed from Ruben’s perspective, involves standing around and monitoring the bullets being shot at you, perhaps ducking. The Berlin wall would have been a lot less effective if the German guards had simply yelled, “Halten Sie!” No, Obama’s troops need to take an active role in stemming the tide of illegal immigration, a tide that leaves behind a trail of garbage that looks like this:

There are about 5,000 backpacks alone in this one wash in the Sonoran Desert—that’s Arizona, people, which is being trashed as part of the superhighway which funnels immigrants north.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Ruben Navarrette Jr.

Thank God for that, though I’m afraid there are those who agree with him.

Now, let’s hear from the other side of this argument…

Dear ALa,

Not too long ago, you declared that you might have had it with the whole blogging thing. There’s not enough revenue. It takes too much time for too little public response. There’s always Glenn Beck.

“There’s always Glenn Beck?!” Are you crazy?

I’m pretty sure that until Glenn Beck marries someone in the armed forces (and sticks with that marriage through thick, thin, unemployment and deployment), lists his occupation as “educator,” moves from Connecticut (Hi, neighbor!) to Philly, drops some pounds and years, changes his gender, and gets a whole lot better looking, then his viewpoint will not be the same as yours.

“There’s always Glenn Beck.” Pshaw!

Anyway… I’m not writing to change your mind.

Because, other than that whole Glenn Beck thing, you’re right on the money. Blogging consistently takes time, and you certainly won’t find conservatives (big C or little C, doesn’t matter) voicing their opinions, either in the comments or in their own blogs. You see, the problem with most of us Conservatives is that, as I’ve said before, we’re too conservative. Worse yet, most of us are too lazy to Get up! Stand up!, as the song says.⁺ So to expect anybody to respond, even if they agree with you? It feels like standing in front of a class of students who really couldn’t care less about what you’re saying, trying your damnedest to get their attention, and still getting “Meh” from them. Been there. Done that.

You, however, are clearly not too conservative or lazy, content to rest on your rear and let the country go its own way. Instead, you have taken the time, made a huge effort, and stood up for what you believe is right, and Right, too. That makes you the exception, not the rule, and it’s something for you to be proud of.

Not that I’m writing to say, “Lemme’ tell you a thing or two, li’l missy.” Nope. I’m totally in agreement with you. You’ll notice on my blog that I don’t have ads, so my revenue is negative. And if you search for comments? You’ll notice that I may as well be talking to myself. I know how you feel to some extent.

So if you decided to quit tomorrow—or even today!—I could and would totally understand.

Please know this, however: I have appreciated reading what you write. I have appreciated the tidbits which you’ve thrown our way. I have genuinely thought our families would get along just fine, and yet I don’t know you or The Man at all. I have enjoyed the viewpoints of someone with whom I don’t agree 100% of the time, but agree with enough to know that with enough of us, the country could be headed in a better direction.

If only people knew we existed. If only others would voice their opinions, too. If only the loudmouth liberals weren’t the only ones publishing, voicing, arguing, and generally making a nuisance of themselves. If only…

ALa, I’m sure there are lots of people out there who are long-tail bloggers like I am. I post only about 4 times a week, I have 13 Google Reader subscribers (Hi, y’all!), and I see about 1,500 unique visitors to my website/blog per month. We probably wouldn’t be missed if we dropped out of the conversation. But you’re further into the main body of the tail, and I’m sure that your 176 Google Readers and 20,000 visitors (or more!) will miss you.

Or rejoice that you’re sticking around.

Either way, congratulations on making it this far, thank you for the last six years, and best of luck and blessings in your other endeavors,

⁺ Note to RNC and others who think this might be a good theme song for your campaigns: Read and understand the lyrics before you make that decision. It’s a shame. Catchy tune, great hook, but definitely not in line with your values.

I like these guys. It seem that what I’ve read so far is “Just the facts, ma’am.” Check them out for yourselves.

[via DaringFireball.net, if you can believe it]

And for the half of us who pay those taxes, averages are meaningless.

Article here.

Money quotes:

“The idea that taxes are high right now is pretty much nuts,” says Michael Ettlinger, head of economic policy at the liberal Center for American Progress.

Note the source. He ought to know what’s “nuts.”

And this beaut:

A Gallup Poll last month found that 48% thought taxes were “too high” and 45% thought they were “about right.” Those saying taxes are “too high” remain near a 50-year low.

Given that nearly half of Americans aren’t paying federal taxes at all, those numbers don’t seem so out of line, now, do they? And since the percentage of Americans paying taxes is also the lowest it’s been in 50 years, I’m guessing there’s no mystery as to why the number of those saying taxes are “too high” remains near a 50-year low.

With the non-tax-paying majority running the country, if you worked hard to get where you are and can see the fruits of your labors, it’s pretty likely that somebody else is going to pick and eat that fruit for you.

[via DaringFireball.net]

Article here.

I think Hillary has bigger balls than her husband, but I don’t think the administration has the guts to live up to her warning.

Or is this administration finally realizing that Hope and Change aren’t necessarily the best foreign policy?

After all, “hope and change” don’t work quite as well as “shock and awe” when it comes to killing your enemy.

Several kids in California got sent home because they were wearing shirts with the American flag on them on May 5th, 2010, Cinco de Mayo.

Seriously? It’s come to this? We have to be respectful of a holiday which is barely celebrated in Mexico?!

Here’s the money quote:

“He said ‘If you wear [the flag T-shirt] on any other day, it’s fine; but just because it’s today you can’t wear it,’” [Daniel] Galli said. “His exact words.”

Galli said he was told it was inappropriate to wear the shirt because “it’s supposed to be a Mexican Day and we were supposed to honor them.”

Here’s a link to the school’s official dress code.

Gang colors? Don’t wear them. Glove on one hand? Don’t do that. Showing cleavage? Don’t. American flag? Don’t wear them on May 5th or March 17th.

Oh, wait, that’s not in the school’s dress code. I just made it up, as did the idiot administrator(s) at Live Oak High…

[via Blonde Sagacity]

I don’t know how I missed this one. Apparently, Obama thinks that he’s more experienced with nuclear policy than Sarah Palin. Her response is classic:

Palin shot back later at a speech to the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans, further mocking Obama’s earlier career and “all the vast nuclear experience that he acquired as a community organizer.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Denial or not, there are some pretty enlightening tidbits in this article.

Among them:

Neither Waxman or Stupak—who betrayed the pro-life community by negotiating for more than a week with the White House to ensure his vote on the health care bill—had anything more than a cursory understanding of how the many sections of the bill would impact business or even individual citizens before they voted on the bill, says House Energy Democrat staff. “We had memos on these issues, but none of our people, we think, looked at them,” says a staffer. “When they saw the stories last week about the charges some of the companies were taking, they were genuinely surprised and assumed that the companies were just doing this to embarrass them. They really believed this bill would immediately lower costs. They just didn’t understand what they were voting on.”

No clues, just as I suspected. But then, I haven’t read the 2,000 pages of legislation, either. And even if I did, could I possibly understand its implications? I say, if you can’t understand what you’re voting on, should you be voting at all?

(Thanks again, John!)

Well worth the read. I really couldn’t have said it better myself, though I’ve tried.

What angers many Americans is the abandonment of a concept that laid the foundation of the Constitution and the nation itself: limited government.

And I’ll keep on trying. I may only have only 13 followers on Google Reader and only 50 viewers of this site per day, but Rush Limbaugh Glenn Beck… heck, is there a Republican/Conservative to admire these days? Maybe you’ll start making some noise, too.

It only takes a match to start a forest fire. I’m jus’ sayin’.

(Thanks, John!)

Choice quote—the article lead:

Nearly two-thirds of Americans say the health care overhaul signed into law last week costs too much and expands the government’s role in health care too far, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds, underscoring an uphill selling job ahead for President Obama and congressional Democrats.

My question to President Obama and the Congress: Why are you having to sell us legislation you already passed?! Are you so blind to the desires of the American people that you can’t see that we didn’t want it in the first place?

Or are you just trying to make yourselves feel better?

Oh, no, wait. I get it. November is coming and you have to put enough spin on this train wreck so that the American people will forget just how how much we didn’t want this legislation in the first place.

Somehow, Frank Rich thinks that Republican “anxieties” are tied to a rapidly-changing America as if our “anxiety” is caused by race. He’s missing the freakin’ point, to paraphrase Joe Freakin’ Biden.

Frank Rich seems to think that taking back the country is all about taking it back from the people in it as opposed to the people who run it. No, it’s not about taking the country back from the majority of Americans who opposed the health care clusterfreak that just passed through our Congress. Most Americans agreed with us, for Pete’s sake! It’s not about taking the country back from the millions of hard-working Americans who oppose tax hikes. It’s not about taking the country back from millions of hard-working Americans who run their own small businesses. In fact, we’re not “anxious” about taking the country back from blacks, whites, Hispanics, dogs, cats, parakeets or salamanders, as if any of these groups are the ones running the country in the first place.

I’ll have you know that I, a staunch conservative, Conservative, republican and Republican am not anxious to take the country back from anybody except those who don’t represent my interests, namely this currently-seated Congress. I don’t give a damn about what color, race, creed, gender, political inclination, sexual orientation, or Starbucks Coffee preference you are so long as you represent my opinion. If you got elected and you don’t represent my opinion, I don’t want you in Congress. It’s that simple.

Think that’s selfish? Well, then, next time you step into a polling place, vote for somebody who doesn’t represent your point of view, who doesn’t represent your opinion. You can’t and you won’t do it. Because you realize that it’s all about having your opinion represented. That’s what our forefathers fought and died for. That’s what millions have died for over the intervening centuries. And it’s what we’re fighting for now.

Anyway, you may call me “anxious”—if you like that word—because I am anxious that Congress is running roughshod all over what I and many millions of other Americans view as our right to representation. We are seriously underrepresented. We are definitely disenfranchised. And having leadership which seems hell-bent on getting its way in spite of what we, the American people, clearly prefer is significant cause to be anxious.

Shoot. You want disenfranchised? Anxious?

I am a Republican. I live in Connecticut. Need I say more?

If only…

Or… Up! Up! and Away!

(via ALA)

This poll shows that Americans are warming to the health care plan. But they’re still not overwhelmingly in favor of it. Heck, we’re not even regular ol’ in favor of it yet.

(Insert cartoon sound of double-take here.)

I don’t get it. Congress voted to pass legislation that American’s didn’t want in the first place? Yeah, I knew that all along, too, but Pelosi and Obama want to go down in history for… for what? Working against their electorate?

Who put them in charge?

Oh, right. You. Some of you, anyway. But I’m pretty sure that you didn’t vote Obama in because of his stated position on healthcare as much as you voted a Republican out.

Again, change isn’t running on your strengths, it’s running on your opponent’s weakness. And hope can’t be legislated.

You fools.

Let’s hope you can change your ways in November, shall we?