Conservative Donnybrook

I was listening to Dennis Miller’s radio show on the way home from work today and one of the callers had a great suggestion, which I will plagiarize now. Build a fence between Mexico and the United States out of solar panels and donate the energy to border households. Dennis and I (although Dennis didn’t know about my approval) thought the idea was brilliant. If you make the immigration issue a cause in the energy crisis and also pledge to lower carbon dioxide emissions (through solar energy) NO ONE can object to building the fence then. We’ll have a fifteen layer impregnable Maginot line on our border with Mexico within weeks! (Granted, it won’t keep Germans out).

Pure brilliance as far as I’m concerned. I would link to that portion of the program, but the capitalist pig who is Dennis Miller requires that you pay him money to get audio of his past shows. (I don’t blame him; I would do the same thing. I don’t want to work forever!)

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The man who was shot in the buttocks by border patrol agents Compeon and Ramos has been convicted of drug smuggling - exactly the suspicion upon which the border agents originally stopped Mr. Davila for the first time. Ramos and Compeon are serving prison sentences now for attempting to protect our borders, but it looks like the guy they shot was a scumbag after all.

Conservative Donnybrook was but a twinkling in the eye of its founders when the Ramos/Compeon bruhaha erupted, but I think it is safe to safe that most, if not all, of the contributors to this site support the border agents in their quest to maintain order on our borders (if not, I’m sure they will give me hell for saying so). Ramos and Compeon are, to some extent, vindicated by this latest conviction.

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Say what you will about McCain, but he is a man who sticks to his principles, come what may. For example, the principle that 12 million illegals should be given amnesty and allowed to continue working in the United States.

But hasn’t he changed his stripes of late?  Mickey Kaus:

 … it’s obvious to anyone paying attention that McCain hasn’t altered his support for legalization of illegals (once he’s declared the border “secure”). One reason we know this is because he’s said it–he said it again on Meet the Press yesterday, when asked if he’d sign the McCain-Kennedy “comprehensive” immigration bill as president if it came to his desk. Answer: “Yeah.”  …

What about McCain’s statement that: “I will not allow anyone to receive Social Security or any other benefits because they have come here illegally and broken our laws”?–ed Obvious BS. If he offers legalization to the “12 million” who are here they will clearly get benefits from having come here illegally–the benefit of being here legally, for one. Medicaid, Medicare, and public schooling for another. People who came here illegally would also immediately qualify for Social Security benefits as soon as they got the quickie “probationary” Z-visa under McCain’s bill.

You wouldn’t know it judging from the crookedness of all his “straight talk” on immigration.  But for some real straight talk, see McCain’s hispanic outreach guy’s comments on the Mexican-American community (again, h/t Kaus):

Mr. HERNANDEZ: We are betting on that the Mexican-American population in the United States will … think ‘Mexico first,’ and they will invest in Mexico. They’ve already been doing it–in–in–in–to a great extent.

AMOS: But that’s family to family?

Mr. HERNANDEZ: Family to family. But now I want the third generation, the seventh generation, I want them all to think ‘Mexico first.’

Is this guy suggesting that millions of unassimilated foreigners staying largely within their own homogeneous ethnic group might have something less than total loyalty to the United States? What is he, some kind of racist?

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The Lakota Indian Tribe in South Dakota has announced that they are no longer citizens of the United States.

I wonder if they’ve fully thought this out. Think about it. The land they claim is in the middle of South Dakota (I’ve been there - South Dakota, not the Lakota Reservation -  and they’re welcome to it as far as I’m concerned), but they will be entirely surrounded by the United States. What happens if the U.S. accepts their withdrawal from the 33 treaties they’ve entered into and then simply denies citizens of Lakota Nation (or whatever they wind up calling themselves) visas to visit the United States? If individuals wanted to emigrate three blocks to the United States, would they then be required to get in line with the rest of the immigrant hordes?

I cannot think that they truly wish to secede. Rather, this is an attempt at making a political statement - and, perhaps, even a valid one. The risk, of course, is the United States takes them at face value and treats them like another nation.

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Yesterday, a report was released on the fertility rate in the United States and for the first time since 1972, Americans are reproducing as fast as they are dying. This is significant news for a country that relies so heavily on socialistic programs and income redistribution schemes for the benefit of the elderly, indigent and lazy.

The story had a few interesting items that I will share.

First, the REALLY good news is that “[r]ed states tend to have both more religious people and higher fertility rates.” I take that to mean that if we just keep doing what we’re doing here in fly-over country for the next 18 years or so, we may be able to take back both houses of Congress and the presidency.

Second, “[s]ome of the increase is explained by immigration. Hispanics have the highest fertility rate — about 2.9 — followed by blacks (2.1), Asians (1.9) and whites (1.86). But Hispanics do not represent enough of the population to fully explain the trend, and the fertility rate of U.S. whites is still higher than that of other developed countries.” This is interesting because it reveals that the complexion of America will be slowly changing over time. If these rates continue, even if the borders are completely shut down, America will become more Hispanic, the proportion of black Americans will remain more or less the same (the replacement rate is 2.1), and America will become less white and Asian. Politically, and after all, this is a political blog, what that means is that whoever captures the Hispanic vote will have captured a rising proportion of the population and, presumably, an ever greater proportion of the vote.

Finally, I love the fact that the life-haters are alarmed by this news:

But not everyone sees that as encouraging, given that the United States remains a leading consumer of increasingly scarce natural resources.

“The world is now consuming resources faster than the Earth can sustain over the longer term,” said Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute. “Forests are shrinking. Fisheries are collapsing. Water tables are falling. Large parts of the world’s grasslands are deteriorating. The U.S. is already disproportionately responsible for that because of our very high consumption levels.”

It would seem that the folks over at the Earth Policy Institute see human life on this planet as some sort of dire threat. Seems to me that the gradual extinction of human beings itself is a threat, but maybe I’m being dramatic.

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Pat Buchanan was interviewed by Diana West about his latest book on C-SPAN’s After Words.

The MP3 is here, the video here.

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James Pinkerton has a wonderfully snarky column on the “virtual fence” idea that Giuliani and other “comprehensive immigration reform” backers promote. (HT Kaus.)

Here’s Giuliani, quoted in an Associated Press story from last week, headlined, “Giuliani promotes virtual fence.” Explains the former mayor, “Frankly, the virtual fence is more valuable because it alerts you to people approaching the border, it alerts you to people coming over the border.”

That sounds like a good plan, doesn’t it? After all, you use a virtual lock on your front door, right? That way, when intruders approach your house, you can spot them. And when they walk in, well, a police SWAT team is on the way. The key to this enforcement strategy, to be sure, is to respond after the crime has occurred. So it’s strange, therefore, that Giuliani insists that he wants to build at least some physical wall.

Because virtuality works better, Giuliani assures us.

It’s funny how these erstwhile advocates of amnesty insist that they support strict border enforcement, yet the idea of actually building, you know, a fence cannot be countenanced. It ain’t the Panama Canal, people, I think we’re up to the challenge.

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In the little professional legal experience I have in creating a record and preparing for a trial or arbitration I’ve always been told to start from what happened first and then progress all the way through to what’s happened most recently. That way the entire story unfolds before your eyes and you can see how things progressed (or more often than not, regressed) to were they are. Applying this logic to the New York State plan to give licenses to illegal immigrants you learn something about Senator Hillary Clinton’s character or lack thereof.

First this.

Then this.

Way to drop the hammer of decision making with authority there Senator Clinton, especially in the face of adversity.

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This story from the LA Times reports that six illegal immigrants were arrested after stealing food from a relief center in San Diego. As bad as it is that they were caught stealing food from people who have lost everything they owned, it is the comments of the Border Patrol agents who responded to the call that has me concerned.

According to the story:

Border Patrol agents are not looking for illegal immigrants at the center but will continue responding to police calls for assistance.

“We are not in any means at Qualcomm for enforcement capacity,” he said. “We are not there to take advantage of a situation.”

Why in the world not? Border Patrol agents take the following oath on their first day:

I, . . . . . . . ., do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foregin and doemstic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

Part of that oath is the obligation to enforce the immigration laws that Congress has enacted. 

I spoke to a friend of mine about this story over lunch today and he provided an explanation of why he thought the Border Patrol is right in this instance. According to him, “They probably would rather the illegals showed up at the relief center than to have to round up their dead bodies from their homes later.” Fair enough; and that might even be what they are thinking. But seriously? Would rational people opt to be killed in a fire than to risk deportation?

Imagine that some notorious gangster on the FBI’s Most Wanted List (like, for instance, James “Whitey” Bulger, who incidentally may be in Sicily) sustained a gunshot wound and wandered into the emergency room. Of course we want the doctor to treat the wound, but we also would want and expect that doctor to report the whereabouts of the gangster to the FBI. And then we would expect the FBI to act on the information. We would never set up sanctuary ER’s where criminals could be treated for wounds with no questions asked. Why should illegal immigrants be any different? Breaking the law should get you no preferential treatment. 

It is gratifying that most of the Republican nominees have finally come to see that securing our borders and upholding the law of the land is of paramount importance. Even John McCain has moderated his rhetoric and now says that he will focus on securing the border before pressing for comprehensive immigration “reform” (i.e. amnesty). This leaves Rudy Giuliani as the sole hold-out in the Republican pack.

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Marquette Warrior: Elderly Man Killed by Hit-and-Run Driver — Crowd Doesn’t Help, Steals His Groceries.

It astounds me that people could be so callous as to steal a man’s groceries as he lays dying in the street. Stories like this really push home the need for wholesale change in the way we view life in this society.

The comments to the linked story pose the question of whether the driver was legally inside the United States and it does seem a pertinent question since it seems that we hear of one story after another in which an illegal immigrant is involved in a hit-and-run. While there currently does not seem to be any evidence of Mr. Flores-Ocon’s citizenship status, there is plenty of evidence cropping up about his past criminal history (here and here).

h/t Marquette Warrior

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