Although many on the left have a vested interest in denying it exists at all costs, the ineluctable truth of the matter is that voter fraud is a widespread phenomenon. Whether it is so rampant that it influences the outcome of major elections, as some maintain, or has unseated incumbent congressmen in past races, is open to debate.

However, the recorded episodes of fraudulent voting and the manipulation of the election process, from corrupt Democratic officials in Indiana, to vote harvesters in Texas, to political apparatchiks in Ohio, to the Republican secretary of state of Indiana, demonstrate that the number of people who have violated state and federal election laws is substantial. One organization in particular, ACORN, has submitted thousands of fraudulent voter registration forms and has had dozens of its former employees indicted for violating such laws.

Therefore, it should come as no surprise that the chronically inept, partisan-driven New York City Board of Elections has opened itself up to potential vote/voter fraud. Although it’s possible that the registration ballot below is simply the result of a clerical error, somehow I doubt that’s the case. The fact is that many people have a political and pecuniary interest in allowing non-citizens to vote, despite its illegality. I’ll let Joanna Marzullo, president of New York ICE, describe what she found this election year.

December 2012, New York, NY.  The New York Board of Elections circulates fraudulent voter registration forms in Spanish. (Of course!  Even though proficiency in English is one of the requirements for citizenship, and many illegal people here from Latin American are, in fact, illiterate in Spanish).

These fraudulent Spanish voter registration forms ask the applicant, in the first box, if he or she is a citizen of North America!  North America is actually comprised of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, where most illegals are from. So, technically, the illegal alien from Mexico or Canada is a citizen of North America!  A scanned hard copy of this form is included below, with the question of North American citizenship highlighted in orange.

So the illegal alien from North America does not even have to get creative with his or her voter fraud in New York, because the New York Board of Elections does it for him or her!

This calls, of course, into question the veracity and legality of any of the election results.

Here is the scanned, fraudulent New York voter registration form:

NY ICE Voter Registration in Spanish-1 1

The Democrats deny the existence of voter fraud.  Yet it occurs on the floor of their own convention, as the Convention Chairman approves the mention of God in the platform against the overwhelming objections of the delegates.

You know, they might just have a point.  Still, I doubt it will register with the deniers.

Hat Tip: Progressive Libertarianism.

One of the more depressing elements of the current presidential race is the lack of any substantive-or for that matter, trivial-discussion of federal immigration policy. Aside from Mitt Romney’s refusal to endorse SB 1070-despite overwhelming support for the law among the American voters he is ostensibly trying to woo-there has been virtually no debate between the two presumptive party nominees about the utility or morality of immigration enforcement, let alone the value of unprecedented levels of legal immigration.

As Rick Oltman points out in the SF Immigration Examiner, this is a subject that can and should galvanize millions of Americans who are dissatisfied by President Obama’s amnesty by fiat. The fact that this issue has political resonance is so ineluctable that even mainstream media outlets which routinely push for open borders solutions acknowledge its truth, although their reductive reasoning leads them to typical generalizations regarding the hidden potency of the “Hispanic vote.”

A notable, and welcome, exception to the Republican Party’s timidity is Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who serves as an informal advisor to the Romney campaign. In response to the Justice Department’s attempt to enfranchise thousands of illegal voters, he’s denounced the Obama administration’s concerted legal effort to stop voter verification laws from being implemented during the upcoming presidential election. The spurious argument that voter i.d. laws deprive legitimate voters of the franchise is in reality a thinly veiled attempt by Barack Obama and his surrogates to push the President’s flagging political campaign across the finish line.

Notwithstanding the implausible assertions by leftist activist groups, scores of cases of fraudulent voting have been documented-thousands of illegal votes being cast in Florida alone! The connection between this administration’s wholesale contempt for immigration enforcement and its insistence upon protecting the “rights”  of potentially hundreds of thousands of ineligible voters is undeniable. The ability of illegal aliens to manipulate the election process is so obvious that even John Fund-an exponent of unfettered immigration-has described it in encyclopedic detail.

Stealing elections is not a myth, it is reality. Thankfully, some public figures have not forgotten their responsibility to the American public and the integrity of our election process. Kudos to Kris Kobach for cutting through the politically charged fog and illuminating a deeply disturbing aspect of our electoral process.

This month’s Rattle brings us a host of stories that the mainstream media didn’t cover sufficiently-preferring instead to shower accolades upon the man responsible for abandoning immigration enforcement in the name of political opportunism. We’ll cover everything from the latest spate of violent crimes committed by illegal aliens to Barack Obama’s continued roll out of administrative amnesty, which now includes directives to ignore both interior enforcement and border security.

But first, we’ll examine this administration’s ongoing obstruction of Congress’s investigation into the ever-broadening gun-walking scandals. Courtesy of Sipsey Street Irregulars-whose coverage of Fast and Furious is non pareil-we learn that the White House is blocking testimony from Kevin O’Reilly, a former staff member of the National Security Council who wants to speak with the Senate Judiciary Committee and House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. This administration’s invocation of executive privilege is just the latest example of obstruction of justice  relating to Fast and Furious.

It should be recalled that last July the acting head of the ATF told Congress that his agency was paying FBI agents to ignore the law in pursuit of this administration’s bizarre and opaque political goals. Immigration control, not gun control, is a solution that Barack Obama’s Justice Department dismisses out of hand. We can only hope that, as Katie Pavlich reports in Town Hall, Chairman Darrell Issa pursues this investigation to its conclusion, which hopefully will result in a more than a few stiff prison sentences. Speaking of Katie Pavlich, she has a fantastic new book about Fast and Furious entitled-appropriately-Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal, which I urge you all to read.

Obfuscation and evasion are hallmarks of this administration, especially as it pertains to immigration and border security, as an insightful commentary from Michael Cutler published by Fox News Latino illustrates. The former INS agent and current immigration watchdog points out that Janet Napolitano’s Department of Homeland Security is effectively “cooking the books” by relying solely upon  documented arrests-a misleading statistic-in order to pretend that this administration is cracking down upon illegal entry into the United States. FAIR’s Legislative Update further dissects this policy, which is drawing increasing scrutiny from Congress-particularly Chairman Darrell Issa and Rep. Jason Chaffetz- notwithstanding what Tom Tancredo accurately describes as a bipartisan conspiracy to hobble border security and immigration enforcement. By not logging and tracking the number of illegal border crossers who were not detained, Customs and Border Protection is painting a rosy picture of a much more dire situation.

The deceit of this administration extends beyond the CBP and encompasses virtually every aspect of immigration enforcement, both at the border and inside of the United States. Even though ICE is touting the Cross Check raids it initiated earlier this month-intended to apprehend ostensibly violent criminals, absconders and  fugitives from justice-this is merely a political expedient designed for election year consumption. The truth is that Barack Obama’s administrative amnesty proceeds apace, with four cities ordered to halt deportations, according to the Dan Stein Report. Remarkably, the Executive Office for Immigration Review has closed San Francisco’s immigration court and plans to completely halt its proceedings for the entire summer. Jim Kouri reports on yet another component of Barack Obama’s administrative amnesty, the decision to suspend deportations of illegal aliens with “families,” inside of the United States.

And while illegal aliens are not being deported, they will be able to enjoy state-of-the-art detention facilities, including some new amenities such as beach volleyball and cable TV. Lamar Smith excoriates this administration for its skewed priorities in a must-read op-ed published in The Hill. Although this new detention manual  might seem farcical, it’s far from a laughing matter. As Jim Kouri points out in his Examiner column, the Department of Homeland Security has taken virtually no action against foreigners who overstay their visas. This negligence persists over a decade after the September 11th massacres, which were committed by a cadre of jihadists whose visa applications are symptomatic of our country’s dysfunctional immigration bureaucracy. This is not merely an hypothetical problem, even after the destruction of the World Trade Center, as the case of illegal alien Amine El Khalifi demonstrates. The fact that this indifference to the lives of American citizens continues unabated, despite repeated pressure exerted by the GAO serves to illustrate this administration’s fundamental lack of accountability.

Even as it lags behind in locating and detaining criminal aliens, the administration of Barack Obama has deigned to grant Temporary Protected Status to thousands of Syrians living in the United States. As we’ve pointed out in the past, Temporary Protected Status is anything but temporary. In fact, it is merely another expedient used to grant de facto amnesty to a group of illegal aliens who can prove “hardship” circumstances, most of which persist indefinitely-making their stay in the United States permanent. This is even more disturbing when juxtaposed against the State Department’s recent decision to bar inspection of a visiting Egyptian delegation consisting of Muslim Brotherhood officials. Of course, Egypt isn’t the only country where the Ikwhan has a strong foothold.

The problem is that Barack Obama’s ostensible opposition, i.e. congressional Republicans, are doing virtually nothing to investigate the egregious overreach of his administration on immigration matters. Quite the contrary, some are hard at work developing proposals that would only worsen the situation, such as DREAM Lite, in hopes of  cultivating the ever-elusive Hispanic vote. Republican leaders in the states are not faring much better in this regard, as the difficult struggle in New Hampshire to prevent illegal aliens from capitalizing upon in-state tuition benefits demonstrates.

In an update to a story that we’ve covered recently, the North Carolina General Assembly held another hearing on illegal immigration and potential enforcement mechanisms. Unfortunately, according to NC Listen, it was dominated by illegal aliens and their supporters in the legislature, including some of the very people who had disrupted a previous hearing about these problems. Heading further south, we learn that the Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhood Act has been killed in the Mississippi State Senate. Apparently, Judiciary Chairman Hob Bryan has caved knuckled under to the Mississippi Poultry Association and its desire for cheap labor, notwithstanding the harm such a decision may inflict on innocent Mississippians. Its neighbor to the East, Alabama, has revisited HB 56, the landmark legislation that targeted illegal aliens living in that state. Rep. Micky Hammon has decided to alter some of the provisions that have been enjoined by a federal court, but maintains that he and his fellow Republicans will not repeal the law, which is welcome news.

In not so good news, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle has decided to defy Immigration and Customs Enforcement and refuse detainer requests for criminal aliens housed in her county’s jails. Saul Chavez is one beneficiary of Preckwinkle’s benevolence, having fled the country upon being released from jail after killing William McCann. The carnage our government’s policies wreak is not limited to the odd vehicular manslaughter though, as the massacre at Oikos University in California makes clear to any impartial observer. Limits to Growth has an insightful story about mass-murderer One L. Goh which explains the circumstances surrounding his rampage which the main stream media willfully ignores. Oikos was apparently more concerned with harvesting tuition payments by foreign students-often with loans backed by American taxpayers-than ensuring the safety of its student body. It brings to mind  9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, whose entrance to the United States was facilitated by a campus administration eager to recruit students from the Middle East, heedless of the potentially deadly repercussions.

The fact that there are visa mills exploiting the F-1 Visa program should come as no surprise to people who are aware of the extensive fraud and exploitation present in the legal immigration system. Just as in Canada-which recently charged attorney Sandra Zaher with inventing false refugee claims-the United States is plagued by immigration fraud so pervasive that the conviction of Earl Seth David, aka Rabbi Avraham David, head of a New York law firm, headlines an ICE press release. The irony of an agency headed by John Morton-who’s tasked with expediting illegal immigration-spotlighting the conviction of someone for immigration fraud is apparently lost on this administration.

In another prime example of abuse, a lawsuit by two former employees of Larsen & Toubro InfoTech Limited Inc alleges systemic fraud at the India-based IT firm for which they once worked. Joining an earlier class action filed against the firm, this suit asserts that the plaintiff was forced to not only forge documents related to H-1B visas-a program rampant with corruption and fraud-but told not to report the crime to outside authorities. Read the sickening story for yourself, if you feel you have the requisite stomach. The baffling purposes of the H1-B visa program weren’t illuminated by a recent decision by Judge Gregory Frost, who ordered suppressed almost all information related to the case of  Geza Rakoczi, who is described thusly,

…a young alien man with a mysterious legal status, probably an illegal alien, who has a bachelor’s degree from a marginal educational institution, a private one that accepts all applicants, and his employer, a mortgage finance company in trouble in two different states.

Putting the lie to the idea that these visas are reserved for “highly-skilled” immigrants. More often than not they are merely convenient bodies used to replace the more demanding, highly-compensated Americans who they’ve made redundant. If you don’t believe me, just ask the wife of unemployed semiconducter engineer Darin Wedel, who is still waiting to hear back from President Obama. But do not fear, the virtual border fence is back on track,which I suppose is small comfort to the thousands of hard-working Americans like Mr. Wedel.  However, India is not the only nation to take advantage of the nebulous, easily exploitable H1-B visa program. As Phyllis Schlafly  points out, the Islamist Gulen movement in Turkey has used these same visas in order to indoctrinate Muslim students in American charter schools. The dangers posed by the Gulen movement have been explored ad nauseam in other forums, but it should be noted that even if you ascribe the most benign of intentions to the Gullenists, the idea that fundamentalist Muslim teachers are somehow highly skilled workers is implausible on its face.  Focusing on yet another rising Asian power, the New American has an interesting story about the PRC’s use of the EB-5 immigrant investor visa program in the state of Idaho which is well worth reading.

Returning to more timely issues, we discovered this past week that it’s not all that difficult to register to vote using a fabricated identity, or even assuming the persona of the current Attorney General  of the United States. Thanks to James O’Keefe we’ve discovered how simple it is to game the system, although officials at the increasingly misnamed Justice Department don’t seem to agree. Of course, acknowledging that vote fraud exists would require the Obama administration to prosecute those responsible for it, which wouldn’t bode well for the electoral prospects of Barack Obama’s party. From New York to Florida, from Indiana to Arizona, stealing elections has become quite commonplace, even as the White House-and its complaisant cronies in the media-scoff at the notion. Some Democrats, though, readily admit that trying to manipulate the outcome of elections is a routine practice, and a few even have the integrity to support measures that would rectify this betrayal of democracy.

In an ironic twist, labor unions-which were some of the most vehement supporters of President Obama’s Stimulus plan-are now complaining about some of the jobs stemming from stimulus projects going to Korean workers. I suppose the lesson is to be careful what you wish for, especially if it is over 700 billion dollars worth of taxpayer-financed boondoggles.

In more border violence, two illegal immigrants were murdered just northwest of Tucson on Thursday by two camouflaged gunman, echoing an attack that occurred  near the same city in 2007. This sort of bloodshed is rare but not unheard of in Arizona, especially in the Tucson sector, where over forty percent of this nation’s  illegal aliens come through. It is yet another reason why the constitutionality of SB 1070 must be upheld by the Supreme Court, in spite of the hostility of open borders dogmatists such as the misleadingly named Democrats in the House of Representatives.

Our final story is related to our relationship to the state as individuals, and how that relationship is changing as a result of our government’s decades-long recalibration of this country’s demographics. Courtesy of the Pew Hispanic Center, we now know that over seventy percent of Latinos want the government to provide more services to Americans, not less. Limits to Growth has a fascinating summary of the survey’s other findings, which include a belief among Hispanics that they should learn English in order to succeed in the United States, but not in order to integrate into the broader society. The findings about faith in government are worth exploring though, because they reinforce something that our side has been saying for a very long time. Namely, that Hispanic voters’ support for Democrats and generally left wing political candidates has very little to do with the GOP’s position on immigration, but a lot to do with their endorsement of redistributive economic policies.

The findings of the Pew Hispanic Center demonstrate that the cause and effect most often cited in declining Republican Party affiliation among Hispanics-embodied by the specious narrative about Pete Wilson and the waning fortunes of the California GOP-is reversed. Hispanics do not support the Democratic Party because it advocates open borders, the Democratic Party supports open borders because it enhances its ability to win future elections. In effect, what is happening is that the political elite is electing a new people. This dynamic needs to be remembered whenever we hear mealy-mouthed Republicans exhorting us to abandon any attempt to impose reason upon an anachronistic immigration system that is designed to thwart the wishes of the vast majority of the American public.

It’s going to be a long, tumultuous election year.

“Martyrs” — That was one of the many signs on display during an NAACP and SEIU-sponsored rally that took place this weekend  in opposition to David and Charles Koch, CEO and Executive Vice-President, respectively, of Koch Industries and universal left wing hobgoblins. The ostensible reason for the demonstration was the brothers’ contributions to the American Legislative Exchange Council, a coalition of conservative state legislators which has become an object of antipathy for liberal political activists at publications like The Nation and groups like Common Cause, People for the American Way, NAACP, and dozens of others-many of which were present at this anti-Koch rally on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

For full coverage and many more pictures, read more after the jump.

This press conference/march intended to draw an analogy between the explicitly discriminatory laws in place in the American South during the Jim Crow era and what the left views as “racist” laws intended to verify the eligibility of voters casting ballots in national and local elections. Hence, the employment of symbolism hoping to evoke thoughts of the worst civil rights abuses of this nation’s past, including the murders of Congress of Racial Equality workers Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney. One of the signs crafted with this purpose in mind used a photograph that came to symbolize the Memphis Sanitation Workers Strike.

One of the main themes the organizers of this demonstration emphasized was the alleged oppressiveness of voting ID requirements, which they repeatedly attempted to compare to discriminatory poll taxes levied against black citizens in large swathes of the American South prior to the enactment of the 24th Amendment to the Constitution.

Leaving aside the hyperbolic nature of this campaign, it’s not an especially convincing argument, especially since none of the voter identification laws-either proposed or enacted-would require voters to pay anything in order to obtain a proper ID, should they not already have one. Jay Nordlinger dissected some of the more spurious arguments posited in opposition to these laws in a National Review article published several years ago. Honestly, the opinions of skeptics in this regard don’t seem to be especially important to the organizations behind the anti-voter ID crusade, because the aim is to energize Democratic, left wing voters who view any such laws with absolute derision. So it shouldn’t have surprised anyone that local Democratic officeholders, such as ethics paragons John Liu  and Charles Rangel, were in attendance.

Also present was the current president of the New York State NAACP, Hazel Dukes. An opponent of charter schools and friend of the United Federation of Teachers-another enthusiastic backer of this event-Dukes is probably best remembered for her troubled tenure at the head of New York City’s Off-Track Betting, which was marked by corruption, racism and incompetence.

Apparently, none of that was enough to dissuade John Liu from giving Ms. Dukes a hearty embrace. I’m not sure if she used her pet name for Comptroller Liu, although the two share a troubling laxity with regard to overseeing their employees and abiding by seemingly prosaic ethical standards so they doubtless found many ripe topics for conversation.

Harlem Congressman Charlie Rangel was also there, completing the sound stewardship of public funds by NY Democrats trifecta.

One of the chief sponsors of this rally was Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, which sent one of its representatives to the rally. No one seemed to note the irony of a rally against “racist laws” being endorsed by an organization largely responsible for instigating the climate that led to the massacre at Freddy’s Fashion Mart. Apparently, the political power Sharpton wields within the Democratic Party today outweighs any concerns about his dubious past.

One of the fliers distributed at the press conference that preceded the march highlighted the states which had enacted some form of voter identification and verification. The speaker below tried to emphasize the purported threat to voting rights these laws presented to putatively disenfranchised minorities.

Anthony Romero, the Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, tried to emphasize that this was not a “partisan” event, but in reality…

The impression of an Obama reelection pep rally was palpable.

Bob Edgar, the CEO of Common Cause-a left wing 501(c)3 which lobbies for unconstitutional things like McCain-Feingold-was another one of the featured speakers at Saturday’s press conference. The absurdity of an organization that opposes the First Amendment denouncing constitutionally protected things like lobbying for more rigorous voter ID laws was lost on most of the crowd.

Although there were very few Muslims that came to the anti-Koch rally, our old friend Talib Abdur-Rashid was given a prime speaking slot to denounce what perceives to be attacks on minority voting rights.

One of the largest contingents at the event-which attracted several hundred people-was formed by the United Federation of Teachers. The president of the UFT, Michael Mulgrew, gave a speech attempting to draw a parallel between the Occupy Wall Street Movement and events like this anti-Koch rally. Both share common goals-and until recently, lockers.

Although the signs are new:

The demonstration included an unwieldy grab bag of leftist special interest groups, including the National Organization of Woman. NOW president Terry O’Neill  attempted to link new voters laws to attempts by pro-life legislatures to restrict access to abortion.

There were also representatives of Hispanic advocacy groups, which shouldn’t be surprising considering the continued national discussion over how-or, if you’re the Obama administration, whether-to enforce immigration law.

The open borders lobby, although considerably smaller than the group of union activists and NAACP workers, was an eager participant in the subsequent march to the United Nations.

Our good friends from the Minkwon Center:

Something tells me that the sign below isn’t entirely accurate.

But perhaps the most ubiquitous presence at this rally was supporters of the NAACP. President and CEO Benjamin Jealous gave the standard speech, not markedly different from any of his colleagues.

For what it’s worth, the organization did do a competent job of organizing local affiliates of the national organization:

There was one seemingly valid argument to be found at this event, notwithstanding the reservations expressed above. The question of whether convicted felons should be stripped of the franchise in perpetuity-and what classes of felonies should be subject to this penalty-is a necessary debate, especially with the increasing growth of federal criminal penalties that attach themselves to crimes that were never before within the purview of the federal government. While most people would find the thought of Charles Manson or Mumia Abu-Jamal casting a ballot deeply troubling, to say the least, I doubt that there would be many objections to restoring the rights of individuals who have been rejoined society after committing a nonviolent offense many years before. However, that is a far cry from demanding that convicted criminals be reenfranchised en masse.

One of the main motifs of this march, and the movement in general, harkens back to the height of the Civil Rights Era in the 1960s. Because there are very few actual victims of laws intended to thwart voting by illegal aliens and felons-and the cause of allowing people prohibited from voting back into the electoral process is not nationally popular-using vivid images of iconic victims of civil rights violations is necessary. And although well-designed, they’re probably not persuasive to the extent hoped for by their creators. Then again, these signs are not necessarily aimed at convincing undecided voters but rather energizing those who already subscribe to this very dubious analogy.

Several of the demonstrators did appear to be old enough to have participated in actual civil rights struggles…

Although those who were not at least had some knowledge of the aims of the civil rights movement and its leaders, such as Chief Counsel to the NAACP and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.

However, there was still a sizable number of people there simply to voice their anger at the Koch brothers, attempting-with limited success-to tie this demonstration into the Occupy Wall Street movement.

As well as local struggles between organized labor and municipalities in other parts of the country:

Apparently this quip wasn’t self-evident. At least, to the person holding aloft a sign spelling out the Koch family name phonetically.

Tomorrow, more pictures from the Two Minutes Hate.

Here are some details on the planned march, for those of you who’d like to counter their bizarre protest:

Join us on December 10th, United Nations’ Human rights Day, as we march from the office of the Koch brothers to a rally at the United Nations Building.

My apologies for being so late to this story, which involves one of the most outrageous abuses of power by a local police force that I can remember. The audio recording above comes from Jose Guerena’s wife, who frantically called 911 after a SWAT team killed her husband, a decorated veteran of the Iraq war. I’ll write more about this travesty of justice in the days to come, but for a more comprehensive summary of the facts surrounding Mr. Guerena’s death, I suggest you check out this phenomenal piece in the Huffington Post by Radley Balko.

The Pima County Sheriff’s Department, and its publicity-hungry chief, still have a lot to answer for.

Update: Andy Sullivan was also at the Breitbart book signing/lecture. You can find his thoughts on the event at Blue Collar Corner.

Today I had the opportunity to meet one of the kingpins of conservative new media, Andrew Breitbart. In town for a signing of his recently published book, Righteous Indignation, the creator of Big Hollywood , one of numerous Breitbart-inspired websites, delivered an entertaining speech that weaved together his personal narrative of embracing conservative activism with his current fight against the Obama administration and its many devout supporters.

An at times irreverent, always impassioned, largely extemporaneous speech that explored everything from his pretensions of privilege as the child of an earnest middle class family living in Brentwood, California, to his dissolute college years spent in New Orleans-and how the conservative values of his parents restored a sense of purpose to his life-to his infatuation with the new, ever-changing medium of the World Wide Web, to his groundbreaking exposure of the Pigford scandal, Breitbart’s lecture dovetailed with his new book, which chronicles the political and personal transformation he’s undergone over the past two decades. 

Breitbart’s message, as much as a single, coherent message can be gleaned from someone whose personality is so ADD-inflected-as he readily admits-and whose career is scattered in so many directions, is that conservatives should utilize the tools of the new media-whether they be social networking websites, blogs, or streaming Internet radio-in order to impress their ideas upon an American public that’s so often bombarded with a monolithic, unadulterated leftist critique of society. Even if it means bypassing the traditional bastions of conservatism in this country, for example, the Republican Party, the benefits of this strategy will become manifest in the larger cultural battlegrounds, where the left’s traditional strengths have been eroded by activists such as Hannah Giles, Lila Rose, and James O’Keefe.

 I was impressed both by the content and delivery of Andrew Breitbart’s message. Although often caricatured as an impetuous zealot, the overall impression I came away with after listening to him speak was one of a serious-minded, yet very passionate, crusader on behalf certain values which are shared by millions of like-minded Americans. 

You’ll very rarely see me praise the Wall Street Journal-at least, when it comes to that paper’s stance on immigration issues-but I have to single out one of its better writers, John Fund, for a thoughtful column in Opinion Journal today, which calls on Tom Tancredo to withdraw his third-party bid for the governorship of Colorado.

As those of you who have followed my previous coverage of this issue might have been  aware of, former Congressman Tancredo has jumped into the race as the Constitution Party’s nominee for governor of  Colorado, ostensibly due to the deficiencies of what were then the two Republican contestants. However, now that the most ethically questionable nominee, former congressman Scott Mcinnis, has been defeated, the utility of Tancredo’s third party bid is open to debate. On the Democratic side of the ledger, we have the former Denver mayor John Hickenlooper, who is already on record as opposing SB 1070, while the GOP is running Dan Maes, whose public stance on illegal aliens is significantly better but who has a poor track record on immigration issues.

I won’t hesitate in praising Tom Tancredo’s work as a member of Congress, work that did more to thwart the scheme of former President Bush and DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff to enact amnesty than probably any other single individual working on our behalf at the time. But to persist in this quixotic bid for office-after the seemingly endless intraparty warfare has already taken a toll on the eventual nominee-even if it means a pro-amnesty, anti-enforcement candidate assumes office next year, is simply an act of political opportunism and self-aggrandizement.

If Tom Tancredo truly cares about seeing the border enforced-and his entire career has been predicated upon that principle-then he’ll reconsider his decision to enter the gubernatorial race as a third party candidate, and potential spoiler.