With the United States Senate rushing headlong into its rendezvous with destiny, i.e. deconstructing what remains of this nation’s anemic and beleaguered economy, and the U.S. House following suit, it  seems appropriate to examine cui bono from these developments. Obviously not American citizens, beyond Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg and the politicians who’ll be handsomely rewarded by his corporation as a result of  yet another mass amnesty. Undoubtedly the thousands of immigration attorneys who’ll be enriched through the passage of the Gang of Eight proposal-whose case was pleaded by Laura Lichter, the president of the AILA, in laughably skewed immigration hearings-will accrue some financial benefits after comprehensive immigration reform finally occurs.

Certainly, the individuals and institutions which have collectively spent over a billion dollars lobbying Congress over the past half-decade feel that they have a vested interest in altering this nation’s immigration laws. However, the more immediate beneficiaries will be the millions of illegal aliens who will have their status changed, with the resultant benefits, including those enjoyed by their immediate family members and relatives.

That part of this story is the ostensible focus of Two Americans, a documentary about Katherine Figueroa-whose beatific face you see juxtaposed against the snarling visage of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio in the print ad above-a nine year-old girl from Arizona whose Mexican parents were arrested and detained after an immigration sweep at their workplace.

I caught a screening of the film by directors Dan Devivo and Valeria Fernandez, which was sponsored by the Justice Action Center and Racial Justice Project of New York Law School, last week just as the debate-such as it is-about immigration reform was percolating within Congress. As you can tell by the names of these academic centers, the foremost concern among faculty members-and presumably, their students-is achieving a desired political outcome-in this case for preferred racial and ethnic groups-regardless of whether that result is consonant with basic Constitutional precepts, a broader conception of justice according to natural law, or a firm foundation in American history. One of the main problems I have with the legal  assault against immigration enforcement-and the left’s approach to the law in general-is that it relies upon this sort of results-based policy, which is predicated on achieving an outcome that is politically-not deontologically-correct.

In my estimation, this is the polar opposite of “justice,” whose definition has until recently-perhaps before the era when critical legal studies achieved a foothold in academe-meant the application of objective rules which applied equally to everyone, regardless of skin color, ethnicity, religion, or sexual preference. Fortunately, the filmmakers behind Two Americans do grapple with the statutory and constitutional issues, such as habeas corpus, due process, and equal protection, that the enforcement of immigration laws in Arizona-specifically, the suppression sweeps launched by Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Maricopa County-raise. In fact, the film’s focus upon these enforcement actions-and the difficult questions of federalism and the criminal justice system-is arguably the most substantive aspect of this documentary. Personally, I wish the directors had chosen to focus exclusively on these issues, rather than attempt to create an ambitious, almost panoramic-yet not altogether successful-film that often feels like four or five separate documentaries stitched together.

While the film’s promotional materials bill it as an investigation of Joe Arpaio’s expenditure of state funds as head of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, as well as a portrayal of the struggles of young Katherine Figueroa, it actually touches upon at least half a dozen other subjects that could have constituted distinct cinematic projects. From the President’s implementation of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, an extension of his administration’s administrative amnesty, to the political struggle over Arizona’s landmark law SB 1070, to the issues of leadership raised by the activities of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office, to the relationship between Arpaio and the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, to the relentless effort by his critics, such as Randy Parraz,  to dislodge him from office, to the battle between Sheriff Joe and the President himself, this documentary seemingly attempts to cover every angle of the immigration debate within Arizona in its hour and a half running time.

The relationship between the sheriff and Figueroa’s family is tenuous at best, as Dan Devivo readily conceded during a post-screening question and answer session, where he described how Joe Arpaio is merely a stand-in for all of the elected officials and law enforcement officers-however few in number-who are attempting to enforce immigration laws in a robust manner. I was genuinely surprised by the negligible amount of time devoted to Katherine’s dilemma-even the focus on the Figueroa family was divided between interviews of Katherine, her parents, and her custodial relatives. She is a very appealing personality for the anti-enforcement movement-lending credence to Mickey Kaus’s theory that the DREAM Act was merely a stalking horse for a much broader amnesty-and I had made the assumption going into the screening that she would be centerpiece of this film.

Admittedly, I wasn’t moved to tears-a reaction that Andrea Callan, the ACLU advocate who hosted this event, assured us would be forthcoming-at any point during Two Americans. Perhaps I’ve become inured to the barrage of sob stories and media puffery which deluge the American public on a daily basis regarding the plight of the undocumented. However, it’s hard to discount the notion that Katherine Figueroa’s story is tailor-made for a sympathetic human interest story which could have filled the plot of an anti-enforcement film in its own right. The directors chose to focus instead on the political nature of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s public persona, which is often overlooked in discussions about the utility, legality, and impact of his office’s enforcement campaigns.

In truth, Arpaio is, in addition to being the chief law enforcement officer in Maricopa County, a public official whose capacity as sheriff rests upon his popularity with Arizona voters. So it’s not surprising that his most hotly contested public stance generates scrutiny regarding his motives; the filmmakers asserted-both in the film and subsequent Q&A session-that his crusade against illegal immigration is driven solely by political opportunism. It’s a charge seemingly buttressed by the testimony of a former colleague-interviewed throughout this film-who claims that Joe Arpaio jumped on the anti-illegal alien bandwagon in order to prosper politically. However, I feel this critique wanting, not least because Dan Devivo, in response to an audience member’s (translated) question, averred that Arpaio’s support within Maricopa was dwindling with each subsequent election. One wonders why an extremely popular elected official would adopt a stance that would earn him scorn and political antagonism among open borders enthusiasts throughout the country-and certainly generate opposition within his home county-if it wasn’t based at least partially on personal conviction.

Furthermore, the same insinuation can be made of Arpaio’s political enemies, such as open borders socialist Raul Grijalva, whose political fortunes-and campaign bank account-haven’t suffered as a result of his dogged campaign against SB 1070 and the current sheriff of Maricopa County. And while  questions pertaining to Arpaio’s use of his investigatory authority-particularly with regard to his office’s MACE unit-are certainly valid, the misuse and exploitation of power by some of Arpaio’s most powerful opponents is a question never broached by Two Americans. Specifically, the highly politicized tenure of Thomas Perez-President Obama’s nominee to replace Hilda Solis as Secretary of Labor, but at the time of the administration’s lawsuit against Maricopa County the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights-is never raised, nor is his extensive history of open borders activism.

Given that this documentary is advocacy journalism, I don’t know how much balance on this subject the audience is entitled to expect. However, the narrative thread of this film continuously returned to the bad faith of people who support immigration enforcement, with the implicit accusation that their beliefs are responsible for the travails of Katherine Figuroa, rather than the actions of her two parents. I give the filmmakers credit for highlighting to a certain degree the fusillade of hatred open borders advocates have unleashed upon Arpaio-including the credible death threats he has received in office-yet the reasons why Arizona voters continue to support him are never seriously scrutinized, nor examined in anything but the most cursory manner.

The extensive and sustained public support for laws such as SB 1070 never arises at any point in this documentary, and the only footage of protestors who are critical of illegal immigration focuses, curiously enough, on members of the National Socialist Movement. The many peaceful, multi-ethnic, well-attended rallies supporting this law-which were covered by mainstream, liberal media outlets in Arizona at the time-completely escape the notice of the filmmakers, as do the public statements of  large, representative, reputable immigration reduction and anti-illegal immigration organizations and individuals in this country. In the end, I think that is the biggest shortcoming of Two Americans. Not the sprawling focus, but the refusal to honestly present the arguments made by the respective camps in the immigration debate. It’s a problem that will persist so long as one side refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy of their opponents’ beliefs.

Well, it turns out that the “blockbuster” Fortune Magazine piece defaming ATF whistleblower John Dodson, while simultaneously exculpating the architects of Fast and Furious within the Obama administration from blame, was a pack of lies.  Try to contain your shock. It would seem that the statuary above was meant to depict the members of our nation’s leftist press organs.

No good deed goes unpunished, as those who blew the whistle on the Obama administration’s gun-walking debacle can tell you firsthand. Intimidation and obstruction is the norm, and honesty about criminal abuses by the feds is discouraged at all costs. Vince Cefalu is one of several former agents who’ve been punished for daring to question the illegal commands of their politically-appointed superiors. Those who aided and abetted the malfeasance of the executive branch, on the other hand, were handsomely rewarded by the federal bureaucracy. I urge you to watch the entire interview! This is our government at work.

Update: It’s believed by the FBI that the death of this Border Patrol agent was a case of friendly fire. Look for a link to the USA Today article in the comments section of this post. 

Yet another deadly attack upon this nation’s Border Patrol agents, the first since the ambush of Brian Terry by Mexican drug cartels, goes largely unnoticed by the White House. Just as this administration ignored the pleas of Agent Terry’s family for honesty and transparency, so too does it evade troublesome questions raised by Univision’s blockbuster investigative journalism related to the ongoing Fast and Furious carnage.  

Was Patrol Agent Nicholas J. Ivie’s murdered by one of the weapons trafficked in the Fast and Furious Operation? House Republicans think so, and based upon past events, I would have to agree.

The appointment of Cheryl Saban as Ambassador to the United Nations merely raises more questions about an administration that has been hell bent on obstructing any and all investigations into President Obama’s blood-soaked Watergate.

Will this latest attack upon our nation’s front-line defenders force the White house to finally come clean, or stop the retribution exacted from federal whistleblowers? If past is prologue, it probably won’t, which is why we can be grateful that some people in the media are finally paying attention.

More than three months after Barack Obama abrogated the legislative powers granted to Congress by implementing an unconstitutional nationwide amnesty, the men and women who put themselves in the line of fire in order to protect this nation’s sovereignty have decided to challenge  this administration’s illegal usurpation of power in court. The lawsuit by filed by 10 ICE agents against Janet Napolitano and John Morton symbolizes the contempt the current occupant of the White House-and by extension, his chief deputies-have for the rule of law.

The fact that chief of staff for ICE Director John Morton has been sidelined in response to a lawsuit by male employees of the immigration agency who’ve experienced systemic discrimination shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who’s familiar with the way Obama & Co. operate. A good primer is Katie Pavlich’s book about Fast and Furious, which exposes how deceit, evasion, and obstruction of justice reach all the way from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Arizona, to the corridors of the Department of Justice.

Kudos to Chris Crane and the ICE agents who have taken a stand against the arbitrary tyranny of an unchecked executive branch, as well as the governors in states across the country, from Mississippi, to Nebraska, to the great state of Arizona, which have defended the interests of American citizens, a group that has become increasingly marginalized by this country’s two main political parties.

As always, American Rattlesnake stands with Sheriff Joe, Governor Jan Brewer, and the good people of Arizona. 

Even as Janet Napolitano’s flunkies and the Obama administration continue their war against Arizona, the vast majority of ordinary Americans, and rank and file ICE agents,  stand for law and order and against an illegal invasion aided and abetted by elected and unelected officials in Washington D.C. We stand with them as well. 

I’ll delve more deeply into President Obama’s Unemployment For Americans Act in future updates, but today I’d like to highlight a speech made by the intrepid Michelle Malkin at this weekend’s Right Online conference. It’s particularly apt in light of the President’s continued policy of lashing out at dissenters-not a new phenomenon, unfortunately-such as the Daily Caller’s Neil Munro.

Find more videos of Right Online at The Right Scoop.

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.

Update: Our friend Anthony Bialy also had the pleasure of meeting Andrew Breitbart during his cross-country tour for Righteous Indignation. Read his account of Monday’s tribute at Conservative Commune.

Thanks, Karol! 

Monday night I had the honor of attending a tribute to the late Andrew Breitbart held in Hell’s Kitchen. I’m not sure what I was expecting from the evening, but what happened is something that can’t quite be put into words, although I’ll try my best. Over the course of three hours, over a hundred people filtered into a cramped, slightly raucous Manhattan bar that-as one of my friends remarked at the time-Andrew himself might have enjoyed. After all,  he spent more than a few pages of Righteous Indignation cataloguing the extracurricular activities he engaged in while matriculating at a university in the heart of the nation’s party capital, New Orleans.

This was not a party, of course, nor could it have been given the circumstances. Yet, you couldn’t help but feel the joy-however subdued-present in that room filled with friends, followers and comrades-in-arms of the man who revolutionized how grassroots activism and citizen journalism were practiced in this country. No one was more dedicated to altering the status quo of society, a state he termed default leftism, or educating the public about their power to illuminate (deliberately) hidden truths than Andrew Breitbart. He was driven by a passion for truth and justice; not justice as conceived of by society’s levelers, nor truth filtered through the prism of an historically marginalized gender, ethnicity, or sexual orientation extolled by critical studies departments in order to diminish our national heritage, but common sense, bourgeois, patriotic, universal values that were instilled in him as a child and which were shared by millions of Americans who feel disenfranchised by what they see on the nightly news and read in their daily newspapers.

This passion was leavened by a richly sardonic vein of humor familiar to anyone who read his work or heard him speak. That’s why the witless postmortem attacks on Andrew-which, as Mickey Kaus points out, have nothing to do with his combative persona-need to be put into their proper context. Breitbart was an individual who reveled in the contempt of the institutional left, and embraced the slanderous broadsides of his most febrile stalkers for what they were, i.e. proof that he was doing his job! The hatred he attracted was, in a perverse sense, a compliment. It was a testament to Andrew Breitbart’s skill at exposing the malefactors in government, the mainstream media, and bottom-feeding political factions like ACORN that earned him this bile. That is why one of the most rabid, obscure left wing talkers is positively overjoyed at his death. If Andrew could see some of the reactions to his passing by his avowed enemies he would impishly grin-and probably retweet some of the more bilious attacks-while being discomfited by the startlingly civil reaction by Media Matters for America, his notorious bete noire.

The gathering in Manhattan commemorating his legacy was necessary, but it was also edifying in the sense that it illustrated how broad Breitbart’s reach was, how unifying his message was-notwithstanding the libelous attacks upon his character-and why his death is such a profound loss, not just for his widow, his four children, and his father-in-law Orson Bean, but for all of us. In that small, cramped bar there were white, black, and Asian friends and admirers of Andrew’s that were there to pay tribute to the man who brought them together.  Mormons, Catholics, Jews and people of no particular religious affiliation mingled amiably while focusing on our commonalities, not their religious or philosophical differences. Neoconservatives, libertarians and anarcho-capitalists, as well as everyone from brilliant policy wonks to the self-described “morons” who form the online community known as Ace of Spades interacted  with each other and debated various issues without a hint of reproach or acrimony.

This sort of ecumenism is something that would never have come about had Andrew Breitbart not been willing to join the cultural maelstrom that many traditional conservatives have either ignored or consciously abandoned. He not only engaged in a war with the left-successfully refuting nostrums that it long ago stopped defending on empirical grounds-he defeated the left on its own territory, inspiring new generations of conservative, patriotic activists who are using the model he devised. Breitbart refused to cede the moral high ground to people whose fundamental philosophy was immoral. He was a happy warrior, but a warrior all the same, a dichotomy epitomized by his orgy of truth-telling at the Netroots convention, a forum that provided him with the opportunity to not only expose the hypocrisy of his ideologically blinkered detractors, but also to engage in a surprisingly substantive debate with one of the “progressives” willing to listen to his point of view. For all the talk of Breitbart being a provocateur, he probably engaged in more robust, legitimate debate with those who disagreed with him than any of his perennial critics, who continue to misrepresent what he stood for, even in death. That’s because he believed that the best means of changing this country for the better was through open and honest intellectual combat. The theatrical trappings Andrew Breitbart assumed were merely intended to emphasize fundamentally sound principles he sincerely believed in.

That’s why honoring him this week was so important. Karol Markowicz-who, along with David Bernstein and Robert George, did a fantastic job of successfully orchestrating what was by necessity a last-minute event-spoke for many of us when she gave an impromptu speech that touched upon both the tremendous personal tragedy represented by this evening, but also the tremendous loss Andrew Breitbart’s absence represents for both the immediate and distant future of the conservative movement. She vocalized the thoughts of many of those gathered in that bar room-most of whom are either in the same age cohort or slightly younger than Andrew was when he left us-by reflecting upon the fleeting nature of life, as well as the necessity of capitalizing upon our short time here, a concept no one was more aware of than Andrew himself.

Pamela Geller, of Atlas Shrugs, picked up on that theme as she spoke to the crowd, emphasizing the necessity of continuing the fight that Breitbart began, and of not letting America’s critics monopolize the public sphere simply because one of conservatism’s most resonant voices has been prematurely silenced. Pamela demanded that we all be Breitbart, as she pointed to the suddenly iconic gravatar that has come to symbolize the movement he spearheaded during his tragically brief life. She recounted how Andrew came to her defense even when other conservatives abandoned her out of self-serving “prudence” and fear of the potential repercussions to their own careers. Then she brought the discussion back to the present, invoking the unyielding guerilla campaign by the left to silence Rush Limbaugh, the most widely-heard and popular conservative voice of the past two decades. She averred that Rush “wasn’t controversial,” but that it was Katie Couric and the drive-by media-which form the consensus of elite, Beltway opinion-which should be viewed as controversial and beyond the pale.

It should be noted that this crusade doesn’t merely involve a relentless campaign to mau mau sponsors and syndicators of Rush’s program-which, though perfectly legal, serves as a rough indicator of the left’s tolerance of dissent-but a concerted effort to use extraconstitutional arms of the government to suppress his First Amendment rights.

Pamela made the trenchant observation that Andrew would have been the first to defend Rush from the Gramscian left, which not only wants to compel you to pay for their “choice,” but wants to prevent anyone who disagrees with this policy from voicing his or her objections in the public arena. This Catch-22 was something with which Breitbart himself was intimately familiar, as followers of the numerous boycotts initiated by official grievance mongers against Andrew’s presence anywhere will recall. He would have not taken the sustained propaganda campaign against another conservative icon lying down, but would have instead fought tooth and nail to debunk the lies and half-truths being propounded by Rush’s antagonists. Breitbart would not have relented until the truth outed.

And that is what we must keep in mind as we recall Andrew Breitbart. He never slacked for a moment when he saw good people’s reputations besmirched, or when the media narrative of a news event contradicted reality. His intensity was not a pose or an affectation adopted for the cameras, it was a fire born of genuine conviction and the knowledge that life is permanently impermanent. The best way of honoring and perpetuating the legacy of Andrew Breitbart is by continuing it in his spirit, and standing up for what we know to be right while we still have the privilege of doing so.