In today’s Rattle, we cover everything from the Obama administration’s continued dismantling of border security and immigration enforcement, to the trivialization of the Civil Rights Movement by the open borders left, to congressional oversight into Attorney General Eric Holder’s obstruction of justice in the Fast and Furious probe.

But first, we look at the increasingly misnamed Southern Poverty Law Center, which continues its progressive slide into buffoonery with a report into the national security threat posed by purportedly misogynistic weblogs. As Mark Krikorian explains in The Corner, the SPLC has adopted new hate objects now that its demonization of patriotic immigration reformers has run its course. Notwithstanding the dearth of civil rights violations by non-government entities or white-on-black crimes-the ostensible raison d’etre for the organization, the SPLC continues to rake in millions of dollars from credulous liberals. Even so, the fundamental illegitimacy of Morris Dees’ operation hasn’t escaped notice, and its laughable mission is now the source of mockery on countless blogs and websites.

On a much more distressing note, yet another vicious attack by an illegal alien has been recorded in Lexington, South Carolina. In a case of life imitating art, Jose Hernandez Mendez has been charged with a string of brutal machete attacks against innocent South Carolinians and is being held on an immigration detainer. As those of you who’ve been following American Rattlesnake probably know, the dramatic spike of machete attacks inside of the United States correlates with the increase in illegal and legal immigration from Central America and Mexico, hubs for brutal criminal gangs like MS-13  and Los Zetas. Look for more such arrests-and less preventive deportations-in the future as this administration removes even the faintest veneer of immigration enforcement. What’s more, the exodus of emigrants from Latin America will increase as these organized crime syndicates go global, as this piece from InSight demonstrates.

As for the lack of enforcement stateside, there are several new, disturbing developments to report. Even as John Morton moves to expedite the administrative amnesty implemented by this administration last year, the process of eviscerating this nation’s border security and internal immigration controls has been expanded to include the United States Border Patrol. Not content to merely persecute dedicated law enforcement officials like Agent Jesus Diaz, and heedless of the lack of interagency cooperation between Customs and Border Protection and ICE, this administration seems bent on doing away with whatever remaining obstacles impede or deter illegal aliens in any substantive way. But you need not fear, because Angelenos are being protected from counterfeit sex drugs peddled by septuagenerian Koreans! What tax dollars aren’t being funneled into fake Viagra suppression sweeps are being redirected to hormone therapy for transgendered illegal alien detainees.

There are a few-far too few, unfortunately-members of Congress objecting to cuts in border security appropriations, but the vast majority of congressmen seem to be mired in a state of torpor that would be risible if these individuals hadn’t been elected in order to represent our interests. This administration is in the process of eliminating even the vestiges of immigration enforcement-while simultaneously engaging in political charades intended to mask its true intentions-and the one possible check on its exercise of unconstitutional power shirks its oversight responsibility altogether. What’s more, the leaders of the Republican House majority are actively thwarting attempts by backbenchers in their own caucus to advance E-Verify, a state of affairs so blatant in nature that Numbers USA feels compelled to run television ads taking Speaker Boehner to task for his inaction.

Congress’s dereliction of duty has had a deleterious impact across a wide spectrum of issues. For example, a new audit from the Treasury Department’s Inspector General for Tax Administration found that illegal aliens and immigrants ineligible to work had pocketed over 4 billion dollars as beneficiaries of the Addition Child Tax Credit. As if the serial manipulation of our tax code for social engineering purposes and squandering of tax dollars for economic “stimulus” weren’t enough, our federal government is now subsidizing the creation of more anchor babies.

Perhaps one issue where Congress-or at least, its Republican membership-has continued to press this administration for accountability is its ongoing probe into the Fast and Furious fiasco. Breitbart.com’s Big Government reports on the growing chorus of Republican congressmen who have called upon Eric Holder to resign, a group which now includes former presidential candidate Michele Bachmann-who has pushed for a no-confidence vote on the Attorney General in the House of Representatives. To discover what the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee is doing to bring this administration to account, take a look at Representative Jason Chaffetz grilling Holder for his serial evasion and obstruction of justice.

While Congress vacillates between dithering and actively holding this administration to account for its skewed priorities, the impact of the greatest recession-and most stunted recovery-in decades continues to be felt by ordinary Americans. Unfortunately,  many of those Americans who are unemployed are not able to find work at home. As CNN reports, American manufacturers are scouring foreign shores to find qualified factory workers that allegedly do not exist in this country. However, much like the purported dearth of qualified American engineers, this media narrative is a complete and utter fabrication.

There are more than enough factory workers and engineers to occupy vacancies within their respective industries, but the problem is that “tech titans,” as the Wall Street Journal so lovingly describes them, would rather fill them with illegal aliens and imported workers using the H1-B visa program, which-as we’ve pointed out repeatedly in the past-is rife with fraud and corruption. The reason being that American workers expect to command a salary commensurate with their level of training and education, whereas foreigners can be locked into contracts that even supporters of lenient immigration laws compare to indentured servitude. These policies obviously have devastating consequences for Americans seeking employment, as this Edwin Rubenstein analysis of last month’s job data illustrates.

The quest to replace the American worker continues at nearly all levels, as does the attempt to stretch the increasingly elastic immigration laws that do exist. For example, in the state of Massachusetts, Senator Scott Brown is attempting to expand the E-3 Visa-currently available only to Australian workers-to include nearly 11,000 Irish nationals seeking admittance to the United States. In the proud tradition of ethnic pandering carried out by his predecessor, the late Ted Kennedy, Senator Brown is attempting to curry favor with a mainstay of Massachusetts’ politics, i.e. Irish-American voters, by contorting American immigration law. It should be noted, however, that drastic changes to immigration laws often have unintended consequences.

On a statewide level, the fight for immigration enforcement plods along, encountering the same impediments that Arizona did when Governor Jan Brewer decided to stand up to the Obama Justice Department nearly two years ago. Even so, activists like D.A. King-president of the Dustin Inman Society-have begun to wield the law to our advantage. The Montgomery Advertiser has a story exploring how he has lodged a complaint with the Immigration Enforcement Review Board-an entity charged with applying Georgia’s new immigration law-over Atlanta’s decision to accept illegitimate Matricula Consular  cards as valid identification for the purposes of dispensing public benefits.

Mexican-issued identification cards are prevalent in many American cities and states, especially in the South. In addition to the mockery they make of our election laws-a threat this administration does not seem to be cognizant of, based upon its attempts to nullify voter i.d. laws-these fraudulent i.d. cards, through their wide availability, also invite domestic terror attacks, as the House Judiciary Committee pointed out nearly nine years ago! To appreciate the true scope of the damage inflicted by American institutions which have chosen to accept these cards, check out this CIS backgrounder, which explains how and why the Matricula Consular has proliferated in the United States.

Moving on to Georgia’s neighboring state, Alabama, we find open borders hysterics beclowning themselves once again. This time, by analogizing Alabama’s landmark immigration enforcement law HB 56  to Jim Crow Era segregation. Dr. Frank L. Morris, punctures this insipid, desperate comparison brilliantly in his Daily Caller column, which I urge you all to read in its entirety.

Finally, our fight against the negation of American immigration law shouldn’t let us lose sight of the courage and compassion displayed by the front line warriors in this nation’s battle to protect its borders. Officer Ross Goodwin is just one member of the Border Patrol who deserves our gratitude for his selfless devotion to duty, which has been recognized by the New Mexico Sheriffs’ and Police Association, as KOB reports. Officer Goodwin was accorded the honor of being named Officer of the Year  for saving the life of an illegal immigrant while in the line of duty.

In spite of the racist crudities heaped upon them by embittered Mexican nationalists, and the unremitting hostility open borders dogmatists exhibit towards them, our nation’s Border Patrol agents continue to risk life and limb in order to protect Americans, as well as save the lives of Mexican and Central American border crossers who have been left to their fate by coyotes wholly indifferent to human suffering. While this administration continues its predecessors’ policy of political prosecutions of Border Patrol agents, these men and women are putting themselves at risk in order to help their fellow human beings, something we should all keep in mind the next time we see or hear a know-nothing assault against immigration enforcement.

 Hat Tip: bcsco and Nafbpo

One of the most persistent divides between traditional conservatives and their libertarian/anarcho-capitalist counterparts involves a fundamental philosophical disagreement about immigration. While most conservatives view immigration primarily through the lens of preserving American culture by only accepting those immigrants who are assimilable and will tangibly benefit our society in the future, a view expressed repeatedly during debates over illegal immigration in this country, many libertarians view the subject in an altogether different light. For them, the question is not so much whether a particular cohort of immigrants will be an asset to the United States but whether we have any right to prevent them from settling in this country in the first place, which many answer in the negative.

Libertarians extol the primacy of individual rights, which in this case entails the right to emigrate from your country of birth whenever you so desire-something that I don’t think any conservative would take issue with-and to immigrate to whatever country you want to live and/or work in for an extended period of time, which is where the divide between the two camps emerges. Libertarians view the issue as one of freedom of association-and by extension, contract-wherein willing employers, such as large agribusinesses and meatpacking plants, seek out willing employees coming from nations with under-performing economies that can’t meet the personal and financial needs of their citizens. They believe that the nexus between trade and unfettered migration is inextricable, if not completely self-evident, and that the two can not be severed if a nation hopes to grow its economy. While this may well be true as a matter of law, there are numerous holes in this thesis intellectually, which opponents of open borders-even anarcho-capitalists such as Hans-Hermann Hoppe-have exposed through well-researched arguments of their own.

However, underlying the debate over whether immigration and settlement is a natural right is the assumption that all libertarians/anarcho-capitalists agree on the immigration issue, which is not as much of  a given as it would seem on the surface of things. One of the things that I’ve attempted to do with American Rattlesnake is debunk commonly held assumptions about immigration issues, and the assumption that libertarians all subscribe to Gary Johnson’s point of view is one that needs to be reexamined. There are many libertarians and  anarcho-capitalists who recognize both the practical difficulties and existential problems inherent in society based upon unfettered immigration, especially one with the vast social welfare apparatus of the United States. One of the chief exponents of the view that welfare programs need to be curtailed in order to solve the immigration problem is Gary Johnson’s opponent in the Republican presidential race, Congressman Ron Paul. Paul has repeatedly emphasized the need to do away with the generous, taxpayer subsidized social welfare programs that-while not serving as the initial magnet-provide incentives for illegal aliens to extend their stay in this country indefinitely. The population density of legal immigrants is also heavily correlated with the availability of welfare benefits. Even acclaimed economist Milton Friedman, who held a rather benign view of immigration in general, emphasized the incompatibility of a welfare state with unfettered immigration.

The same opinion is held by many libertarians today, including self-professed constitutionalist Andrew Napolitano, who views Arizona’s landmark immigration law primarily through the prism of the Constitution’s supremacy clause and potential violations of the 4th Amendment via racial or ethnic profiling by law enforcement officers. I’m not sure that the Constitutional objection to statewide laws is dispositive, because-as Andrew McCarthy has pointed out repeatedly in National Review-there is no precedent for prohibiting states from enforcing laws that are consistent with federal statutes. Furthermore, if we look to the broader issue of legal immigration, there’s nothing to suggest that the men who drafted the United States Constitution supported the sort of unfettered immigration we have endured since passage of the Hart-Celler Act fundamentally altered this nation’s demographic destiny. This is a concept that is seldom grasped by arm-chair commentators on immigration these days, whose default option is to repeat the platitudinous-not to mention, factually incorrect-bromide that we are a “nation of immigrants.” What they neglect to mention is that most this nation’s founding fathers would have been implacably opposed to the present lassez-faire system of immigration, a fact that Thomas Woods-as anti-statist an individual as you’ll find among academics-expertly limns in this Human Events column published during the height of the amnesty debate in Washington D.C.

Yet, even if we were to concede that there’s no firm historical or Constitutional foundation for this nation’s current open borders policies, can it not be argued that there is a compelling moral case for the views espoused by those at the Wall Street Journal editorial board, Cato Institute, Reasonoids, and other trendy, beltway cosmotarians? You would definitely think so if you took their arguments at face value. The notion that we have no moral basis for barring certain immigrants from entry into the United States is certainly widespread in certain libertarian circles, but I don’t believe that makes the idea, ipso facto, libertarian. Julian Simon, in a 1998 essay published in the Journal of Libertarian Studies, articulated the perspective felt by many that individual autonomy takes precedence over other “public” goods, including our national borders. In an anarcho-capitalist reality, nation-states would not exist, therefore deciding who should or should not be admitted to your nation would be a moot point.

But while it might seem logical that freedom of movement, freedom of association, and freedom of contract-and at its most essential level, the individual him or herself-are all prioritized over the wishes and feelings of citizens who have a vested interested in preserving the character of their nation, there are those that don’t think these competing values are necessarily mutually exclusive. In a persuasive essay written for Lew Rockwell several years ago, N. Stephan Kinsella made a very compelling argument that while the disposition of property in our society is unjust-insofar as the state has no right to expropriate land that rightfully belongs to individuals-so long as that property is entrusted to the state it has a responsibility to act as caretaker for the rightful owners. In this case, it has the responsibility to prevent the ingress of people that citizens do not want to welcome into their country. While those who are opposed to communitarianism in even its most minimal form might reject Kinsella’s public pool analogy, I think he makes a convincing case that some prophylactic measures need to be enforced to prevent the exploitation of your property-even if it’s already been subjected to theft by the state.

There are many cogent arguments against the current trendy libertarian support for open borders, several of them outlined by the first presidential nominee of the Libertarian Party, John Hospers, in paper published by the Journal of Libertarian Studies over a decade ago entitled A Libertarian Argument Against Open Borders. The concluding paragraph of the essay is especially perceptive in its analysis of the problem:

Occasionally, we hear the phrase “limousine liberals” used to describe the members of the liberal establishment who send their children to expensive private schools while consigning all the others to the public school system, which educates these children so little that by the time they finish the eighth grade they can barely read and write or do simple arithmetic, or make correct change in a drug store. It would be equally appropriate, however, to describe some other people as ”limousine libertarians” —those who pontificate about open borders while remaining detached from the scenes that their “idealism” generates. They would do well to reflect, in their ivory towers, on whether the freedom they profess for those who are immigrants, if it occurs at all, is to be brought about at the expense of the freedom of those who are not.

This passage describes, in a nut shell, the quintessence of cosmotarianism, and why most Americans-and even some in the libertarian movement-continue to reject it. I could post the most meticulously researched George Borjas journal article, the most statistically devastating backgrounder from the Center for Immigration Studies, or the most irrefutable essay by Mahattan Institute scholar Heather Mac Donald. And although all of these sources are invaluable in the fight to define the terms of this debate, they wouldn’t hold a candle to the self-evident fact that none of the greatest exponents and defenders of open borders, be it Tamar Jacoby, or Jason Riley, or Nick Gillespie, abide by their own exhortations. None of these individuals partake of the glorious mosaic which their unyielding ideology has done so much to create.

You won’t find many Reason Magazine editors or Cato Institute scholars living in Bergenfield, New Jersey, Maywood, California, or Eagle Pass, Texas. Why, you might ask? Because they would rather pass off the tremendous costs of their bankrupt philosophy onto ordinary Americans than to admit that they might just be wrong. These people are insulated from unfettered immigration’s worst effects, including chronic unemployment, violent crime, and environmentally devasting pollution from Arizona to California and throughout the country. They have the luxury of ignoring the impact of this country’s changing demographic profile while promoting the patently absurd notion that our open borders are a boon to all but the small percentage of high school dropouts.

What’s more, they make the equally ludicrous assertion-outlined in the Caplan speech above-that importing millions of unskilled, uneducated immigrants, who will be dependent upon costly government services, from quasi-socialist nations will expand this nation’s economic liberty. Forget the fact that we now enjoy less economic freedom than our northern neighbors, a development concurrent with the greatest expansion of immigration in this country’s history, the entire premise underlying this concept is flawed. You do not build a prosperous, 21st century, post-industrial society around foreigners from countries with low human capital. And the amount of time, energy and economic resources that need to be shifted in order to improve the educational prospects and earning potential of these immigrants, e.g. the billions funneled into ESL programs each year, is so cost prohibitive that it outweighs whatever benefits can be gleaned from such an arrangement.

Another seeming inconsistency in the archetypal libertarian solution to our immigration problem is the reluctance of most libertarians to support any sort of relief for American taxpayers who are tasked with paying for millions of illegal aliens and immigrants who are dependent upon costly social services. Particularly, public schooling and emergency health care. Invoking Friedman’s argument once again, we find that while many libertarians will concede that dependency upon welfare programs is a bad thing they will do nothing to limit access to these programs by illegal aliens or permanent residents. To the contrary, if any such bill-which is immigration neutral-is proffered, they will stalwartly oppose it. Just ask new Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson, who supports the DREAM Act, despite the fact that taxpayers would be subsidizing the in-state tuition discounts of its recipients. Paleolibertarian writer Ilana Mercer deftly skewers  purported libertarians who routinely call for the abolition of the welfare state while adding a proviso that excludes immigrants and illegal aliens from the fiscal demands of their libertopia.

True believers in liberty, like Mercer and the late Murray N. Rothbard, recognize the inherent contradiction in persuading your fellow Americans to reject the embrace of the state while simultaneously welcoming millions of non-Americans into the country who prefer a larger and more intrusive government in almost every respect into our society. They realize that the banal platitudes used to support unfettered immigration are grossly inaccurate, if not transparent lies. They also realize that the interests of the National Association of Manufacturers, the Chamber of Commerce, the Farm Bureau, and the hospitality industry do not necessarily coincide with the interests of the free market, and that to a large extent our current immigration policy is another form of corporate welfare, which putative libertarians would be quick to denounce in any other context. The time-saving, productivity-increasing technological innovations that would normally be welcomed by these same individuals are rejected by those who apparently think pre-industrial stoop labor is the best method of improving  our agricultural production. Finally, they recognize that the  utopian, globalist conception of freedom-where people living in Gabon or the Hadhramaut have just as much say in how we are governed as American citizens living in New York-contravenes the distinctively American, Constitutional, federalist, representative republic designed by this nation’s founding fathers.

In short, the issue before the house is not whether it is an abandonment of principle for libertarians to embrace sensible immigration restrictions, it’s why institutional libertarians representing organizations like the Cato Institute and the Reason Foundation have stifled an honest, open intellectual debate about this subject. Even as the negative repercussions of our government’s devotion to open borders become harder to ignore for all but the most oblivious, the gatekeepers of respectable opinion on this subject continue to narrow the parameters of discussion to their own narrow, ahistorical perspective. I don’t expect that to change any time in the near future, but those of us who want an intellectually honest debate about the most important issue of our time can at least begin to clarify its terms, if for no other reason than to educate those novices interested in how mass immigration has impacted our society who are asking themselves how they should view these changes from a liberty-oriented perspective.

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.

-We begin the blotter with a bone-chilling story focusing upon a particularly senseless, brutal murder by a 27 year-old Mexican national in Stark County, Ohio. The heartless, illegal killer of 61 year-old taxi company owner and driver Jerry Laury-a man who, as his sister points out, had survived both a kidney transplant and open heart surgery-was given a 33 year sentence, after which he can be deported, although I’m sure that’s small solace to Mr. Laury’s surviving family members. The death of Jerry Laury at the hands of this piece of sub-human detritus concretizes the senselessness of our country’s open borders policies. 

-Meanwhile, on the Left Coast, jury selection began in the trial of another 27 year-old illegal alien who gunned down 60 year-old Charles Ellsworth Richardson in front of his trailer repair shop in Riverside County, California. This charming fellow, in addition to being a cold-blooded killer, has already been convicted of the following crimes:

...possession of marijuana for sale, transportation of marijuana for sale, possession of an assault weapon and a misdemeanor count of carrying a loaded firearm in public.

Aren’t you glad this “undocumented American” is part of the wonderful new mosaic of California? 

-Next, we move a bit north, to the Pacific Northwest, where another Mexican national who had been deported just three weeks prior murdered his 21 year-old former girlfriend, who was the mother of his five year-old son, Griselda Ocampo Meza. A statutory rapist with previous convictions for domestic violence? Good to know that in the future such pettifogging crimes won’t merit the attention of American immigration enforcement.  

-Finally, we head south to the Sunshine State where, courtesy of the New American, comes word of the 13 year sentence handed down to a 26 year-old, illegal border jumper convicted of vehicular manslaughter in Sarasota, Florida. We wish we could say this was an isolated incident, but as the New American points out-and as has been reported on American Rattlesnake in the past-the link between drunk driving and illegal aliens is one that continually reappears, and one that will keep cropping up if our government persists in its lackadaisical policies, re: immigration enforcement.

One of those most inexplicable aspects of immigration policy in developed, Western nations is the tendency to give refuge to people who want to eradicate-or utterly transform-our way of life. While the media in this country often highlight the unresolved issues that stem from our shared border with Mexico, it rarely if ever discloses the fact that many migrants entering the country illegally are not Latin Americans, let alone Mexicans. The number of  aliens from state sponsors of terror-or merely Arab-Muslim nations where anti-Americanism and Islamic extremism are rife-crossing our border is increasing. What’s more, even the immigrants who come to this country legally pose grave risks to Americans, especially when they retain the same deep-rooted values that made their countries of origin so hellish they were forced to flee to the United States.

Unfortunately, the September 11th massacres, the July 7th bombings launched by British Muslims against London, and every subsequent attempt-successful or failed-at obliterating markers of Western culture or annihilating non-Muslims inside of the West has been met with a collective shrug by those ensconced in power, who continue to extol the virtues of open borders and espouse multiculturalist dogma. And while the efficacy and constitutionality of Anwar al-Awlaki’s assassination is debated throughout the blogsophere, no one asks why his parents-born in a country where antipathy towards Americans and Western norms is nearly universal-were allowed to immigrate to the United States in the first place. Only in certain quarters, which up to this point have not influenced immigration policymaking, is the notion that some immigrants might not be potential Americans even suggested.

To find concrete examples illustrating the insanity following this policy to its logical conclusion produces, you need not look very far. In Australia, an Algerian-born illegal alien was recently spared trial for conspiring to murder scores of Australian civilians. In the United Kingdom, yet another Islamic terrorist has been granted virtual immunity for his crimes by the British legal system. The generous freedoms afforded to defendents in our culture’s criminal justice systems, in concert with the decadent multiculturalism that has prevented the assimilation of foreigners, combines to undermine the fundamental structure of our society. The solution, of course, is to prevent this conflict from occurring in the first place, i.e. imposing rational, sensible immigration reforms. However, that is unlikely to occur so long as the ruling class in the United States, Europe and elsewhere are possessed by mania that prizes diversity and multiculturalism over the lives and values of their ostensible countrymen.

The Obama reelection campaign has begun in earnest with the announcement yesterday that the administration will henceforth be ignoring the expressed will of Congress, its Constitutional obligations, and the desires of the American public. In a move that President Obama’s functionaries have been telegraphing for months, and which was made official yesterday, the White House has announced that it will be “reviewing” the cases of individuals who are in the process of deportation, or who are subject to deportation, in what is effectively a sweeping amnesty for nearly all illegal aliens currently residing in this country. The Wall Street Journal has a brief summary of who is now eligible for the amnesty jackpot, including a description of the aforementioned Morton memo, but a better question is, “who isn’t eligible?”

Although much of the media is framing the issue as one of the admistration implementing the DREAM Act that an anti-immigrant faction of Congress was loathe to enact, the truth is that this decision is much broader  and encompasses more than simply potential DREAM recipients, which as Hans von Spakovsky points out on the Heritage Blog is itself a blatantly unconstitutional act. Nearly every illegal alien who falls within one of the amorphous, Morton-defined categories will be given the opportunity to remain in this country indefinitely, and the “criminals” whom the Department of Homeland Security and BICE will allegedly be honing its sites on are not defined. Presumably, the unlucky aliens will not include petty, inconsequential criminals such as car thieves.

There are a number of conclusions to be drawn from the Obama amnesty, but for the time being I’d like to focus on the most overlooked but ineluctable one. Namely, the breathtaking effectiveness of the open borders lobby. Despite the fact  it does not represent American voters-the overwhelming majority of whom support tougher immigration enforcement-it was able to lobby, protest, and hector Barack Obama into adopting its stance of complete non-enforcement of this nation’s immigration laws. As puerile as some of its tactics might have struck us, the fact is that they campaigned for the Obama administration to flout the law and implement amnesty from the moment the DREAM Act failed to gain cloture during the last lame duck session of Congress. While patriotic, pro-enforcement activists concentrated on taking  proactive measures in Congress and in the states, the open borders dogmatists devoted most of their resources to convincing the Obama administration to defy Congress and simply ignore the law. Although they were pushing against an open door-one guarded by people like Janet Napolitano, La Raza’s Cecilia Munoz, and John Morton-don’t discount the influence they exerted upon the White Hosue’s decision-making process. The sustained action of our enemies, combined with flagging support for the President among Hispanic voters, is how we came to this pass.

Now we have to figure out what can be done to mitigate the situation we now find ourselves enmeshed in. The best long term solution, obviously, is thwarting President Obama’s reelection. Ideally, the new president would not only subscribe to the beliefs espoused by websites such as this, but also believe in limitations on executive powers and the constitutional separation of powers that Barack Obama has so brazenly defied this week. In other words, we need a presidential candidate who is willing to uphold his or her oath of office. However, this solution does nothing to ameliorate the situation at hand, or prevent the wholesale abandonment of immigration laws that will, barring a miracle, remain the status quo for the next year and a half. That’s why I’m posting a link to Stand with Arizona’s website, which provides some useful links and helpful suggestions for how you can combat this latest outrageous decision by Team Obama.

As Governor Jan Brewer pointed out in her statement condemning the White House’s extraconstitutional action, President Obama lied when he told his friends at the National Council of La Raza that he would not bypass Congress in order to enact amnesty by executive order. Even if we can’t do much to obstruct the decisions made by an administration intent on foisting amnesty upon an hostile American public, we can begin to regain the momentum that was pivotal in preventing Congress from implementing this plan legislatively last year. Although we now have an essentially lawless administration beholden to anti-American special interest groups like La Raza, we still have power as individual citizens, which is something the gang at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue can not change through administrative diktat.

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.

Although I’ve been neglectful in highlighting  recent important developments in the Gunwalker scandal, I’d like to make up for this oversight with today’s update. First of all, I have to congratulate CBS News for being one of the first, and by far the most persistent, of mainstream media outlets to report on the unfolding debacle known as Fast  and Furious.

Just to refresh your memory, that is the name of the disastrously ill-conceived program run by the ATF, and approved at the highest levels of the Justice Department according to agents speaking anonymously to CBS, which involved allowing Mexican gun-runners and narco-terrorists to get their hands on high-powered assault weapons and to transer them into Mexico. In a fascinating article published in this weekend’s Wall Street Journal which looks at who’s responsible for the increase in violent, gun-related crime in Mexico, government spokesmen claim that this operation was simply a means of entrapping high-ranking members of notorious Mexican drug cartels. Even though prominent space is given to proponents of gun control, such as the Brady Center For Handgun Control, Inc., and ATF administrators who have a vested interest in absolving themselves from responsibility for the ongoing bloodbath in Mexico, in the very same issue there is a column that wholly refutes the notion of widespread gun-trafficking rings operating inside of the United States.

The real issue is not unscrupulous gun dealers or gun owners exercising their 2nd Amendment rights, it’s the government attempting to deflect blame from some of the officials who are now in the hot seat for aiding and abetting Mexico’s most notorious drug cartels. And as this illuminating Examiner column by Jim Kouri points out, that seat is getting increasingly warm for Attorney General Eric Holder, who has been a staunch foe of the Second Amendment since his tenure in the Clinton administration Justice Department.

Border agent Brian Terry’s life-which might very well have been taken with a gun supplied to the Zetas from this gunrunning operation undertaken by the ATF-can’t be restored. However, let’s ensure that his death was not in vain, and demand accountability from our nation’s public officials and the law enforcement agencies they oversee.

I wasn’t planning on discussing this issue today, but we do address important foreign policy issues on this site when the occasion demands it. Needless to say, President Obama’s insistence that the state of Israel, which has heretofore been our most trusted and reliable ally in the Middle East, return to annihilatory borders  is such an occasion.

Putting aside for a moment the observation that these borders are utterly indefensible, which has been made by experts much more well-versed in this subject than me, there are several issues with the President’s new “peace” proposals that pose even greater barriers to the adoption of what he seems to think will be a final resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. One of them being the fact that these new guidelines are an explicit repudiation of the ironclad guarantees enunciated by President Bush when he and former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon decided that Israel should unilaterally withdraw from the Gaza Strip.

Israel’s disengagement from Gaza required the heart-breaking removal of Israeli civilians from the homes in which they had lived for decades, not to mention the complete and utter destruction of a thriving economy that was in short order replaced by Hamas military bases from which rockets are now launched into Israeli territory. Israel withdrew from that territory based upon the promise that the United States government would not force it to retreat behind indefensible borders. Now, the President has not only shredded the pledges and agreements made by his predecessor in office, he has reneged on his own promise to the Jewish State, made not more than three years ago.

As if this were not enough, Barack Obama compounded this egregious insult to our best friend in the entire Mid-East with yet more superfluous, fawning outreach to the Arab-Muslim “street,” including a reaffirmation of the false sense of victimhood Palestinians use to batter Israel’s reputation on the international stage. As Democratic pollster and Fox News analyst Pat Cadell has said, this is simply yet another attempt to assuage the feelings of Muslims at the expense of our national security priorities overseas. If anything, it only emboldens the forces intent on doing us and our allies harm, as the recent pronouncements by Hamas, those charming fellows who belong to the Osama Bin Laden Fan Club, make clear. The more of the Palestinian/Islamic supremacist narrative you accept, the more they will demand of you, as Israel has learned to its regret. The “humiliation” of the Palestinians is not something that can be alleviated by giving Hamas and the PA-and possibly Al Qaeda-yet more territory, it can only be addressed by tangible achievements that do not involve murdering Jews and Americans.

That is why Prime Minister Natanyahu’s bracing response to the President’s speech was so welcome, at least to those of us who have been waiting for a foreign leader who will resist the ill-conceived foreign policy decisions of the current adminstration. It seems like he has taken the advice of Caroline Glick and decided to assert an independent foreign policy based upon the best interests of Israel. Even though I’m not a huge Ron Paul enthusiast-especially after his recent embrace  of the worst of open borders dogma-I have to admit that his suggestion, i.e. that we disengage from the “peace process” altogether-instead of trying to impose a solution that will be disastrous for both the United States and Israel-makes a lot of sense. At the very least, we will not be forced to have endless discussions over what our obligations are to the participants in the current conflict. Our obligations should be to protect American lives and American interests abroad, which means letting Israel defend itself in the manner she sees fit. Her enemies are our enemies, which is as true now as it was decades ago.

A satirical article published by the website Big Peace  illustrates the absurdity of President Obama’s plan for “peace,” but it also highlights the disregard he has shown for national sovereignty as a general principle. Just as he wants to erase the borders of Israel by ceding territory to a terrorist entity, he desires the erasure of our borders through the wholesale adoption of amnesty. American land, which couldn’t be conquered militarily, must be relinquished through the force of law-that’s essentially the guiding principle of the Obama presidency, and it’s one that should be rejected by American voters, regardless of what position they hold on the Arab-Israeli peace process.

In the wake of the much-deserved death of Osama Bin Laden, the voices of those whose lives were torn apart by Al Qaeda naturally come to the fore. That’s why I’m pleased to bring you a fantastic article from the Wall Street Journal which explores the emotions and thoughts of the family members whose loved ones perished in the World Trade Center attacks on September 11th, 2001.

While the death of such a vile mass-murderer should be applauded, we should also remember the men and women who still grieve for the loss of their brothers, sisters, daughters, sons, friends, and lovers.