Y'All Come! Si Se Puede!

At the end of the Bush administration and for the first few months of the Obama administration, illegal immigration from Mexico was on a downward spiral. It was a combination of better border enforcement and the calamitous downturn in the American economy. Those illegals who came here for work began to realize jobs were few and far between. Fewer illegals came, many returned home.

Yet with little change in the economy, the numbers are creeping back up. If jobs aren’t the reason for the increases, something else must be. The biggest reason is the illegal-friendly Obama administration and the Democratic Party’s pandering to Hispanic voters. The administration has dodged or reinterpreted Congressional action to set up a lengthy series of rules which make crossing the border illegally easier and staying less uncomfortable. What it couldn’t get in Congress with the proposed comprehensive immigration reform (aka “amnesty”) and the Dream Act it is accomplishing administratively and bureaucratically.

The administration talks about its achievements in deporting illegals, but the record hardly supports the claim. While talking deportation numbers with one side of his mouth, President Obama talks “prosecutorial discretion” out of the other side. Under current law, deported illegal immigrants must remain outside of the United States for a minimum of three years before returning under some legal plan. The administration has acted to change that rule using a “hardship” exception. If the illegal already has legal relatives living in the United States, he can claim his absence would pose a hardship for the family. It’s an Alice in Wonderland kind of reasoning, but you can bet that immigration authorities will find the exception nearly every time as long as this administration remains in power.

Another new rule imposed is that once caught, a large majority of illegals who have not run up a criminal record will go to the end of the deportation line. And while remaining in the country they can build up “longevity credits” putting them closer to the magic legalization goal. In major cities, where most illegals end up, this will mean a large number of very dangerous people being allowed to stay. Most of America’s big city immigration magnets are “sanctuary cities,” or cities so overwhelmed by crime that they simply can’t keep up. In sanctuary cities, criminal activity is not reported to the federal authorities unless there has been a conviction. In San Francisco, youthful offenders are rarely reported at all, and adults are reported only after being convicted of major violent felonies.

And then there’s the simple issue that if you can’t get in through the door, sneak in through the window. The Government Accountability Office reported that in 2011 only 15% of the border with Mexico was under full Border Patrol control. Another 44% is not under full control, but is counted as being under “operational” control. That means that 41% of the border is under minimal or no control. That’s about 800 miles of unprotected border. That would be bad enough. But when individual states have attempted to assist the federal government in enforcing border control, the feds have either ignored their efforts or sued the states for interfering in a federal prerogative.

Arizona has been a primary target of administration ire. While the state is losing $2.7 billion in enforcement and public services losses during the period from 2009 to the present, it has been the whipping boy for the Obama administration for simply passing legislation which is designed to do the job the feds either can’t or won’t do. Yet the Arizona statutes take no power from nor do they create parallel immigration power with the federal government. They simply create the mechanism by which the state can turn illegal immigrants over to the federal authorities.

Still, the Obama administration felt it wasn’t doing enough to support illegal immigration and fast-track legalization. It remedied that lack by appointing immigration enthusiast Andrew Lorenz-Strait to the post of public advocate for the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE). Another czar. And it’s the first time ever that an administration of either party has created a position which essentially advocates for illegals. The very agency charged with the enforcement of immigration law will effectively have a man who will act as a taxpayer-funded lobbyist for illegals.

Lorenz-Strait previously advocated for cuts to the ICE budget of the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program which helps states cover the cost of jailing illegal immigrants. The President’s crazed budget announced just after his State of the Union address includes this cut—to the tune of $170 million. Lorenz-Strait is off to a good start.

The pandering appears to be paying off. Obama won about 67% of the Hispanic vote in 2008, and his reelection campaign committee is predicting that number could increase to 73% in 2012. I think that’s an exercise in radical optimism, but surely the pandering isn’t hurting his popularity among Hispanic voters.

Immigration will not be the big issue of the 2012 campaign, but it can’t be ignored. Any Republican presidential candidate is going to need good answers to questions about immigration. A “get ‘em out now” approach may appeal to many nativists, but it could be utter disaster in the general election. Comprehensive immigration reform is an important issue, but the Obama administration will try to paint anything short of amnesty as racism and jingoism. It must be addressed, but in realistic and humane terms. It is quite possible to reassure Hispanic voters without caving in to the open borders crowd.
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Primer: Obama/Holder v. Iran

I figured you might like a primer on the new Iranian issue, as it’s all over the headlines and it’s an issue which could actually lead to war if mishandled -- although that’s extremely unlikely. Here’s what’s up:

● What Happened: On Tuesday, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the DEA and FBI had foiled a plot to murder the Saudi Arabian ambassador and blow up the Saudi and Israeli embassies. This plot was supposedly masterminded by Iran’s “elite” Quds military unit. The Quds are a special unit within Iran’s Revolutionary Guard whose job it is to “export” Iran’s Islamic revolution to other countries.

According to Holder, Manssor Arbabsiar (a Corpus Christi, Texas car salesman) was tasked by the Iranian government with finding someone to carry out the killing and the bombings. Arbabsiar turned to the nastiest of the Mexican drug cartels, Los Zetas, a group of former special forces soldiers who started their own cartel. I wrote about Los Zetas here: LINK. Arbabsiar wanted Los Zetas to do both the killing and the bombings and he wanted them to agree to funnel tons of opium from the Middle East into Mexico.

However, the person Arbabsiar contacted turned out to be a DEA informant. Whoops.

● Team Obama’s Response: The administration accuses Iran and describes this as: “a dangerous escalation of Iran's long-scale use of violence.” The reason they claim Iran did this was “the Iranians watch the Saudis roll tanks in Bahrain, and they see a key ally in Syria going down, so they step up the Quds Force.”

Joe Biden has been sent forth from the Idiotorium to take the lead on this. He described this as “really over the top” and said it was “an outrage that violates one of the fundamental premises on which nations deal with one another.” He also said that “no options have been taken off the table” for dealing with this, though the administration has already ruled out military action. Instead, they are considering sanctions, the standard response by liberals when they don’t know what to do.

● The Saudi Response: Saudi Arabia and Iran are bitter regional rivals largely because their versions of Islam consider the other to be heretics. The Saudi embassy said this was “a despicable violation of international norms, standards and conventions,” and their former head of intelligence said Iran will have to “pay the price.” They have not been more specific yet. However, Saudi Arabia does not have a military capable of defeating Iran.

● The Iranian Response: For its part, Iran denies involvement. They told the UN they are “outraged” and “strongly and categorically reject these fabricated and baseless allegations, based on the suspicious claims by an individual.” Tehran claims Obama has fabricated this to “divert attention from the Wall Street uprising.” Ha ha! They also repeated claims the US has assassinated Iranian nuclear scientists in the past two years.

For the record, the only link so far to Iran is that the car dealer apparently is a cousin of someone in the Qud and he visited Iran right before $100,000 was wired into the informant’s account by the car dealer. The FBI claims this was wired from a Qud bank account.

● The World Reaction: The world reaction has been skeptical. Iranian experts say that Arbabsiar does not fit the profile of the typical Iranian agent, who tend to be professionals. And they say it’s unlikely Iran would be behind such a plot. Similarly, an Iranian expert in Berlin said these claims would be viewed with skepticism as “everyone is extremely skeptical about US intelligence revelations” and added, “I don’t regard it as impossible but rather improbable, even if the details of the story presented by the attorney general are essentially true.”

One western diplomat said: “I don't believe Iran's regime was behind the plot. If we assume it was Iran's plot, it would seem like a group of professional gangsters hiring a careless agent for their most important project. It's impossible.”

Even a senior American law enforcement official said (on condition of anonymity) that the US isn’t quite sure what this was and it was likely a “rogue plan. . . so outside their normal track of activity.”

● Some Questions: This all leaves us with some odd questions. If we assume Holder is correct, then what will Obama do about it? Even Clinton dropped a few cruise missiles on Sudan after the embassy bombings in Africa. So Obama can’t just pretend this didn’t happen.

But if Holder is wrong, then is he simply wrong or is there more to this?

I never like conspiracies as an answer, especially when there are more likely answers -- such as this guy just being a nut job. But it is extremely coincidental that the day after Darrell Issa starts talking about subpoenaing Holder to answer for what are likely criminal acts related to Fast and Furious, that Holder manages to unveil a huge distraction involving the very elements of Fast and Furious -- DEA, drugs, Mexican cartels and cross border crime. This is one of those coincidences you can’t put in films or people will lose their suspension of disbelief.

My normal response would be to trust professional law enforcement. BUT we’ve already seen how compromised they’ve been by Democratic Justice bosses, such as when Janet Reno ordered the Branch Davidian attack to show that she was tough or the Elian Gonzalez deportation to show Castro goodwill or Holder’s actions in Fast and Furious itself, where potentially hundreds of lives have been taken or destroyed by Holder’s attempt to use the ATF for political purposes. Trust is in short supply here.

So I think we should keep an open mind at this point and not assume anything unless and until strong, verifiable, independent proof is provided.

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DOJ: "Cartels Control Border Access"

In a stunning admission, the Department of Justice last Wednesday released the following announcement: "Mexican drug-trafficking organizations control access to the United State-Mexico border as well as the smuggling routes across the border, resulting in unprecedented levels of violence in Mexico."

Anyone who opens a newspaper or watches TV news already had a good idea that this was true, but the announcement of reality was a bit of a surprise. The statement goes on to say: "The organizations control, simultaneously use, or are competing for control of various smuggling corridors that they use to regulate drug flow across the border. The value they attach to controlling border access is demonstrated by the ferocity with which several rival transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) fight for control over control of key corridors, or 'plazas'."

And as a near-throwaway line, the statement reports that the Mexican drug cartels "dominate the supply and wholesale distribution of most illicit drugs in the United States." So much for what we may have thought about domestic gangs, the Mafia and those pesky Jamaicans. The next big drug-trafficking movie won't be called The French Connection. In fact, drug-trafficking back in that era seems almost quaint by comparison with today's border wars.

While controlling access for drug trafficking is the main purpose of cartel violence along the border, having complete control of access to entry points into the United States also enhances their ability to traffic in human bodies, both kidnap victims for ransom and women for forced prostitution. What we need to focus on is not just the violence, but the fact that the Mexican army and police have essentially ceded control of near-border access to the cartels. Having gotten control of the north, the cartels are now gaining control of main highways and travel routes throughout the entirety of Mexico.

Most frightening of all, having gained control of the access routes into the United States, the cartels are quickly gaining control of routes on our side of the border. We have an immense border with Mexico, and many of the access roads lead to sparsely-populated desert and rural areas, unfenced and unguarded. Where there are border guards, they are there in grossly insufficient numbers, inadequately armed, and subject to rules of engagement that make them targets for murderous thugs who play by no civilized rules.

Rather than tell us that Janet Napolitano at Homeland Security is nuts, and we're going to beef up the border patrol, use army units freshly back from Iraq or Afghanistan, arm them with state-of-the-art equipment and give them "shoot on sight" orders, the DOJ instead produces assessments which are largely self-fulfilling prophecies. "Collaboration between US gangs and Mexican-based TCOs will continue to increase, facilitating wholesale drug trafficking into and within the United States."

Before anyone starts thinking that I'm suggesting illegal or unconstitutional use of our armed forces on American soil, I need to point out that it is a perfectly legitimate use of the armed forces to repel an invasion. Make no mistake, this is an invasion, and the posse comitatus act simply doesn't apply. Our armies were used within America's borders during the War of 1812, and those weren't the local police who fought the Indian wars of the 1800s. The act was passed after Civil War Reconstruction to avoid having to use the army indefinitely to enforce law in the states formerly in rebellion.

The posse comitatus act was designed to prevent the army from having too much power within American borders, but more specifically it was designed to prevent the armed forces from acting in a law-enforcement capacity. And therein lies the problem with the liberals and the Obama administration. Not only is the administration overly-sympathetic with illegal immigrants, but in regard to the narco-wars the administration once again prefers the metaphorical "war on crime" model rather than the real war model which allows the military to repel armed invaders.

It should also be noted that the posse comitatus act applies solely to the Army and the Air Force. The Marines and the Navy are restricted by Department of Defense directives, not by the act. The Coast Guard is entirely exempted from the act, as is any entity under the aegis of or created by Homeland Security. And to further complicate matters, the restrictions of the act can be lifted by any new act of Congress which does not conflict with the Constitution. So citing the posse comitatus act as a barrier to fending off an armed invasion of American soil is naive at best and disingenuous at worst.

A side benefit of mounting an all-out attack against armed narco cartel invaders is that it would also tend to reduce the entry of non-violent but still illegal immigrants. The same routes that the drug cartels have gained control of are the ones being used by the "coyotes" bringing in illegal immigrants.

In the meantime, the DOJ is very concerned with covering its behind in the wake of the Fast and Furious/Gunrunner scandal in which narco-terrorists obtained thousands of deadly weapons with the full approval and assistance of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. It can't be bothered with protecting our southwestern border from an invasion. Those weapons are being used to kill Mexican citizens on their side of the border, but they have also spilled over into the United States resulting in both civilian and Border Patrol deaths.

Unlike the takeover of Chicago by Al Capone in the twenties, this is not a domestic crime syndicate, the local police are helpless to do anything, Eliot Ness is long dead, and the cartels are not amenable to being arrested, tried and imprisoned for tax evasion. What needs to be done is to increase the number of Border Patrol agents armed with the best equipment by a factor of ten or twenty, use the military if necessary, and fight this invasion as if the British are coming to burn the capital.

That will not happen as long as Barack Obama, Eric Holder and Janet Napolitano remain in charge. They are too afraid we might offend the hapless Mexican government or a large demographic of future Democratic voters already inside our borders.


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Feeling Safe? Not On The Southern Border.

People with any sense at all know that all the reports being given by bigwigs in the Obama administration about securing our border with Mexico are laughable at best, horribly dangerous at worst. At the official level just below the Obama insider crowd, there's a bit more honesty, even if occasionally unintentional. The new head of ATF has blown a few whistles about Project Gunrunner, and now a high-ranking Customs and Border Protection official has made a big admission about illegal immigration.

The border has long been porous and a fertile ground for "coyotes" (Mexican nationals who assist illegal immigrants to cross into the United States). Coyotes are not nice people, nor are they unofficial ambassadors of good will merely trying to help their fellow Mexicans find a better life in the United States. They charge huge fees for their assistance, often rape the women, and with their connections on our side of the border, exploit them further by changing the terms of the agreement, and/or forcing them to work off their debt in coyote-controlled businesses. Those businesses often include prostitution and drug-dealing.

Still, next to the Mexican drug cartels, the coyotes are rank amateurs, almost gentle souls. And those drug cartels did not fail to notice this source of an easy takeover and a new, lucrative business for them to exploit. Illegal immigrants were often used as "mules" for the cartels. Now the cartels have figured out that if they own the mule, they can traffic in guns, drugs and the human beings they use to transport the contraband.

A week ago, Customs and Border Protection Deputy Commissioner David Aguilar admitted rather freely that "drug cartels control several major areas along our border with Mexico." When asked "do you think Mexican drug cartels have taken control of the human trafficking that takes place from Mexico to the United States," Aguilar replied: "There are several areas along our border with Mexico where in fact we believe that the drug cartels not only have taken control, but control the areas by which the illegal crossings occur on both sides of the border (emphasis added)."

Many of the coyotes have been recruited into the cartels, and those who have not are either dead or about to be. Aguilar compared the cartels to the Mafia, which started off small, largely dealing in prostitutes and illegal booze, but grew sufficiently and became sufficiently organized to take over many of the other criminal enterprises run by smaller, more local thugs. The Mexican drug cartels still make the majority of their money off drugs, but human trafficking is now big business as well, and they have determined that business belongs to them.

Deputy Director Kumar Kibble (no, I did not make that name up) of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE, the former INS) confirmed Aguilar's view. Speaking of the cartels' expansion, Kibble said: "They, of course, control the plazas, the approaches that facilitate smuggling into this country--the cartels, of course, control the territory and the approach and tax other criminal ventures that may be operating in their area of responsibility. So there is certainly that kind of involvement as well." Another local official added that though it was far less organized, there was cartel control of remote areas on the American side of the border once the illegals have crossed into US territory.

This all contradicts what Homeland Security Director Janet Napolitano said back in April. "Given the statistical framework, the border is not overrun or out of control." She then said that those who disagree are just trying to score political points. Apparently that includes two high-level officials within agencies under her DHS umbrella.

Considering that over a quarter-million illegals have been caught in just the six months prior to the ICE and CBP officials' statements, Napolitano is living in a dream world. Aguilar concluded his remarks with a very pointed statement: "Do Not Be Fooled (the name of the Border Patrol initiative to pull the benevolent costume off the cartels' activities) into thinking that individuals being brought into this country, putting their lives into the hands of smugglers who are careless and heartless, are being well treated. The possibility exists that they could be placed into human slavery, sexual exploitation, forced labor, and other types of slavery that unfortunately and tragically we know exists within the borders of our country."


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The Agenda Behind The Gun Scandal

Project Gunrunner, Operation Fast and Furious, “Gunwalker.” Take your pick for the name of the federal project which has become a major Obama administration scandal. We previously discussed the scandal itself here and here. The operation was almost Kafkaesque in its planning, implementation, and results.

But now we are beginning to see hints that it may have been equally Machiavellian. Purported to be a sting operation to trace guns to the Mexican cartel bosses, it may have been a stealth gun-control initiative flowing from the White House and its allies in Congress.

The operation was so insane and so deadly that many people began to question why the federal government would involve itself in law-breaking and gun-trafficking at all. We may have gotten the answer yesterday. On Friday, July 15, a group of Congressmen and a Fish and Game official held a press conference to announce a new initiative: “Stop Gun Trafficking and Strengthen Law Enforcement Act.” So far, we know that Operation Fast and Furious involved agents from ATF, DOJ, FBI, DEA and even the IRS putting serious weaponry into the hands of cartel-members. If the proposed act were to pass, those are the same agencies which would be charged with enforcing the act.

At least one wag has suggested that the proposed act be retitled “the Eddie Espinoza Act” in honor of the Democratic mayor of Columbus, New Mexico, who has been convicted of trafficking guns to the Mexican drug cartels. The act is sponsored by Rep Carolyn B. Mahoney (D-New York), Elijah E. Cummings (D-Maryland) and Carolyn McCarthy (D-New York). The mission statement reads: “This act establishes a dedicated firearms trafficking statute to empower law enforcement to keep high-powered firearms out of the hands of dangerous criminals, including Mexican drug cartels.” I’ll leave the irony of that statement to our readers.

The act has very little chance of passing. So why bring it up in the first place? The most obvious reason is to draw attention away from the ever-growing scandal. How can a party that is so obviously concerned with protecting the public and empowering law enforcement possibly be charged with gun-running of its own? It’s a ploy, and a rather weak one at that. But that may not be the only reason.

Another reason, more subtle and more dangerous to the Second Amendment and recent Supreme Court decisions confirming the right of individuals to own firearms is to deflect attention away from President Obama’s recent executive order requiring that multiple gun sales be reported to federal agencies (particularly ATF). The President seems untroubled by the fact that he has no constitutional authority to issue such an order, which is nothing more than another end-run around Congress.

The idea that this administration and its allies in Congress would push a program that endangers the stability of the Mexican government and puts American lives in danger has been routinely pooh-poohed by the left and the mainstream media. But there is emerging evidence that in its zeal to revivify the dying gun-control movement this administration has done exactly that. On top of the big Fast and Furious operation, it now appears that the Tampa office of the ATF allowed nearly 1,000 firearms to be smuggled to the murderous MS-13 gang headquartered in Honduras. Other similar operations are being investigated in Texas and Oklahoma.

Most recently, an e-mail from Mark R. Chait, assistant director for ATF field operations to William Newell has been made public. Newell is the special agent in charge of the Phoenix Field Division of the ATF. The e-mail reads: “Bill—can you see if these guns were all purchased from the same source and at one time. We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a letter on long gun [rifles] multiple sales (emphasis added).” Additional e-mails seem to confirm that ATF and DOJ officials were using Fast and Furious to set the stage for the President’s executive order.

If the Issa/Grassley hearings on Operation Fast and Furious produce more hard proof of this collusion, there should be multiple criminal prosecutions. Barack Obama seems to want desperately to establish government by Presidential decree to speed up his leftist agenda and anti-gun initiatives. It is conceivable that in this case, government by fiat has already cost the lives of too many Americans. It’s time to return legislative power to Congress and true power to the people whom Obama is failing to protect. An unarmed citizenry is a vulnerable citizenry. Selling guns to murderous criminals in order to disarm American citizens is a travesty of unimaginable proportions.

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Holder To Cartels: "Kill Faster"

Pictured, left to right, are the father, son and holy ghost of the unholy trinity of the Obama administration. The father (Obama) sees no reason to defend our borders by adding sufficient manpower to cover them, and the holy ghost (Clinton) ignores gross negligence and criminality south of the border while undermining legitimate constitutional governments in the same arena.

The son (Attorney General Eric Holder) is in charge of blocking any negative information about the trinity by any means necessary. Currently, the trio are facing serious charges and angry questions about Operation Fast and Furious. The operation was intended to be an ATF "sting" that facilitated the purchase of 2,000 high-powered semi-automatic weapons in the United States and allowed them to flow freely to criminal cartels in Mexico. The Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Bureau, ATF[E?] for short, appear to have been actively involved in the transactions, usually through surrogates or in such a way as to make it easier for an unfriendly to get the weapons, transport them across the border, and get them into the hands of the vicious gangs.

The operation was so amateurish, and yet so deadly, that the ATF Director was "allowed" to resign. And now it also appears that the FBI and DEA also knew about the operation from the beginning. Among the charges are that some or all of those agencies were working directly with the purchasers/smugglers and were fully aware that the weapons would end up in the hands of the Mexican drug cartels.

Most of the new information comes directly from the mouth of the Acting Director of ATF, Kenneth Melson. This week, Melson voluntarily produced the information to Congressional investigators, wisely taking his own personal attorney with him rather than rely on Justice Department lawyers to protect him. For an in-depth discussion of the operation as it existed just prior to Melson's promotion and revelations, Andrew did a thorough report in June: The Next Obama Scandal. As Andrew speculated, the DOJ may very well try to make Melson the goat in this mess, but I don't think that even the slippery and devious Eric Holder can spin this one to his advantage.

Melson also told the investigators that he would have provided this information much earlier and much more fully had not the Justice Department limited and interfered with earlier requests to him from Congressional watchdogs. If true, and there is little reason to disbelieve him, then the Holder Justice Department is even more lawless than we suspected after the dismissal of the Black Panther voter intimidation cases. On July 5, based directly on Melson's provided information so far, House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-California) and Senate Judiciary Ranking Member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) sent a letter to Holder informing him that they now consider Melson to be a key witness in the upcoming formal investigations and hearings.

Melson told the investigators that prior to his temporary appointment as Director, each response given by him, his counterparts, and his subordinates to Congressional inquiries first had to be submitted to the Justice Department lawyers for "editing." He made it clear that the DOJ would then submit the answers which bore little or no resemblance to the information originally provided by the agents. He described the DOJ's answers as "false denials of fact" and added that the DOJ "buried its head in the sand" over questions about how the operation went so terribly wrong.

The idea behind the operation looks good on its face. Allow and/or facilitate dangerous weapons sales so that the weapons could be traced across the border into Mexico and help identify the names and determine the locations of cartel bigwigs destined to receive the final delivery of those weapons. But it looks a lot better on paper than in reality and it sounds better in theory than it turned out in practice. It grossly overestimated the ability of the ATF to continue tracking the weapons after leaving the hands of the American sellers. It existed in a fantasy world of honest Mexican cooperation after the weapons crossed the border. It assumed that the buyers were simply low-level smugglers without considering that they might also be "players" in the cartels' murderous games.

In some cases, the smugglers were also questionable informants for various agencies, frequently funded in their purchases by taxpayer money diverted from other agencies. Many deaths and many hundreds of "missing" weapons have resulted from the ATF's overconfidence. However, with DOJ's active assistance, the previous Director had hidden most of this information from his subordinates, including Melson. If he is to be believed, Melson knew very, very little about any of these activities until one of those weapons made its way back across the border into Arizona, where Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was cut down with it. Indictments of those involved in the Terry murder and those involved in the "loss" of the weapons have been delayed by the United States Attorney's Office and political attorneys in the Justice Department.

If the operation was in fact an ill-conceived and poorly-implemented "sting" that resulted in lost weapons, armed cartel members, and deaths on both sides of the border, that is bad enough and heads should roll. But when those deaths go unanswered legally, and when cartel members are now better-armed than ever, it would be a disgrace of immense proportions if the Congressional investigation proves that Holder and his department interfered in the investigation to avoid political embarrassment. Equally repulsive would be the idea that the Obama administration might try to turn the whole murderous mess into an argument for draconian regulations on gun sales.

Still, Melson's deep suspicions and logical assumptions prior to his ascension to the role of Director are not new and are well-documented. Issa and Grassley stated in the letter to Holder that "Melson provided documents months ago (most recently in April) supporting his concerns." Melson also claimed that he sent both the documents and the accompanying inquiries from Congress to the Office of then-Deputy Attorney General, James Cole. Issa and Grassley stated that the answers to their inquiries have not to this date been provided to them by anyone in the Justice Department.

The Congressional hearings are scheduled for July 13, and attorneys from both the DOJ and ATF have been invited to attend. So far, that invitation has not been accepted. But in the interim, DOJ officials have continued to attempt to limit or edit Melson's ongoing communications with Congress. The operation was a miserable failure, but the coverup is equally bad. There has been a hint from some ATF agents and Issa and Grassley that if the DOJ had provided the information requested, when requested, fully and honestly, much of the mayhem might have been avoided. That can't be proven at this point, but it's a logical assumption. The information obtained so far seems to indicate that the "higher-ups" that the sting was supposed to flush out were already known to both the ATF and the FBI.

Given an opportunity to respond to ongoing requests from Congress for a public statement, Holder continues to remain silent. But there's always the mouthpiece's mouthpiece, Press Secretary Jay Carney. When asked about the operation, Holder's silence, and Congress's questions, Carney went off on the usual DOJ-approved tangent: "Well, I think there's an investigation going on precisely to get to the bottom of this. And I can't comment further on it, because there is an investigation going on." How facile, and how convenient.

Pressed further by ABC's Jake Tapper about whether "you guys are worried about and incensed about the details which have been revealed so far," Carney interrupted to say: "Well, Jake, I think it's being investigated for a reason. And obviously it's a matter of concern and that's why there's an investigation. But it would be a mistake for me to comment further on, or to characterize further what happened or how to rate our unhappiness about it from here. So I think that I have to refer you the the Justice Department for that [emphasis added]." Good luck with that. Congress already tried, and ran into a stone wall.
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The Next Obama Scandal: “Gun Walking”

Operation Fast and Furious was an idiotic attempt by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to get proof that Mexican drug cartels are buying guns from American gun shops. This reckless operation had no chance of success and it got people killed, including American Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. What's more, it has all the hallmarks of being politically motivated and is likely to reach into the White House.

Starting in 2009, the ATF, part of Eric Holder’s Justice Department, got cooperative Phoenix-area gun shops to sell guns illegally to Mexicans. Rather than arrest these buyers, as they would have done in the past, the ATF instructed its agents to turn a blind eye to the sales. This has been called “gun walking” because they let these guns walk out the door. The ATF hoped the guns would be recovered from Mexican crime scenes, which they believed would let them build conspiracy cases against Mexican drug cartels. It didn’t. In fact, it couldn't because the entire concept is flawed. Consider this:

1. By telling the gun shops to knowingly sell the guns illegally, the agency itself made it possible for the guns to reach Mexico. Thus, this operation cannot stand as proof that American gun shops are selling to Mexicans because it was the ATF itself that made this possible and there is no evidence that any non-cooperating gun shops made similar sales.

2. Secondly, there’s no way to connect the drug cartels to the gun sales because the ATF didn’t keep track of the guns. In other words, even if cartel members used these guns in Mexico, there’s no way to trace the gun from the purchase to the cartel. And if the ATF's plan was just to assume the connection (something that is not permissible in a court of law) then why even bother releasing the guns?

Thus, even if the operation worked perfectly, it still could not have achieved the ATF's goals.

But more importantly, what was the cost of this stupidity? Republicans Rep. Daryl Issa and Sen. Charles Grassley just issued a 51 page report damning Operation Fast and Furious. From the start, this operation was criticized by experienced ATF agents as “reckless.” Said Grassley: “Both line agents and gun dealers who co-operated with the ATF repeatedly expressed concerns [about the operation]. . . but ATF supervisors did not heed those warnings. Instead, they told agents to follow orders because this was sanctioned from above.” And when ATF bosses were told this could result in people getting killed, they responded: “if you are going to make an omelet, you need to scramble some eggs.” In other words, they didn’t care. Apparently, they even threatened to fire or punish agents who complained.

It is unknown how many crimes these guns were used to commit because the ATF had no way to monitor what happened to the guns. But before the operation was stopped, 1,730 guns were allowed to disappear onto the black market, including hundreds of AK-47s and sniper rifles. One of those AK-47s was later used to kill Board Patrol Agent Brian Terry. And when he was killed, the ATF embarked on a cover up. William Newell, the special agent in charge of the operation, ordered the arrest of 20 of the minor gun buyers and then declared the operation a success even though nothing was ever linked to a single senior cartel member. When he was asked if the guns the ATF had let disappear were deliberately allowed to end up in the hands of criminals, he lied: “Hell no!”

So what you have here is a government agency that embarked on a policy that could not achieve the goals for which it was planned, which endangered thousands of American and Mexican lives, and which covered up the mess it created. If that’s not an argument for reining in the government, then nothing is.

Naturally, Obama has denied any knowledge of the operation and I’m sure Eric Holder will too. There is speculation that acting ATF director Kenneth Melson will be made the scapegoat here. But this is not the kind of operation that happens without higher up approval. In fact, one ATF agent has stated that this operation was cleared by the State Department, i.e. Hillary Clinton (who "coincidentally" came to the border to decry American guns right before this operation started).

To dodge this scandal, the Democrats are spinning this as the fault of the gun lobby for blocking the appointment of Obama’s choice to run the ATF -- that's the same Democrats who had a 60 seat majority but didn't confirm the guy. They also are trying to claim this started in 2006, which is true of the overall operation but not of the gun walking -- which only started in 2009 apparently after the approval of State. The ATF is trying to spin this as the result of the ATF not having enough personnel to monitor the guns, but that begs the question why they even started the operation.

In fact, why would they do this at all? The ATF says they wanted to get a better grasp on how cartels work, but that kind of knowledge is already available and this wouldn’t have helped them in any event. The real goal, in my opinion, was to create data to prove what Obama/Hillary/Holder were all arguing: that gun control is needed because American gun shops are arming Mexican drug cartels. That argument wasn’t working because everyone knows better. As I pointed out at the time, it’s silly to think Mexican cartels were buying guns from American gun shops when they have co-opted whole departments of the Mexican police and whole military units -- they could easily get better hardware out of Mexican armories. BUT. . . if American guns with serial numbers known to the ATF could suddenly be traced to a significant portion of murders in Mexico, then Obama/Clinton/Holder would have a new argument to aid them in their gun control attempts.

It strikes me this is a prime example of politicians abusing law enforcement to generate a controversy to help them score political points. People died so Team Obama could score those points. This is shameful and needs to be investigated.

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Secretary of State Clinton Backs El Jefe

We were recently treated to a jokey Barack Obama in Texas, telling us our borders are secure, he's the immigration president, and dumb Republicans want to install unnecessary border moats filled with alligators. In all the glow of the words coming from the mouth of The Anointed One, perhaps you missed Hillary Clinton's follow-up speech at the forty-first Washington Conference on the Americas.

Clinton luxuriated in the wonderful interdependence between Latin America and the United States. Particularly when it comes to immigration. She loves it. She also forgot to mention any distinction between legal and illegal immigration. She said that immigration from Mexico particularly "makes some people nervous." Uh, not really. Massive illegal immigration makes a lot of us considerably more than nervous. She further exulted that "the United States is blessed to have one of the largest Spanish-speaking populations in the world." I'd rather we had the largest Hispanic population that speaks fluent English.

She explained how she is a huge fan of Mexican President Calderon (you know, the guy who addressed Congress and denounced immigration-related legislation in several border states). She mused over Calderon's honesty about the unfortunate need for Mexican citizens to swim or hike across the American border. After all, Calderon has said "emigration from my country will continue as long as Mexico cannot offer its people the job opportunities they deserve." And who's fault is that, you two? Now get your hand out of my wallet, Senor Presidente.

She further spoke of our "joint problem of narcoterrorism." Well, how does that justify erasing the American border? We have the junkie problem. They have the narcoterrorists. The real problem is that the Obama administration is willing to allow the narcoterrorists to form up on our side of the border. Then we'll have both problems. The Mexican police have done next-to-nothing to halt the murder and mayhem in Mexico, and are often directly involved in those activities themselves. Calderon can't even control his own law enforcement agencies. American undercover narcotics agents, supposedly working in cooperation with the Mexican police, are frequently outed or attacked by the very Mexican authorities they are working with.

Let's move on. We also share the problem of climate change, says Hillary. But it's so impressive that Mexico has taken such a strong position on the issue. She becomes rhapsodic, in fact. Says the Secretary: "We are building bilateral and multilateral (she almost forgot the other Latin Americans) partnerships to help us address the strategic challenges we face."

"Pathways to Prosperity and the Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas are promoting inclusive growth and sustainable energy security." I have no idea what that means, but if it's "security," it must be good. Undaunted, she went on to say: "It was a Mexican proposal for the Green Fund that will serve as the vehicle for assisting developing countries in meeting their climate needs." Yep--their needs, our green. When Hillary says "green initiative," she means greenbacks being spent on other countries who are also crazy enough to think that "climate change" has nothing to do with the sun or terrestrial internal thermodynamics. If you believe in anthropogenic global warming and Mexico's contribution to stop it, you might want to take a look at a Mexican delivery truck spewing out more noxious greenhouse gas fumes in a day than your entire family will produce in a year.

My favorite part of her speech relates to our shared values. Particularly where it comes to free elections, a republican form of government, the rule of law, and private enterprise. Says the Hill: "Now, Latin America has undergone a stunning transformation over the past few decades." Like Venezuela, I suppose. Never one to allow one lie to go untold or one fact to go undistorted, Clinton spoke specifically about Honduras. "Now, in Honduras, we have seen how effective that kind of common approach can be. And now that the obstacles to former President Zelaya's return to Honduras have been removed, I am confident that we will soon welcome Honduras back as a full member of the inter-American system. That is a step that is long overdue." WTF?

Hillary is still fighting the fight to put a disgraced wannabe dictator back in power in Honduras. The Obama administration has quite literally gotten everything wrong about Zelaya's attempted Hugo Chavez-style takeover of a constitutional republic. The Obamists don't understand our own Constitution, but they're more than willing to tell Hondurans what their constitution means. A year and a half after it became apparent that Zelaya had no intention of following his own nation's laws, the Obama administration is still saying and doing all the wrong things.

They've attempted bribery and threats to get the duly-elected government of Honduras to let Zelaya back in. The "removed obstacles" to Zelaya's return were the result of money and pressure applied by leftist US Ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens. Since Zelaya's ouster, Llorens and the State Department have lavished at least $100 million dollars on Honduras, each "gift" specifically containing a provision that the strictures against Zelaya be relaxed. Meanwhile, Llorens and Clinton have used multiple tricks to isolate Honduras from trade and mutual security agreements with other Latin American nations until the Honduran government caves in and lets Zelaya back into Honduras without legal charges pending against him.

And you thought Obama was the master of sound and fury signifying nothing. Hillary makes him look like an amateur, and she's an even-more facile liar. For fully fleshed-out discussions of the Zelaya/Honduras fiasco, check our Index over on the right side of the cover page, and click on "Honduras."
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When Is A Coyote Not A Coyote?

When it's a scumbag who exploits Mexican nationals by gouging them monetarily and abusing them physically as they bring them illegally across the southern American border. But that's not really the point of this article. I just read an Associated Press dispatch about euphemisms being used in Mexico for all the violence resulting from the drug wars.

It seems there are two lines of thought about why euphemisms and verbal shorthand are commonplace among all classes of Mexican citizens. Either (or both) may be correct. The first line is that jargon anesthetizes people by making extreme behavior seem mundane, and may be an intentional plan formed by the drug cartels. The second is that it is a psychological defense mechanism that the average person uses to deal with the horrific. I don't come down on either side, at least for now.

This list is not even close to being exhaustive, but hits the most common euphemisms surrounding the drug violence that is slowly spilling across the border. "Narco" has become the common usage for those involved in the violent drug trade, and it also serves as a prefix for other expressions deriving from the violence. "Narco fosas" are pits where the drug gangs dispose of their victims. "Narco mantas" are the threatening banners that the gangs use over highway overpasses to terrorize those who might interfere with their activities. "Narco tiendas" are compact areas for drug-dealing.

Cartel fellow-travelers who inform the gangs of possible police activity are called "posts" or "stakes" in Spanish because they hang around in one place trying to get information. "Ventanas" (windows) are informers who walk around and occasionally mark intended targets with special graffiti or advertising fliers. Contract killings are "jobs," kidnap-murders are "pickups," and "settling accounts" means killing rivals. "Necklacing" (originally used in South Africa, but adapted by the cartels) means placing gasoline-soaked tires over a bound enemy's body and setting them on fire.

We have done much the same thing over the years in America, and probably for the same reasons--some good, some bad, some situational, some intentional. And motives are often hard to discern. "Whack" for kill. "Taken for a ride" meaning grabbed and taken away to be killed. "Snitch" for police informer. "Tragedy" for an intentional act of violence which results in multiple deaths or injuries. "Hit" (in both countries) to mean "murder." The list could go on and on. I'm sure you can think of plenty.

That got me thinking about the euphemisms revolving around the mass murder of 3000 innocent civilians by religious/political terrorists on American soil nearly ten years ago. The appellation "9/11" had been adopted by nearly everyone who discusses the attack. It tends to demean the deaths, but I believe that is largely unintentional, and it is good shorthand for a single horrendous event. It eliminates the need to revisit the horror by having to describe it.

However, I think the left owns the intentional downgrading of the horror with its carefully-crafted euphemisms. "Man-caused disaster" for mass murder of civilians. "Extremists" for Islamic terrorists who are not far from mainstream Islam. "Angry youths" for mad dogs who are clearly identifiable as mid-twenties Muslims. "Kinetic military action" when talking about which Islamic group we will attack while defending a different Islamic group. "Fundamentalist Muslim" for those who simply take the Koran at its word without quibble.

And then there's the old tried and true euphemism "racist" for those who are willing to name the enemy and the crime. "Islamophobe" describes anyone who thinks that Islam is not the religion of peace and can point out multiple examples of recent mass murders and attempted mass murders committed by those same Islamists. "Allahu Akbar" as simply meaning "God/Allah is great" when in fact it is the Muslim version of "Geronimo" as an attack is being carried out. Let's not forget "Muslim Cultural Center" as a substitute for "Ground Zero Mosque." "Personal struggle" for jihad, neglecting to notice that Mein Kampf means pretty much the same thing.

I'm not going to agonize over this trend, but I couldn't help giving it some thought. I imagine more than a few of you have had the same thoughts. Once in a rare while, even the AP provokes some genuine musing.

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Beanbags Versus AK-47s On The Border

At least if you bring a knife to a gunfight, you have a chance to stab the other guy while he's bent over in laughter at your stupidity. Even bringing a gun to a gunfight can be too little, if you're armed with a .38 police special and the bad guys are armed with multiple assault rifles.

I thought we learned that lesson after the North Hollywood Bank of America robbery fifteen years ago. If we learned anything it was that the good guys need to be able to outgun and outshoot the bad guys. But if we concentrate on equality of firepower, we miss another critical factor: The rules of engagement. Those rules still unnecessarily give all the advantages to the bad guys. And as a result, a Border Patrol agent was murdered on December 14 during a one-sided shootout with a well-known vicious gang of Mexican gangsters. One of the criminals was also killed, but only after Border agents had lost one of their own by virtue of truly stupid rules of engagement.

Five Border Patrol agents were tracking an already-identified gang of bandits north of Nogales in Peck Canyon (Arizona) known as a "rip crew." A rip crew is usually a gang of Mexican thugs who illegally cross the border to prey on other illegals. They attack drug traffickers to kill the traffickers and seize their drugs for their own profit. They target "coyotes" and their illegal immigrant "clients" for murder, rape and extortion, relying on the living victims not to testify against them. They are always armed, always murderous, and confident that with weak-sister American rules of engagement they have the advantage.

The Border agents used night-vision binoculars to locate and identify their enemy. They easily identified at least two AK-47 assault rifles being carried by the gang. They shouted to the rip crew, announcing their presence and ordering the gang to drop their weapons. Fat chance of that. So now they're ready for a firefight, correct? Well, the gang certainly was. But the Border Patrol was still bound by nebulous, "situational" social welfare, goody two-shoes bureaucratic regulations. In order to avoid future prosecution by the political hacks or dismissal by their own agency, the agents fired beanbag rounds. The scumbags responded with real bullets, resulting in the death of agent Brian Terry.

The purpose of beanbag rounds is to disable an apparently-violent suspect temporarily who may or not have lethal force at his disposal. They were not designed for situations in which there is a known "enemy" who is identified on the spot as fully-armed with assault weapons and a long history of using them. Only a doctrinaire bureaucrat sitting in a safe and cushy government chair could consider putting those kinds of restraints on professional law enforcement. When their lives are on the line, and only milliseconds separate their lives from the grave, police should never be required to spend those milliseconds deciding which outrageous policy or procedure might apply to their current life-threatening situation. In this situation, one clear and unequivocal rule should have applied: The enemy is a clear and present danger, he is fully armed, we have verified that in advance, so--SHOOT TO KILL, NOW!

Even if the Border Patrol had fired first, in order to incapacitate with a beanbag round, there is a simple physical fact involved. Good intentions aside, along with bleeding-heart bureaucratic regulations and rules of engagement, a beanbag round is fired from a shotgun. It immediately reveals the location of the shooter. If the beanbag successfully incapacitates one or two gangsters, what about the others? Even those who are not particularly good shots now have a clear target, and with an AK-47 set on full automatic they have a substantial chance of killing the shooter or his fellow agents.

This entire set of gruesome and insane restrictions on the rules of engagement was based almost entirely on one politically-sensitive case of one Mexican teenager who chucked rocks at agents and was shot dead by the agents for his efforts. The Peck Canyon reality was a totally, even wildly different situation. There is no connection between rock-throwing kids and fully-armed criminals operating under cover of dark (although I would argue that some rocks can be pretty deadly if properly thrown). But bureaucrats and politically-correct liberals are pretty good shots, too. They know how to kill a mosquito with their own bureaucratic elephant guns. The mosquito in this case is the ability of law enforcement officers to protect themselves and the general public.

So long as DHS, Congressional Democrats and the White House refuse to recognize the violent invasion that is taking place on our southern border, this "beanbags first" policy is going to get more police and innocent civilians killed. I prefer the old-fashioned method. When police are confronted with known, armed criminals the following procedure shall apply: "Stop!" Bang, bang, bang, bang, rat-a-tat-tat-tat. "Or we'll shoot."
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El Presidente Demagogue

Sometimes politicians make it so easy to point out their stupidity and hypocrisy that it feels like taking candy from a voter. That was the case with Mexican President Felipe Calderon the other day, who demonstrated that he’s a top notch demagogue who is happy to exploit any tragedy he can to help his sagging political career. Check this out.

A week or so ago, a tragedy occurred along the U.S./Mexico border. Anastacio Hernandez, who was in this country illegally, was being deported by federal Border Patrol agents. They were in California. According to the Border Patrol agents, when they removed Hernandez’s handcuffs at the border crossing between San Diego and Tijuana, he turned on them and wrestled both to the ground. One of the agents pulled out a stun gun and shocked Hernandez. Hernandez died a few hours later from that shock.

This is a tragedy on many levels. It’s a tragedy that Hernandez is dead. His death was entirely avoidable if he had simply crossed into Mexico rather than pointlessly fighting the Border Patrol. And it’s a tragedy that these two Border Patrol agents will have to live with having caused a death. Moreover, it's a tragedy that every leftist in Congress will now try to exploit this tragedy by calling for the heads of the two Border Patrol agents who do not appear to have done anything wrong. They will also call for hearings on stun guns, one of many causes on the left.

And chief among the exploiters, getting a solid head start, was Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who saw in this tragedy an opportunity to raise his Obama-like popularity ratings (41%). Calderon began by completely losing all sense of reality, by describing what happened as “torture” and stating that “a death with that degree of violence is truly a unacceptable violation.”

So a guy gets shot with a stun gun, as in “don’t taze me bro,” after he chooses to fight two cops who are letting him go, and he dies because of a freak set of circumstances, and that’s a “degree of violence” that is unacceptable? Really? That’s torture? Seriously?

How does that compare with corrupt Mexican police and drug gangs torture-killing thousands of citizens in Mexico over the past several years in ways that are too graphic to discuss? Where is the condemnation for the illegals who have been brutally killing Arizona ranchers? How about the bodies they’re pulling out of the abandoned mine in Mexico? The deputies found decapitated on Mexican highways? The murder of family members when you can’t get at the principal? The execution style killings of politicians? Any of this ring any bells Felipe? And let’s not forget that Hernandez started it.

Then Calderon tossed in Arizona’s immigration law, claiming that it “opens a Pandora’s box of the worst abuses in the history of humanity.” Really? Asking people for identification is the same as the Holocaust, or the genocides in Cambodia, Turkey, Rawanda, Sudan, and so on? It’s the same as Stalin’s mass murders and purges? It’s the same as the slave trade or Islamic terrorists blowing up school girls? It’s the same as what’s going on in Mexico right now? Me thinks someone needs some perspective.

Not to mention that this has nothing to do with Arizona’s law. This took place in California. And if you don’t know where Tijuana is, then buy a map señor. Secondly, these were federal agents enforcing federal law -- these weren’t Arizona cops. And let’s not forget that Mexico’s “laws” are much harsher when it comes to illegals, and that Mexico’s “justice” system actually is brutal and corrupt, not pretend brutal like you’re making out the US system to be.

Maybe exploiting and demagoguing a tragedy is good politics in Mexico, but it certainly sucks here. And maybe if you would do something to make Mexico something other than a cesspool of violence and despair, then this whole problem wouldn’t have come up in the first place? Maybe it's time to shut the heck up el Presidente?

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From Rep. McClintock to Presidente Calderon with Love...

On May 20th, Mexican President Felipe Calderon spent his day as a distinquished guest of the American people. A typical state dinner was given in his honor complete with attempted party crashers at the Whitehouse and he was granted the rare honor to speak before a joint session of Congress. And speak he did. I won't bore you with the video of Calderon mainly because it may cause irreparable harm to LawHawk, but CBSNews.com reported:

"Calderon received his longest round of applause when he spoke in Spanish, addressing Mexican migrants in the U.S. and telling them that Mexico admires them, misses them, and is fighting hard for their rights and their families.

Calderon also won sustained applause when he said, "I strongly disagree with the recently adopted law in Arizona. It is a law that not only ignores a reality that cannot be erased by decree, but also introduced a terrible idea using racial profiling for law enforcement."

What CBSNews.com did not report was that he received a sustained standing ovation (Warning for LawHawk!) from our left-leaning Congresscritters when he denounced the new Arizona laws.  No one seemed to think anything was wrong with that.  But I do.  And finally Rep. Tom McClintock (R/CA) went on the record to give Calderon a slapdown:



Thank you, Congressman. It is good to know that at least one elected official in Congress supports the American people. [+] Read More...

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Forget The Minority Take Over Of America

You’ve all heard how there will be more minorities in the United States by 2050 than there will be whites, right? Forget it. It’s not happening. Moreover, expect the illegal alien problem to start going away soon all on its own. Why? Because demographics don’t move in a straight line.

If you do as the left does, and you look at demographics as a straight line, then you see that 30 million Hispanics in 1980 turned into 45 million Hispanics in 2000 and will turn into 67 million in 2020 and 104 million in 2040. That, combined with blacks and Asians (groups that are not experiencing growth), results in about 50% of the population by 2050.

But that’s not how demographics work, and recent developments have shown the problem with this assumption. First, when the recession hit the United States, large numbers of Hispanics left the United States. So many in fact, that the Census Bureau had to revise its estimates downward for the future take over of the United States by a decade. They now estimate that there will be only 105.1 million Hispanics by 2050 -- a full decade later than expected.

But there’s another problem with this that hasn’t been considered yet. The key to Hispanic growth has been Mexico. Indeed, almost all of the growth in the Hispanic population in the United States has been the result of Mexicans coming to the United States. When Reagan granted an amnesty in the 1980s, there were about five million Mexicans illegally in the United States. By 2000, we’d added another 12 million. That seventeen million is more than one-third of the forty-five million Hispanics in the United States today, and it represents almost the entire growth in the Hispanic population since the 1980s.

Indeed, if you look at the map to the right, you’ll see that consistent with this, Hispanics are almost entirely concentrated along the border with Mexico.

So why does this matter? Because things are changing dramatically in Mexico.

Mexicans first started coming to the United States in vast numbers in the 1980s. There were two reasons for this. First, with the end of the oil boom, Mexico’s economy tanked. At the same time, the American economy boomed. Thus, with few jobs south of the border and large numbers of jobs north of the border, people fled Mexico for the United States. This was made even worse by the fact that Mexico’s economy was almost entirely dependent on the oil industry and that its government is one of the most corrupt in the world -- leading to a lack of opportunities and huge disparities in income, which creates a large underclass.

The second reason was that Mexico’s collapse coincided with a baby boom that began in the 1950s, similar to that experienced by the United States. Indeed, in the 1960s, Mexico had the highest birth rate in the world, with Mexican mothers having on average seven children each. Thus, in addition to its economic collapse, Mexico was awash in young people, who are by-their-nature more willing to emigrate to find work. These were the people who began coming in the 1980s.

So what’s changed? Mexico’s birth rate has plummeted. It is now just over 2 children per mother, almost identical to the birth rate in the United States, and it’s still falling -- it will soon be at European levels (around 1.4). Because of this, Mexico’s population is estimated to peak in 2043, though I suspect that will happen much sooner, as it has in other countries. That means that the supply of people to head north is quickly running out.

Moreover, because of this change, the population is aging much quicker, which will accelerate the decline in the number of people willing to go north. Not only is an older population less interested in emigrating, but this also means that there will be more opportunities for Mexico’s young to find solid, long-term employment. Also, a smaller, older population tends to lead to greater personal wealth because the competition for employees drives up wages. This again, reduces emigration because it makes it more profitable to remain in Mexico. It also may draw people back to Mexico, just as this recession has done, because they can do better in Mexico.

What all of this means is that there will be fewer Mexicans very soon, and fewer of them will want to come to the United States to find work. That means that American Hispanics will no longer be receiving the mega-demographic boost that illegal immigration has been providing. When you exclude those numbers, the rest of Hispanic America is growing at about the same pace as white America.

Thus, the Hispanic growth rate will soon start to fall from 50% every twenty years to around 4%, about the growth rate of everybody else.

Hence, reports of the minority take over of America have been greatly exaggerated.


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Badges. . . We Don’t Need No Stinking Badges. . .

Do you remember the big fuss made by Team Obama and Mexico’s incompetent government a couple months back? Remember how all the carnage in Mexico was the result of automatic weapons being sold in the United States and then smuggled across the border to kill policemen? Wanna know the truth? It’s actually kind of scary. Read on. . .

Now at the outset, you know this story is bunk. Indeed, as you will recall from our article on guns, you can no longer buy new automatic weapons in the United States, and getting the older ones is extremely difficult. It’s also very difficult under the law to manufacture semi-automatic weapons that can be converted to full automatic. Not to mention that you can’t buy rockets and other real military hardware at all.

So where is this equipment coming from? Meet Los Zetas.

Who Is Los Zetas?

Mexico, like much of South-Central America, is beset by corruption. Local police are often for sale to the highest bidder. This has allowed various criminal enterprises (drug cartels, crime syndicates, smugglers) to all but turn Mexico in a series of small criminal kingdoms, with any attempt to combat these groups being frustrated by the complicity of local law enforcement.

To solve this problem, Mexico turned to their army. With the help of the United States, Mexico set up an elite anti-crime/counter-insurgency unit that it could send into any part of the country to impose order where the local authorities failed or refused, and to fight these criminal enterprises. This group, called the Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales (GAFE), was trained in the full range of special forces tactics at Fort Bragg and is equipped with the latest in US special forces hardware. So far so good.

In the late 1990, Gulf Cartel leader Osiel Cardenas Guillen began recruiting GAFE members to act as protection. His top recruit, Lt. Arturo Guzmán Decena brought with him approximately 30 other GAFE members. They called themselves Los Zetas, for the radio code “Zeta” used by the Mexican military to identify leadership persons.

Upon the arrest of Guillen, Los Zetas set out on their own. Soon enough, they set up camps to train recruits, including ex-federal, state and local police. Eventually, this would increase the number of members in Los Zetas to around 4000 members.

(A rival gang, the Sinaloa Cartel, has established its own version of Los Zetas known as Los Negros.)

Not only does Los Zetas operate at a higher tactical level than local authorities, but they are also extremely well armed (body armor, Kevlar ballistic helmets, a variety of automatic weapons including 50 caliber machine guns, grenade launchers, surface-to-air missiles, helicopters and a variety of explosives), and they make extensive use of wire tapping and cell phone tapping. Apparently, they also often masquerade as federal troops or police, using both federal uniforms and vehicles.

And what does this private army do? They collect debts, secure cocaine supply and trafficking routes, kidnap individuals, perform murder-for-hire, engage in extortion and money-laundering schemes, smuggle humans, and, most importantly, execute rivals. In that regard, they are known for incredible sadism and savagery. One common tactic, for example, involves putting their victim into a barrel of oil and setting the oil on fire -- this is reminiscent of the practice of “tiring” or “necklacing” practiced in Haiti and by the African National Congress in South Africa, where a tire is placed over the victims shoulders, filled with gasoline, and then set on fire.

Los Zetas also is known for monitoring and kidnapping journalists and their families, and they have hired gangs like the Texas Syndicate and MS-13 to carry out contract killings in within the United States. They are suspected in the recent murder of a popular politician and his family, though they deny involvement.

Threat To The Mexican Government

The fight between Los Zetas and the Mexican government has been so intense that many have feared the government would fall. Indeed, in February 2009, Rick Perry called out the National Guard, including armor and air units, “as a preventive measure upon the possible collapse of the Mexican State.”

This followed a year in which:

• In September 2008, Los Zetas members killed eight people and wounded more than 100 by tossing grenades into crowds of people celebrating Mexico’s independence in the city of Morelia.

• In December, eight soldiers were found tortured and decapitated in the resort town of Acapulco. The heads were stuffed in a plastic bag, left outside a shopping center with a note saying: “For every one of us you kill, we are going to kill 10.”

• In July, a group called La Familia, with whom Los Zetas apparently works, dumped the bodies of twelve federal police intelligence agents on a highway in Michoacán.

• At the end of August, a dozen hooded gunmen burst into a drug rehabilitation clinic in Ciudad Juarez, on the Texas border, lined up the patients, and killed eighteen of them. On the same day, another 30 people were executed across Mexico.

Last week, Mexican President Felipe Calderon removed Attorney General Eduardo Medina Mora from office because of concerns that the government is losing this war.

Threat To The United States

Right now, Los Zetas is primarily based in the border region of Nuevo Laredo, though they are believed to operate all along the border and in most parts of the country. There is also evidence that Los Zetas has spread to Texas.

Since late 2006, more than 80 United States law enforcement officers working on the U.S.-Mexico border at the local, state and federal level have been convicted of corruption-related charges, according to an Associated Press tally. They have helped Los Zetas move drugs as far as Delaware.

In August, it was revealed that Los Zetas smuggled $46 million worth of oil stolen from PEMEX into the United States, where it was sold to U.S. refineries using false import documents.

Following a joint investigation titled “Operation Black Jack” by the ATF, DEA, ICE, FBI and Homeland Security, American authorities raided two Los Zetas’s safe houses in Texas, freeing over 40 kidnapped individuals.

On October 26, 2008, the Washington Times reported that the FBI warned Texas law enforcement that Los Zetas had threatened “a full tactical response” should law enforcement interfere with their operations. In response, a leader of Los Zetas was arrested in Reynosa, Tamaulipas (a border city) on November 7, 2008. In that operation, the Mexican Army and Mexican Federal Police seized three safe houses and found 540 assault rifles, 287 grenades, 2 M72 Law rocket launchers, half a million rounds of ammunition, 67 ballistic vests and 14 sticks of dynamite.

Conclusion

So where do these guns that are plaguing Mexico come from? Where else would former military and police officers with deep connections to the Mexican police and military get modern American military hardware of the type provided by the American military to the Mexican military (but not available to average Americans)? Well, if you’re a liberal or journalist, apparently you think they’re buying this hardware from gun stores in Texas.

This is an issue that needs to be addressed before Mexico explodes. It is shameful that Team Obama would not only turn a blind eye, but would falsely try to convert the crisis they should be addressing into an opportunity to make false political points against lawful gun ownership in the United States.

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