In case anyone is still wondering, the Bush administration really does believe America’s borders need even less policing than they get right now, The Decider’s Potemkin-village photo ops in border towns like Yuma notwithstanding.

Phase One in the Bushite neutering of the Border Patrol is finding scapegoat Border Patrol agents to put in federal penitentiaries as punishment for doing their jobs. For emphasis, make sure you mix those defenseless agents into a prison population full of illegal alien gang-bangers, and see what happens… Phase One is still ongoing, but President Bush must figure the prospect of telling your illegal-alien fellow inmates why you work for the Border Patrol still isn’t deterrent enough to keep Border Patrol agents from patrolling America’s border. Time for another brainwave that could spring only from the furrowed brow of The Decider or his twin brain, Ms. Rice (not-so-affectionately renamed by Bill Lind as the Tea Lady): Better to remove the Border Patrol from the border altogether!

So bring on Phase Two of the Bushite gutting of the Border Patrol, reported by the Houston Chronicle yesterday: lure Border Patrol agents away from the onerous (and counterproductive, in President Bush’s eyes) task of securing America’s borders. Instead, offer them a huge premium over what the Border Patrol can offer to go help secure the borders of a country Mr. Bush does care about: Iraq.[U.S. wants Border Patrol agents for Iraq |Firm seeks veteran officers to mentor Iraqis on immigration , By Steve McVicker April 30, 2007 ]

What could be in store as Phase Three? Filling the Border Patrol with affirmative action hires with roots and relatives in Mexico, and all the conflicts of interest that flow therefrom? Oh, I forgot, the feds have already been doing that for years…

Now the Democrats have tipped their mitt that they don’t have the guts to impeach President Bush over his mendacious Mesopotamian misadventure, are any Congressional Republicans willing to buck the GOP party line and offer articles of impeachment based on Mr. Bush’s criminal dereliction of one of his few explicit constitutional duties (Art. IV, § 3): to protect each of the United States against invasion?

A reader reports:

I was video taping with my anti illegal alien group (US Border Watch) at a protest on Saturday. Our Houston NBC affiliate was at the protest to do a story. [Send them mail] The following picture below is a screen grab from the event.

The NBC cameraman had a Mexican flag attached to his camera! This is making headlines on some forums here in Houston, and was talked about quite a bit this morning on both Houston and Dallas channels. Fair and balanced, unbiased and non-partisan, right? Ha!

As usual, Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution illustrates Across Difficult Country’s aphorism.

Alex says:

I understand individual rights and I understand counting everyone equally but I see less value in counting some in and some out based on arbitrary characteristics like which side of the border the actors fall on.

The difference is quite obvious if you remove the libertarian economists’ assume-we-have-a-can-opener blinders. We live in a world where violence — perpetrating it and preventing it — is the fundamental fact that social and political organization must deal with.

Thus, all property rights come out of the barrel of a gun.

Once you realize that, the reason why we prefer the welfare of our fellow citizens to that of non-citizens is (to get all reductionist):

They are the ones who would fight on your side.

[Crossposted at Isteve.com]

You might ask, and for good reason, why I would be so happy about today’s big event–you know, the latest illegal immigrant nationwide protest march. Easy enough, I’ll tell you!

You see, every time these annoying folk assemble in large numbers chanting about their woebegone lives, more and more people awaken to our cause. More and more people (who might normally be spared the knowledge that millions of illegal aliens have invaded and are taking over America) become outraged enough to get up and do something about it.

You might recall last year at this time I was scheduled to appear on Scarborough Country (MSNBC) but the driver sent by the network could not get into the Los Angeles studios thanks to all the protesters blocking the streets. Yeah, these would be those “hard working people who just come here for work” who in fact are not working but instead preventing me from doing my job.

Yes, I’m still rather bitter about that.

Last year, major cities were handicapped and residents were unfairly inconvenienced. Hundreds of supposedly Latino students skipped school, people walked our streets parading Mexican flags, news stations kept running all the insolent remarks made by the “organizers” or “activists” and thousands of participants wore t-shirts that said “I’m illegal–so what?”

Hopefully much the same will happen this time because as I already said, it makes people angry…angry enough to do something.

I seem to remember legislation floating about Congress last year that would basically grant amnesty to all these people and then somehow, miraculously, the discussion stopped. Places such as Hazleton PA enacted city ordinances to punish illegal immigrants and those who hire them. The small town folk came alive…thank God!

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villarrrrrraigosa and Cardinal Roger Mahony are of course pushing the event but encouraging kids to stay in school–good idea when you consider that Hispanics have the highest drop-out rate among students in California public schools.

For more info click here.

I’ll be watching throughout the day…I’ll let you know how it goes! Keep your fingers crossed for things like Mexican flags and Spanish versions of the National Anthem…real crowd pleasers they are!

Columnist Pat Buchanan has now joined VDARE.COM’s Peter Brimelow in suggesting that some attention ought to be paid to the Virginia Tech shooter’s immigrant status as well as, you know, gun control.

Support for Buchanan and Brimelow has come from an unexpected source: an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Maggie Olona, the director of the student counseling service at Texas A&M University says, “Writing scary stories is not against the law…Odd behavior is not a crime. Not talking to people is not a crime. … You have to wait for someone to do something, and sometimes the first step can be a murder.” (Counselors Say Cases Like Cho’s Are Hard to Spot as Students’ Behavior Becomes More Extreme, by Scott Carlson, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 4-23-07)

But it’s not simply a matter of “scary writing” or “odd behavior“:

Indeed, college counselors say that this generation of students seems particularly troubled, and the problems they bring to counseling centers are worse than those of past years. “College counseling centers are very aware of the increasing pathology coming through our doors,” Ms. Olona says.

“…Is there a profile of people who do this? Of course,” says [the director of counseling services Cornell University] Mr. Eells.

Without again mentioning “profiling,” the article goes on to mention briefly that:

At Cornell, the counseling center has made a special effort to reach out to minority and international students, who suffer from extra levels of stress and are less likely to reach out to counselors. Satellite counseling offices have been set up in buildings on the campus that are regularly used by international and minority students.

In other words, more international students = more stress = (at least arguably) more Chos.

BTW, VDARE.COM ran a letter suggesting “A Million International Students Are A Time Bomb“ because of a bomb threat incident a month before Cho’s rampage.

The Korea Times, meanwhile, reported that about 460 students from Korea are studying at Virginia Tech, along with an estimated 500 students of Korean descent. Cho, living in the US since 1993, was still carrying a Korean passport. (Why hadn’t he applied for American citizenship? Why hasn’t the MSAM asked?)

Well, I’m glad that’s cleared up. They were actually killed by …guns. And American fundamental rights.

Tom Plate [send him mail] writes

So let’s just disregard all the hoopla about the race of the student responsible for the slayings. These students were not killed by a Korean, they were killed by a 9 mm handgun and a .22-caliber handgun.Plate: Let’s lay down our right to bear arms - CNN.com

Earlier in the article, Plate had written “Ban Ki-moon is also Korean! Our brilliant new United Nations secretary general has not only never fired a gun…” (but had a engineered some kind of bogus peace plan for Sudan, blah blah blah.)

I don’t see how a guy who spends as much time writing about Asia as Plate does could avoid knowing that all Koreans are required by law to do military service.

That being the case, I’d like to see some evidence that Ban-Ki Moon has never fired a gun.

It’s true that South Korea has gun control as well as universal conscription. That may have been a factor in the one of the worst mass killings in history, the 57 people killed by Woo Bum Kon, a South Korean policeman who had taken guns from a police armory.

As for “all the hoopla about the race” and more important, the immigrant status, of Cho Seung Hui, there hasn’t been any, except for a few people like us and Pat Buchanan. It’s not allowed, remember?