"We Can't Man, Those F***ers are Everywhere!"

The Minuteman Project, a large-scale volunteer neighborhood watch program along 22-23 miles of the U.S./Mexican border, has completed over two full weeks in operation.

The results so far have been disappointing... at least to the bulk of the MSM/DNC and the ACLU, along with illegal immigration advocacy groups such as the White House and Congress.

All of these groups claimed there would be widespread vigilantism by overzealous volunteers, which has not occurred. These groups also claimed there would be potentially violent confrontations with both law enforcement and illegals, none of which has happened since the project started March 30 (one claim was made, and dismissed by local law enforcement).

In fact, the arrest of illegals along the section of border patrolled by the MMP has dropped from approximately 1,000 a day to less than 20 in the past week according to front line border control officers, and the MMP is claiming 268 arrests as the result of watchful volunteers calling the border patrol. CNN is reporting potentially higher numbers, citing the Border Patrol as responding to 317 calls from the Naco and Douglas area netting 846 arrests, though they will not say which of these calls and arrests were made as a result of volunteer activity.

The drop in attempted illegal border crossings and number of volunteer-related apprehensions speaks volumes of the success of the MinuteMan Project, but perhaps the best testimony so far was this two-way radio conversation in Spanish overheard by MMP volunteers between drug dealers in the mountains near Sierra Vista, AZ:

"We've got to get down, to get our loads down!" [Meaning drug loads]
Reply: "We can't, man - those f***ers are everywhere!".

Obviously, Minuteman Project volunteers are not only succeeding in helping an underappreciated and underfunded Border Patrol, but a besieged Drug Enforcement Agency as well.

The tone of media coverage as shifted markedly since the project began, as well. In the days leading up to the start of the volunteer effort, much of the media coverage resembled this two weeks out-of date article crying out against vigilante justice, interference, and potential racism. This view, once dominate in the media, is increasingly giving way to comments such as these:

"Hundreds of Minuteman Project volunteers have done what the president has refused to do: They have helped to effectively halt illegal crossings in a 23-mile section of the Arizona-Mexico border. Volunteers have shown how easy it would be for the U.S. government to do the same." --USA Today

"The chairman of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus yesterday declared the 'Minuteman Project' border vigil a success and invited its organizers to Washington next week to meet with members of Congress." --Washington Times

"The controversy surrounding the Minuteman Project is a poorly crafted red herring.

"The simple, empirical reality is the Minuteman Project has been hugely successful. Illegal border crossings along the stretch of Arizona/Mexico border have virtually been stopped." --American Daily

The Minuteman Project has been so successful in fact, that the Minuteman Project has been swamped with applications by more volunteers than they can handle, forcing them for the time being to encourage volunteers toward similar organizations while the volunteers consider expanding to other areas in border states.

A clueless President Bush, instead of taking steps to strengthen the Border Patrol, instead has ordered a review of a simple requirement to require passports that might impede legal travel across out nation's borders.

Amazingly, he and most other politicians can't seem to be bothered to address illegal travel.

That is certain to change, as illegal immigration is rapidly turning into a major campaign issue for the 2006 mid-term elections. Illegal immigration and the unwarranted amnesty of illegal aliens are emerging, defining issues where voters may very well be willing to cross party lines to regain control of the border and their nation. Members of the House and Senate would be wise to heed their constituents if they hope to remain in office.

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Inciting Murder

Enough is enough.

Liberals are growing increasingly violent. They've gone from rude and boorish behavoir, to petty assault, to calls for suicide, to subtle calls for murder (read as "end Bush," see note below), to outright calls for politically-motivated homicide. These people are tacitly and sometimes enthusiastically accepted within their reality-based community, but they should not be allowed to function in real reality.

The people behind these examples of hate speech (and make no mistake, that is exactly what these examples are) must be found, investigated, and if necessary, prosecuted before they finally incite some mentally unstable person to commit murder, no doubt in the name of "peace."

These people are going to get people killed, most likely innocent bystanders. It is time for the Secret Service and the FBI to stop being politically correct and put an end to the rising tide of violence from the reality-challenged community.

Note: The owner of the Cafepress.com site with the "End Bush" HTML-style code not-so-cleverly tries to call this a "Closing Bush" tag, which in addition to not making grammatical sense, doesn't even follow good HTML form. HTML tags are noted as "start and "end" tags according to the W3C.

Update: Over at Right Thinking Girl's Tom Delay post (linked above), we've come up with quite the comparison of left vs. right violence. I first chimed in with an partial listing of assassinations and assassination attempts by political leftists in the United States:

...Hey, Sara... you're right.

As a matter of fact, the majority of political assassinations in America have come from the left or other variations of the mentally ill (as you will see below, many are both, liberalism and mental illness apparently run hand-in-hand), with the exception of RFK, who was killed by a long-standing lefty friend, the Jew-hating Muslim, in this instance Sirhan Sirhan.

The list goes on: John Wilkes Booth was a cross between Robert Byrd and Alec Baldwin, Charles J. Guiteau was a John Edwards-type lawyer who was told by the great beyond (perhaps channelling?) to murder President Garfield, Leon F. Czolgosz, who shot William McKinley was a lefty anarchist. Guiseppe Zangara who tried to kill FDR was a whacked-out anti-capitalist, and we all know Lee Harvey Oswald was a communist sympathizer.

Wannabe white Black Panther Sam Byck got himself killed trying to take out Nixon, and a year later, loonie lefty cultist Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme tried to take out President Ford, who was the target of lefty counterculture loser Sarah Jane Moore just 17 days later.

The evidence is pretty convincing Sara, that if there is a political assassination attempt in America, that either the left or the mentally ill are behind it (I'm not sure I see the distinction between the two, but some do).

Back to Andrew Mickel, the latest lefty political assassin in the link above. Not surprisingly, this guy was a graduate of Evergreen State College, home to bomb-tunnel speedbump Rachel "St. Pancake" Corrie. He has been convicted of murder, has been recommended for the death penalty, and will be formally sentenced two weeks from now.

Yeah, you guys love peace...

That was followed up by RTG poster "tex" reminding us to:

toss in stalin, lenin, pol pot, castro (including che)...they killed non-politicians until the cows came home, and not just at clinics...
(next post)
kim jong il...whoever the fuck is running china today...and venezuela...

But to be fair, the lefty visitors on RTG did come up with a list of right wingers that are guilty of political assassinations. I'll present it in its entirity (as of the most recent posting at RTG) here:

1. Eric Rudolph*
2. Hitler

They forgot Tim McVeigh, but you get the point.

* Rudolph's abortion clinic bombings were based on (bad) religious beliefs, not politics, so I'm not 100% certain he should even be included.

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AFLAC Duck on SE Asian Sex Tour?

And you thought you were having a bad day. (h/t: Drudge)

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Stupid Media Comment of the Day

From a CNN television segment about a small plane that crashed during an emergency landing on a higway today:

The plane "...might have clipped an 18-wheeler while flying lower than usual." (emphasis added)

Gee, you think?

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Shiavo and Pope are Not Real News for the American Left

You can always count on the Democratic Underground to be consistently out standing in a field, especially if a caretaker isn't there to usher them back inside the home. Mary Shaw's April 12 op-ed "Mind Control and the American Media" is a wonderful case in point.

Shaw wants us to consider the fact that the Terri Shiavo case occupied the media for a significant segment in March, and then the media transitioned rapidly into near 24-hour coverage of the last days, death, and burial of Pope John Paul II. This was apparently an unacceptable use of media time for Shaw:

"...the media has had very little to say about Iraq, where several more U.S. soldiers have been killed, the Abu Ghraib prison was attacked by insurgents, and a Belgian soldier died from "friendly fire" by U.S. troops.

"While the Schiavo case and the papal passing were certainly interesting and poignant stories, did they really merit 23 hours of coverage per day on the cable news channels, while other events that more closely impact the lives of the average American citizen went unreported?"

Cleary, Shaw's opinion of what constitutes "events that more closely impact the lives of the average American citizen" is the real topic of this article.

Shaw would apparently like to have more focus on events in Iraq. She calls for more media coverage of solider deaths, the Abu Ghraib prison attack, and a friendly fire event that killed a Belgian soldier. Do you notice a theme?

Shaw seems focused only on the negative events in Iraq, and apparently would waste no words on the successful capture of high-ranking Baathists and terrorist leaders, the increasingly rapid pace, scale, and success of raids by Iraqi forces against criminals and terrorists, nor would she mention the truly historic appointment of a former dissident Kurd to the Iraqi Presidency. No, Shaw is focused on dead soldiers, terrorist attacks, and U.S. troops killing a Belgian soldier.

There are a few problems with her proposition, starting with the simple fact that there are no Belgian troops stationed in Iraq.

One can only assume that she must have been speaking about the March 7 death of a Jr. Sgt. Gardev, a Bulgarian soldier tragically shot by U.S. forces in a friendly-fire incident while on patrol southeast of Diwaniya, Iraq.

Shaw fails to mention that just an hour after Gardev's death, a communist journalist by the name of Guiliana Sgrena was wounded, and a Italian security officer killed, when their driver ran an American checkpoint in Baghdad. That incident dominated the media for days, until physical evidence started contradicting Sgrena's hysterical claims, at which point the story quickly fizzled out in the liberal media.

The other two incidents, while tragic, don't measure up to the immediacy standard that Shaw herself wants to impose with her "events that more closely impact the lives of the average American citizen" criteria.

Sadly, over 1,500 brave men and women have died in combat in Iraq, but after two full years of combat, these loses are viewed by the media and American public as a routine, if tragic, fact of war. There are only so many ways to say that an American soldier was killed in combat, and these deaths are mentioned consistently and dutifully across all media, even if the MSM doesn't linger on these deaths as long as Shaw would apparently like. The Shiavo case, half a world closer than Iraq, was also much more immediate; as any American may one day be forced to rely on another to determine whether they should live or die. It does not get any more immediate or personal that contemplating your own demise, so by Shaw's own standards, the Schiavo case was more newsworthy for most Americans than any event in Iraq over the past month.

Which brings us to the final event Shaw would drum up airplay for, the Abu Ghraib prison attack. This was a complete tactical defeat for the terrorists, freeing not one prisoner, nor killing a single Coalition or Iraqi soldier, while heavy casualties were inflicted upon the attacking terrorist forces. This was not overlooked in the media, but with no American losses, the liberal MSM was more than willing to allow this story to become a footnote instead of a defining event. The death of the nearly three-decade leader of a religious group that has a billion followers worldwide and millions of followers in the U.S. is far more immediate and newsworthy than any event in Iraq of the past year. Once again, Shaw fails her own test.

These events are also have more immediacy than the other events Shaw would have the media focus more time on, specifically inquiries into Tom Delay's ethics, and lawsuits against Donald Rumsfeld. Both of these events are long-horizon, which could drag on far into the foreseeable future (or as long as they have merit).

Shaw says further:

"The media are in business to make money. Sensational stories like the Schiavo case and the death of the pope can easily be spun into headlines that sell papers. But the media have a moral responsibility to give us all the news of the day, even if the truth hurts."

Did Mary Shaw find out about military deaths in Iraq, the Abu Ghraib attack, and the friendly-fire death of a Bulgarian (not Belgian) soldier thorough her own private news sources? I suspect not. She obtained this information from news media, or from sources who interact with the news media. Obviously, Mary Shaw is getting the news she seeks, just not with the spin or in the amount she desires.

Perhaps she should be more straightforward and admit that what disturbs her is insufficient amounts of negative news about the Iraqi War, though I can think of better uses of Mary Shaw's time.

I'd suggest she start by learning the subtle differences between Bulgaria and Belgium.

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Tweety's Revenge

More than one blogger got a wicked glint in his eye when he first heard reports of plans to legalize the hunting of feral cats in Wisconsin, and as can be expected, many cat lovers are in an uproar over the proposal. Despite the outrage, the proposal making cats an unprotected species does not come without scientific merit, nor is it an unknown practice; the hunting of cats is legal in at least two other states, and is quietly practiced by hunters in other states worried about the depredation of game species.

In Wisconsin alone, feral cats kill an estimated minimum of 47 million songbirds; estimates run as high as 139 million dead songbirds each year in the state, and the carnage doesn't stop there. They also kill millions of other small animals like rodents, amphibians and reptiles that are prey species for other creatures, such as owls and hawks, martens, weasels, and other small native predatory species.

The simple fact of the matter is that Fluffy is wired to be a hunter, and when you put her out at night she is looking to kill, no matter how well fed she is. They do not kill for food, they kill becuase that is what they are designed to do. The broken necks of baby ducks and punctured skulls of baby bunnies tend to show a darker side of domesticated cats that cat owners are determined not to see.

Personally, I'm not morally opposed to the proposed law, but would hope it goes hand-in-hand with feline leash laws. The millions of truly feral cats may only be practically controlled via hunting, but enforced leash laws would significantly cut down on feral birth rates and bring the population down to a point where cats aren't a threat to native species.

As a matter of pure ballistic interest to the gun geek in me, what would be the best cartridge for cats? I'm thinking the new .19 Calhoon would be almost perfect... hypothetically, of course.

Now, should I submit this post to the Carnival of Cordite, or the Carnival of the Cats?

Update: Simon Bond must be loving this...

Update 2: Wisconsin citizens have voted 6,830-5,201 in favor of allowing the hunting of feral and untagged free-running domestic cats. The Dept. of Natural Resources now must gather support in the Wisconsin Legislature, which would then need to pass a bill and have Gov. Jim Doyle sign it.I give this proposal a very slight chance of becoming law anytime soon.

Animal rights groups such as the Humane Society of the United States are sure to oppose this legislation, and cat people will almost certainly seek to drown out biologists, environmentalists and others who support this reasonable legislation, which is the most economical, practical and effective way of controlling feral cat populations.

I am all for people having domestic cats as pets, but not at the expense of native and endangered species.

Sorry, Sylvester.

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Freedom of (Some) Speech

It was recently announced that Kevin Sites, freelance war videographer, will be awarded a Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism. Editor & Publisher covered the award announcement by saying:

Kevin Sites, a freelance photojournalist for NBC, will be awarded the 2005 Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism on May 12 for his decision-making process after he witnessed and taped a U.S. Marine killing an unarmed Iraqi man in a mosque.

Sites decided to share the tape with the military, then he worked with NBC to create a "well-nuanced story that aired 48 hours after the incident," according to the Payne announcement. Since he was working as a pool photojournalist at the time, Sites shared the tape with the other news organizations in the pool.

When Sites was criticized after other outlets used the footage, he answered the critics and explained his decisions in detail on his Weblog, www.kevinsites.net.

In response, one of my favorite blogs weighed in by calling Sites a traitor, while another was surprisingly reserved, though his comments section made up for it. These blogs, of course, were hardly the only ones with this general viewpoint.

From both legal and ethical standpoints, calling Kevin Sites a traitor is ignorant. Not stupid, mind you, but ignorant of the law. It isn't a matter of "I think" or "in my opinion," they are quite simply, technically, wrong in calling Kevin Sites a traitor.

One cites Article III, Sec. 3 of the U.S. Constitution:

"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort." (his bold. --C.Y)

Kevin Sites shot a video of real events, unedited, and undoctored, and even ran it by the U.S. military before release. That is not treason. Furthermore, the assinine "logic" of some people that "well, he knew if could be twisted against us, so he's guilty" would not only stifle the First Amendment, but completely eviscerate it to a totalitarian extent. These people don't support the freedom of speech, just the freedom of some speech, that of which they personally approve.

I'll tell you what, my friends: go ahead and start a movement to prosecute Sites for your understanding of treason. You will of course also charge the journalists and producers, writers and editors who furthered this travesty by mentioning it in network broadcasts, cable news shows, and in national, regional, and local newspapers. I won't personally miss Olbermann, Dowd, or Krugman much, but I will miss Hannity, Krauthammer, and Will.

While you are at it, of course, you'll also have to charge the career Marine officers who released the tape for publication. I think that is a pretty short chain of command, just a few PR officers and maybe a general or two. Probably only a dozen or so all told. As active duty military, they will of course face the possibility of execution for their treason. Do they still use firing squads at Leavenworth, or does the military now allow lethal injections for enemies of democracy?

Nothing like the idea of putting a Few Good Men to death to underscore your shaky understanding of the Constitution, right guys?

Guys?

There are higher allegiences more important than the United States, and that if you honor these higher ideals, the best interests of the country are served as a natural consequence.

I'm sorry, but we disagree on this one.

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An Interesting Life

I happen to be in the middle of a fascinating book called Right Turns, an autobiography by former 60s student leftist Michael Medved and his eventual transition to becoming a conservative cultural critic. So far I've read from his childhood up to his marriage at 23, and it is amazing not only what he had done by that age, but who he met along the way. He's quite an interesting character, and I'm not quite halfway through.

This book is worth a look if you get a chance.

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The Law is not the People's Choice Awards

Mark R. Kleiman wants to know what conservatives think about Mexico City's mayor facing minor criminal charges that may keep him from running for the presidency. Klieman is hardly alone in feeling that the current Mexican government may be trying to pull a fast one here, but I think he and several other bloggers right, left, and center are hitching their cart to the wrong proverbial horse.

Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is subject to the same constitution as all Mexican nationals, and therefore he must play by those same rules. "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time," I have always heard. Lopez may be being legally railroaded, but he is being treated in accordance with Mexican law. If the law is broken, then the people should push their elected officials to try to change it, but advocating a separate and more equal application of the law becuase of his popularity seems as least as much of a threat to Mexican democracy as is this selective application of charges, if not more so.

How does this conservative feel about this situation, Mr. Kleiman? I feel that the same people who didn't want the American government to intervene on behalf of one citizen in Florida, shouldn't suddenly want us to to reverse course and intervene on behalf of another single citizen in another land where our meddling is even less wanted.

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Another Sign of Success?

The NY Times reports today that senior U.S. commanders are ready to begin thinking seriously about drawing down troop levels in Iraq, yet another subtle suggestion of progress in stabilizing a post-Saddam Iraq. The Times reports that U.S. commanders almost universally see signs of improvement, but perhaps an even more telling factor is that the Times is willing to give credence to the viewpoints of actual military commanders on the ground instead of the opinions of anti-war politicians and protestors.

One would almost be tempted to think that coalition forces and the new Iraqi government forces are not only slowing ending the Iraqi insurgency, but the American media insurgency as well.

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EXCLUSIVE: CBS Insurgent Capture Photo

Confederate Yankee was able to scoop the MSM/DNC today, obtaining this exclusive photograph of the capture of a CBS video cameraman arrested as a suspected insurgent in northeastern Mosul, Iraq.

I'm all news, all the time. Full power, tall tower. I want to break in when news breaks out. That's my agenda. Now, respectfully, when you start talking about a liberal agenda and all the, quote, 'liberal bias' in the media, I quite frankly, and I say this respectfully but candidly to you, I don't know what you're talking about." -- Dan Rather

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Sneak Attack on the Border?

I almost couldn't believe this when I read it on Blue State Conservatives.

While Minutemen Project volunteers are busy doing the work in Arizona that President Bush refuses to allow the Border Control to do, Larry Craig (R-Idaho) and Ted Kennedy (D-Tox) may cravenly try to sneak in backdoor de facto illegal alien amnesty language (S.359, the Craig-Kennedy Agricultural Job Opportunity, Benefits, and Security Act of 2005) into an emergency spending bill to supply our troops.

The Craig-Kennedy bill would not only allow amnesty to any invading illegal who can prove he worked on a farm for three months, it would also grant amnesty to their families, even if they have never been to the United States.

Need I say more?

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A Few More Good Men

At a time when enlistment is low and the military has been forced to open up age restrictions, Army Sgt. Robert Stout, a Purple Heart recipient and veteran of the Iraq war wants to continue to serve his country, but a Pentagon trapped in the past may not let him. Why?

Stout is openly gay.

This brings him into direct conflict with the antiquated "don't ask, don't tell" policy still in use by the Pentagon, even though the bulk of our allies--Great Britain, Australia, Israel, etc--have had openly gay soldiers in their ranks for years. There are an estimated 65,000 gays currently serving in the U.S. military.

I'm rather disappointed in our Petagon leadership both for the obvious discrimination against a minority group willing to serve this country, and in their underlying belief that our soliders are so immature and homophobic that they cannot function with openly gay soldiers in their units. American soldiers are among the best trained, most disciplined, and professional military forces in the world. To think that they cannot cope with homosexuality when they can cope with the vastly more intense emotions of combat is assinine, and selling our soldiers short.

We've seen this kind of discrimination before from our military, but it is past time for it to stop. Our soldiers are better than that. It is time for their leadership to catch up.

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Chickenhawks and Vultures

Thanks to Charles, we know that Pittsburgh IndyMedia will be meeting this weekend in Pittsburgh. Their topic is:

How can the U.S. be stopped?
Lessons from the Vietnam war

Mass protests, GI refusals and a powerful "insurgent" movement - the same things that led to the end of the war in Vietnam are what can stop the U.S. slaughter in Iraq today...

I found the concept of "stopping the U.S. slaughter" very interesting, as even if you agreed with the idea in theory at one time, the facts show that the supermajority of offensive actions killing civilians are being conducted by the insurgency, not by coalition forces.

Saddam's conventional military forces have long since been defeated, and Saddam himself just watched a Kurd elected to his former position from his prison cell. The insurgency itself has failed prevent free elections, and it's recent behavior is far more criminal than revolutionary. By trying to "stop the U.S." by supporting a powerful insurgency, these "peace activists" actually advocate extending an insurgency that only currently exists as a terrorist and criminal force.

In other words, these "peace activists" are actually encouraging far more continued slaughter by supporting the insurgency.

I've accused liberals in the past of so blindly hating President Bush that they don't seem to care who gets hurt; these people hate our president, one man, so much that they would sell tens of millions down the river hoping to cause him to fail.

When you combine this blind hatred of Bush with the complete lack of any sort of changeover plan by the left, or even an acknowledgement of the fact that the immediate withdrawal they favor would plunge an fledgling democracy into chaos and potential civil war, then you see that IndyMedia and their far left supporters are long on rhetoric and hatred, and short on well-reasoned or even remotely strategic long term planning.

IndyMedia and other liberals are against George Bush beyond logical constraints. Their heated rhetoric and short-sighted ideologies shows that they don't care who dies, American soldier or Iraqi civilian, as long as they get their desired result of an diminished George W. Bush.

Liberals have taken to calling conservatives "chickenhawks."

In return, liberals have given us vultures.

Update: Donald Sensing happens to have a post up this morning about how the liberal's hoped for powerful insurgency is giving us lessons on how not to conduct guerrilla warfare (via Instapundit). Sensing in turn, points to must-read articles by Austin Bay, Bill Roggio and Wretchard.

On a separate but related note, "Hanoi Jane" Fonda is still widely viewed as a traitor by many Americans for supporting the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War. It will be very interesting to looks back to the present from 5, 10, or 20 years in the future at today's crop of pro-insurgency leftists and see if they earn an even more tainted legacy than Fonda for supporting an enemy who are fighting against the common dream of the Iraqi people.

Update 2: Allen at Cox & Forkum reminds me that they've covered this ground before.

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Martinez-Shiavo Memo

I'm really glad I decided not to post on the so-called Shiavo memo. It was just gut instinct not to blog it, but it just didn't feel right. Michelle Malkin made a similar choice as well, not that it kept stupid liberals from sending her e-mail saying she was wrong for something she never wrote.

But the real blame goes to the MSM/DNC for blowing the reporting of this story in the first place (which they have yet to account for to the best of my knowledge), and to bloggers too willing to consider this on par with the forged TANG documents far too early without sufficient evidence.

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Liberalism Kills

The left keeps ramping up their paranoid delusions and their rhetoric and actions get more and more violent. It was only a matter of time before they started murdering people "for the cause."

In this instance, frequent Indymedia poster and Evergreen State College graduate (yes, that Evergreen) Andrew Mickel murdered a 31-year-old policeman, shooting the new father in the back and then bragged about it on more than a dozen Indymedia web sites in a ranting manifesto.

Read the whole sickening thing. Mickel is hardly the first leftist assassin in American history.

(hat tip and comments: LGF)

Note: This murder was in 2002. Mickel was convicted and is now in the sentencing phase of is trial, and stands to face the death penalty. At least he has a chance. It is more than he gave Officer Mobilio.

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Delusions of Supremacy

Tom Elia at the New Editor dug up this self-parodying gem in response to Paul Krugman's smug post "An Academic Question" in the NY Times:

To the Editor:

Paul Krugman ("An Academic Question," column, April 5) is correct that the lack of conservative faculty members in college is caused not through bias but by deficiencies in conservative ideology.

From the laissez-faire, anti-unionism of late-19th-century Republicans to the melding of those trends in today's neoconservative movement, the result of conservative ideology has almost always been deleterious for the majority of Americans.

Academics look at evidence and come to conclusions. Today's conservatives start with a conclusion and then try to find anything to support that conclusion to the exclusion of all contrary evidence. Their arguments tend to fall apart under the lightest scrutiny.

It is no wonder that the vast majority of well-educated academics are "liberal."

Brandon Bittner

Royersford, Pa., April 6, 2005

I have another explanation, Mr. Bittner: If you can't do, teach. Academia may not only attract liberals, but it is the only practical area in which it can exist.

Mr. Bittner may assume liberal superiority all he wants, the fact remains that though liberals dominant the university, this ideological domination is quickly destroyed by real world market forces once students leave the academy. If liberal ideology were as superior as both Mr. Krugman and Mr. Bittner haughtily opine, then college graduates would not only emerge from universities with a liberal ideology, they would retain that ideology far after graduation and would be quite successful in the professional world.

But that supremacy doesn't exist, does it? The vast majority of industry leaders are capitalists, not marxists. In fact, the vast majority of most businesses, from industry leaders down through the "tail" are capitalists, rejecting liberal egalitarian theology out of hand.

In addition to not surviving contact with the business world, liberalism doesn't well tolerate contact with the ballot box. Liberals holding a supermajority in academia, and therefore, this "superior" ideology should then dominate American life and politics across the board. Yet, conservatives and moderates dominate every level of government as voters consistently reject liberalism across the vast majority of the country.

Mr. Krugman and Mr. Bittner are welcome to fondle their delusions of liberal supremacy in the academy. It is the final place it exists.

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Reasons for Fear

I've been mentioning the "high end" problems with illegal immigration, mostly in the terms of economic impact and national security. Thousands of miles from the border, I can't feel what the illegal invasion feels like, nor can I imagine feeling the need to arm my spouse when I leave home.

Unfortunately, this feeling is a fact of life for some Americans who live the Mexican border. Country Store finds this odd and unsettling example in this Christian Science Monitor coverage of border life for a Naco, Arizona family:

The Garner family on Purdy Lane doesn't know exactly how many chickens, roosters, Guinea hens, or geese they own on their 5-acre farm in this dusty town on the US-Mexico border. But they know the number is smaller than the number of illegal immigrants who can be seen daily in groups of three, 10, 40, 60, and more on their property. They are often huddled in centipede form (hands on the hips of the person in front), kneeling under windows, crouched behind trees, and sleeping in their egg house.

Mr. Garner, a carpenter, his wife, and three daughters (age 10, 12, and 15) tell countless stories that are as alarming to outsiders as they are matter-of-fact to them. Theirs is a life dominated by self-defense lessons, family practice drills to huddle in the master bedroom, obligatory two-way radios for kids who walk to school, and a handgun on the hip for mom.
Although violent encounters are relatively rare, their stories tell a narrative of how surreal - and spooky - life can be for families that straddle the 1,400-mile Maginot Line known as the US-Mexican border. "You'll be weeding in your garden and turn around to see 20 of them standing in front of you, demanding water and food," says Dawn Garner, the mother.
"I come out to go to school, and they are changing their clothes under my bedroom window," says daughter Shayne.
"They leave backpacks filled with drugs on the lawn," says sister Ciara. "It's scary and creepy."

This is their daily existence, thanks to a federal government that doesn't feel that our border, or this family's lives, is worth their effort or resolve.

Update: A Mexican radio reporter was shot nine times in front of her radio station in Nuevo Laredo, a city on the Texas/Mexico border known for drug smuggling related violence. Dolores Guadalupe García Escamilla was the fourth journalist shot by Mexican drug gangs in the past year; more than 30 people have been killed in drug-related violence in Nuevo Laredo so far this year.

Update 2: Two illegal aliens in New York City were just arrested for plotting to turn themselves into suicide bombers. Is the threat illegal aliens pose starting to sink in yet?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 01:09 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Observations on Micheal Shiavo

I've been getting a large and consistent amount of traffic from search engines looking for information on "shiavo" or "michael shiavo." Obviously, even though Terri Shiavo is dead and cremated and soon to undergo burial, people still want to know about her life and her death, and the former husband entangled in both.

Michael Shiavo claims that his wife had a heart attack as the result of an eating disorder. Her body chemistry, enzyme levels and EKGs in the hospital emergency room never supported this claim. If experts are correct, Terri Shiavo's recently completed but as yet unreleased autopsy should be able to explain whether Terri Shiavo's brain damage was the result of a heart attack or some other means.

Michael Shiavo then sued in 1992, and won a court judgment for $300,000 for himself and $700,000 for Terri's rehabilitation. Instead of getting Terri Shiavo rehabilitation, however, he stuck her in a nursing home and denied her treatment. It was at this point, only after winning a million-dollar settlement and putting Terri into a nursing home instead of a rehabilitation facility that Michael Shiavo suddenly "remembered" Terri wanted to die.

For seven years Michael Shiavo spent Terri's rehabilitation funds trying to have her taken off her feeding tube instead of trying to get her therapy. Once successful in getting legal permission to commit the homicide of his wife, he made no known efforts to find a shorter, more humane ways to end Terri Shiavo's life than letting her starve to death.

Once Terri Shiavo was dead, Michael Shiavo would not let her parents bury her body nearby in Florida where both the Shiavo and Shindler families live. Instead, he had Terri Shiavo cremated instead of buried as her family desired, would not let the Shindler family have access to Terri's body or ashes for their daughter's memorial service.

In addition, if widely available accounts can be believed, Michael Shiavo did not want to even let the Shindler family know where or when their daughter's ashes would be buried, only providing that information under court order.

That is what we know of Michael Shiavo. Make of it what you will.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:19 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Rational Ways

"I am against vigilantes in the United States of America; I am for enforcing law in rational ways." --George W. Bush

I am against vigilantism, as are most Americans. I am also for a government that protects its people, and this government is failing. As I mentioned yesterday (and previously here, and here, and less seriously here), we have a major security risk in this country which defies explanation.

We've spent billions destroying the Taliban in Afghanistan for harboring al Qaeda, and to attempt to establish a democracy there for the first time. We've spent billions more in Iraq removing a dictator that sponsored four terrorist groups (ANO or Fatah, al Qaeda affiliate Ansar al-Islam, the Mujahedin-e Khalq, or MEK, and the Palestine Liberation Front, or PLF ), invaded two neighboring countries, paid bounties to the families of suicide bombers to murder women and children. Saddam also gave sanctuary to the 1993 World Trade Center bomb-builder, used massed chemical weapon assaults not seen on a scale since World War I, and broke the terms of the 1991 Gulf War cease-fire literally thousands of times.

We're spending billions more to rebuild Iraqi infrastructure to a level better than what it was before the war, while simultaneously (and as time goes on, apparently more successfully) building a fledgling democracy that held free elections in less than half the time it took us in Japan and Germany after World War II. I support both of these invasions and nation-building projects, which give 50 million people a chance to decide their own destinies for the very first time.

Further, I support and understand the need to spend millions if not billions more to overtly and covertly destabilize dictatorships in Middle Eastern, Eastern European, and Asian countries that support or allow terrorism. These expenditures are long term investments in global stability. They make sense.

What doesn't make sense is to spend lavishly on proactive measures overseas without supporting even minimally reactive defensive measures for our country here at home. I am, of course, talking about our anemic border security efforts, one area so far in two terms where George Bush's presidency has abjectly failed by any rational standard.

A group of concerned citizens calling themselves the Minutemen Project, frustrated by the failure of our government to address border security issues, is now stationed along 23 miles of the most porous section of our border with Mexico, a stretch of arid Arizona desert so poorly defended that somewhere in excess of 2/3 of those who criminally intend to enter our country succeed in their criminal effort. In real numbers, this translates to two million illegal aliens flowing over the border northward each year unchecked, with un-inspected cargo (certainly drugs, possibly weapons conventional or otherwise), unknown criminal background (a favorite ingress of violent central American gangs), and unknown intent.

The Department of Agriculture is more responsive and better equipped for their duties than is the Border Patrol. It is harder to get a guava into this country than a Guatemalan. That should tell you something, and that "something" isn't good. In fact, it's downright frightening.

So frightening, in fact, that American citizens, feeling abandoned (and rightly so) by their government, are staging an intervention. Hundreds of volunteers set up lawn chairs every few hundred yards, armed with binoculars, night vision scopes and occasional small arms for protection from violent border smugglers known as coyotes that traffic in people and drugs. These volunteers, in what was widely seen as a bit of political theater, are accomplishing something George W. Bush has not done (nor apparently tried to do) since 9/11: they are stopping or at least hampering illegal border crossings along the 23-mile stretch they are patrolling. So far, they've detected and lead authorities to a minimum of 118 illegals.

In addition, they've forced patrolling actions on the other side of the border by a Mexican government seeking to avoid confrontations (and no doubt, bad P.R.) between its illegally-acting citizens and the U.S. volunteers. This patrolling action, may I add, would almost certainly not occur otherwise.

The MSM/DNC reaction largely echoes Bush's irrational cry of vigilantism, though that reaction is fficial&sa=N&tab=wn" target="_blank">hardly uniform among regional and local media who actually deal with these issues on the community level. A growing amount of media coverage is actually positive.

No, the peaceful, rational and practical action of the Minutemen Project is exactly the kind of intelligent (and surprisingly effective) protest needed to force our government to live up to its responsibilities.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 06:36 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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