Usted No Puede Fijar Estúpido

According to a Washington Post article cited today by David Frum....

Nearly half the nation's five year olds (45% to be precise) are now ethnic minorities, with most of the surge in minority population driven by Hispanic immigration. About half that immigration is illegal.

In other words, the decision today not to enforce the immigration laws is guaranteeing that the US of the second half of the 21st century will cease to be a country predominantly populated by people of European descent. Isn't that sort of a big deal?

Actually, not necessarily - if not for all that illegal immigration that is driving this trend. As it is, and given the stubbornly stupid "open borders now, open borders forever" mentality of the American political establishment, it becomes ever more difficult not to conclude that by the time my children retire, the country they live in really will be a de facto United States of Mexico, with a comparable level of corruption, poverty, and world influence. "Killing the golden goose," as it were. And that's the optimistic assessment; one also can't help but foresee that once "Anglos" become a minority in what used to be their own country, that country will be transformed in more ways than one, such that the deference and indulgence with which the new racial/ethnic majority (or majority coalition) was treated for all those decades by hopelessly neurotic, institutionally guilt-ridden "gringos" will, let's just say, not be recupricated.

Demographics, to paraphrase Mark Steyn, is a bitch. Especially when they're rendered suicidally (also in more ways than one) active help:

The U.S. Border Patrol has been tipping off Mexican authorities about the whereabouts of Minuteman civilian patrols that are seeking to stem the flow of illegal immigrants.

According to documents on the Mexican Secretary of Foreign Relations Web site, the Border Patrol is to notify the Mexican government about the location of Minuteman and other civilian border patrol groups when they participate in apprehending illegals crossing the border.

"Now we know why it seemed like Mexican officials knew where we were all the time," said Chris Simcox, founder of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps. "It's unbelievable that our own government agency is sending intelligence to another country. They are sending intelligence to a nation where corruption runs rampant, and that could be getting into the hands of criminal cartels. They just basically endangered the lives of American people." [emphases added]

Has anybody got a paper bag I could breathe into for a minute or two?

He added that Mexico's official perception of the Minutemen and other civilian groups is that they are vigilantes, and the Border Patrol hoped to allay that concern by entering into the cooperative agreement with Mexican authorities. [emphasis added]

Comedian Ron White had a line in his most recent DVD that seems appropriate at this juncture: "I am third-generation don't-give-a-fuck" about what the Mexican government thinks of the Minutemen. The Minutemen only exist because the Border Patrol won't do its bleeping job, and the reason it won't do its bleeping job is because the Bush Administration doesn't want it to do its bleeping job. And apparently the Bush Administration doesn't want the Border Patrol to do its bleeping job bad enough that it has compelled the Border Patrol to start patrolling our side of the border rounding up (or bleeped close to it) our citizens on a foreign country's behalf.

Interestingly - and tellingly - the Bushies, in the person of U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Mario Martinez, initally confirmed the report that first ran in California’s Inland Valley Daily Bulletin. Quite matter-of-factly, as a matter of fact. Like it was no big deal and why would anybody be the slightest bit hot & bothered by it?

I would have thought it humanly impossible for anybody to be this obtuse. It's generally acknowledged that the leading reason President Bush's poll numbers are subterranean is because his border-erasure stance is alienating his own base in droves. The recent attempt to skate yet another amnesty bill through Congress (and the accompanying reconquistador agitating) produced a general public reaction that was charitably describable as sulfuric. Now this bobs to the public relations surface, like a turd that won't flush, and their trousers are not the slightest bit damp?

I guess somebody must have had reality dawn on them, because within hours DHS couldn't backpedal into disarrayed double-talk fast enough:

DHS categorically asserts that the “Border Patrol does not report activity by civilian, non-law enforcement groups to the Government of Mexico.” Rather, “During a detention of a legal or illegal immigrant that produces an allegation of improper treatment, Border Patrol reports the allegation and allows the appropriate consulate to interview the individual in custody.”

The DHS statement is noteworthy in two respects. First, while attempting to discredit the report about providing Mexico with intelligence, it does not clearly deny transmitting information about Minuteman patrols—something the CPB spokesman previously conceded quite matter-of-factly (saying, “It’s not a secret where the Minuteman volunteers are going to be”).

DHS instead says it “reports the allegation” if “improper treatment” is alleged. But we are not told what DHS considers “improper treatment” (e.g., does it consider patrols by the Minutemen—whom the President has labeled as “vigilantes”—to be improper?). Nor are we told how comprehensively DHS “reports” the matter to Mexico (e.g., does it simply notify Mexico that an arrest has been made, or does it convey an expansive summary of the case?).

Second, DHS seems to be saying that it was compelled to disclose whatever information it may have given to Mexico by the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, which President Nixon ratified in 1969.

This latter claim bears scrutiny. The consular-notification convention, and in particular its Article 36, comes into play whenever an alien—legal or illegal—is arrested in the United States. It absolutely does not require U.S. authorities to provide any investigative information or other intelligence to foreign governments....

If the foreign government is determined to educate itself about the case, it must do so by interviewing the arrestee (just like a defense lawyer) or by open source information (just like a reporter or any person curious enough to check the public record). It has no claim on investigative or intelligence information maintained by the United States government....

The reasons for all this should be obvious. Americans themselves are not entitled to intelligence and investigative information from their own government, so foreigners clearly have no legal basis to demand it.

Or, in plain, non-Vulcan English, the Bush Administration did not have to turn heel on the Minutemen, they did so of their own free will. They're so determined that the border NOT be controlled that they not only refuse to guard it, but actively prevent it from being guarded at all.

There's another old saying: "Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, thrice is a trend." After the post-Katrina spending gusher, the Harriet Miers debacle, and the Dubai Ports World fiasco, George W. Bush had staked a pretty irrefutable claim to being, in public policy terms, the new Nixon. He's already effectively abandoned the Bush Doctrine, as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pretty much conceded anew yesterday, assuring that the War on Islamic Fundamentalism cannot be won. And now he has yet again pissed in the face of the American people on an issue of paramount importance - perchance for the last time.

There's still another old saying: "If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's probably not a mastadon." Substitute "Rubicon" for "duck" and you've got what this feels like. And if that feeling needed any reinforcement, this would do the trick:

Scott James, a former Tucson [Border Patrol] agent, resigned after eight years of service in February, citing a lack of support for agents by the Department of Homeland Security. He said that U.S. Border Patrol officials provided office space inside their headquarters to Mexican consulate officials, allowed the consulate to dictate the agents' activities, and gave the consulate information on ongoing investigations. Such courtesies were not extended to consulate offices of other countries, James said. [emphasis added]

The title of the aforementioned Ron White DVD is You Can't Fix Stupid. Talk about art imitating life.