'Minuteman' effort moves northwest By John Ritter, USA TODAY
Tue Oct 25,11:08 AM ET
From a parked van, Ben Vaughn and Larry Loop, a couple of middle-aged Vietnam War veterans, peer across a 3-foot-wide drainage ditch - the U.S.-Canadian border.
Two-lane roads run on both sides of the ditch. No fences or barriers are there to keep someone from walking across the border. Houses line the Canadian side of the road, behind them forests and farmland. Vaughn and Loop, members of a volunteer "Minuteman" contingent like those that stirred controversy earlier this year in Arizona, hang out for several hours but see nothing out of the ordinary. It is a far cry from the desert of the U.S.-Mexican border, where undocumented immigrants try to sneak into America every day. That doesn't matter to these Minutemen. They say they're here to make a political statement about the vulnerability of the nation's borders. "If we can help keep some terrorists from coming across that would be great," says Vaughn, 58. "Even just slow them down." The Minuteman presence at nine "posts" along 26 miles of the 4,000-mile northern border's far western sector so far has been uneventful. Minutemen called in once to report a suspicious vehicle, but it turned out to be an unmarked Border Patrol SUV.
Human rights groups say the Minutemen foster immigrant bashing and racial profiling. The ACLU of Washington is monitoring their activities. The Bellingham City Council passed a resolution deploring border vigilantes and Whatcom County, where Lynden is located, is considering one.
This goes to show:
1). How Bush has completely abdicated the conservative agenda on immigration
2). Why Liberals can never be trusted with national security.
3 comments:
Quite right, doctor. I heard Tom DeLay promise about 2 weeks ago that the Republican congress would be putting forth meaningful immigration reform legislation "in the next 8 weeks." He has 6 weeks to put up and I for one am not optimistic.
We are now living in the world predicted by Reagan in 1984 and the liberals were laughing then. Now, as the prophecy has been realized and we are all dodging IEDs, they still don't believe it.
For all the negatives attached to Bush, I am at least thankful that he takes the threat seriously. I shutter at the notion of Al Gore calmly reassuring us of our safety with smoke clouds billowing in the background.
Greek philosophers thought of democracy as a pejorative meaning mob rule. And when our founding fathers tried to create a government they took the old Roman Republic model based on laws and protection of freedoms.
Just as the Roman senate gave into the emperor, our own Congress cedes power to the Supreme Court at every opportunity. As far as immigration, national politicians are too afraid of the Hispanic vote to enforce the law. So our Republic has slouched towards democracy on one hand and given way to the emperor on the other. The worst of both worlds.
I’m reading David McCullough’s 1776 and I wonder if Washington spent so many nights in the freezing cold so that we could raise generations of men gladly willing to trade those gifts for a soft career in politics.
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