Thursday, October 14, 2004

Michelle Malkin On Cheney's Daughter & Illegal Immigration

ABUSING DICK CHENEY'S DAUGHTER

By Michelle Malkin · October 13, 2004 11:05 PM
http://michellemalkin.com

John Kerry stooped to the lowest of the low with the shameless, invasive line that will be played over and over again on the news in the next 24 hours:

And I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was, she's being who she was born as.

Um, has John Kerry talked to Dick Cheney's daughter? Has John Edwards? Has Mary Beth Cahill, who called Mary Cheney "fair game" on Fox News Channel after tonight's debate? If they haven't talked to her, they should shut up, leave her alone, and defend their incoherent position on gay marriage without hiding behind the vice president's daughter.

THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM, UNLEASHED
By Michelle Malkin · October 13, 2004 10:11 PM

9:45ish: Finally, finally! Bob Schieffer asks about illegal immigration...but both candidates bomb.

Bush's perfunctory reference to how he has sprinkled a few more Border Patrol agents across the southern border glosses over the horrendous policies instituted under his Department of Homeland Security that have resulted in undermining those agents. As I noted recently:

When a mobile unit of border agents in Southern California made a series of high-profile mass arrests of illegal aliens in June, prompting the ire of ethnic activists and Hispanic Democrats, Under Secretary for Border and Transportation Security Asa Hutchinson iced the agents' efforts and publicly criticized the arrests. Instead of backing his own men and women, Hutchinson assured the open borders lobby that his department would bow to the "sensitivities" surrounding interior enforcement.

The retreat has had a devastating effect on border agents' morale -- and our safety. A new survey of border security personnel released this week by the National Border Patrol Council revealed that almost two-thirds of the workforce are demoralized, and nearly half of these employees have considered leaving their job within the past two years. The council noted: "Almost three years after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, despite the expenditure of billions of dollars and endless rhetoric from the top about how anti-terrorism is our foremost priority, only about half of these officers believe that our nation is any safer from terrorist threats."

Meanwhile, John Kerry delivers another empty promise--pledging to "toughen the borders" without giving a single specific example of how he would do so. Like Bush, he ignores the disastrous and deliberate lack of interior enforcement in this country. Has not a word to say about the dismal shortage of detention space for illegal aliens, the continued perilous policies of catch and release, and the deportation abyss created by the likes of Teddy Kennedy and his immigration lawyer friends. (More here.)As for the economics of illegal immigration, someone in both campaigns ought to be reading Robert Samuelson.

As for amnesty, forget what their lips say. They both support mass pardons of millions of immigration law-breakers and their employers.
More. Of. The. Same.

***By the way, the hottest issue in Arizona right now is Proposition 200, which would in part require secure identification to vote in elections and to receive public benefits. President Bush could have strengthened his grass-roots conservative base--and scored with conservative Democrats--by endorsing the measure as good for national security, good for election integrity, and good for fiscal responsibility. Last month, an Arizona Republic poll in Phoenix showed that 66 percent of registered Arizona voters support the measure. The poll showed that Republicans favor the initiative by an 8-1 margin, while Democrats approve by a 3-1 margin.

So, why didn't Bush utter a word about it? Because someone at the highest levels of the national GOP elite opposes the vast majority of Americans on this most important issue.

DEMOCRATS GONE WILD
By Michelle Malkin · October 13, 2004 02:40 PM

My new column gives an overview of the campaign epidemic of anti-GOP hate spreading across the country. Here's the intro:

How many hate crime anecdotes does it take before the mainstream media spot a trend? If the victims are politically correct, all it takes is one or two.

One alleged name-calling. A few alleged acts of vandalism. A suspicious arson here or there. In an instant, an unsubstantiated attack against the right kind of ethnic, racial, religious or sexual minority becomes undisputed evidence of an epidemic of violence. A symbol of rising hate. A national crisis.

But what happens when the targets are the wrong kind of victim? What happens when conservatives and Republicans are on the receiving end of discriminatory threats or harassment or worse?

Hello, reporters? Is anybody home? Is it my imagination, or do I hear pins dropping in the grievance corners of America's otherwise victim-friendly newsrooms?

On a related note, see below for updates to last night's blog entry on the disgusting anti-Bush Special Olympics poster, which has now been picked up by Drudge. I spoke with both the editor of the local newspaper in rural West Tennessee, where the poster is being distributed, and with a woman who obtained a copy of it.
Update: Add this to the list.

YES, VIRGINIA, THE SOUTHERN BORDER IS A PROBLEM
By Michelle Malkin · October 13, 2004 05:31 AM

Another scoop from Bill Gertz of the Washington Times. He cites an intelligence report indicating that 25 Chechen terrorists entered the United States illegally via our southern border with Mexico:
The Chechen group is suspected of having links to Islamist terrorists seeking to separate the southern enclave of Chechnya from Russia, according to officials familiar with intelligence reports.

Members of the group, said to be wearing backpacks, secretly traveled to northern Mexico and crossed into a mountainous part of Arizona that is difficult for U.S. border security agents to monitor, said officials speaking on the condition of anonymity.

The intelligence report was supplied to the U.S. government in late August or early September and was based on information from an intelligence source that has been proved reliable in other instances, one official said.A second U.S. official said the report is being investigated, but said it could not be determined whether the group of Chechens actually entered the country, as the intelligence source reported.

Yeah, maybe they're a group of musicians with a gig in northern Mexico.
For more on the vulnerability of our southern border to terrorism, see here and here.

For a good example of head-in-the-sand thinking about the need to secure our southern border, see this Virginia Postrel post.

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