Tag: immigration

The Godfather, Vigilantism & anti-ICE Protests, Part 1 (posted 2/9/26)

Last week I was pleasantly surprised by how many readers were interested enough to follow my 3-column series on the illegalities of the anti-ICE protesters’ tactics.  Those pieces were the most widely shared of any of my past columns, so thanks for that.

This week I’ve got another 3-part series, this one discussing the role played by vigilantism in these protests – today on the left, but in the future, potentially, on the right.  This idea came to me when I was thinking about the Godfather – which as a straight man over the age of 40, I naturally do at least once a week.     

I’m going to assume that all of you have seen the Godfather. 

If you haven’t, hang your head in shame, and then immediately remedy that by watching at least the first 10 minutes before you read this column. 

Sidebar: “Diversity is our strength” is one of the most wrong-headed ideas in modern life.  Cultural unity is our strength, and there is a core list of cultural high points with which all Americans should be familiar, among them the Declaration and Constitution; the King James Bible; the heroism of our military and its history; the music of Johnny Cash, Tom Petty, John Prine and Tom Waits; American football, etc.  The Godfather I and II are on that list.  On this point I will tolerate no disagreement!

Okay, so the movie opens on Vito Corleone’s daughter’s wedding day, and there is a tradition that people can ask for favors from the Godfather on that day.  A nervous Italian undertaker tells Vito how his daughter was assaulted by some American boys, and the courts gave them a slap on the wrist – three years in jail, but with a suspended sentence.  “They went free that very day!” the mournful father says.  So he says that he has come to the Godfather for justice, and he asks him to have the criminals killed. 

Vito says, “Why did you go to the police? Why didn’t you come to me first?  Let’s be honest.  You never wanted my friendship, and you were afraid to be in my debt.”

The undertaker says, “I didn’t want to get into trouble.”

Vito says, “I understand.  You found paradise in America, had a good trade, made a good living.  The police protected you, and there were courts of law.”  But now, after the justice system failed him, the Godfather offers him a solution grounded in ethnic solidarity and an authentic – though extra-legal – justice.  “If you had come to me in friendship, the scum who ruined your daughter would be suffering this very day.  And if by chance an honest man like yourself should make enemies, they would become my enemies. And then they would fear you.”

I taught this scene in a course I designed called “Analyzing Propaganda.”  I used it to introduce the idea of competing political narratives out of which grows most propaganda, and I prefaced the class discussion with the definition of a typically contentious political term, “vigilante.”

We use the term “vigilante” to mean someone who takes the law into his own hands, usually when he thinks a government’s legal system has failed to deliver justice.  The Godfather broadens that idea from a person or small group of people to a network of close relationships grounded in a shared ethnicity or tribal identity. 

We usually think of “vigilante” in negative terms, as a stand-in for mob “justice.”  But the word comes from the same root as “vigilant,” and vigilantism can take two forms, only one of which is negative.  The evil form of vigilantism is when the people are wrongly defying or resisting a legitimate government.  The first example that comes to mind is Democrat lynch mobs in the south, killing blacks out of racial animus, regardless of whether they had committed a crime or not.    

But when a government or legal system has become corrupt, abusive or lawless, people who want real justice are morally justified in taking action against it, including (in some cases) vigilantism and violence.  Examples would be any of the uprisings against communist and other dictatorships, or partisan raids and sabotage against a conquering force. 

Even our own revolution could be seen as partaking in vigilantism – e.g. the Boston Tea Party, or various occasions when Scots-Irish proto-Simpsons retreated into the woods with their Kentucky long rifles and started picking off Redcoats – though our brilliant Founders soon transformed and codified a chaotic uprising into a new legal framework, and the best damn country in the whole freaking world.  (USA!  USA!)   

So what does this have to do with the anti-ICE protests/riots in Minnesota and elsewhere?

The leftists clearly believe that they are the good kind of vigilantes, heroically standing up for real justice against a corrupt and evil government.  Hence all the references to “Nazis” and “Gestapo” and “fascists.”  The protesters see themselves as similar to the partisans who conducted resistance and sabotage missions against the Nazis in occupied Europe. 

They also consider themselves the moral equivalent of the civil rights protesters of the 1960s, which gives them that extra intoxicating frisson of irresistible self-righteousness.  They’re not just heroes fighting for justice.  They’re super-heroes fighting for racial justice!  Hence all the talk of the black and brown people being persecuted for their skin color, rather than being legally detained and deported for their criminal acts.

Unfortunately for them, and as with all leftist racial melodramas, the truth stubbornly contradicts their preferred narrative. (Not to mention their entire political worldview.)  Their two currently prominent martyrs are Robin Good and Alex Pretti, both of whom were – so inconveniently! – white.  I mean, not as white as Grandma Squanto Warren.  Because who is?  (#wemustneverstopmockingher) 

But still: very white.

Even worse, the fascist agents of the ominously Nordic Gestapo (i.e. the Border Patrol and ICE) are disproportionately…I’m not making this up… wait for it… Hispanic!  (Cue the sad trombone.)

When I heard that reported, I looked it up.  (As opposed to just making things up, like a MSM “journalist.”) I found that at least 24% of ICE agents (the highest numbers I saw were 30% and “approximately 1/3”) are Hispanic, and more than 50% of Border Patrol agents are also Hispanic!  Since 20% of Americans are Hispanics, these numbers are both disproportionately high. 

It was fun to discover that, because when I confirmed those numbers on several left-leaning, anti-immigration-enforcement websites, their authors scrambled to find any explanations that would confirm their political priors.  One typical flop-sweating leftist admitted that Latinos make up more than half of Border Patrol, but quickly insisted that “it’s not self-hatred that drives them to work for agencies that often target their communities.” 

Um, what community is that, buddy?  The “American citizens of Hispanic descent” community, which the Border Patrol agents belong to?  Because spoiler alert, that’s NOT who Border Patrol targets.  In fact, they don’t “target” anyone, you bad-faith-arguing dope.

They focus on finding, detaining and deporting people who have broken our immigration laws, be they white, black, Asian, Middle-Eastern, Patagonian, Middle-Earthian, Wakandan, or (yes), Hispanic. 

But leave it to Notre Dame political science professor (shame on you, Notre Dame!) David Cortez to put it best. If by “best” you mean, “most dishonestly,” or “most propagandistically.”  Or just “worst.”

Because: political science professor.

Saith the miserable, credentialed hack: “How do Latinos do this to their own people?  Is it self-hatred?  A denial of their ethnic identity?  Or… [to strengthen] their own claim to belonging in America – even to whiteness?”

Ugh.  

Hey Davy, I’ve got one more possible reason why Hispanics might join law enforcement that’s beyond your ability to imagine: Because they are law-abiding Americans who don’t like watching people of any ethnicity breaking our laws and then falsely crying ‘racism’ when they are caught and are held accountable for their own criminal behavior?

But nope.  Davy knows the truth: “For Latino agents, it’s primarily about the money.”

Like all damnable lies, this has one tiny bit of truth in it.  Because of course, everybody who works does so partly for money.  For example, even political science professors who know better will still shamelessly prostitute themselves (via dishonest “research”) to their political co-religionists in return for cash and a generous benefits package. 

Right, Professor Dave?

But Cortez’s creepy conclusion is even creepier if he actually believes the racist politics he espouses.  He claims that Hispanic LEOs have chosen their profession for a reason that he thinks exonerates them for their otherwise unacceptable (to him) choices, i.e. they do it for the money that will allow them to support themselves and their families.   

But his claim actually damns them even more.   If true, it would make them cowardly, treacherous collaborators, betraying their brethren in the service of a corrupt and evil Vichy puppet state for cash. That would make them even more despicable political wh*res than David Cortez himself!    

So while the leftist protesters have been envisioning themselves as the moral kind of vigilantes, fighting for a good cause against a bad government, they are actually the bad guys in this scenario. 

You’d think that they’d have realized that when they found themselves aligned with Somali fraudsters, tattooed antifa thugs calling for murder in the streets, and arrogant creeps who burst into church services to scream at the meek (as in, “blessed are the…”) and terrify children.  Or when they discovered that they’ve been defending people who turn out to be gang bangers, human smugglers, and woman-beaters.  (Or in the case of “Maryland dad” Kilmar Garcia, all three!)

But contemplative self-reflection has never been their strong suit, has it?  

Tomorrow: the potential for future vigilantism on the right, if the left stays on their current, radical path.  

Hamas (and Trantifa) delenda est!

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Part 3: What Laws Have the Anti-ICE Protesters Been Breaking? (posted 2/6/26)

This is the last of three columns of legal analysis of the anti-ICE protests.  I had feared that these would be too dry for most people, but more people have read these than my typical columns… so that’s good, right?

Some of the following info I first came across when I was teaching a Writing for Pre-Law course.  I looked back through my notes to refresh my memory, and then looked at a bunch of legal websites to reinforce and update my knowledge.  There might still be some errors here, and as always, I would appreciate corrections or fuller explanations from any lawyers in the audience.

My goal today is to look at the most common actions of the protesters, and explore what laws they might be violating.

As we know, the First Amendment protects the right to protest, though only peacefully.  To the extent that at least some of the protesters are exercising their free speech rights – castigating ICE officers without interfering with their actions – they’re good.

However, it’s become very clear that most of the protesters have been interfering with ICE officers, so that’s the best place to start.  The most commonly committed infractions would be covered by 18 U.S.C 1501 and 18 U.S.C. 111, which are parts of the US legal code addressing “the crime of interfering with federal officers while they are performing their duties.”  The key language describes action that “obstructs, resists or opposes” officers in that context.

The code “covers both direct physical acts and indirect methods of obstruction.”  Examples of physical acts would include blocking officers’ movements, making physical contact with or using any physical force on them.  The code also mentions “standing in front of an officer to prevent an arrest or shielding another person from apprehension.” 

The above actions probably make up at least half of what happens at many anti-ICE protests.  Protesters routinely surround cops, blocking them in on foot or in vehicles; they also try to get between officers and illegals to prevent their arrest.

This statute also forbids “threatening behavior,” which doesn’t have to be explicitly violent.  The test is whether the behaviors “create a reasonable fear of harm or intimidation,” and the code also mentions “verbal statements, gestures or electronic messages implying danger.”

Good lord!  Wouldn’t that encompass about 90% of the rioters on video in Minneapolis?  If everybody who posted threatening emails to ICE officials, or threatened to dox, injure or kill them were arrested, there’d be more un-F-able jailed leftists in Minnesota than there are fraudulent Somali Learing Centers!

If those weren’t enough, the code also makes clear that interference doesn’t always require direct threats or physical contact.  Activities like creating a diversion, refusing lawful orders and providing false information are also illegal.  Some of those would be charged under other codes.

For example, lying to federal law enforcement during an investigation falls under 19 U.S.C. 1001, and creating a distraction to aid an illegal falls under 1501. 

As a broad group, these offenses can be misdemeanors or felonies, depending on context.  Misdemeanors can be penalized by a year in federal prison and a fine up to $100K; felonies can draw long prison sentences (up to decades) and higher fines.    

More serious actions like use of a deadly or dangerous weapon (not just a gun, but also bricks or other thrown objects, fireworks, or striking with sticks or bats, etc.) or force that results in bodily injury are covered in Section 111.  Those are felonies, and could draw up to 20 years in prison. 

My general sense is that misdemeanors get escalated to felonies when they happen in conjunction with other illegal acts, or are repeated.  (For example, just entering the country illegally is a misdemeanor, but re-entry after being previously deported is a felony.)  But some charges can be surprisingly harsh; just intentionally touching an officer can be charged as a felony, with a penalty of up to 8 years in prison.  (Though I think that is almost never charged for touching alone.)  And spitting on an officer is considered touching/assault, and can be similarly charged.    

One legal summary concluded this way: “In protest settings, the moment someone makes physical contact – shoving, grabbing, pulling an officer, yanking a door, striking a hand/arm, trying to “un-cuff” a detainee – can jump to felony territory.”    

I looked up the constant, near-deafening blowing of whistles, and found mixed interpretations.  In some contexts those can apparently count as permissible (if rowdy) speech, while in others they can constitute harassment/obstruction or even threat of harm (as they can create pain and at least potential longer-term hearing impairment).

I would argue – and I’d like to see this tested in court – that the loud whistling must constitute a form of impeding/obstructing, because its obvious purpose is to harm officers’ ability to carry out their duties.  It prevents them from hearing or giving orders or warnings, and agitates and disorients them, degrading their situational awareness.  As I wrote in a previous column, I’m almost certain that the whistling contributed to Alex Pretti’s death, because the cop who recovered his gun right before Pretti was shot would have yelled out that he had the weapon, as cops are taught to do in that situation.  But the whistling idiots kept that knowledge from the other cops, thus facilitating Pretti’s shooting.  (So great job, whistling idiots!)

In addition to all of those infractions, many protests involve a lot of property damage and trespassing, too.  Property damage can be a misdemeanor (usually if the damage done is under $500 or $1000) or a felony (for larger amounts).

Trespassing is entering government or private property, and also remaining after being told to leave; the former would include ICE or police facilities and courts, while the latter would include hotels or restaurants (which violent leftist dopes often enter and damage because they think ICE agents are staying there or dining there).

Don Lemon and the Morons (worst cover band ever, by the way) are in deep trouble, because they definitely trespassed in that church.  But they’ve been charged with the much more specific and serious FACE act and/or Klan act violations.

Two other crimes are also constantly in play during protests: resisting arrest (for those who are told they are being detained) and disobeying a lawful order (for virtually everyone, when told to get back, or get out of the way, or to stop assaulting our senses with your hideous ugliness).  Of the hundreds of protesters whose arrests I’ve seen on video, I can’t remember more than a small handful who didn’t resist arrest.  (Usually while screaming “I’m not resisting!” over and over, as they wriggle and struggle and fight with the cops.)    

Finally, I researched one legal issue that I haven’t seen discussed much in the media, and that is conspiracy.   The current wave of anti-ICE protests – just like the BLM and Antifa mass riots before them – have been characterized by extensive, sophisticated, coordinated planning.  Hundreds (maybe thousands?) of people join various ICE watch groups, use Signal chat to collect intelligence about where ICE are staying, or eating, or carrying out raids and arrests, and then relay that information to a network of co-conspirators who show up and commit all of the crimes listed above.

This is a textbook example of a wide-ranging conspiracy, which one of the legal sources summarized this way: “Conspiracy: the multiplier that turns group activity into felony time.”

If only!  I’m not sure why Homan or anyone else in the Trump administration has not brought this up, but I hope that they start throwing resources at it, pronto.  Because as satisfying and proper as it is to start making mass and individual arrests and prosecutions of the useful idiot foot-soldiers in these protests, the biggest progress will be made when we start hitting the organizers and funders with huge criminal penalties.

Conspiracy violations are covered in a variety of US codes.  Section 372 deals with “conspiracy to impede or injure an officer by force, intimidation or threat,” and carries up to 6 years in prison. 

Section 371 covers coordinating to obstruct lawful government functions.  Examples would include communications such as, “We’re going to meet at X, track vehicles and physically stop transport,” and action such as participating in group chats with coordinated roles, and arranging pre-planned timing and movements.

Section 1071 describes harboring and helping someone evade government officers such as ICE agents (with a possible 1 to 5 years for each act), and Sections 2232 and 1519 deal with destroying property or evidence to prevent seizure, or giving “tip-offs” about ICE activity (up to 5 years) and “destroying/altering records” (up to 20 years).  

Though I’ve been following all of these protests (and the antifa and BLM protests) pretty closely, doing this research has opened my eyes on several issues I’d not realized:

1. The vast majority of the anti-ICE protesters and protest organizers have routinely been committing more crimes than I’d thought, both misdemeanors and felonies.  (There are probably a handful of protestors who have not been violating at least one of the crimes listed above, but they are the exception to the rule, and I’d be shocked if they were more than 1-2% of the protesters.)

2. Virtually all of the leftist talking points about these protests are false: 

  • The First Amendment does NOT permit protests that are not peaceful, and these aren’t.
  • The Supremacy Clause dictates that local politicians and citizens CANNOT legally declare their cities sanctuaries and ban ICE (or any federal agency). 
  • Our legitimate, democratically passed immigration laws clearly state that immigrating here illegally is a crime; there’s no such thing as a non-criminal, “undocumented,” “legal” illegal alien, and ALL illegals are subject to deportation. 
  • Very few asylum claims – and none of them that have been pursued outside of legal channels – are valid.
  • And no American law enforcement agencies or actions are in the same moral universe as the Gestapo, you lying, hypocritical jackasses!

3. I had no idea how many legal weapons there are in our arsenal; we can use any of several dozen laws to charge and convict the protesters and their leaders.

As much as I’d love to see us charge thousands (or tens of thousands?) of protesters with thousands of crimes, and try all of them, that is logistically impractical.  It would take many years and tie up half our legal system, and to the extent that we’d need to depend on some local (and left-biased) judges and juries, we’d likely see a wave of destructive jury nullification verdicts.

We’ll be better off focusing on the leaders, and the worst of the bad actors among the protesters – maybe 100-150 of them – and go after them on federal charges, using the same intensity with which the Democrats pursued every Midwestern grannie who walked through the capitol on January 6th, took a selfie, and peacefully left. 

The reason the Antifa and BLM protests spread and grew into riots in 2020 – and the anti-ICE agitators have metastasized and escalated over the last year – is that almost nobody has been punished.  So we need to send a message, and make an example of these people “pour encourager les autres,” as the French say. 

If we can legally and morally put the worst 150 through what the Democrats illegitimately put the peaceful J6ers (not the brawlers) through – harassing them, bankrupting them, and sending them to jail for at least a few years – that would establish a powerful deterrent.

Especially if we focused on the conspiracy angle. These coordinated groups seem to be perfect targets for a RICO approach, and after the first couple of street-level and then coordinator-level creeps went down, we’d probably be able to flip some to use against the commie Colombos who were the bosses.  (Boom!  Mafia-Leftist alliterative analogies for $1000, Alex.) (We would also have accepted “the bolshevik Bonannos,” or the “leftist Luccheses.”)  

The one thing we can’t do is back off and let the insurrectionist protesters think they’ve won something.  I don’t think Homan will let that happen, but I’m a little concerned that the draw-down of agents from MN might be premature, especially if Small Frey and Jazz Hands start crowing about it.

I understand political realities, and I know that we can’t just go Roman on the protesters, as would be my own arch-conservative desire. 

But if we can’t go Roman, we should still be able to at least go Homan on their arses.

Hamas (and Trantifa) delenda est!

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Part 2: The Laws that Determine the Legitimacy of Deporting “Non-Criminal” Illegals (posted 2/5/26)

Yesterday I gave a brief overview of the national laws (the Constitution and our various immigration laws) that should determine issues such as sanctuary jurisdictions and the types of protests that are legal and those that aren’t. 

Today I’m going to delineate the propriety of deporting illegals who have committed no crimes other than immigration-related offenses.

One constant refrain from well-meaning lefties (and not-so-well-meaning ones) is that “undocumented” aliens who commit no crimes unrelated to immigration are not criminals, and that Trump lied when he promised to deport ONLY the “worst of the worst” who commit other, non-immigration related crimes.

Taking the second point first, they are either mistaken or lying.  Because while Trump and many other administration figures have repeatedly said that they are prioritizing and going after the worst first – which is pragmatic and wise – they’ve also repeatedly said that everybody who is here illegally has to go back to their home countries. 

To the extent that other illegals get caught up in raids or arrests that target the doubly-criminal ones, that was not the immediate intent, but it’s also fair and justified.

Which leaves us with the assertion that entering the country illegally is not a crime.  (I think it was the scholar and Mensa member AOC who said that to Tom Homan in a congressional hearing.  And promptly got her juicy booty smacked with facts, rhetorically speaking.) (Also, her words, not mine.)

Of course, coming here illegally – by coming in anywhere but at a designated port of entry, or with fraudulent documents, etc. – is a crime, under 18 U.S.C. 1325.  Specifically, it is a federal misdemeanor, which is punishable by a fine of up to $250 and a maximum sentence of 6 months in jail, followed by deportation.  (In the vast majority of cases, the illegal immigrant has usually just been detained/jailed for long enough to deport him, since that is logistically much easier and quicker.)  If anyone re-enters after having once been deported, their violation is then raised to a felony.

So no, there are no “non-criminal” “undocumented” illegal aliens, no matter how many times a pink-haired zealot screams that at an ICE agent, or on TikTok, or at the sky.

A common refrain is that illegals who get caught and then claim asylum in America are here legally.  This is also untrue in the vast majority of cases.

There is a legal process for claiming asylum.  Although they are supposed to make that claim at a designated port of entry when they arrive, illegals can also make that request (using form I-589) after they’ve come in, though they MUST do so within a year of their illegal entry.  In other words, in the tens of thousands of cases in which an illegal who has been here longer than one year (and in many cases, for decades) gets caught and THEN claims asylum, those claims are illegitimate, and the immigrant is subject to immediate deportation.

The Biden administration, as part of their “Flood the Nation with Illegal Democrat Voters” program, created the CBP One app to allow every illegal in the country to claim asylum.  But the reality is that the vast majority of asylum claims are unsuccessful, since they require that the immigrant was being persecuted in their home country for one of five specific reasons (race, religion, etc.).  Those are very hard to prove, and in fact are almost never successful.

(Biden added an extra layer of slimy duplicity to the system through the CBP One dodge. Instead of the traditional process of meeting with the asylum seeker immediately and then making a decision promptly, Biden routinely gave CBP One users an appointment for anywhere from three to five years or more in the future, and then waved them in. 

Of course the Dems knew that almost no illegals would ever show up for those appointments.  And they didn’t want them to.  They  allowed them to melt into the country and stay for years, after which a future Dem administration (and some spineless RINOs) would weep over the cruelty of deporting people who had been here for years, and then grant a blanket amnesty.  We didn’t hate the Biden administration enough.)    

Ironically, one of the few groups who have a bulletproof case for asylee status in recent years is the small number of white South Africans who applied after suffering a wave of vicious criminal attacks because of the color of their skin.  This has been clearly documented through many recordings of the racist songs (“Kill the Boer!  Kill the [white] farmer!”) at political rallies of the racist majority government, and in the official, written policies of that government.

And boy was it fun to watch the furious apoplexy of the whitey-hating leftist American radicals when those few South Africans were allowed into America!

Back to asylum claims: the reality – which everyone knows but which the left will go to great lengths to avoid admitting – is that the vast majority of asylum claims are invalid.  Because the vast majority of immigrants want to come here because this is a wealthy country that offers many opportunities and benefits, which can be gained by either pursuing your own dreams through hard work and grit, or by living on our suicidally generous welfare benefits, which were never intended to go to foreigners.    

Both are understandable motivations, but neither are legal reasons to receive asylum.

I sympathize with the former group and have no hard feelings toward them, even though they still need to go home, and then apply for legal, vetted entry, which is neither an entitlement nor a guarantee.  But I have contempt for the second group, and would like to see them immediately tossed out of the country like they were low-down four-flushers being tossed out of swinging saloon doors by John Wayne.

Having said all that, the constant claims that “the ‘non-criminal’ ‘undocumented’ have broken no laws except for their illegal entry” are in reality never true.  Because once you come here illegally (again, a misdemeanor that makes you legally deportable by itself), you can’t avoid committing further and repeated crimes.  

In fact, most of the basic aspects of modern life – buying a home, driving, and working – are criminal acts when done by illegals.

Legal foreign residents can own a home in America (as they can’t in most other countries), but quasi-legal or temporarily legal foreigners (such as asylum seekers, green card holders and DACA recipients) have to wait to close on a house or mortgage until their claims are legally granted.  But illegals cannot get a mortgage for a house, and if they attempted to buy with cash, the source of that money would have to be legally vetted by the government. 

In other words, no Kilmars – i.e. “Maryland dads” hoping to buy with cash from their gang activities and human and drug smuggling – can legally buy a home in America.   

If illegals drive (which most do), they are committing multiple other crimes in the process.  What do cops always ask for when they pull you over?  License, registration and proof of insurance.  

In most states you can’t get a driver’s license if you’re here illegally.  Even if you’re in a blue state which shadily gives you a license, most other states don’t recognize it, so you’ll be driving without a license if you drive in any of those states.  (And there are tons of cases of blue states fraudulently giving non-English-speaking illegals drivers licenses and even CDLs, only to have them injure or kill Americans on the highways of all of our states.)

You also can’t legally buy and register a car if you’re here illegally in most states.  And of course if you don’t legally own it and can’t register it, then you can’t insure it either.  So any illegal who drives is almost certainly committing at least 3 additional crimes. Plus, if you’re ever caught speeding, that’s usually just a traffic infraction, but that escalates when you add no license, insurance or registration. 

If illegals work here, they are either working on a stolen or fraudulent social security number (which are crimes), or working under the table.  The latter involves several crimes, including tax evasion, facilitating non-payment of tax by their employers, and violating other legal requirements such as getting proper permits, licensing, submitting to proper inspections regarding safety, cleanliness and etc.

If they don’t work, they are exactly the kind of financial burden on our society that our legal immigration system was designed to exclude.  But they are also almost certainly either committing crimes to make money to survive on, or else illegally collecting various forms of welfare, such as housing benefits, SNAP benefits, Medicaid and/or free health care, (plus cash benefits in many blue states) – all of which are at least misdemeanors, often bumped up to felonies when committed in conjunction with other violations/crimes. 

Some illegals do work by getting an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN) in lieu of a social security number (which they cannot legally get). But that is a gray area at best, and widely abused.  The IRS created the ITIN in 1996, without any congressional legislation or executive branch approval, which doesn’t seem proper, considering how much illegal behavior the ITIN facilitates.

It was supposedly intended “to address the need for tax compliance among individuals who do not have a valid Social Security number,” specifically “foreign nationals and other individuals who are not eligible for a SSN.”  I can’t blame the illegals for taking this option, but I can blame our federal government, for setting up a greedy and unfair way to profit from illegals, while creating a magnet to draw more of them here.

Unexpectedly!

The ITIN collects millions in social security-esque taxes from illegals, without giving them any entitlement to social security benefits later.  Lefties often complain about the unfairness of this situation, and as much as it pains me, I have to agree with them, up to a point. 

That point is the part where I say, “If illegals think the ITIN exploits them, there’s an easy way to fix that.  [begin Kinison filter] STOP BREAKING OUR IMMIGRATION LAWS AND GO BACK TO YOUR OWN COUNTRY! OH!  OHHHHHH!!! [end Kinison filter]    

Regardless of the initial reasons for creating the ITIN, it has now become an illegal-enabling disaster and an unethical governmental money grab, and should be drastically reformed. 

There is a legitimate reason for taxing foreigners who are here and working legally, and they should be required to pay the same income, sales and other taxes that citizens pay.  It also makes sense to subject them to an additional tax that would pay for their use of our emergency medical care, educational system etc. – as long as they are here and working her legally. 

But there is NO reason to give ITINs to illegals, thus helping them to circumvent and flout our immigration and employment laws.

Tomorrow in part 3, I’ll analyze the legality (or illegality) of the tactics most commonly employed by anti-ICE protesters.

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Looking at the Actual Laws – and Lawlessness – of the anti-ICE Protests, Part 1 (posted 2/4/26)

Many people have filled the air with claims about our immigration laws and the legitimacy of the anti-ICE protests.  Most of them claim to know the law, and to have it on their side. 

In this column and the next, I’m going to lay out the relevant laws and legal principles as I understand them, to try to counter a lot of what I think are false statements coming from the open borders and anti-ICE left.

Regular readers will know that I’m not a law-talkin’ guy (“Obscure Lionel Hutz references to lawyers on the Simpsons for $100, Alex”), but rather a humble retired English professor.  But I’ve followed a lot of legal writing and SCOTUS cases, and taught writing for pre-law students, so I think I’ve got at least a basic, informed amateur’s understanding of this topic.

Of course, I welcome any corrections or extra information from any actual lawyers among my readership.

I’m going to go from big picture to the small, starting with the Constitution and our national immigration laws.

On this topic, the most relevant parts of the constitution are the Supremacy Clause, which appears in Article 6, and the First Amendment.  The supremacy clause established that whenever a state law on an issue that affects the other states conflicts with the national law as embodied in the Constitution, the Constitution trumps the state law. 

Famous examples would be when Ike or Truman called out the National Guard into southern Democrat states who had passed Jim Crow laws infringing on the rights of black Americans.  The Guard forced blacks’ access to schools and other segregated businesses and institutions, because constitutional law trumped the state Democrats’ racist laws.

One question I’ve had for 10 years or more is why cities and states have been allowed to declare themselves to be “sanctuary” locations, and thus defy the federal government and break our immigration laws?  That would necessarily make them insurrectionists, wouldn’t it?  (Remember when the Democrats used to pretend to take that VERY seriously?)  

The supremacy clause clearly forbids sanctuary cities, and I’m not sure why Trump and conservatives in the GOP haven’t pushed back on this issue, and stopped that open defiance of federal law.

I’ve written elsewhere that at the very least, the feds should stop all federal funds from going to sanctuary cities, to force their compliance with our laws.  If the feds could cut off all federal highway funds to force states to lower their speed limits to 55 in the 1970s, they can certainly cut off funds to end illegal sanctuary policies.   Especially when you consider that lower speed limits hadn’t existed before, and higher limits didn’t break any laws – which local sanctuary ordinances clearly do. The feds just wanted the states to change their behavior, and used the power of the purse to force them to do so. 

The First Amendment’s guarantees of freedom of speech and religion are also crucial in the ongoing disputes.   The freedom of religion is more rarely contested, because until recently, most protestors weren’t stupid enough to intentionally disrupt worship services.  (Rumors that most of the protestors cannot tolerate being in the presence of a cross, lest they burst into flames and run shrieking into the darkness have not been confirmed.)

That is, until Don Lemon and a couple of radical activists led a platoon of morons into the church in Minneapolis a few weeks ago.  The charges against them are an easy legal call – always with the caveat that they get a judge or jury who feels bound to actually rule according to the law.  (Sadly, we can no longer take that for granted anymore.)  They violated many laws that day, starting when they forcibly entered the church, disrupted the service and interfered with the congregants’ freedom of worship, and they have no substantive legal defense.

Freedom of speech is the elephant in the room when it comes to the legality of protests.  Protestors of all political persuasions routinely claim constitutional approval for any and all actions they feel like taking, but that’s not what the First Amendment grants. As with many contentious constitutional issues, the essential distinctions often hang on very specific wording.

In this case, the amendment establishes “the right of the people PEACEABLY to assemble, and to petition the Government for the redress of grievances.”  Obviously, the capital letters are mine, and highlight the crucial point: peaceful protest is allowed and protected; violent protest is not.

A lot of con law jurisprudence has grown out of defining the kinds of protests that are disallowed.  The first (and easiest) was violent protests.  “Violence” is defined by various laws that establish various types and levels of criminal behavior, from property damage to assaults, throwing objects, spitting on people, etc.

Other restrictions developed over time to codify legal and logical definitions.  One such set of limitations involve “time, place and manner” restrictions.  “Time” encompasses limits to protests in the middle of the night or early morning.

 “Place” limits where protests can occur: you can’t go into private property (like a church or business), or a secure military base or other government facilities. Often the government can establish specific protest zones that balance the right of protesters to be heard and the right of others not to have the protests forced on them.  You also can’t protest in front of a judge’s home or a courthouse. 

I know: Technically, the scumbags who harassed Kavanaugh and other SCOTUS justices at their homes were breaking the law, and many activists protesting inside or right up against courthouses are too.  Enforcement, please!

“Manner” covers many issues, such as noise restrictions and decibel levels; capping the number of protestors allowed into a venue; requiring permits to allow road closures or other accommodations; restrictions based on threats to safety (e.g. protests can’t legally spill into roads and block traffic, or create overcrowding that could result in trampling or crushing injuries, etc.).  Protestors also can’t harass their targets, or interfere with legal activities such as going into a place of business, or carrying out legitimate governmental responsibilities such as investigating a crime, or detaining, questioning or arresting someone.

After reading that list, you’re thinking what I am: the anti-ICE mobs have been constantly violating a ton of those laws.  They routinely use constant, ear-splitting whistles, which can induce physical pain and injury, and are necessarily psychologically disorienting and aggravating.  They regularly block traffic, and box LEOs vehicles in.  Their entire raison d’etre is to illegally interfere with any enforcement of our immigration laws.    

The only possible justification I can see for this systematic and blatantly illegal behavior would be if our immigration laws were somehow illegitimate, not democratically passed, or violative of the Constitution.  And that is also just as clearly NOT the case.

I’ve written a previous column summarizing the overall development of our immigration laws from the Founding to the 1960s.   If you’d like to see the details, I posted that column on 4/2/25, and you can find it by scrolling back through my archives on the right side of the screen.

To summarize my summary… The first major immigration law was the Naturalization Act of 1790, and the two major laws in the next century were the Immigration Acts of 1882 and 1891.  My main takeaway from analyzing those acts is that even though we didn’t yet have a vast, bloated welfare system, we were still picky about who we let in, and we purposely chose those who would clearly benefit America.  (We rejected those who were physically or mentally sick, criminals, and those who would be financial burdens on the country, for example.)  In the early 20th century, after decades of booming immigration, we tightened our laws and dramatically decreased the number of immigrants from the ‘20s through the early ‘60s.

But in the 1960s and afterwards, we began to allow more people in, and our goals for immigration underwent an ideological drift to the left.  But initially, we did partially maintain our early, conservative focus on enlightened self-interest, prioritizing immigrants who would be most likely to contribute to our society.  We offered many visas and green cards to allow seasonal workers and students to come in temporarily.  The goal was that this would be a win-win; the seasonal worker immigrants would get better wages and working conditions than they could get in their home country, and the students would get an education that increased their skills and value.  

All of them would be expected to leave the country when their temporary status expired, but the cream of the crop of both white- and blue-collar immigrants would have a chance – after careful vetting – to apply for citizenship, and bring added value to America.

But even as that was going on, the leftist march through the institutions produced more intellectuals and government leaders who took a darker and darker view of America. They saw us as exploitative colonizers and capitalists who had victimized the Third World, so it was only fair that we generously take in more and more immigrants from the Third World, almost as a form of indirect reparations.

They felt guilty and selfish about choosing immigrants based on how they could benefit America, and they moved more toward allowing people in based on “compassion” and “empathy.”  The poorer and more dysfunctional your country was, the better the liberal “saviors” felt about letting you in.   

And, of course, race played a larger and larger role.  Because: leftism. 

Since previous waves of immigration had been drawn predominately from Europe, those immigrants had been mostly white. Which made the ascendant lefties feel really icky, and white-guilt-y.  So they started preferentially admitting more non-white people.  Which dove-tailed nicely with the fact that non-whites tend to vote heavily Democratic. 

To top that off, the leftist attraction to multiculturalism and disdain for traditional/conservative American culture meant that this latest wave of immigration broke from all earlier waves in one crucial way: we no longer insisted that immigrants assimilate to our culture.  Because our leftist betters know that all foreign cultures are morally superior to ours, it would be bigoted and xenophobic of us to expect them to adapt to us.  We need to accommodate them, and allow them to set up defiantly non-assimilating outposts of their own native cultures within our borders.

Annnnnddddd… we get the Muslim call to prayer blasted out of loudspeakers daily in Dearborn, Michigan; angry, racist Latinos burning the American flag and waving the Mexican flag in LA; and piratical fraudster Somali Muslims creating Mogadishu-St. Paul.

This leftist drift on immigration produced an addictive mix of power and pleasures which lefties found irresistible.  They could grow their own political power by admitting millions of morally superior racial victims who will vote for them forever, while also damaging their hated political enemy (conservative whitey!), and simultaneously experience the near-orgasmic pleasure of self-righteously virtue signaling while profiting from the whole mess.       

By the time Biden got control, they had weakened our immigration so much that they were emboldened to drop all pretenses – along with the border – and wave unvetted illegal immigrants in by the millions, for four long years.

Okay, that’s a lot of background.  Next up: I’ll look at the alleged non-criminal status of most illegal immigrants (spoiler alert: it doesn’t exist), and rebut the MSM claims about the legality of the anti-ICE protests one by one.

Hamas (and Trantifa) delenda est!

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More Lies, Fraud and Insurrection from Minneapolis (posted 1/16/26)

Okay dammit, I’ve got a few more thoughts on Minneapolis before I move on. 

I swear I’m trying so hard not to write about Minnesota in every column, but much like Michael Corleone in the terrible third Godfather movie, “Just when I think I’m out, they pull me back in.”

Or, to paraphrase, they are really flooding the zone with stupid, and I can’t avoid at least pointing that out in passing.

On Wednesday night, violent a-holes in Minneapolis attacked ANOTHER ICE agent. 

Unexpectedly!

This time the bad guy was an illegal who fled in his car, wrecked that, and then fled on foot.  When the agent caught up to him, he turned and fought.  When two other illegals in a nearby apartment saw what was going on, they charged out with a snow shovel and a broom handle, and started beating the ICE agent.  The illegal target then grabbed the shovel, and started beating the ICE agent.

Then – FINALLY! – the ICE agent shot the guy in the leg.  After which all three illegals went back into the apartment and barricaded themselves inside.  More ICE agents arrived and ended up getting them out and arresting all three of them. 

That’s what happened. 

Here’s the NYT lede for that story: “Federal Agent Shoots Immigrant in the Leg in Minneapolis, one week after an ICE officer killed Renee Good in city.”

No mention that the “immigrant” was an ILLEGAL.  No mention that the illegal was fighting with the agent, or that two other illegals joined in that fight.  Just an agent, going around shooting immigrants. 

A freshman writing for his high school paper could fix that headline: “Illegal Attacks ICE Agent, gets shot, one week after Renee Good hit ICE agent with her car, got shot.” 

Say it with me, people: We don’t hate the media enough!

Also, I noticed something in this story that I haven’t seen anyone comment on: the agent actually shot the illegal in the leg. 

Ignorant lefties who have watched too much tv and don’t know a gun from a gunny sack are always asking, “Why don’t police just shoot a suspect in the leg?”  And now, when an ICE agent actually did that, the left is still whine-screaming about it.  You just can’t please some people.

On the other hand, you can definitely please other people, like me, and (I’m guessing) most of you reading this right now.  Because if the ICE agents start listening to us, the next time three illegals bring a shovel, a broom handle and their fists to a gunfight, we will be very pleased indeed if the ICE agents will shoot them. And not just in the leg, and not just once.  

Meanwhile, a new fraud story came out of Minneapolis yesterday, and you’ll be shocked to learn that those damn Swedes are at it again.

HA!  I kid.  It’s the Somalis.  Because of course it is.

It turns out that $700 million dollars in cash has been sent back to Somali through the Minneapolis Airport over the last 2 years.  And that’s only the amount that was “flagged,” which I’m guessing means that the money was disclosed or found, but then still allowed to be shipped out.

I’m also guessing that that money was way less than the full amount sent out, unknown and unflagged.  The story notes that that much cash, if it was all in $100 bills, would weigh 7.7 metric tons.  Through one airport!

This phenomenon needs to be considered in context of two other recent discoveries: the $8 billion dollars of fraud (at least!) committed by Somalis in Minnesota, and the official stats from the Center for Immigration Studies that as of December 2025, 81% of Somali households in Minnesota are on welfare. 

Rumors that the other 19% own daycares have not been confirmed.

But c’mon, man.    

Logically, if Somalis have committed that much fraud and received that much welfare, there is no way they got their hands on that much cash to send back to Somalia legitimately.  Not to mention that at least some of that taxpayer-provided money has gone to support Al-Shabaab. 

Which is not some delicious dish involving skewers of meat, but a hateful jihadist terror group.

Plus, at least one Somalian married her brother to commit immigration fraud, and should be denaturalized and deported immediately.

So if you’re keeping score at home, the most common career of Somalis in Somalia appears to be piracy at sea.  Until yesterday, it appeared that the most common career of Somalis in America is piracy on land.

And now it turns out they’re also very good at piracy in the skies. 

Next up: Somalis stow away on one of Elon’s rockets to the space station, and… wait for it… Somali pirates in space! 

In light of all of this, I wish the GOP would start accurately describing what the ICE-attacking mobs and sanctuary cities are doing as insurrection.  Because the leftist politicians, media figures and foot soldiers are by definition “rising in revolt, rebellion or resistance against civil authority or an established government.”

So we need to go full court press against insurrectionist sanctuary cities and states for the next 10 months:

1. Demand that their courts and jails hold illegal detainees for ICE to pick up. 

2. Charge the top politicians who refuse to do that with whatever federal crimes are most serious: obstruction, dereliction of duty, insurrection, whatever. 

3. In the meantime, cut off all federal funding to those cities and states for any purpose that can be even tangentially tied to illegals.

My ultra-conservative heart tells me to do that directly and across the board:  Since illegals are receiving food benefits, cut off all SNAP funds; since illegals are illegally receiving schooling, cut off all K-12 federal funds; since illegals are illegally attending colleges, cut off all college loans and funding.  Since they are illegally getting housing benefits, cut off all housing funds. 

But my crystal brain – better than a crystal ball, and more strategic than my ultra-conservative heart – suggests a better way to go about this. Because the dishonest Dems and their collaborators in the MSM would say that we were denying innocent Americans in those states the funds that they should rightly be receiving. 

So instead of cutting off all funds to those states and cities, I suggest that Trump announces a new plan with a public statement along these lines:  “We don’t want to do this.  We hate it.  But those states are screwing their own citizens by taking benefits away from them and giving them to illegals.  And the residents of all non-sanctuary states and cities – which are the majority of the country – do not consent to having their money taken from them and then given to illegals in corrupt sanctuary cities and states.

“So we’ve studied the numbers, and have determined how much money they’ve been illegally giving to non-citizens, whether through SNAP funds, housing benefits, educational benefits, etc.  For example, we’ve determined that Minnesota receives $30 billion in SNAP funds annually, and gives $10 billion of that to illegals.  [I’m making these numbers up to make the point.]

“Starting now, we’ll be giving the $20 billion Minnesota needs to give SNAP benefits ONLY to American citizens.  We’ll do the same with federal funding in every other category.  This will give voters in every state the chance to tell their leaders how they want that money spent.  If they are happy to lose their apartments and have their kids go hungry while tax money pays rent for illegals and feeds them and their families, so be it.

“Again, we will continue to fully fund the states so that they can support their American citizens.  If they want to re-direct much of that money to illegals, that’s up to them, and to you, their voters.”  

The beauty of this plan is that it would put the blame directly where it belongs: on the leftist politicians and activist groups who are ripping off American taxpayers for the benefit of illegals.

I think this would be an easy and popular argument to make to the American public.  I’d point to a precedent from the 1970s.  During the oil crisis when gas shortages started popping up, the feds said that since driving slower conserved gas, the national speed limit should go down from 70 to 55 mph.  When some states balked at that, the feds stopped highway funds for those states until they complied. 

And that wasn’t even to force them to obey a law they had been breaking. Speed limits weren’t in the constitution, and states had always set their own.  It wasn’t illegal to allow people to drive 65 or 70.  The feds just didn’t like it, and decided that they knew what was best.

And if you can withhold funds to force states to make their citizens drive slower, you can sure as hell withhold funds to force states to stop breaking federal laws, and stealing billions from the taxes paid by citizens of all other states!

I’ll end on a historical parallel that I’ve noticed. 

Small Frey, Jazz Hands and hundreds of protestors have been screaming at ICE to get out, saying they don’t want them here.  First, that’s not how any of this works, as they would know if they’d ever read part of the Constitution called The Supremacy Clause. 

Second, they sound exactly like some of their co-religionists from 165 years ago, when another bunch of Democrat insurrectionists told the federal government the same thing, as they attacked Fort Sumter.  “Stay of out of Charleston!  We don’t want you here!”

Today they’re calling face-tattooed gang bangers, child molesters and murderers “our neighbors.”  Which proves that they’re even dumber than the Democrats of yesteryear, who were at least smart enough to not try to sell the public on the lie that they were concerned about their black “neighbors.” 

They were also more honest. 

Because screaming, “We won’t let you have our property!” might sound more jarring, but it’s a lot more true than today’s Dems calling foreign criminals “our neighbors”

Hamas (and Trantifa) delenda est!

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Looking Forward to the New Year (posted 1/1/26)

I love New Year’s Day.  It comes in the middle of the 12 days of Christmas, during a long break spent with family; there is good football to watch; and I savor the chance to look back at the past year, and forward to the new one.   

In my last column I looked back at some highlights and lowlights of 2025, but the year certainly ended with all kinds of stupid.  Consider those cheese-eating surrender monkeys the French, for example.   They have a famed national celebration every New Years Eve in Paris, with huge crowds on the Champs-Elysees and a gigantic concert, followed by fireworks at the Arc de Triomphe at midnight.

Except for this year.  Because it is now too dangerous.  The French government no longer feels it can keep its own citizens safe in its capital on a national holiday.  A police statement alluded to “unpredictable crowd movements” as one cause for worry. 

You know, like when the church parking lot gets crowded on a Sunday at noon, or when lots of Gator fans descend on the stadium an hour before kickoff.  You can never be too careful when you’ve got crowds.  Especially the kind which are prone to moving around.    

So the French canceled their concert, and replaced it with a pre-recorded video broadcast.  Because nothing says, “Let’s celebrate this significant moment!” like… reruns. 

There will still be fireworks, but officials “urged people to watch from home.”  Because there is no better way to appreciate the visceral experience of immense colorful explosions filling the sky and cacophonous blasts you can feel in your chest than…to watch it on a tv screen. 

The evasive banality of these official French government pronouncements demonstrate that they believe that some things are better left unsaid. Especially when those things involve mobs of violent practitioners of a certain Religion of Peace™ whom the French have been allowing into their country for decades now.

Annnnddddd…no more celebrations, Frenchie!  Watch it on tv.

Meanwhile, here at home we have geniuses like Eric Swalwell, who is now running for California governor.    And if California Dems vote him into office, they’ll deserve the reign of error, flatulence and unguarded pillow talk with ChiCom honey traps that will ensue.

Swalwell’s latest campaign promise is a doozy.  He is pledging to arrest ICE agents and take away their driver’s licenses. 

You read that right.  ICE agents – the rare federal employees who actually have a proper constitutional job to do and are actually doing it correctly – will not get away with enforcing our laws on Swalwell’s watch.  Following in the footsteps of the seditious six – who told our military that they shouldn’t follow illegal orders, and then couldn’t point to any such orders they’ve been given, because those orders don’t exist – Swalwell tried to cover himself by using the weaseliest of weasel words.

To wit, “And if they commit crimes then they’re going to be charged with crimes, if it’s falsely imprisoning people, if it’s kidnapping, if it’s assault and battery, they’re going to be held accountable.” 

That kind of vacuous statement might work for the motley collection of AWFLs, sufferers from blunt force head trauma and CTEs, and non-English speakers who make up the Democrat voting base in California.

But the rest of us know that of course ICE agents committing those crimes would be charged with those crimes.  We also know that they are NOT committing those crimes.  Because detaining and then arresting people who broke our immigration laws isn’t “falsely imprisoning” them, and taking them off the street and legally holding them prior to deportation isn’t “kidnapping” them. 

And “assault and battery” is what happens to my ears and brain when Eric Swalwell starts talking on tv when my remote is not within arm’s reach.       

The driver’s license threat is especially rich.  When normal Americans think “problems with driver’s licenses in California,” they think about foreigners who just got here two weeks ago, and were issued voter’s registration paperwork and a CDL, despite the fact that they don’t know enough English to read road signs, or spell “CDL.”

Maybe Swalwell thinks that the total number of driver’s licenses is a fixed amount, and he needs to start confiscating licenses from American citizens who are enforcing our laws and keeping us safe, so that he can give those licenses to every Juan, Achmed and Apu with a hankerin’ to climb up behind the wheel of a 15-ton 18-wheeler and start flattening sedans and SUVs like JB Pritzker trampling people between him and a buffet.   

Where was I?

Oh yeah.  Looking forward to the new year.

I don’t do hard-and-fast resolutions, but I do like to set goals, and I’ve got a lot of items on my own personal bucket list that still need to be checked off:

First, of course, I’d like to get the CO website up and running again.

I’d like to fast-rope down from a helicopter just in time to prevent a crime from happening, or stop a useful idiot from talking a naïve young person into voting Democrat.

I’d like to dive into a body of water with a knife clenched between my teeth.

After being a four-time runner up, I’d like to finally win a People Magazine’s Sexiest Man of the Year award.

I’d like to win a Nobel Prize, just so that in my speech I could work in a Pelosi mummy joke, a Cherokee Liz Warren joke (#wemustneverstopmockingher), and a Pritzker dirigible joke. 

I’d like a law enforcement agency to require me to register my hands as lethal weapons. 

I’d like to be at a public event where I could interrupt an idiot making a land acknowledgment by standing up and yelling, “Either give the land back or shut your yap, you insufferable, virtue-signaling D-bag!” 

But enough about me and my personal goals. 

Politically, my over-arching resolution would be for us conservatives to wield the power the voters gave us as aggressively as the Democrats always do when they are in power.  Even if we don’t lose the House in November, time is fleeting and there is a ton of work to do, so we need to make hay while the sun shines, on many fronts:

1.Do everything possible to speed up deportations, and encourage illegals to self-deport.  Crack down on all benefits that serve as magnets for illegals: stop them from getting Medicaid funds, food stamps, illegal employment and college funding.  Defund the NGOs who have been conduits for money for themselves, and to enable illegals to get here and stay here.    

2. Use the power of federal money to incentivize insurrectionist “sanctuary” blue cities and states to obey federal law or suffer the consequences.  Take highway funds away from states who illegally issue any drivers’ licenses to illegals; take federal matching funding away from states who have been using those funds on boondoggles like the CA bullet train.  Withdraw funding wherever it can be legally withdrawn to stop taxpayers from unwillingly subsidizing wind and solar farms that produce expensive electricity that must then be subsidized again when it shows up in electric bills.

3. Use the power of every law and regulation – not as dishonest lawfare, but as aggressive enforcement of laws that have long been ignored or thwarted.  Arrest and prosecute every person who interferes with or attacks ICE, border patrol or the national guard.  Make examples of judges who break the law or rule frivolously; impeach a handful of them where you can, and arrest and prosecute those like the WI judge who was just convicted for helping an illegal escape ICE officers.   

4. Use conservative media to highlight the truth – and counter the MSM – on every story they distort or lie about, i.e. all of the stories.  Make the really bad actors famous – violent illegals, Somali scammers, brother-marrying anti-Semites in Congress – and highlight our wins (lower crime rates and unemployment, an improving economy, etc.).  Build on our recent successes in social media, and keep the spotlight on Dem malfeasance          

5. In a perfect world, I’d like us to keep the filibuster.  But in the real world, I’m afraid it’s time to get rid of it, both because the Dems will certainly do so the minute they get back in power (they already did, with judges), and because they’ve repeatedly demonstrated that they aren’t good-faith negotiators.  We can’t continue to fight with one arm tied behind our back, and we can’t continue to bring strongly worded letters to a knife fight.  If we don’t, the Dems will prevent us from making health-care reforms, and then will profit by blaming us for the failed Obamacare that they are 100% responsible for.     

We made some very good progress in 2025, but we need to keep the pedal to the metal in 2026.

I hope you all had a great holiday season, and are looking forward to the new year as much as I am!

Hamas (and Trantifa) delenda est!

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Looking Back at 2025 (posted 12/29/25)

 I hope everybody had a great Christmas.  We had a peaceful and quiet one.  In recent years I’ve gotten into the 12 Days of Christmas liturgical tradition, which was not a part of my Baptist upbringing, but which is appealing for several reasons.  I’ve always loved Christmas, and any chance to extend that holy/holiday feeling for longer seems intrinsically good.  (I know that Hanukkah is not a major Jewish holiday, but I’ve always like the idea of 8 days of celebration…so you know I’d be up for 12!)

And because I own a few rental houses in a college town, I really appreciate the feeling of a temporarily emptier town, and the opportunity that brings to do some maintenance work without having to work around tenants’ schedules, traffic, etc.  On the agenda this week is some yard clean-up – I’ve already removed three pickup loads of leaves and limbs – some minor carpentry, repairing and painting a picket fence, and repairing and painting some wooden window screens.    

I also appreciate the chance to look back at the year that has passed, and to look forward to the new year, too.  In this column I’ll look back at some highlights and lowlights of 2025, and in the next column – the last one for this year – I’ll look forward to some of my hopes and fears for 2026.

Obviously, Trump taking office was a huge deal, and a great relief after the four benighted years of the Cadaver and the Cackler and their horrible policies and personnel.  Trump’s most dramatic accomplishment was completely closing the border after 16 minutes in office – and after years of Biden and the Dems feigning an inability to close the border without “comprehensive immigration reform” legislation. 

(By which they meant opening the borders to millions of unvetted immigrants to ensure a leftist voting majority forever.)    

The deportations, though frustratingly slow, have been great too.  The relatively slow pace of deportations has not been because of lack of trying, and it’s been infuriating to watch the same Dems who allowed millions to stampede in – with NO due process to protect American citizens – now insist that every obviously deportable alien be given full, years-long due-process hearings.

Still, Trump’s move to offer cash and a plane ticket to those who will self-deport is smart, and has been paying dividends; I think around twice as many have self-deported as have been caught and forcibly deported.  And as long as Homan and Trump keep pushing aggressively, I would guess that more and more will self-deport, as the realization sinks in that Hulk Homan means business, and they’re going to be caught and tossed eventually.

I think another high point has been the improvements in the first year of Trump’s second term compared to his first.  The first time around, his win came as a surprise to many, and with no previous governing experience, Trump had to fumble his way up a very steep learning curve.  He left way too many oppositional deep-state bureaucrats in place, and his appointments were a mixed bag, with a lot of misses. 

And I’m not just talking about Amarosa and the Mooch.  (Terrible drive-time FM radio shock-jock duo, terrible political appointments.) Pence was a good man but an empty suit as VP; I can’t remember a thing about Rex Tillerson as Sec State.  I actually liked Mattis as Sec Def and Jeff Sessions as AG, but they both had some self-inflicted wounds. 

With the possible exception of Pam Bondi, I can’t think of an appointment this time around that hasn’t been at least as strong, and usually a marked improvement over their counterparts in the first term.  JD is a boss; Mario is doing half a dozen jobs and all of them well; Stephen Miller and Hegseth have taken everything the sleazy MSM could throw at them and spit right back in their eye.

And Tom Homan is my hero.   

Trump clearly put together a team during his four years in the wilderness, and he hit the ground running.  In a functional nation with sane Democrats in it, Trump could have passed much of his agenda through congress.  In the dysfunctional mess Trump inherited, he has had to sign a boatload of EOs and push through the imperfect omnibus Big Beautiful Bill, and those have been vast improvements over the last four years, and clear improvements over the first year of his first term. 

He’s also laid the groundwork for good things to happen in the near- and mid-term future.  The regulation cuts and tax cuts that kick in next month will help the economy, as will the trade deals that are bringing tons of investment into our country.  The appellate courts and SCOTUS are likely to grind along and keep knocking down the partisan lower-court judges’ attempts to stop every good thing that is happening, from immigration enforcement to the economy to pushing back on the discrimination and trans lunacy embodied in DEI ideology.

That’s not to say that everything is going great.  The DOGE effort was noble and much-needed, but has lost a lot of momentum with Elon’s departure.  While Trump’s tariffs push has provided some useful leverage in trade negotiations in some cases, and they have not produced the disastrous results predicted by many conservatives, their indiscriminate and impulsive deployments have hurt some of our allies, and caused some economic uncertainty and problems for many Americans. 

I think that SCOTUS is likely to trim Trump’s sails a bit with some forthcoming tariff opinions, and as a strict constructionist, I think that probably should happen.  I think it will be good for the economy, and it might also provide an opportunity to Trump to recalibrate, and hopefully make more congenial trade deals with our allies, while saving the punitive tariffs for our enemies, especially China and Russia.      

But highlights aren’t just instances when we do well.  Highlights also happen when our opponents shoot themselves in the foot, and defecate on their shoes, and step on rakes, and many other metaphors of hilarious self-injury that I cannot think of right now.

And boy, have the Dems been on a self-injury tear this year!  The TDS has settled over the deep blue areas of the country like the plague hitting Europe in the 14th century, and the results are likely to be just about as devastating.  The insane, insurrectionist and violent resistance to ICE enforcing our immigration laws are already starting to bear fruit.  That hag of a judge in Wisconsin who helped an illegal felon temporarily evade ICE has just been convicted, and is providing a good example for the rest of the left-wing partisans in robes.

The flight of American citizens from blue states and cities to red ones is only accelerating, as the horrific results of leftist governance – high taxes, high crime, insufferable micro-managing Karens of both genders – are destroying the quality of life in those blue areas.  Ken Doll Newsom and Brandon Johnson and J(um)B(o) Pritzker continue to afflict the citizens of CA and IL respectively, and Mamdani’s incipient carnival of stupid is about to give NYC voters what they asked for – good, hard and sans lubrication.

As sick as I am of feckless RINO GOPers – thanks for not redistricting, Indiana Republicans! –Congressional Dems have reached new record lows of approval, around 18%!  And they’re still steering into the skid of stupidity.  They’re championing felon illegals, scamming Somalians, and drug-running Venezuelans.  And now they’ve set the Epstein files to blow up in their faces, too.  After four years of having total control over those files and doing nothing with them, they now look like morons as they clamber onto their high horses and accusing Republicans of doing slowly and bumblingly (fact check: true) what they themselves refused to do at all!

And as the newest tranches of Epstein material comes out, it turns out that there is no new damage done to Trump, while Bill Clinton is turning up in a whole photo album of hot tub and pool pics with every female who is not his Clydesdale-ankled harridan of a wife.

Or, as a Babylon Bee headline put it, “A Surprising Amount of Epstein Photos are Turning up in the Bill Clinton Files.” 

Of course the saddest political event of the year was the murder of Charlie Kirk and its aftermath.  It’s fitting that that is the clearest dividing point of 2025, because it became a focus of wildly different reactions that showed the essential nature of so many on both the right and the left.  For the vast majority on the right – and most independents too, I think – the brutal and evil nature of Charlie’s death was rightly repulsive.  So far, at least, it has produced a groundswell of support for Turning Point USA among young people, and a spur for many to turn to (or return to) Christian faith.  

For a tiny sliver of the right, including creepy racist Nick Fuentes and newly creepy anti-Semitic dunce Candace Owens and sadly deteriorating Tucker Carlson, Kirk’s death has provided a jumping-off point for conspiracy theories and mean-spirited attacks on innocent friends and associates of Charlie.

And for the left, his murder unleashed a tidal wave of shockingly ghoulish glee.  They have revealed the ugly reality of their political hatreds in a way that will hopefully inoculate many citizens from wanting to vote for them in the near future, at least.

Coming up next: my hopes – and a few worries – for 2026.

Hamas (and Trantifa) delenda est!

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History: Does Part of the US Belong to Mexico? (posted 10/13/25)

This week I’ll be doing some travelling, starting on Wednesday.  I’ll go up to TN to see my mom and sister, then on up to IL and WI to see some leaves change and hang with my cousins, before visiting mom again on the way back home. 

But I’ve been noodling around with many column ideas for a while, so I’m hoping to post columns on Wednesday and Friday, and I’ll play it by ear for next Monday.

Today, as Trump appears to be on the verge of shepherding a peace deal in the Middle East that would earn him universal acclaim – even on the left, if he weren’t so orange and trumpy – I’m going to talk about his other greatest accomplishment (IMHO): his success at stopping illegal immigration and deporting the illegals who are already here.

I want to focus on one specific aspect of that struggle, which is the ideological arrogance of some of those who have come here illegally, especially those from Mexico. 

I’ll be the first to acknowledge that many Mexicans came here for a very logical reason, which is to escape the poverty and chaos of their badly run homeland in favor of the opportunities to improve their lives and future in America. That is a worthy goal, and I don’t blame anybody who wants to achieve it.

Don’t get me wrong: if they came illegally, they’ve still got to go back.  If they voluntarily self-deport, they can have a chance to be heavily vetted, and to someday potentially immigrate legally.  (If they don’t, and they force us to catch and deport them, don’t let the door flatten your sombrero on your way out.)

But I’m not talking about those Mexicans.  I’m talking about the ones who have adopted an obnoxious and false leftist ideological fantasy that much of the United States morally and legally belongs to them.  This belief has been part of the lefty/multicultural/anti-colonizing ascendency in academia generally, and Hispanic and American studies in particular.  (Common terms are the “All of Mexico” movement, and the “Reconquista.”) 

The theory is that much of the southern and western United States once belonged to Mexico, and since taking land by political conquest is immoral and illegitimate (at least when Europeans or white folks do it), a big chunk of the USA is not really “America,” and Mexicans have a right to be here and stay here.  And maybe be given the land back officially, just as some argue that black Americans should get cash reparations or else property, in a variation on the “40 acres and a mule” formula. 

As a former academic, I encountered later iterations of this aggressively misinformed concept in the form of “land acknowledgements,” those fatuous pronouncements preceding various events (graduations, conferences, etc.) bemoaning the fact that the event is taking place on land once owned by various Edenic, noble (non-white) peoples such as the Hekawi tribe or the Wakandans, from whom it was brutally stolen by Euro-whities. (Boo, whitey!  Boo!) 

Basically, the conceit is that the imaginary Elizabeth Warrens – brown gals with long black hair in braids, deer skin dresses, and cheekbones you could skin a Tatanka with – were all dispossessed by the actual Elizabeth Warrens – translucent AWFL shrews whiter than a yodeling competition in Reykjavik in January.  (#wemustneverstopmockingher)  

Phony land acknowledgments were the highest form of virtue signaling, making the scolding whiners feel morally superior while costing them nothing.  (If they believed their own BS, they’d cancel the event, insist that the venue be given to the descendants of the Apaches or whoever, and abandon their own houses immediately.)  

This ideological stance only added to the larger trend of resistance to assimilation, which has made the recent explosion in illegal immigration so much more destructive than earlier waves of immigrants.  And this is obviously a significant problem with at least a large portion of Mexican illegals – and their pale-face lefty enablers – judging from the violent protests and attacks on ICE this year, including those involving flying Mexican flags and burning the American one.

Needless to say, believers in those ideas vigorously oppose any suggestion that they should assimilate to American culture!  To the contrary, they are entitled to claim the land for themselves, after which we can be required to assimilate to their culture, if they allow us to stay.

So let’s take a little stroll down history lane, and see how well this theory holds up.

Spain started controlling parts of the Americas in 1493, and started planting cities and missions in what is now the USA in 1565 (starting with St. Augustine).  Their control of parts of America lasted for almost 3 centuries, until they started weakening in the 19th century.  They lost Louisiana to the French in 1803; they ceded Florida to the US in 1819.  And then they lost the rest to Mexico in the Mexican War of Independence in 1821, who then lost it to America in the Mexican-American War of 1846-48. 

So to the extent that most of the disputed Western territories that eventually became the site of the “Reconquista” political fight today (CA, AZ, NM, etc.) were “owned” by any nation, they were owned by Spain for 250 years, then by Mexico for 25 years, and then by the USA for the last 175 years. 

Which means that the La Raza rioters say that big chunks of the US belong to them because Mexico controlled it for only 25 of the last 450 years!  Needless to say, they don’t talk a lot about how the Mexicans “stole” it from the Spaniards before America “stole” it from them!  

Because after all, the Mexicans won their land fair and square, in a war, whereas the grifter gringos won it from the Mexicans…um…fair and square…in a war.  (What’s Spanish for “D’oh!”?)

And their case is even weaker when seen in the light of the racialist identity politics of most “educated” young lefties.  Because from what I’ve read, Mexico has a much more stubbornly persistent racially binary, privileged/under-privileged make-up than the multi-racial USA does.

A disproportionate number of the most influential/rich/politically connected Mexicans descend pretty clearly from the Spaniards who ruled Mexico for most of its history.  The descendants of Aztecs – shorter and more squat, with darker skin and flatter features – are easily distinguishable from the taller, lighter-skinned European Spaniards. 

And those guys were European colonizers to the core, and would be considered white in modern leftists’ racial taxonomy. 

But before you award the Nobel Prize for Victimology to the “native” Mexicans, hold on to your maracas.  Because if we canoe back a little farther into the mists of history, we find that those “native” Mexicans were actually the racial descendants of the Aztecs, who were very successful colonizers in their own right. 

In fact, Cortes’ conquest of the Aztecs was made possible in part by brutal Aztec treatment of their neighboring tribes, which motivated those tribes to take revenge on them by giving the Spaniards assistance and local knowledge.

Now I don’t believe in all of this racialized identity politics that the professional/academic left does.  I’m more of a conservative, merit-based/MLK guy, into judging people by the content of their character instead of the color of their skin.  But if I did buy into the racialist left’s taxonomy, I STILL wouldn’t think that the Mexican protestors should be fighting ICE and Americans. 

To the extent that they are Aztec-descended, they should be pissed at the Spanish (i.e. “white”) power structure that’s been keeping them down in Mexico.  To the extent that they are Spanish/white, they should mock the Aztec-descended Mexicans, because they are condemning the Spanish for colonizing them, while the Aztecs only had “Mexico” because THEY had colonized/genocided the previous inhabitants.

And to the extent that they are proud Mexican patriots/nationalists who don’t care about racial differences amongst them – and good for them! – they should be ashamed of themselves for whining that the Yankees “stole” Mexico from them 175 years ago, when THEY had stolen it from the Spanish 25 years earlier.  Just like they should feel sheepish because they resent being forced to speak English, when they only speak Spanish because a bunch of white Europeans forced it on them, and wiped out the native Nahuatl language.

However it would be fun, if they did manage to drive out the Americans and take over LA, to hack their phone systems with messages that started, “For Nahuatl, press one…”  And then they could suffer when some Aztec jerk who calls himself whatever is Nahuatl for “Bad Bunny” gives them four months to learn Nahuatl before he yowls out some terrible music at halftime of the Super Bowl of soccer.  (Making a horrific experience even worse!)

Illegal aliens’ fantasies of forcing American citizens to adapt to their own cultural norms is just one more reason to deport them.  Unlike earlier immigrants who admired America and were excited and eager to become Americans – like my Scots-Irish and German ancestors, and my wife’s Norwegian and British ones – too many illegals prefer their home cultures, and would rather create outposts of El Salvador or Somalia here, or live in Muslim enclaves with sharia law here. 

That is certainly not true of all immigrants, and I’m sure there are many Muslims who want to get out from under the jihadi freaks running their nations, and many Central Americans who want to escape the d-bags who have turned their countries into an oppressive hell-holes, and many others who just want to work hard and become patriotic Americans.

However, thanks to Joe Biden, many Democrats and some Republicans, we’ve got a huge mess on our hands now, and we got here by allowing millions of unvetted illegals to flout our laws.  But as the Secretary of War once said, “That sh*t is over!”

It’s going to be hard to devote a lot of time and resources to processing more would-be immigrants while we’re spending a fortune to deport the millions of illegals here now.  (Again, thank Joe Biden for that!)

When we do get back to vetting new immigrants, we’d better vet the hell out of them!  Because along with all of the good ones hoping to come for the same reason most of our ancestors came – before there was a welfare system or any social safety net, and you were expected to assimilate to American culture, instead of the other way around – there are many who want to come for the welfare benefits, and the chance to spread their own hatred of the West and American culture.

And we’ve already got enough leftists, thank you.  

Hamas and Trantifa delenda est!

I See Some Bad Things on the Horizon for the Dems (posted 7/11/25)

Yes, faithful readers, your eyes are not deceiving you: you are reading my fifth consecutive daily column.

I know: a five-column week is an impressive achievement.  It’s like shooting under 60 in one round of a golf tournament, or throwing back-to-back no-hitters in the MLB.  Or the Bears drafting a quarterback who doesn’t rip the hearts out of Bears fans and stomp on them with inexplicably sharp cleats by the time Halloween rolls around and we’re eliminated from the playoffs.

Would I be able to do this if I weren’t semi-retired?  No. 

Would I be able to do it without your faithful readership, which I might even describe as verging on adoration, if my instinctive modesty didn’t restrain me?  No. 

Would I be able to do it if I didn’t have the strength of ten men, because my heart is pure?  No way.

Okay, enough of that.  It’s Friday, baby, so where my narwhals at?

Today I’m focusing on some escalating bad behavior from mainstream Dems in the congress and the MSM that is not going to end well for them.  I’m talking about their increasingly unhinged and violent rhetoric aimed at ICE agents who are just doing their jobs and enforcing our immigration laws.

The Dems are in such an impenetrable bubble that they really do seem to think that the public is on their side, and that the Cuddly Kilmar doll is going to be a big seller this Christmas.  (You pull a string on his back, and he says, “MS-13 forever, homes!” and “My old lady had that beating coming, your honor.”)  (Unregistered car filled with illegals he was caught trafficking sold separately.)

Many Democrats are in the throes of anger, and convinced that it’s the righteous kind.  Axios interviewed a dozen Democrat House members who anonymously reported that their voters are getting more and more heated.  One said that, “our own base is telling us that there needs to be blood to grab the attention of the press and the public.” 

Another reported that his constituents are saying that “civility isn’t working” and to prepare for “violence…to fight to protect our democracy.”  A third said that “people online have sent me crazy sh*t, told me to storm the White House and stuff like that.” 

(Because insurrection is (D)ifferent when they do it.)  

Of course, this is the predictable result of Democrat elites ramping up hatred on their side in recent years.  By last November, their supporters didn’t think Trump could ever win, or that if he did, it would be through some illegitimate trickery.  So when he swept the swing states, won the popular vote, and beat Que Mala in the electoral college like Kilmar tuning up his wife because she looked at him wrong, they didn’t know what to do.  

The same boneheads telling them to “fight for democracy” – until democracy worked, and swept Trump into a second presidential term – have now gone back to the Extremist Handbook of Inflammatory Slogans and recycled “Conservatives are Nazis and ICE is the Gestapo!” 

They have no idea that they’re racing down F**k-Around Street with the pedal to the metal, and they’re fast approaching Find-Out Avenue.  And that intersection is strewn with spike strips and Jersey barriers, and both sides of the cross street are lined with empty prison buses.  The seat belts in those buses come with complementary handcuffs, and in front of each bus is a squad of Homan’s Heroes®.  And those guys are there to do calligraphy and jail rioters.

And they’re all out of fountain pens.

Okay, that got a little weird at the end.  Annnndddd…I’m pushing away the glass of Knob Creek 9 until I finish this column.

Anyway, the lefty activists have been asking for trouble, and now they’re starting to get it.  More and more stories are coming out about imbeciles interfering with ICE and getting arrested or worse.     

On Tuesday four morons were caught after they put out devices that spiked the tires of ICE vehicles.  Their mugshots send the clear, non-verbal message we’ve all come to expect in these situations: “My prospects for ever having sexual congress with a decent woman are slim and none, and slim has left the building.”

A day earlier, at a Border Patrol station in McAllen, TX, an idiot armed himself and dressed up in tactical gear and attacked border patrol agents and local police.  He managed to wound one of them before they shot him a lot, and he quickly took the pavement temperature challenge.  Because: Texas.

Or, as a Breitbart story put it, “Cops Neutralize Attacker.” 

I love the use of the term “neutralized” here.  You almost never hear it outside of thriller novels or movies, or IDF after-action reports, which regular readers know are my favorites.   “We neutralized that Hezbollah leader’s eyes and hands in our pager attack three weeks ago.  And we just neutralized the rest of him with a missile strike on a goat pen where he was having a conjugal visit.  Shalom, and thank you for your attention to this matter.”

Ten radical freaks ambushed an ICE facility on the Fourth of July, wounding one agent before escaping, frustratingly un-shot.  But they were soon arrested, and their chances of being home in time to find a Cuddly Kilmar under their Christmas tree are not good.

Just yesterday a Texas Constable arrested a 22-year-old Mensa member named Serio Olivares (tragically, an American citizen), whose dad owns a business where ICE agents arrested some illegals.  As the agents were about to leave, Serio arrived and confronted them, damaging one of their cars.  When they left, he pursued them, driving recklessly, until they stopped and arrested him. 

The local “liberal Democrat district attorney’s office” would not press any more serious charges than misdemeanor traffic violations, so the constable is contacting the Feds to bring more serious interference with federal agents charges. 

My favorite part of the story is that Serio is a serial offender.  Unexpectedly! 

Because last November, he was charged with interfering with an officer’s public duties – sound familiar? – but that charge was later dismissed, in a deal in which he pled to one felony charge.  In March he was given diversion after cocaine possession and unlawful carrying of a gun – C’mon, Texas!  You’re letting me down here – on the condition that he not commit another crime within one year.

Right now Serio is staring intently at a calendar, trying to do some basic calculations.  I’d love to be there when he figures out that from March to July is four months.  And I’d REALLY love to be there 10 minutes later, when he realizes that four months is less than one year.  

Which means that he can still serve two years on the earlier coke charge, in addition to whatever sentence the Feds are going to give him for his latest stunt.

To paraphrase the Captain in Cool Hand Luke, “What we’ve got here is a failure to cogitate.”    

If the Dems keep this up, one of their unstable foot-soldiers is eventually going to kill an ICE agent, and they are not going to enjoy what comes next.

In the meantime, I’m praying for our cops, border patrol and ICE agents, and bracing for more winning, and the lefty activist tantrums that come with it.

Hamas delenda est!

Thoughts on Immigration, Part 2 (posted 4/4/25)

In my column on Wednesday I covered a little bit of the history of our immigration laws, and discussed the long-standing legal and common-sense concept that we have every right to decide who to allow to come into our country, and under what circumstances.  And however much our rules about immigration have developed and evolved, they’ve always included one central idea: we should allow people in who can improve and benefit America.

Hence the five categories that I quoted from the 1891 Immigration Act.  If you’re a foreigner who wants to come here, and you’re stupid, or mentally or physically ill, why would we want you here?  If you’re a criminal, why would we want to be your victims?  If you can’t or won’t support yourself financially, why would we want to work harder and tax ourselves more, just to take care of you? 

On the one hand, it’s weird to even have to say all that, because rational self-interest seems so self-evident and obvious.  If Americans don’t have the right to decide who comes into America, who does?  And if you will predictably make us dumber, sicker, poorer and more preyed-upon, why would we allow you in?

On the other hand, over the last half-century or more, we’ve developed almost a sense of shame – at the very least, embarrassment – about our strength, successes, and wealth.  It hits our ears wrong to say, to the millions who would want to immigrate to America, “What’s in it for us?”  Many schools of thought have added to this unease, some of them good, and some very bad.

I’d include the Judeo-Christian world view that is entwined in our national DNA – and which formed the ethical and political architecture of our Founders’ minds, and the scaffolding of the constitution and democratic republic they built – as the most important factor on the good side.  We were raised on stories of the Good Shepherd and the Good Samaritan, and our duty to care for the widow and the orphan, and for the poor.  We’re a generous and a compassionate people, in no small part because of a wide-ranging body of teaching from Uncle Jesus and his predecessors that, “As you’ve done to the least of these, you’ve done it unto Me.”

On the bad side, we shouldn’t underestimate how much damage has been done by leftist schools of thought, and the multitude of ways they have taught our children to hate our country and themselves. 

Multiculturalism tells us that all cultures are equally valid, except that ours is somehow worse than the primitive and the non-capitalist ones.  Socialism tells us that the wealthy are evil exploiters, rather than the creators of rising tides that can lift all boats.  Critical race theory and post-colonial studies tell us that successful first-world countries and the lighter skinned are eternal victimizers, and the rest of the world their rightly aggrieved victims.    

Put that all together and disseminate it through an insular and propagandizing educational system, and you get the modern West – wildly successful, and while flawed, the best available model for the world to follow – yet without the civilizational self-confidence to vigorously defend itself, let alone its borders.  

Which brings us to today, with tens of millions of people here illegally.  They’ve come here for good reasons and bad – some to work hard and make better lives for themselves, some to prey on a wealthy and vulnerable populace, some to take advantage of our idiotically generous and unpoliced welfare benefits.

This has been incredibly frustrating for most Americans.  Clear majorities in all polls say they want less LEGAL immigration, and giant majorities want illegal immigration stopped, and illegals deported.  And yet there have been a network of groups who have been able to engineer the recent waves of illegals coming in.

Self-interested businesses want cheaper labor.  Foreign governments and cartels and their American partners want to enrich themselves through remittances, as well as smuggling and organized crime.  Gullible and naïve church and “charitable” groups have allowed their misplaced compassion (and IMHO, often an intoxicating sense of their own virtue) to blind themselves to the damage they are doing to their own country.    

But most of those people and groups have always been here, and together have always accounted for some illegal immigration into this country.  But the driving force behind the recent flood of illegals has been the Democrat party.  Dem politicians see illegals as an army of future voters who will secure their national political majority for many decades, thus allowing them to achieve their political goals of a more leftist/socialist, and less traditionally American, country.

And the fact that an entrenched network of NGOs and other Dem organizations (which DOGE is just beginning to uncover) can enrich themselves in the process is just icing on the cake for them.

To me, the best thing about the new Trump administration so far has been the way they’ve closed the border and started deportations.  All of my usual hyperbolic mockery aside, I’ve been giddy watching the American people regain their self-confidence, to the point where they will openly support deporting illegals, unswayed by the usual accusations of racism and xenophobia. 

I love watching the elite Left – lulled into an arrogant complacency by years of hectoring us, unopposed – get completely wrong-footed when their usual attacks no longer work.  When AOC lectured Hulk Homan™ that “being in the country illegally isn’t a crime,” he rhetorically pantsed her (it’s not my fault that she has placed her juicy booty – her words, not mine – front and center in the public’s mind) by reciting from memory the relevant portions of US law that proved her wrong. 

All she could do was pull up her pants, stammer, and change the subject.  (Rumors that her panties were red, with a hammer and sickle on the seat have not been confirmed.)

The top Dems don’t know if they’re afoot or horseback on immigration, and it’s glorious to see!   After they insisted for a full year that Biden couldn’t close the border without new legislation, Trump closed it 15 minutes after being inaugurated, and everyone started glaring at those Dems, while they looked at their feet or checked their watches.

When some immigration raids began catching run-of-the-mill illegals along with the violent TDA gangbangers who were being targeted, lefty talking heads got excited.  They actually  thought that it would turn the public against deportations!  But every time they did some kind of “man on the street” interviews, the citizens said something like, “But the untargeted ones are here illegally too?” 

And before the “journalist” could say, “Well yeah, but-“ the citizen would say, “Vamanos!” or “Adios!”      

Hysterical Jamie Raskin actually gave a speech calling for the plane full of gang-bangers to be flown back here so they can have taxpayer-funded lawyers and years-long hearings to see if they get to stay! 

Keep it up, Dems, and let us know how that works for you.

I’ve got a few more thoughts on how likely it is that we’ll be able to deport the vast majority of illegal immigrants, and also on the related controversies over deporting students who were here legally on student visas or green cards.  But this column is long enough, so I’ll save those for next week.

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a joke I saw last week…

How badly has Snow Woke bombed? (Unexpectedly.)

Someone posted a pic from the opening night’s 8 o’clock showing… and labeled it “Snow White and the Seven Audience Members.”

Have a great weekend, and don’t forget…

Hamas delenda est!