Tell Establishment Media A Dog Died On The Border

Arizona state Sen. Frank Antenori spoke on CNN of the grisly crimes committed by illegal aliens in the counties he represents. In response to CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux’s concern that the Arizona immigration-enforcement law, SB 1070, has made “a lot of people very angry, very upset” [a life threatening condition, apparently], the upstanding Antenori demanded: “What about my constituents whose homes are ransacked? What about the ranchers who’re shot at while patrolling their fence lines; whose cattle are being slaughtered ─ there are millions of dollars of economic damages ─ what about them? What about their civil right?”

Bad move.

Although not as rude as Chris Matthews and his malevolent MSNBC colleagues, Malveaux was only mildly interested. To grab her attention, Antenori ought to have begun what to Malveaux was a white, hot, racist rant with the story of a dog ─ a dog that was shot by one frequent “visitor” to Arizona. The same marauder who beat a retreat to Mexico killed the dog’s faithful companion, Rancher Robert Krentz. A pillar of the Cochise County community, Krentz had for decades raised cattle along the Arizona-Mexico border.

The violent death of a dog on the border is more likely than that of his owner to rate a mention in mainstream media.

State Senator Russell Pearce might also have mentioned a mutt ─ or even better, a Mulato family member ─ to justify the “racist” law he sponsored, which was passed by the Arizona House and signed into law last week by Republican Gov. Jan Brewer. Too late; the New York Times was on to the man’s bias, generated by generational victimhood: “Pearce, a former sheriff’s deputy,” wrote the Times, “was shot and wounded while arresting gang members 20 years ago. His son, a Maricopa County sheriff’s deputy, was shot and wounded in 2004 by an illegal immigrant.”

Arizona crime statistics are broken down by race, if not by immigration status. According to “Crime In Arizona 2008,” an annual report compiled by the Arizona Department of Public Safety,” out of a total of 313 arrests for manslaughter and 187 arrests for forcible rape, 141 and 64, respectively, were Hispanic. We can only hazard a guess as to whether these perpetrators are illegal. However, when they are not overrepresented among the criminal class, Hispanics ─ who comprise a third of the population in Arizona ─ are clearly well-represented in this thriving segment of the population. Gov. Brewer, now more popular than ever, told Fox News’ Greta van Susteren that of 1000 illegal aliens who cross into Arizona daily, 85 percent have criminal records.

These probabilities notwithstanding, SB 1070 prohibits racial profiling. Nor can police inquire after the immigration status of a passerby. Only pursuant to “lawful contact made by a law enforcement official” may immigration status be ascertained. In other words, the subject must have committed an offense before the police can inquire as to whether he is in Arizona lawfully. It goes without saying that the Arizona Department of Public Safety has foisted upon its officers the standard perilous, counterintuitive, profiling-prohibiting pact, as does it encourage the public ─ at least, a third of it ─ to file complaints against law-enforcement officers.

Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution obligates “The United States” to “guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and [to] protect each of them against Invasion.” As Allan Wall of VDARE.Com has noted, the Arizona law “prohibits actions that are, under federal law, already illegal.” Except that Washington will not enforce the law against trespass, so Arizona is forced to do the job Washington won’t do.

Put more accurately: Arizona is doing the work Washington doesn’t want done.

Washington does not want immigration laws enforced. And it matters not that its open-house policy is costing American lives and livelihoods. This applies to Barack Hussein Obama as well as to his predecessor, George W. Bush. Lest Republicans forget, the last “Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act” defeated was the culmination of a collaboration between Republican traitors John McCain, Jon Kyl, Lindsey Graham and President Bush, and Democratic Senators Harry Reid and Ted Kennedy. CIRA, S.2611 would have converted all illegal aliens into legal immigrants, in addition to increasing legal inflow to allow “an estimated 103 million persons to legally immigrate to the U.S. over the next 20 years.”

By necessity, the State of Arizona has become the crucible for a states’-rights fight against the unrestrained federal offender. Attorney General Eric Holder vows to sic his Justice-Department bloodhounds on Arizona’s 6.6 million residents who support the “new” measures by a ratio of 7 to 1.

That pesky thing called democracy doesn’t much bother our president, either. For when practiced on a local level, democracy is at its purest and fairest. Correction: local and little like Athens ─ that’s the only form democracy ought to take. A democracy “can never be established but among a small number of people, living within a small compass of territory,” wrote the brilliant James Madison in The Federalist Papers (No. 14).

One of the finest minds on matters pertaining to immigration and the Constitution is Kris W. Kobach, a University of Missouri–Kansas City School of Law professor, and an author of the Arizona law. Kobach has determined that “state police, exercising state law authority only,” may make arrests for violations of federal law” ─ a right Kobach anchors in a state’s status as a sovereign entity.

States are sovereign governments possessing all residual powers not abridged or superseded by the U.S. Constitution. The source of the state governments’ power is entirely independent of the U.S. Constitution. … the states possess what are known as ‘police powers,’ which need not be specifically enumerated. Police powers are ‘an exercise of the sovereign right of the government to protect the lives, health, morals, comfort, and general welfare of the people.

Arizona’s is not an exercise of “delegated federal power.” “Rather, such arrest authority inheres in the States’ status as sovereign entities.” Lastly, and courtesy of TIME:

When the crowds cross the ranches along and near the border, they discard backpacks, empty Gatorade and water bottles and soiled clothes. They turn the land into a vast latrine, leaving behind revolting mounds of personal refuse and enough discarded plastic bags to stock a Wal-Mart. Night after night, they cut fences intended to hold in cattle and horses. Cows that eat the bags must often be killed because the plastic becomes lodged between the first and second stomachs. The immigrants steal vehicles and saddles. They poison dogs to quiet them.

If America’s news cartel finds it hard to sympathize with law-abiding American citizens under siege, perhaps it will consider the critters.