Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that “all men are created equal”.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle field of that war. We come to dedicate a portion of it, as a final resting place for those who died here, that the nation might live. This we may, in all propriety do. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow, this ground — The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have hallowed it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here; while it can never forget what they did here.

It is rather for us, the living, we here be dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that, from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here, gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people by the people for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

– President Abraham Lincoln.

Hillary Clinton recently lamented that the American “rich” don’t pay enough in taxes. One wonders where she gets her data from, because the IRS and CBO numbers show the opposite.

“The rich are not paying their fair share in any nation that is facing the kind of employment issues [America currently does] — whether it’s individual, corporate or whatever [form of] taxation forms,” Clinton told an audience at the Brookings Institute, where she was discussing the administration’s new National Security Strategy.

Clinton said the comment was her personal opinion. “I’m not speaking for the administration, so I’ll preface that with a very clear caveat,” she said.

Clinton went on to cite Brazil as a model.

“Brazil has the highest tax-to-GDP rate in the Western Hemisphere and guess what — they’re growing like crazy,” Clinton said. “And the rich are getting richer, but they’re pulling people out of poverty.”

According to the Congressional Budget Office the top 1% of wage earners in the United States pay almost 39% of federal taxes (Income taxes, Social Security, Medicare, etc.) Note: Just federal. We’re not yet even discussing how much state and local taxes add to that.

So, my first question to Madam Secretary would be, “How much would you consider a fair share?”

We’ve created the very economic majority-rule system of which our founders warned — a system where some 60% of the American public receive benefits even though they pay zero dollars in federal income tax, and just 7.65% to a Social Security system, never intended for more than beyond a few years — 5 or so — of post-retirement benefit; a system in which the top 20%, 10% and 5% of income earners pay 69%, 73%, and 60%, respectively, of ALL Federal taxes!

By contrast, the top 1% of wage earners in the UK pay 25% of all federal taxes. In other words, simply by our “rich” moving across the Atlantic they could receive a 15% tax cut.

These Top Percenters are the very people who create the startup businesses and add jobs in our country and, thus one sees the relationship between our extremely high income tax (not to mention corporate tax rate) and our high unemployment rate — there’s no incentive to risk adding new jobs with the Hillary Clinton economic model.

And mind you, these aren’t the uber-rich such as (now) Bill Gates, George Soros, or Warren Buffett, who don’t rely on income but instead wealth. Understand the difference — The uber-rich, such as those three highly fiscal liberal persons mentioned, care not if income tax rises because they long ago made their fortunes, not through income but through stock and other wealth creation schemes.

One need also remind Hillary Clinton that the United States imports 365,000 barrels of oil from Brazil every day. Brazil is #8 in our list of top petroleum importers (behind Canada, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Venezuela, Nigeria, Angola and Iraq).

This leads to the second question for Madam Secretary: “If the U.S. is to copy Brazil’s economic model should we not commit to domestic oil drilling as Brazil has done?”

I think we all know how Hillary would answer that question.

You may have heard about the head of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), John Morton, basically state that his taxpayer-funded  department, which is sworn to uphold and protect the Constitution of the United States, will not actually uphold and protect the Constitution of the United States, in this case by refusing to detain or deport illegal immigrants brought to it by Arizona authorities based on the intellectually- and morally-bankrupt argument said law is controversial.

Amazing. With that logic authorities all over the country could transform criminal negligence into government policy by refusing to enforce laws that are deemed “controversial.”

Tell that to the people of Phoenix, AZ, whose city is now ranked second in the world in kidnappings for ransom (behind, naturally, Mexico City). All the while Mexican-American protesters, such as this California educator and member of La Raza (the Race, and talk about a racist name for an organization) are taking a page out of the Palestinian playbook and announcing Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and California as “occupied territory.”

Mr. Morton apparently confuses his unelected appointment with that of free Arizonians freely electing their representatives who freely passed this state law!

Charles Krauthammer elaborated on this pathetic Obama stance over the weekend:

On Immigration and Customs Enforcement head John Morton telling the Chicago Tribune that his agency will not necessarily process illegal immigrants picked up under the new Arizona law:

I think it’s a perfect example of the arrogance and the near lawlessness of this administration. Look: The Constitution requires the federal government ensure that every state have a republican form of government. Last time I checked, Arizona does.

There is no allegation that the immigration law in Arizona was passed in any way other than legally. There were no procedural problems with it.

If the president doesn’t like it, well, he’s got an option. He can instruct the Department of Justice to go and have a judge strike it down. And if he likes, he can get an injunction in the meantime that will suspend it until the constitutionality is ruled upon.

In the meantime, it’s as legal a law as any other law in the land. And for the executive but to say we’re going to ignore it, or we’re going to un-enforce immigration essentially in this state on account of this, is – it’s lawless. We had a Civil War and a civil- rights movement over the claim of Southern states that they could ignore the federal laws on slavery and on civil rights, and that was struck down. Everybody from Abraham Lincoln on opposes that.

And now what we have is the reverse. The federal government, this guy [ICE director John Morton] says, well, you know, he doesn’t think the Arizona law is a good way to go about it. That’s not his business, it’s not his jurisdiction. Arizona decides on what it’s to do [about illegal immigration]. And his job is to enforce the federal law, which he is openly saying he wouldn’t do, simply because a referral comes out of the state whose laws he doesn’t like.

On the argument that ICE wants to focus on criminal elements among illegal immigrants:

Look, if immigration [service] has a set of priorities, as it should, looking into criminality, dangerousness, compassion, humanitarian concerns — all of those are relevant. But whether a person comes out of a state [i.e., Arizona] who’s got a law you don’t like — [that] is an irrelevant criterion, a high-handed one, an arrogant one, and I think probably an illegal one.

Here’s William Bennett in a must-read commentary regarding the Arizona anti-illegal immigration law:

[Mexican President] Felipe Calderón has simply no business lecturing us, lecturing America, about our immigration policies. How does Mexico treat illegal immigrants? See Article 67 of Mexico’s General Population Law: “Authorities, whether federal, state or municipal . . . are required to demand that foreigners prove their legal presence in the country, before attending to any issues.” Now, the Arizona law, which we’ll get to in a moment, doesn’t even say this; there is no such language as “demand,” in Arizona.

But, first, here’s an Amnesty International press release from last month: “The Mexican authorities must act to halt the continuing abuse of migrants who are preyed on by criminal gangs while public officials turn a blind eye or even play an active part in kidnappings, rapes and murders.” Public officials — the government of Mexico — turns a blind eye. The AI report continues: “Migrants in Mexico are facing a major human rights crisis leaving them with virtually no access to justice, fearing reprisals and deportation if they complain of abuses. . . . Persistent failure by the authorities to tackle abuses carried out against irregular migrants has made their journey through Mexico one of the most dangerous in the world.”

So, illegal immigrants in Mexico face some of the most dangerous abuses in the world and they face reprisal and deportation if they complain. Further, there is “persistent failure” by the government of Mexico in stopping this. Felipe Calderón should be schooled on this, and until he is schooled on this, he should simply shut up about Arizona, about the United States — one of the safest places in the world for illegal immigrants and one of the most welcoming places in the world for legal immigrants.

Now, on to Arizona’s law. It cannot and will not operate the way President Obama has said; one will not be stopped because he may be calmly eating ice cream while looking different than the rest of America. Here’s what the law says:

FOR ANY LAWFUL STOP, DETENTION OR ARREST MADE BY A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL OR A LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY OF THIS STATE OR A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL OR A LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY OF A COUNTY, CITY, TOWN OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE WHERE REASONABLE SUSPICION EXISTS THAT THE PERSON IS AN ALIEN WHO IS UNLAWFULLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES, A REASONABLE ATTEMPT SHALL BE MADE, WHEN PRACTICABLE, TO DETERMINE THE IMMIGRATION STATUS OF THE PERSON.

What this means is that one simply cannot be stopped or inquired of, regarding their immigration status, based on any kind of suspicion whatsoever, not without a condition precedent, not without being stopped for an illegal act antecedent. For example, one will not be inquired of unless first stopped for violating some other law, like speeding or running a red light. Status and looks are not in play. And then, if inquired about, all inquiry stops if proof such as a driver’s license or green card is shown.

Second, the law continues:

A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL OR AGENCY OF THIS STATE OR A COUNTY, CITY, TOWN OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE MAY NOT CONSIDER RACE, COLOR OR NATIONAL ORIGIN IN IMPLEMENTING THE REQUIREMENTS OF THIS SUBSECTION.

It is written into the law: race, color, and national origin cannot be the basis for reasonable suspicion to inquire of someone’s status. It is against the law.

Now, let’s look at the federal law that has been on the books for over 50 years: Not only is it a federal offense to be in this country illegally, but the federal law states, “Every alien, eighteen years of age and over, shall at all times carry with him and have in his personal possession any certificate of alien registration or alien registration receipt card issued to him.”

And the federal law adopts no standard for such enforcement, not even the standard of reasonable suspicion. And it requires no lawful stop precedent to such inquiry. Furthermore, Department of Justice guidelines state: “State police officers have ‘inherent power’ to arrest undocumented immigrants for violating federal law.”

So just what exactly has Arizona done to bring down the wrath of city councils, the president, the attorney general, the secretary of Homeland Security, and the president of Mexico? What exactly has Arizona done that could serve as the basis for an assistant secretary of state to tell the Chinese that we, too, have our human-rights problems, citing Arizona’s new law? The answer is nothing.

Now, a new argument came up yesterday from the president. He said: “I think a fair reading of the language of the statute indicates that it gives the possibility of individuals who are deemed suspicious of being illegal immigrants from being harassed or arrested.”

We first ask if he’s read the law, because the AG and the Secretary of HLS have said they have not read it. But what of the “possibility of being harassed or arrested” unfairly? Sure, it’s there, but the state law is more protective on this score than the federal law. And, moreover: All laws are potentially discriminatory or have the potential to be abused. As Andy McCarthy put it, not just laws, but policing:

All policing is potentially discriminatory. Police make arrests without judicial arrest-warrants all the time if they believe they have witnessed a violation of law. They conduct searches all the time without judicial search-warrants if, in their judgment, the facts they observe amount to one of the recognized exceptions to the warrant requirement. And, as we’ve pointed out repeated, they do not have to have any reason at all to ask questions — including to ask a person for identification or immigration status.

It makes no sense, except as an exercise in pandering, to criticize a law because it can potentially be abused. Should we, for example, shut down the legislative process because Congress could potentially abuse its power by, say, hiding the occasional hundred billion or two in spending?

Final point, why did Arizona pass this law? Last year, as Abby Wisse Schachter put it, “the Border Patrol apprehended 241,453 people and confiscated a record 1.3 million pounds of marijuana — in the Tucson, Ariz., sector alone. Nearly a fifth of all those apprehended already had a U.S. criminal record.”

There are nearly half a million illegal immigrants in Arizona. According to the Center for Immigration Studies, while illegal immigrants make up 9 percent of the Arizona population, they are responsible for 22 percent of the felonies in Arizona and they constitute 11 percent of the state prison population. Arizona is now the kidnapping capital of the United States, and Phoenix has the second-largest kidnapping problem in the world (second to Mexico City).

According to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, kidnapping in Arizona increased 402 percent between 2004 and 2008, with almost 70 percent of the kidnapping cases submitted for prosecution involving illegal immigrants. Illegal immigrants account for 16.5 percent of those sentenced for violent crimes; 18.5 percent of those sentenced for property crimes; 33.5 percent of those sentenced for the manufacture, sale, or transport of drugs; and 44.4 percent of those sentenced or forgery and fraud in the Phoenix area. And, according to DOJ statistics, three Border Patrol agents are assaulted on the average day at or near the U.S. border. Someone is kidnapped every 35 hours in Phoenix, Ariz. — mostly by agents of alien-smuggling organizations. And one in five American teenagers last year used some type of illegal drug, many of which were imported across the unsecured U.S.-Mexico border. For example, most of the cocaine and meth consumed in America comes in from Mexico, and in some states, over 90 percent of the marijuana consumed is from Mexico.

Was there a compelling interest for this law? Yes. Was there a rational basis for this law? Yes. Is there any rationality in beating up on Arizona, or in the president’s allowing — even welcoming — leaders of foreign countries to do so? None, and it is a moral shame that he persists in this ugly business.

Every once in a while the pride and arrogant sense of certitude overcomes the well-scripted and politically correct intellectual. In this case it was a “moderate” Islamic follower, a member of University of California at San Diego (UCSD) Muslim Student Association (MSA) who abandoned her carefully crafted code words like “occupation” and “resistance” in favor of all out hateful genocide.

If the video below surprises you, it shouldn’t. There’s more where she came from:

“For it.”

Where’s the outrage? The protests of the UCSD MSA and Ms. Jumanah Imad Albahri? The media saturation?

Jonah Goldberg comments:

I asked UCSD, via e-mail, whether the woman in question was censured in any way for endorsing bigotry and genocide, or if the video was somehow misleading. In response, I received boilerplate about how, in the tradition of Aristotle, UCSD treasures “discourse and debate” and how “the very foundations of every great university are set upon the rock-solid principles of freedom of thought and freedom of speech.”

I wrote back, in part: “Thank you for your response. I must say I find it fairly non-responsive. Out of curiosity, if a UCSD student publicly called for the extermination of gays and blacks, would this be your only response as well?”

I then received an even less responsive primer on how student groups are funded on campus.

Now, I could write at length about UCSD’s hypocrisy. After all, the school recently launched a “Battle Hate” campaign in response to some idiotic stunt called the “Compton Cookout” at which a fraternity held a racially offensive event off campus during Black History Month. Administrators went into overdrive, the Black Student Union issued 32 demands, the vice chancellor righteously explained to students that although the event may have been beyond the school’s “legal jurisdiction,” it was not beyond UCSD’s “moral jurisdiction.”

“We have the moral high ground!” she shouted before trying to start a chant of “Not in our community!”

Well, Albahri’s statements were not only within the UCSD community, they were well inside the school’s legal and moral jurisdiction. And yet in response, we don’t get the familiar kabuki of official outrage. Instead we get: This endorsement of genocide is brought to you by Aristotle.

The important point here isn’t the school’s double standard. It’s that on campuses, and in the wider intellectual culture, people can’t let go of their dog-eared script. It’s not that conventional racism is no longer a problem, nor is it that the civil rights era no longer resonates. But freaking out over the vestiges of familiar racism is firmly within the comfort zone of contemporary liberalism. Indeed, it’s an industry. Yet when it comes to students like Albahri — and there are many like her — administrators become brainless and lost. Lacking an adequate script, they resort to bromides about Aristotle.

Off campus, liberals crave a comfortable plot in which bigoted “homegrown” white men are the villains while Muslims are scapegoats. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was willing to bet that the Times Square bomber might turn out to be an opponent of healthcare reform.

What’s the right script? Honestly, I don’t know. But those perched atop the moral high ground will have to climb down to find the facts before they can write it.

This is astounding… creepy too.

[Mark Steyn] Last week, the American Association of Pediatricians [AAP] noted that certain, ahem, “immigrant communities” were shipping their daughters overseas to undergo “female genital mutilation.” So, in a spirit of multicultural compromise, they decided to amend their previous opposition to the practice: They’re not (for the moment) advocating full-scale clitoridectomies, but they are suggesting federal and state laws be changed to permit them to give a “ritual nick” to young girls.

A few years back, I thought even fainthearted Western liberals might draw the line at “FGM.” After all, it’s a key pillar of institutional misogyny in Islam: Its entire purpose is to deny women sexual pleasure. True, many of us hapless Western men find we deny women sexual pleasure without even trying, but we don’t demand genital mutilation to guarantee it. On such slender distinctions does civilization rest.

Der Spiegel, an impeccably liberal magazine, summed up the remorseless Islamization of Europe in a recent headline: “How Much Allah Can the Old Continent Bear?” Well, what’s wrong with a little Allah-lite? The AAP thinks you can hop on the sharia express and only ride a couple of stops. In such ostensibly minor concessions, the “ritual nick” we’re performing is on ourselves. Further cuts will follow.

To say that this is multiculturalism and diversity tolerance run amuck is to give the word amok a bad name. If this is the recommendation of  pediatricians then one may as well go back to seeing one’s barber for surgery. Pass the leaches. The apologists make the false comparison to circumcision, but while religiously traditional it’s not a sexual control.

Steyn is right. If we can’t draw the line here we may as well start paying our jizya “protection money” as dhimmis. If you don’t know what that is yet, don’t bother Googling it, for we may learn the hard way in our lifetime.

Here’s a great commentary on Arizona’s Illegal Immigration law by Heather MacDonald via the Washington Examiner:

Heather MacDonald: Arizona law is hated because it could be effective
By: Heather MacDonald
Manhattan Moment contributor
May 5, 2010

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Manhattan-Moment/Arizona-law-is-hated-because-it-could-be-effective-92851479.html#ixzz0nfDsfk5m

To understand the hysterical reaction to Arizona’s new immigration initiative, consider the numbers. There are 6,000 federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents tasked with restoring the rule of law in a country that already contains between 12 and 20 million immigration law-breakers.

Any intending illegal immigrant knows that if he can get across the border undetected, he faces a minute risk of being apprehended on U.S. soil. (By comparison, the New York Police Department, with a current headcount of 35,000, feels itself greatly understaffed in a compact city of eight million residents, only a portion of whom are law-breakers.)

The Arizona law, were it to be widely emulated, threatens to disrupt the calculus of illegal immigration. There are 650,000 state and local police officers in the U.S. If a significant portion of those officers received the mandate of the Arizona law—to inquire where practicable into the immigration status of an individual they have legitimately stopped, if they have a valid reason to believe he is in the country illegally—the balance between law enforcement and law-breaking would be changed enough to likely deter illegal border crossings and to persuade many illegal immigrants already in the U.S. to return to their home countries rather than face arrest and deportation.

The opponents of Arizona’s law — SB 1070 — detest it not because it will lead to racial profiling (it will not), nor because it is unconstitutional (it is not), but because it just might work. Texas is reportedly already considering a similar law. The illegal immigrant lobby knows that it has to stop SB 1070 if it wants to maintain its monopoly over border matters, a monopoly that has led to the chaos that is now engulfing Arizona.

The people screaming the loudest against Arizona’s law do not believe in immigration enforcement, period. No matter where an illegal immigrant is arrested—whether on the street, at home, or at a work site—the illegal immigrant lobby will declare that place to be an illegitimate locus for arrest.

So opposed are illegal immigrant advocates to immigration enforcement that they want to dismantle programs targeting the most dangerous illegal immigrants for deportation.

The New York Times recently called for the abolition of the so-called 287(g) and Secure Communities initiatives, a call echoed by illegal immigrant advocates in Arizona and elsewhere. Those programs now focus almost exclusively on screening jail and prison inmates to identify illegal immigrants with particularly serious criminal histories for deportation.

A typical recent catch was a Mexican gang member arrested for aggravated assault in Mesa, Arizona, who had already served seven years in state prison for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Remarkably, the New York Times charges that the 287(g) and Secure Communities initiatives “undermine” public safety, not enhance it, because they use local sheriff’s deputies to identify illegal immigrant inmates. Those deputies, the Times warns, are likely racial profilers.

The racial profiling charge is as specious leveled against jail deputies as it is against police officers. The overwhelming majority of the nation’s law enforcement personnel base their actions on suspicious behavior, not on race. Opponents of SB 1070 and the 287(g) program have never explained why cops are more likely to abuse their authority than federal ICE agents, a distinction they need to maintain in order to justify their desired cordon sanitaire between local police resources and federal immigration enforcement.

Such explanations will never be forthcoming. Arizona’s effort to enlist its police officers and sheriff’s deputies in the fight against illegal immigration is a legitimate use of police power, intended to restore public order and the rule of law. It would also be an effective use of police power, which is why it is so feared.

Here’s Mark Steyn:

As for the idea that America has become fanatically “Islamophobic” since 9/11, au contraire: Were America even mildly “Islamophobic,” it would have curtailed Muslim immigration, or at least subjected immigrants from Pakistan, Yemen, and a handful of other hotbeds to an additional level of screening. Instead, Muslim immigration to the West has accelerated in the last nine years, and, as the case of Faisal Shahzad demonstrates, being investigated by terrorism task forces is no obstacle to breezing through your U.S. citizenship application. An “Islamophobic” America might have pondered whether the more extreme elements of self-segregation were compatible with participation in a pluralist society: Instead, President Obama makes fawning speeches boasting that he supports the rights of women to be “covered” — rather than the rights of the ever lengthening numbers of European and North American Muslim women beaten, brutalized, and murdered for not wanting to be covered. America is so un-Islamophobic that at Ground Zero they’re building a 13-story mosque — on the site of an old Burlington Coat Factory damaged by airplane debris that Tuesday morning.

Via the WSJ:

Regarding Pima County Sheriff Clarence W. Dupnik’s “Arizona’s Immigration Mistake” (op-ed, May 5): What country on earth allows foreign nationals to roam around without passports, visas and IDs? Who disagrees that boarder sovereignty is a legitimate function of government? Why is requiring everyone to carry identification a problem?

David Klemm

Phoenix

Sherrif Dupnik paints a scenario of police officers having to divine a person’s citizenship status from his or her appearance, a practice he decries as un-American. I agree. However, that’s not how the officers’ task will play out.

An officer may, upon a valid traffic stop for an infraction, request a driver’s license or other identification. If the detainee doesn’t possess a license or Social Security card, or the ones he produces are forged, then those facts, together with the inability to speak English, could form a perfectly legal basis for the further inquiry Arizona requires.

This technique is used everyday in Illinois leading to arrests for false or forged IDs. In court the defendants admit they have no Social Security number and are here illegally. But, of course, they are never deported (in my experience), but allowed to pay a fine and go on their way. It is the professor who holds a temporary card who is ordered back home on pain of deportation, whom the INS handles with aplomb.

Arizona is trying to put rational teeth into an absurdly administered system that national leaders are afraid to touch lest they lose the Latino vote.

Mike Carroll

Tuscola, Ill.

When was the last time Mr. Dupnik got on a plane? I sent my 14-year-old daughter with her 18-year-old brother to her grandfather’s home in St. Louis. I anticipated that there would be ID issues, so I sent her passport with her brother. She was asked to produce an ID a few times. The passport solved all ID issues and smoothed boarding significantly. Legal or not, we’re in a new world already. If Mr. Dupnik has a problem, he should have spoken up when the Patriot Act was passed years ago. The attacks of 9/11 were game changers, and he clearly is still playing by the old rules.

Stephen Restaino

Chesapeake, Va.

Plenty of people are pointing the finger of shame at Arizona for its new immigration law. Why is no one pointing that finger at Mexico and the rest of Latin America for making such a law necessary?

Illegal aliens are people fleeing miserable economic conditions, lack of opportunity, repressive regulations and boundless government corruption. They send billions of dollars back home to help alleviate their families’ poverty. Do the governments of Latin America care about their plight? No. Lazy and corrupt politicians south of America’s border are happy to export their most desperate citizens and receive mountains of cash in return. They have no incentive to change this.

Instead of railing against Arizona for trying to protect its own borders, enraged protestors should be venting their fury at Mexico and other Latin nations for shamefully exploiting their citizens, doing nothing to improve their economies, and causing the whole illegal immigration problem in the first place.

Jim Riedmann

Glendale, Ariz.

Clarence Dupnik is an elected official who runs as a Democrat in Arizona’s Democratic stronghold, the Tucson area. Seven of our 10 largest employers are a state university, our public school system, the city and county governments, two military bases and an Indian nation. Only two of the 10 are business firms.

Like most elective officials, Mr. Dupnik surely has an eye on the ballot box. In a county that gave Barack Obama 24,000 more votes than its own Senator John McCain, Mr. Dupnik got 66% of the vote in his race. The good sheriff did almost as well as Democratic Congressman Raul Grijalva, who has called for a national boycott of his own state.

Not surprisingly, the Tucson City Council has voted five-to-one to sue our state to try to overturn the new law cracking down on illegal immigrants.

Dick Jacobs

Tucson, Ariz.

It’s an old idea, and one to date only halfheartedly implemented: A 300-mile or so border fence. One of the lackluster criticisms regarding such a fence has been cost. It’s laughable when compared to how much money the Congress wastes on unnecessary things (not to mention things not explicitly empowered to it via the Constitution). Here’s Byron York:

There is little doubt such moves would work. In one part of the Arizona-Mexico border where authorities installed double-layered fencing and implemented Operation Streamline, the yearly number of illegal crossers went from 118,000 to 8,000.

Total cost? It’s hard to say, but it seems fair to guess that for a relatively low price — perhaps $5 billion? — the nation could radically increase the security of the Southwest border. The columnist George Will recently called the cost of securing the border “a rounding error on the ($50 billion) GM bailout.” He’s right.