The Victorious Opposition

Never a dull moment with illegal immigration.

Border agents arrested 20 illegal immigrants Tuesday morning who were attempting to enter the country by sea at Calafia State Beach in San Clemente.
When the small craft the immigrants were riding in land landed, the occupants attempted to flee. Agents with the U.S. Border Patrol arrested 17 men and three women, all from Mexico.
A 36-year-old woman suffered a broken leg while jumping from the boat, according to a statement from the U.S. Border Patrol in San Diego. She was taken to a hospital for treatment. The others were taken to a Border Patrol station for processing.
No further details were immediately available, but the Associated Press said the incident occurred about 3 a.m.

Not a shocking development, I had always wondered when this would be a new trend in illegal immigration. The feds, whether we think it’s enough or not, have ramped up border patrols and ICE does have a presence here in California. The difficulty is in where to begin, and with nationality of illegals to begin. The focus, in my opinion should be on Central Americans, and I think we as a society need to decide just how much Federal resources we’re going to dedicate to the problem.

It’s three prong, IMO. It starts with the illegals getting here, which will demand a lot of Federal Agents performing regular sweeps to get rid of illegals. We also need a swift deportation process, one which only takes into account the fact that the people here are here illegally. Often times in California illegals can be held, if not indefinitely, for long periods of time for reasons such as fear of reprisals from the gangs that get them here. It should be pretty firm that any illegal immigration won’t be tolerated, and send them back to face the music.

The second prong is the money source. Often times the people that come here are greeted with jobs fairly quickly, be it the Home Depot parking lot, a Beverly Hills lawn job or a place cleaning an office building. Most turn a blind eye to the agencies they hire, looking only at the certificate of the agency they hire, not the pool of labor that it comprises. I believe if we’re truly to get tough on this problem, stiff penalties should be attached to these businesses. How to do it will be the 64,000 dollar question. Perhaps the answer lies in the tax code, a fully open document of who gets paid and where that owed tax money goes. Maybe it’s sweeping businesses to see who’s working there.

The third is housing. I could probably knock on any door on my street and find that illegals (quite often many in on apartment) living in them. ICE could pick and choose who they target and not a lot of investigative work need to be done to find them. IANAL, so I don’t know what kind of red tape it takes to get into the apartment, or what rights they’re entitled to currently after being arrested. I suppose all of them, but we’re really at point critical with these illegals using our services, living in our homes and bleeding cities dry. Something will have to be compromised in an effort to scoop them up and get them out.

If we’re not doing them all together, we’re really just sitting ducks for the next scheme like this, and who knows, the next effort could be flying them in. It’s become an industry like drugs that we can’t really attack from one angle and hope for success. However, as has been pointed out here in the past, motivation is 9/10s of the law. If either political party really hopes to naturalize those that are here for free votes we’re screwed. Or are they screwed once they find out how much they’ll be taxed for the effort?

...And yet another attempt by this Administration to avoid having its policies fairly debated and subjected to the appropriate legislative process.  I’ve been reading over the ICE memo that proposes how the Obama Administration might avoid a messy comprehensive immigration reform attempt in Congress by simply reinterpreting relevant statutes and deeming whether or not any illegal alien’s continued presence is in “the public interest.”  In the last decade, this would have created holy uproar if Bush had been doing it.  We were frequently warned about Bush’s use of signing statements and willingness to similarly reinterpret laws and how it was the pathway to dictatorship.  I’ll be curious to see if the same voices speak up about the Obama Regime’s use of this power anytime soon.

In any case, I don’t have a problem with a President selectively enforcing laws because I believe in preserving the balance of power between the three branches of government.  This particular advice from ICE’s Legal Counsel, if Obama follows up on it, would be an awful choice but I am not going to say that Obama can’t do it.  What I do have a problem with is that the Obama Administration is starting to show a frightening pattern of unequally enforcing the law as it relates to its favored constituencies.

First came the Black Panther voter intimidation case, dropped without any explanation despite overwhelming evidence of guilt.  Then there is Christian Adams who has claimed that there is downright “hostility” to race-neutral enforcement thanks to the attitude of the Administration.  Arizona gets sued by the DOJ for trying to enforce federal law while sanctuary cities that defy the same laws are left alone.  The Administration is even cowardly refusing to make a decision to put the 9/11 plotters on trial until after the midterm elections and humorously accusing Republicans of playing politics with the issue.

This new memo reveals just how far the Administration is willing to go to pander to the minority groups that it regards as politically-friendly even as it uses every legal tool at its disposal to attack a state for enacting a popular law that would support federal law and have the effect of weakening one of those protected blocs.  The Obama Administration has done some ridiculous, even harmful things during its short life, but its refusal to enforce the law equally to the benefit of its beloved political groups is not only worse than any possible racial profiling by Arizona law enforcement, but it could literally prove to be destructive the the country as a whole if the practice becomes the expected norm. 

Correction: As dwex pointed out in the comments, the memo was NOT produced by the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) as the post originally claimed but instead originated from the Legal Counsel and other department members from ICE.  The error was entirely mine but this does not impact the content of the memo or change any of the other facts associated with the story.

As always, I’m more interested in the text of the actual ruling than what the talking heads are saying.  Note that by granting this partial injunction, all the judge did is determine that some parts of the law are likely to be ruled unconstitutional at a higher court—at least that’s her opinion—and it can’t go into effect until they clarify it.  The law isn’t dead by a long shot and this will be hashed out in SCOTUS before the dust settles.  She also didn’t block the entire law because she legally can’t by higher-court precedent:

“[W]hen the constitutionality of a state statute is challenged, principles of state law guide the severability analysis and [courts] should strike down only those provisions which are inseparable from the invalid provisions.” Costco Wholesale Corp. v. Maleng, 522 F.3d 874, 886 (9th Cir. 2008) (citing Tucson Woman’s Clinic v. Eden, 379 F.3d 531, 556-57 (9th Cir. 2004)).

“A court should not declare an entire statute unconstitutional if the constitutional portions can be severed from those which are unconstitutional.” State v. Ramsey, 831 P.2d
408, 413 (Ariz. Ct. App. 1992) (citing State v. Prentiss, 786 P.2d 932, 937 (Ariz. 1989)).

So if you hear anyone calling Judge Bolton a “coward” for splitting the difference (I’ve already read that in a couple of places), understand that they’re wrong.  She couldn’t dismiss the entire law without straying into activist turf.

Anyway, she blocked the main parts of the law that the Obama Administration wanted blocked: requiring police to question immigration status, requiring immigrants to keep their proof of legal residence handy at all times, preventing illegal aliens from seeking work, among other things.  I think she did right by granting the injunction for the required ID checks and for the requirement that immigrants have their papers in possession at all times.  Those parts do need to be resolved above her level and will be.  I do think she was wrong about applying the injunction toward the part of the law that prohibits illegal aliens from seeking work.  The judge’s reasoning on that was that illegal aliens, in order to work in the US, would have to commit fraud in order to state that they can work in the US legally and that ONLY the federal government’s laws can be the basis for preventing this.  That is completely ridiculous.

Here’s what she didn’t block that the Obama Administration wanted her to:

creating a separate crime for a person in violation of a criminal offense to transport or harbor an unlawfully present alien or encourage or induce an unlawfully present alien to come to or live in Arizona

And:

amending the provisions for the removal or impoundment of a vehicle to permit impoundment of vehicles used in the transporting or harboring of unlawfully present aliens

She didn’t touch any of the stuff that the DOJ didn’t attack, such as the prevention of any AZ official from creating a “sanctuary city” or the amendments to existing AZ laws against trafficking and knowingly hiring illegal aliens.

All things considered, I’m not going to slam Judge Bolton with the “Activist” label (although I am sure that the 9th Circuit will go balls deep into their usual Bizarro World empathy trip).  She carefully applied precendent and weighed the law against the likelihood that higher courts will find those parts to be unconstitutional.

The debate will continue.

I’m suspicious that Obama would be this blunt in a one-on-one conversation with Kyl.  Usually, Obama only says things this honest and blunt at political fundraisers:

The No. 2 Senate Republican, in a video clip posted on YouTube showing the senator speaking to a local Tea Party crowd on Friday, said the president told him during a one-on-one meeting in the Oval Office that he was concerned he wouldn’t win GOP support on immigration legislation if he took care of border security first.

“The problem is, he said, if we secure the border, then you all won’t have any reason to support comprehensive immigration reform,” Kyl said, as the crowd in the room gasped loudly. “In other words, they’re holding it hostage.”

See, I do believe that this is what the Administration—and the Bush Administration before it, for that matter—intends to accomplish.  Obama’s people want the eventual union members and new dependency class and Bush’s wanted the cheap labor from allowing this problem to fester.  Both wanted the Latino votes.  When you look at the sheer chaos being caused by illegal immigration along with the resources that the federal government has been given for securing the borders, it’s hard to see how the government can justify failing to do its job unless there is a dishonest political motive.

The Obama Administration only really seems to be interested in American guns heading into Mexico, while working to thwart Arizona’s attempts to enforce the same laws that the federal government refuses to.  If Kyl sticks to his statement and Obama’s people keep denying it, somebody’s lying.  Unfortunately for the Administration, its own actions clearly support Kyl’s accusation.

There’s a lot of furor over whether or not Arizona’s new anti-illegal-immigration law is Constitutional. Specifically, whether or not it is preempted by Federal immigration law under the Supremacy clause. This is an interesting debate for those interested in such things - if one argues that Arizona is making immigration law, then it is preempted; conversely, if one argues that Arizona is defining implementation of Federal immigration law, then it isn’t preempted. FWIW, I’m currently in the latter camp, but I can see how arguments for the former position can be made.

Arizona Republican legislators appear to be proposing some new legislation that appears to be unequivocally preempted:

A proposed Arizona law would deny birth certificates to children born in the United States to illegal immigrant parents.

The bill comes on the heels of Arizona passing the nation’s toughest immigration law.

John Kavanagh, a Republican state representative from Arizona who supports the proposed law aimed at so-called “anchor babies,” said that the concept does not conflict with the U.S. Constitution.

“If you go back to the original intent of the drafters ... it was never intended to bestow citizenship upon (illegal) aliens,” said Kavanagh, who also supported Senate Bill 1070—the law that gave Arizona authorities expanded immigration enforcement powers.

Under federal law, children born in the United States are automatically granted citizenship, regardless of their parents’ residency status.

Let’s look at what the Constitution has to say on the matter.

First, Article I, Section 8 lists the explicit powers of Congress. This includes:

To establish a uniform rule of naturalization

Next, Article VI has the Supremacy Clause:

This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.

Then we have the 14th Amendment, which says right at the start:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.

Rep. Kavanagh, quoted above, may well be correct that it was never the intent of the Framers to allow children of illegal immigrants to be citizens. But they never said that. The first sentence of the 14th Amendment is pretty explicit - “all persons born ... in the United States”. There are no qualifiers. And Article I, Section 8, combined with the Supremacy Clause, makes it pretty clear that the States do not have the power to decide who is and who is not a citizen of the United States - there’s no remotely valid Federalism argument to be made in this area.

I’m ambivalent to the underlying question of whether children of illegals should become citizens if born in the US; I haven’t thought enough about it to be persuaded one way or the other. But from a Constitutional perspective, this proposed Arizona law is a non-starter, and they’re setting themselves up for expensive, futile litigation if they go forward with this.

While we’re discussing the haircut that best explains Kagan’s butchness, I thought I would leave you with one thing that isn’t as dry as a popcorn fart.

The MACHETE! You just fucked with the wrong Mexican! Arizona’s worst nightmare, a Mexican American with papers and a vendetta against the guerros!!

Living in Southern California for the last 12 years, I have seen the face of this area change from America to Tijuana. It is a welcome change to know something is being done about it, so enter the Predator Drones.

Predator drones, the unmanned aircraft used by the U.S. military in the Iraq and Afghanistan war zones, will soon be employed to track illegal immigrants on the Mexico-California border.

The drone, which will be unveiled later today, will be operated out of the Antelope Valley by the military contractor General Atomics. The drones will fly above the border region with advancing electronic tracking equipment looking for illegal immigrants crossing into California.

According to the San Diego-based company, the drones will transmit information to U.S. authorities on human smuggles as well drug smuggling.

Such drones are already used on the border of Texas and Arizona.

Border Patrol officials told SignOn San Diego that the drone would initially be used to monitor ocean area, which has been used by human smugglers.

This seems like a step in the right direction. There are so many undocumented illegals in Los Angeles alone, it’s become almost impossible to count them. There’s been a big push here in Los Angeles to start in churches convincing illegals to, at the very least, allow themselves to be counted in the census. The Latino community has put a lock on this in the community to bring some bargaining chips to the table, if not protect the illegal community outright.

As much as this development might “invite in the vampire” so ro speak, I do approve of it to combat illegal immigration. During my life here in Los Angeles, I have seen a lot of failed measures at stemming illegal immigration. First there was the idea of denying DLs, which failed miserably. Then, we thought that we could simply police them out, and much to our shagrin, our prisons are now full of illegal immigrants picked up on DUIs or speeding, immigrants we can’t deport. Some now are saying to naturalize those here, and then become more strident about stopping others from coming. None of this works, because no matter the penalty, it still beats a life in Mexico.

And, as much as I would hate to see this measure squandered on speedtraps over the freeway, or busting a guy smoking a joint on his patio, drugs are a part of the equation. It’s been postulated that the famous “Station Fire” that burned Los Angeles this summer was caused by drugs, or not stemmed off to burn of drug farms. Drug farms are a serious problem here in Los Angeles, often times farmed by Mexican Mafia. If these drones were to also monitor this and rid the state of these thugs, it could only help the legal Medical market as well.

My major objection to this measure is our state’s capacity to deport the people that we find. TIme and time again, illegals here are pandered to, protected, and offered all of the benefits of law abiding-card carrying American citizens simply because we won’t exhibit any stridency in policy about them. The news here is rife with sob stories about some anchor child who can’t qualify for a Cal Grant, or some cultural jack off about the Virgin Guadalupe Parade, which is supposed to draw the same tear jerking reaction as a baby panda. Hopefully it’s getting old now, and now that we’re farmiliar with Mexicans, as much as we are the Irish or Italians, we can begin to disseminate the good from the bad, and separate culture from the no-gooders who are invariably the majority of immigrants here.

It’s come down to either that, or hoping that there are enough Hollywood liberals to pay for all of these charity cases themselves, because the people of California have spoken, and continue to speak. We say “No Mas,” and if a Predator Drone patrols the skies to keep Mexico, Mexico, so be it.

Today was a very full day, filled with presentations and networking. We only made it into the city for a television release party, and I really almost tuned out after about 11. Mexicans like to stay out late, it’s a latino thing I suppose. We did our day and then went to what amounts to a gourmet restaurant, that is traditional Mexican cuisine, followed by a trek into the city for a party.

One thing that will make tomorrow interesting is this I have learned. Tomorrow, about 50,000 Union power employees will be layed off and replaced by federal workers (suck it, stogy). This development was music to my ears, and even though this will greatly affect my plans tomorrow….Score one for Mexico. I might actually root for the Mexican team in the World Cp over this development.

As a Californian, I respect the people of Mexico for doing what no liberal pansy ass Californian would. In the words of Peter Griffin “Freakin’ sweet!”
Update:
I thought I might also add that I’m not forming any major political opinions based on my stay here. I realize this is the liberal thing to do; go to some country for a couple of days and then expound upon how no one can comment on it because it means you haven’t ever stayed there. Well, I have, but I’ve done so as a privileged minority. My experience here has been of the uber upper crust, and I literally have no point of reference to the common Mexican. I’ve made a few personal observations, but more along the cultural differences of me as a Miami-ite vs. Mexicans as latinos. None of it would amount to my evaluation of Mexican-american politics. Even more so, the inner workings of the country. There seem to be huge differences with the crowd I associate with here, and the Mexicans I interact with in Los Angeles. That much, I agree.

I am reserving any solid political experience to just that. Experience. Fashionably, culturally, Mexicans seem to have their own thing going on. This would pertain more to the upper crust Mexicans that I have mingled with over the last two days, and not the plight of the average Mexican I saw running between cars on the streets. Life is hard here, and it’s nothing I’ve experienced during my stay. However, sticking it to a union is something near and dear to me in my day to day life. Ciao.

Not too far from what I expected to see. You ever watch those shows where a camera guy will follow a platoon around through some city in Iraq? That pretty much sums up Mexico City…For the most part. The area I’m staying at (the Santa Fe) area is actually pretty nice and clean. Let me make a distinction here. It’s not bad here as I’ve seen it in the dark. I have yet to see what’s going on here during the day, nor have I really been able to see what’s really outside of the little playground I am in. I should be getting my camera tomorrow, and promise to post some pics.

Not everything went well, first of all. If you’re ever going to fly to Mexico, AeroMexico was both hot and cold. My flight out of LAX was disgusting, and my seat was right in front of the toilet. No shit, I couldn’t even recline my seat, it would have made my mouth the bowl in the toilet. And it smelled like warm piss on a musty whino in August back there. No freakin’ lie, I am never sitting in that area again.

I don’t think the flight would’ve been so bad, but we were connecting in Guadalajara . I think the thing that fucking rocked me, and really has me shivering right now was that I put my hand on a chair in in the Guadalajara Airport and came up with something weird and yellow on it. I wouldn’t say it was a boogey, but it damn sure felt like it, and was in the place for it. I used about half a bottle of the hand sanitizer to rid myself of the paranoia, and then it was on to Mexico City.

Our evening was pretty easy. The only real stand out was that there were two people who showed up to drive me and the girl from work I ‘m here with on this trip. It’s a pretty damn good thing I do know Spanish ok, I was in the middle of an argument between the two drivers there why I should choose one over the other. I chose the driver who showed up from my hotel over the guy who claimed to be from my work. Hey, they guy from the hotel had a business card, a clear advantage.

No matter the case, I’m in Mexico now, in Mexico City no less. I actually went to a, erm, “Japanese” restaurant tonight for dinner. Think of it like a combination of Benihanna and the sushi you might get at a grocery store. It wasn’t really too inspiring, but I did try Kobe Beef tonight. It was pretty cool, but I’m sorry to say it…. i came here to get a cheap taco, and a beer from a place that probably sells hookers in the back too. I did not come here to pretend that it’s all Chi’ Chi’ and amazing.

More to come.

So tomorrow I leave for Mexico. It’s a pretty brutal trip, one I have to get up around 4:30AM for. I have a limo service coming around 5:00AM (it’s not really a privilege, it’s actually cheaper to go this way-a cab ride would cost around 70-80 dollars). Then, onto Mexico .

I love this part of the trip, the anticipation part. I don’t know what will be on the other side, I’ve just got to get there. I opted out of the extra day there, I think I can save that for when I have some contacts I can exploit. I do, however, have a theme song for the trip:

What can I say? I am a total victim of the eighties.

I just got my trip confirmed today, and I will be staying in Santa Fe, Mexico. This should be a pretty good experience. I can flex my spanish a little bit, and see something new. I will be receiving a body guard for the trip, so you’ll have no luck in wishing me dead.

I’m going to try and take some pictures, but I’m on the fence about whether I should tack on a couple more days for exploring. What do you guys think? Would you? My director is practically encouraging the notion, and really I’d like to take a couple of days off and sip some Margaritas, and dine on some quality swine flu grub.

Sorry about my lack of posting more, I’ve been taking a class in Photoshop and Illustrator, to try and catch up with the quantum leaps in the new Adobe Suite. my class went long today (and will be every Tuesday) so after my bike ride home, it was about 9pm PST. We’re also burning the candle at both ends for a lot of deliverables and pitches. There should be some pretty big stuff to brag about soon, but for now I’ve got nothing to show for my efforts except for the lash marks on my back.

I thought this was an interesting issue:

Arizona Atty. Gen. Terry Goddard said human smuggling has become a $2-billion-a-year business in his state alone, thanks in large part to what he calls “blood wires,” the payments from family members, friends and employers to smugglers via Western Union and other companies.

Goddard and other Arizona officials have not accused Western Union of a crime. But in interviews and court documents they say the company consistently has rejected requests for cooperation, undermining efforts in Arizona to go after the crime cartels that control much of the increasingly violent trade in humans, drugs, weapons and laundered cash from their havens in Mexico.

This is similar to the Domestic Surveillance Program in that the State of Arizona could simply ask Western Union to voluntarily hand over the information that investigators need.  Western Union, however, is justifiably cautious about being too helpful because they know that they can be sued for violating the privacy of their customers and they risk losing business. 

AG Goddard is very smart to be approaching this problem by focusing on the money flow (neither the US nor Mexican governments do it this way) but he’s asking too much by counting on a company to assist in a broad manner without the same immunities that the telecoms have.

Out of curiousity, would anyone here do business with any corporation or even small business that was publicized to routinely share customer’s information (possibly your own) with government investigators?  Let’s not count the telecoms and banks.  You pretty much have to have a phone and a bank account nowadays, but would you use Western Union?  Would you shop at a hardware store if you found out that they have an agreement with local law enforcement to send all of a customer’s credit card information with name and address whenever that person buys any sort of item that could be used to construct a meth lab?

See, your information becomes the property of that business as part of their records when you engage in transactions.  Are they more morally obligated to protect customers’ privacy from the government or are they more obligated to assist in public safety?  What do you expect from the people you purchase goods and services from?

LA Times

Obama’s probably cleaning out his skivees, and rethinking his adorations for our maaltov cocktail to the south.

April 25 (Bloomberg)—Mexican President Felipe Calderon declared an emergency in his country’s swine flu outbreak, giving him powers to order quarantines and suspend public events.

Authorities have canceled school at all levels in Mexico City and the state of Mexico until further notice, and the government has shut most public and government activities in the area. The emergency decree, published today in the state gazette, gives the president authority to take more action.

“The federal government under my charge will not hesitate a moment to take all, all the measures necessary to respond with efficiency and opportunity to this respiratory epidemic,” Calderon said today during a speech to inaugurate a hospital in the southern state of Oaxaca.

At least 20 deaths in Mexico from the disease are confirmed, Health Minister Jose Cordova said yesterday. The strain is a variant of H1N1 swine influenza that has also sickened at least eight people in California and Texas. As many as 68 deaths may be attributed to the virus in Mexico, and about 1,000 people in the Mexico City area are showing symptoms of the illness, Cordoba said.

This flu epidemic could quite possibly be our only hope to secure our borders. Upon entering and exiting China, they have thermal cameras to monitor anyone trying to get out of there who has bird flu. It’s a great feeling to know that they’re at least trying to contain the problem, but how can Mexico hope to contain a problem that they’ve been pretty flippant to in general?

Be afraid for me VOers, I live in Southern California, aka. Mexico.

Update:

I forgot to add that I’m almost happy that there is now a problem that this administration can’t squarely put the blame on our own country. Right?

The videos on YouTube and Mexican-based sites are polished professional singers croon about cartel leaders while images of murdered victims fade one into the next. In the comment area, those loyal to the opposing cartels trade insults and threats.

Such videos are used to intimidate enemies and recruit members by touting ‘virtues’ of cartel leaders, says Scott Stewart, vice president of tactical intelligence for Stratfor, a Texas-based global-intelligence company.

Howard Campbell, an anthropologist at the University of Texas-El Paso who studies border issues, says the videos also signal how the cartels have evolved from pure moneymaking ventures to sophisticated groups with political agendas.

One YouTube video sympathetic to the Sinaloa Cartel opens with white lettering: ‘This is what happens to all my enemies.’ A singer launches into an up-tempo song against a montage of images: slain police officers, bullet-ridden police cruisers, shell casings, crumpled bodies.

It is one of the strangest attributes of these Mexican criminal organizations that they spend almost as much time advertising as they do actually committing felonies.  It’s a little bit like hearing that the Black Gangster Disciples have set up a Marketing Department.

This reminds me of a story I had read a few years ago in a local paper that discussed this sort of thing:

Davila boasts of the poetry in his songs and their encoded meanings. He likes to write about “letting the parrot walk on the table,” meaning chopping lines of cocaine, called el perico because it makes people talk and talk and talk.

Many of the lyrics he writes are commissioned by people who will pay well to hear about their exploits in song. Sometimes the tales are true, but often the details are exaggerated to the benefit of the patron.

Anyway, that harmless sounding polka music is actually the “gangsta rap of Mexico”, but instead of the singers reciting their own past exploits; these guys talk about someone else’s criminal exploits that are still ongoing—and they get paid to write them.  Frankly, I think that’s a little tacky.  Sort of like when Bender on Futurama wanted to have his own funeral so he could listen to all of his friends heap praise on him.  Using You Tube as an extension of that sort of legend-building shouldn’t really be a surprise, considering the usual types of people who upload all manner of stupid, self-indulgent crap (I picked that one at random) they do for reasons I will never understand.

Don’t blame the cartels.  They’re no worse than anyone else on You Tube.

Trivia: I used to work at the bar discussed at the beginning of the local story I linked to.  It really was and is as bad as they say and is still there.

USA Today

You’ve heard this shocking “fact” before—on TV and radio, in newspapers, on the Internet and from the highest politicians in the land: 90 percent of the weapons used to commit crimes in Mexico come from the United States.

...

In fact, it’s not even close. The fact is, only 17 percent of guns found at Mexican crime scenes have been traced to the U.S.

What’s true, an ATF spokeswoman told FOXNews.com, in a clarification of the statistic used by her own agency’s assistant director, “is that over 90 percent of the traced firearms originate from the U.S.”

But a large percentage of the guns recovered in Mexico do not get sent back to the U.S. for tracing, because it is obvious from their markings that they do not come from the U.S.

...

In 2007-2008, according to ATF Special Agent William Newell, Mexico submitted 11,000 guns to the ATF for tracing. Close to 6,000 were successfully traced—and of those, 90 percent—5,114 to be exact, according to testimony in Congress by William Hoover—were found to have come from the U.S.

But in those same two years, according to the Mexican government, 29,000 guns were recovered at crime scenes.

In other words, 68 percent of the guns that were recovered were never submitted for tracing. And when you weed out the roughly 6,000 guns that could not be traced from the remaining 32 percent, it means 83 percent of the guns found at crime scenes in Mexico could not be traced to the U.S.

...

So, if not from the U.S., where do they come from? There are a variety of sources:

—The Black Market. Mexico is a virtual arms bazaar, with fragmentation grenades from South Korea, AK-47s from China, and shoulder-fired rocket launchers from Spain, Israel and former Soviet bloc manufacturers.

—Russian crime organizations. Interpol says Russian Mafia groups such as Poldolskaya and Moscow-based Solntsevskaya are actively trafficking drugs and arms in Mexico.

- South America. During the late 1990s, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) established a clandestine arms smuggling and drug trafficking partnership with the Tijuana cartel, according to the Federal Research Division report from the Library of Congress.

—Asia. According to a 2006 Amnesty International Report, China has provided arms to countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Chinese assault weapons and Korean explosives have been recovered in Mexico.

—The Mexican Army. More than 150,000 soldiers deserted in the last six years, according to Mexican Congressman Robert Badillo. Many took their weapons with them, including the standard issue M-16 assault rifle made in Belgium.

—Guatemala. U.S. intelligence agencies say traffickers move immigrants, stolen cars, guns and drugs, including most of America’s cocaine, along the porous Mexican-Guatemalan border. On March 27, La Hora, a Guatemalan newspaper, reported that police seized 500 grenades and a load of AK-47s on the border. Police say the cache was transported by a Mexican drug cartel operating out of Ixcan, a border town.

...

Ed Head, a firearms instructor in Arizona who spent 24 years with the U.S. Border Patrol, recently displayed an array of weapons considered “assault rifles” that are similar to those recovered in Mexico, but are unavailable for sale in the U.S.

“These kinds of guns—the auto versions of these guns—they are not coming from El Paso,” he said. “They are coming from other sources. They are brought in from Guatemala. They are brought in from places like China. They are being diverted from the military. But you don’t get these guns from the U.S.”

Some guns, he said, “are legitimately shipped to the government of Mexico, by Colt, for example, in the United States. They are approved by the U.S. government for use by the Mexican military service. The guns end up in Mexico that way—the fully auto versions—they are not smuggled in across the river.”

Many of the fully automatic weapons that have been seized in Mexico cannot be found in the U.S., but they are not uncommon in the Third World.

The Mexican government said it has seized 2,239 grenades in the last two years—but those grenades and the rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) are unavailable in U.S. gun shops. The ones used in an attack on the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey in October and a TV station in January were made in South Korea. Almost 70 similar grenades were seized in February in the bottom of a truck entering Mexico from Guatemala.

Those of us who are staunchly pro-Second Amendment are naturally suspicious of this Administration—with Obama’s abysmal record on the issue and Biden’s dumbshit-wrong belief that writing the Assault Weapons Ban is something to be proud of rather than one of the main catalysts for the Republican takeover of 1994.

Nobody wants to see Mexico melt down, but to claim that 90% of the small arms that are killing people down South are there because of our own right to legally own certain types of firearms that people like Barack Obama think are scary-looking is dishonest at best and very troubling at worst.  Of course I think that we should stop weapons from illegally crossing the border, although I’m a little mystified by how anyone thinks that’s possible; seeing as how we’ve been told for years that it’s pretty much impossible to stop the illegal immigrants from coming in.

If the Democrats are planning to use the pretext that they can’t stop “assault weapons” from entering Mexico, so a revival of the AWB is needed, they can expect a nasty surprise come November 2010.

Fox News