I think it’s annoying that most people in the news continue to refer toArizona’s SB1070 as the “controversial” anti-immigration bill. First off, how can it be controversial when it’s supported by 70 percent of the population? Second, it’s not anti-immigration at all. It’s anti-illegal immigration.

I’ve never been a big fan of the Arizona law, but it’s not because I think it’s discriminatory toward Mexicans. I don’t like it because I don’t think there should be a reason for it. Deportation of illegal immigrants should be the federal government’s domain.

Unfortunately, the process of becoming a legal citizen of the United States has become so arduous that many hard-working people bypass the impossible system while the feds look the other way.

While the feds are looking the other way, some really bad guys come in too. Drug mules, slave drivers, kidnappers … shall I continue? Phoenix has the second highest kidnapping rate in the world. OnlyMexico City witnesses more kidnappings than the Arizona capital.

Most of the kidnappings and other violent crimes are attributed to Mexican drug cartels.

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My latest at The Stir:

Apparently Los Angeles doesn’t like the immigration law in Arizona. Well, at least Mayor Villaraigosa and the city council don’t like it. Recently they voted 13-1 to boycott Arizona in protest over the state’s Constitutional right to enact laws that are supported by a majority of its citizens.

Um, ok.

Arizona is completely within its rights to enact a law that would enable local law enforcement to do the job that our federal government is slacking on — keeping our borders safe. The immigration law in Arizona is almost a carbon copy of the federal law. Let me sum it up — if you want to live and work in America, please do so legally.

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Jenny talks about the new immigrant law in Arizona, Ned Ryun of American Majority joins to share the low-down on Post Party Summits, conservative chick chat with Brittany Cohan, and cocktails with Mike G.

Enjoy!

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Ok, there are lots of problems with the new legislation signed into law today in Arizona by Governor Jan Brewer.

The sweeping legislation makes it a crime under state law to be in the country illegally. It also requires local police officers to question people about their immigration status if there is reason to suspect they are illegal immigrants.

So basically, if you have a tan and can properly pronounce “carne asada,” then you better carry your identification with you at all times. Otherwise you might get arrested. This new law is ridiculous, and I suspect that it is more a bold proclamation to shed light onto an area of federal government that badly needs reform.

Seriously. Just take a look at this chart.

The new *law* does nothing to address the real issue. It is so flippin’ hard to come into this country legally that millions are doing it illegally. And they are living in fear of the government, to the point where they won’t report crimes in their neighborhoods for fear of being deported.

I am in no way advocating open borders, but I think it’s ridiculous not to offer visas to the hard working men and women that want to become legal citizens, but lack the money or political connections to do so.

I’m pretty sure I’m going to come off like a bleeding heart liberal by saying this, but I can’t get this Thomas More quote out of my head:

For if you suffer your people to be ill-educated, and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves and then punish them. (Utopia)

I only hope that this weird new law sheds light into an area that badly needs reforming. Please, can we let more people in that want to work hard and build a better life, and try harder to keep the panty-bombers out?

Thanks.

Someone needs to explain this to me. A lawyer perhaps. Maybe a cop. Because I do. Not. Understand.

John Albert Gardner III forcefully raped and brutally murdered two beautiful teenage girls. He watched as the life drained from their terrified eyes, and hid their abused bodies in shallow graves. He took their lives and destroyed those of their family and friends. He shook the trust of a community. MY community.

He’s flat out admitted that he killed them. He raped them both. He stabbed Amber. He strangled Chelsea. He got rid of their bodies. Didn’t manage to get rid of Chelsea’s DNA though. And through a plea bargain, he led the police to Amber’s body.

The plea bargain basically said that he would avoid the death penalty if he pled guilty and revealed the location on Amber’s body.

He will now serve three life sentences, two of them without parole (The third is for an attempted attack on another woman that managed to escape). Chelsea’s parents agreed to the conditions because they knew the Dubois family needed closure, and the death penalty is an empty promise in California anyway.

Why is it an empty promise?

Why can’t we kill these demented perverts?

Why do they have more rights under the law than their victims did?

Why can’t the cops and lawyers make a plea bargain stating, “If you plead guilty and give up the location of Amber’s body, you can have a painless injection. If you don’t, we’ll fry you. Or hang you. Or chop parts of you off and let you bleed to death. Your choice.”

That’s a plea bargain I can get behind.

Life without parole isn’t good enough.

James Moore was spared the death penalty in 1962 after raping and murdering a 14 year old girl. Thanks to a change in the law, he’s now eligible for parole every two years.

In 1966, Kenneth McDuff killed a couple of teenage boys, then raped and killed one of those boy’s girlfriend. He got a life sentence. And was let out in 1989 when prisons were overflowing. He went on to rape and kill at least nine other women. We’ll never really know how many.

Willie Horton.

Clarence Ray Allen.

And many, many more.

Life without parole doesn’t cut it. Kill him.

Kill him dead.

And that’s how I feel about that.

What’s really wrong with immigration, and is there any way to fix it? Plus we talk to Jennifer Leslie and Jonathan Grim about a special Smart Girl Politics project on the Arizona border. And cocktails with Mike G.

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As I was perusing the news sites this morning, one headline in particular caught my attention: 6th-grade boy arrested for taking mom’s jewelry, giving it to female classmate… What?? Why the heck aren’t parents parenting their kids anymore? I would’ve been spanked six ways to Sunday, grounded for 3 years, and probably not allowed to date until I was 32 if I had pulled some shenanigans like that.

This story obviously warranted more attention. *click*

Here’s the whole story:

CALLAWAY — Police arrested a sixth-grade student Monday at the request of the boy’s parents, after he said he stole and then gave away more than $7,000 worth of his mother’s jewelry.

The boy told police he gave a classmate at Everett Middle School a white gold ring and a diamond ring, which he had taken from his mother’s jewelry box the previous week. When he asked the girl to return the jewelry, she gave back the white gold ring but said she “had lost” the diamond ring, according to a Bay County Sheriff’s Office report.

The boy gave a sapphire ring to another friend who, when asked, said he had given it to a female classmate, according to the report. Another boy told his friend that he could have his mother’s emerald and sapphire ring back if he gave him a reward.

The boy’s stepfather was adamant about filing charges, police reported, so the deputy “placed (him) into handcufffs (double locked) and placed him in my patrol vehicle.”

Police booked the student into the Bay County Jail on grand theft charges, and then took him to the Department of Juvenile Justice. (emphasis mine)

Sweet! I love hearing stories about good parents, and it’s even better when it’s good stepparents. I hope that kid got scared straight and never forgets the lesson of treating other people and their property with respect. I wish Congress felt the same way about me and my income.

The Democrats have been doing a victory lap this week over their defeat of the Republicans in the battle for health care reform.  So weird, I thought the parties were supposed to work together, not duke it out until the bitter end. But I guess all things are fair in love and war, and politics is a bit (or a lot) of both. So a battle it was.

Have I mentioned that the Democrats passed the bill without the majority support of their constituents?  Or that not a single Republican voted for it? Or that they resorted to deceitful trickery in the worst ends-justifying-the-means scheme I’ve ever personally witnessed?  That’s bipartisanship at it’s best, all right.

But the funny thing about facts — they’re stubborn things.  President Obama can say “this bill will reduce the deficit” until the unicorns come home, but it won’t make it any less untrue.  The bill is full of twice counted money, doesn’t include the thousands and thousands of government employees that will need to be hired to enforce the darn thing, and it assumes that revenue will continue to increase in the worst economy in a generation just as a massive health care tax is levied upon employers.

The mostly glaringly obvious discrepency is the fact that it includes 10 years of revenue, but only six years of pay outs.  What happens in 2020? Do we only get health care in years ending 4-9? So many questions, never any answers.

Congressman John Dingell (D-NY) was on a radio show in Chicago this week, and host Paul Smith asked him why the coverage wouldn’t be implemented until 2014. You know, in light of the urgency with which it was forced upon us unwilling tax-payers.

The telling response (emphasis mine):

“We’re not ready to be doing it. This has been going on for years…The harsh fact of the matter is when you’re passing legislation that will cover 300 million American people in different ways, it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.”

Not sure about the rest of you, but I don’t relish the idea of being controlled. Seriously. Ask my husband. Or my dad. I believe his exact words to my new husband at our wedding were, “She’s yours now!”

One of my favorite movie lines ever is from My Big Fat Greek Wedding, when Toula’s mom is explaining to her why being the head of the house isn’t everything: “The man is the head, but the woman is the neck. And she can turn the head any way she wants.”

Hmm. Maybe I shouldn’t admit that on a blog that feeds into my hubby’s RSS feeder. Oh well, it’s not like it’s a humongous secret. But my point is that I don’t like other people trying to control me. I don’t want them limiting my choices on what kind of food to buy, where to send my kids to school, or whether or not I need a certain kind of health insurance.

Rep. Dingell went on to say:

“Our Republicans have spent a long time not participating, not helping, carping and delaying.”

I don’t know about you, but that makes me proud to be a Republican. They won’t be able to blame us one bit when this ship goes down in flames. And for the record, Dingell-berry, Republicans were shut out of the entire process, aside from a one day *Health Summit* in which the GOP pretty much shredded the bill and wiped the Liberals off the floor with it.

Which reminds me — I need to write another love letter, uh, I mean letter of support to Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI). He broke down the financial impact so well that President Obama looked absolutely confused. As in, “Huh. That actually made sense. But I wonder if he’s including the money from the cash tree out back? Do I tell him about that or keep it a secret? I better ask Rahm.”

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to have a glass of wine. Before the government takes that away too, for my own good.

Chelsea King is 17.  A senior in high school. Straight A student. A runner.  A world of possibilities on her doorstep.

And now she’s probably dead.

Last week she decided to go for a run after school.  So she parked her car at a park, locked the doors, and probably even stashed her purse in the trunk.  But she never came back.

Yesterday police arrested John Albert Gardner III, after physical evidence led them to believe that Gardner had raped and killed the still missing Chelsea.  This story sucks.  It is the sort of tragedy that is so vile that it’s almost unbearable to think about.  It makes my stomach hurt and my heart twist into a knot and my eyes well up when I think of my two precious daughters.

But it was a punch in the gut to read this part of the story:

Gardner is a registered sex offender convicted of committing a lewd or lascivious act on a child younger than 14, the Union-Tribune said. Details of a 2000 criminal San Diego Superior Court case he was involved in were not available, the newspaper said.

What the heck was a man who committed a lewd or lascivious act on a child doing out of prison?  Child rapists give up their government protected rights when they decide to commit the most disgusting and perverted act known to man.  Lock them up and throw away the key.  What the heck good is requiring them to register and making their addresses known to anyone through sites like Megan’s Law?  A site with a disclaimer that specifically states: Anyone who uses this information to commit a crime or to harass an offender or his or her family is subject to criminal prosecution and civil liability.

I just looked up my neighboorhood, and there’s a man living a mile away from me that’s been charged four times with “lewd of lascivious acts with children under 14,” or “oral copulation with persons under 14 by force.”  Now what am I supposed to do with this information?  Skip his house at Halloween?  It’s not like I can stick a sign in his front yard that says, “Beware of Child Rapist!” That might hurt his feelings or something.

Something is wrong with our system when the sex offenders have more rights than Chelsea King did.  Because of all the protection awarded to convicted sex felons, her young life was unprotected.  A list of addresses is not enough.  Obviously.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was escorted into a Detroit courtroom today, where his lawyers entered a not guilty plea.

I cannot believe I just wrote that sentence. Let me re-write it:

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (the terrorist) was escorted into a Detroit courtroom today (as if he had the same rights as American citizens), where his lawyers entered a not guilty plea (despite the nearly 300 witnesses on the plane that saw his crotch catch fire as the bomb he was supposed to explode the plane with failed to detonate correctly).

Rudy Giuliani hit the nail on the head this morning during an interview with George Stephanopoulos on Good Morning America:

This isn’t about whether you convict him or not, this is about whether you get information or not. If you put someone in a civilian court, within a short time a lawyer is appointed and the person shuts up. If you have a person in the military system you can question him endlessly for as long as you have to, make sure you’ve gotten the full scope of information, and here’s the most important point, you get it timely.

Yesterday, President Obama lectured the intelligence agencies for failing to keep our homeland safe.  He’s right in that we need to do everything possible to keep terrorists off our planes.  But that should be our second line of defense. The first line of defense should be making them too scared to even think about boarding the plane.

How do you terrify a terrorist?  Not even the death penalty means much, because they’re all suicide bombers.  They’re ready for the afterlife (at least they think they are. I bet meeting Satan sort of sucks…). Do we threaten them with a lifetime in prison without trial on a tropical island, where they get 3 meals a day and free access to pray to their God for The Great Satan(America)’s destruction?  Geez, no wonder the Gitmo detainees don’t want to leave… Sounds a lot better than living in a cave in Yemen!  Even if they do manage to get back to their cave in Yemen, they will have fresh information to spread amongst their brothers about our safety and security procedures.

Is there anyway to scare terrorists off planes, then?  Everyone’s afraid of something… Terrorists are afraid of being tortured into giving up valuable secrets about their organization, location, future plans, or any other information that might be floating about in their twisted little brains. To do so would not only harm their mission, but would bring shame upon them and possibly damnation from their god.

It’s insane that Abdulmutallab is being given a civil trial.  If convicted, he could serve up to a life sentence.  Here’s the message that sends to the other terrorists back home:

Keep up the good work boys! There’s nothing to be afraid of with these silly Americans; they’ll even let you on the plane if they know you work for al-Queda.  Getting through security is not too bad, they’re so busy making sure everyone dumps out their water bottle and has the correct size sandwich baggies that they easily overlook us.  If they do examine you closely, be sure to threaten a discrimination lawsuit. That usually does the trick.  And don’t worry if you screw up and the bomb doesn’t detonate, because you’ll never have to say a thing in The Great Satan’s generous legal system.  If released, you may return immediately to us and rejoin the mission, or if imprisoned, you may pray continually for our cause.

Welcome aboard flight number…