If I hear one more politician, news anchor, or talk show host say that the first thing we must do to stop illegal immigration is “secure the border,” I think I’m going to be sick. Moreover, if I hear the term “comprehensive immigration reform” again, I’ll probably begin to retch with disgust. The reason for my stomach-turning impulse comes from the frustration I feel when I hear meaningless phrases used repeatedly by those who have no plan for their implementation. We hear about building a 2000 mile fence as we watch videos of people climbing over portions of recently constructed fences. We hear about state and federal officers assigned to guard the border, while acknowledging that we don’t have enough manpower to become 24-hour sentinels, stretching across several states. When US citizens take it upon themselves to organize and guard their borders, they’re maligned as “vigilantes” and “hate mongers” by those who know how to work the system to turn common sense on its head.

Recently, President Obama, with another one of those platitudes about the immigration system being “broken,” talked about a comprehensive immigration reform that would see “undocumented migrants” (read: people breaking the law by sneaking across our borders) given a pathway to citizenship and further measures put in place to (here we go again) “secure the border.” How in Heaven’s name are we supposed to deal with this gut-crunching problem if we can’t even use words that honestly describe the situation? Euphemisms are going to be the death of us because their usage tends to transmogrify reality. If you are a citizen of this country, the United States is your home! When someone breaks into your home, he should be referred to as a lawbreaker, not stroked and coddled like a lost pet that strayed into your yard. Would a burglar, walking along the street with your television on his shoulder, be called an undocumented shopper? By what stretch of the imagination is the word “illegal” a term th... [Read More]

    Remember when you were a child and were always asking your parents for things? Your mom and dad wanted to make you happy, but they understood the danger of taking satisfaction to the extreme. In addition, they understood the need to teach you the merits of self-sacrifice. They realized that you would grow up and be released into a world in which discipline was a key factor in your maturity. When they said no to your requests, even to your demands, it was because they were keeping you from believing that you could have anything you want if you simply held your breath and stomped your feet in defiance of their judgment. If you had permissive parents, they probably gave in every time you pouted, screamed, or engaged in other childish tantrums. But, if you were real lucky, you had parents who taught you that you can’t always have your own way, and that nobody owes you a living; they were preparing you for adulthood.
    It seems that this analogy exists in the government today. Liberal orthodoxy appears to suggest that you should have everything you want, that freedom is unlimited, and every grievance should be soothed by the curative balm of government largesse. Conversely, conservative philosophy advances the notion that you must take responsibility for your own future and not use the blame game as a crutch. When you take advantage of a legal product like cigarettes, despite warnings of its ill effects, you should not expect a multi-million dollar “reward” for your own lack of discipline when you get sick. Blowing up like a tick on fast food burgers, fries, and shakes doesn’t mean you have the right to get rich as part of a class action lawsuit brought by an army of obese opportunists. And, getting pregnant because you didn’t behave responsibly by taking precautions, shouldn’t give you a license to kill the child growing inside. Behavior must have consequences; otherwise, we’ll be ruled by animal instincts. Freedom must have limit... [Read More]

     The most important job of a police officer is the prevention of crime. In order to do so, the officer must cast a large shadow over his patrol area by projecting an image of omnipresence. The bad guys are unlikely to pursue their nefarious goals while the beat cop or the marked patrol unit is nearby. But there are many other ways in which a savvy cop keeps his area safe. One is to keep an eye on people and activities which he deems suspicious. Making a mental and paper note of such activity can, and often does, lead to crime-solving later. Many good arrests resulted from information recorded prior to the criminal acts. When the notorious “Son of Sam” was finally captured, after committing several homicides, it was due to the data on a parking ticket issued to the killer’s car while he was a few blocks away stalking his next victim. In New York City, the police use a form known as “Stop and Frisk” when they encounter someone who, based on their experience, appears to be in need of some scrutiny. The info on those forms is fed into a statistics-based managerial computer system known as CompStat. The data is used to follow up on incidents that occurred around the same time and place in which they were recorded.
      Now, most people would view that as an excellent way to help the police bring greater safety and security to their neighborhood. Yet, there was a loud roar of criticism from civil rights groups recently when the NYPD released its data on Stop and Frisk interactions for 2009. It seems that cops made 575,000 pedestrian stops last year, 55 percent involving blacks. Critics quickly pointed out that blacks are only 23 percent of the population, while whites, who comprise 35 percent of the city’s residents, were only involved in 10 percent of the stops. So, as is typical with all these race-baiting groups, the implication is that the police are racists who enjoy harassing black people by asking them a few que... [Read More]

   They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but I’m going to try to come in at about 800. I took a look at the front page of a major Dallas newspaper and saw a photo of 2 Hispanic women and a 9-year-old Hispanic girl hugging each other and crying as they celebrated the decision by Federal District Court Judge Susan Bolton to block some portions of the Arizona immigration law. It couldn’t be more obvious that the photo was used in order to pull at the heartstrings of every decent American. It certainly caused me to choke up for a few minutes because the look on their faces made me feel like an ogre for supporting the Arizona law. It’s difficult to take a stand on a subject that causes pain to others; we all like to believe that the decisions we make are based on sound moral judgment. Yet, when we see the tear-stained faces of women and children, people who simply want the American dream for themselves and their families, it strains our concept of humanity to oppose them. Every fiber of my body wants to reach out and embrace them, to assure them that I’m really not a heartless fiend.
    It should go without saying that the overwhelming numbers of people coming here illegally are doing so to earn money to feed their families. If they had been born here, they would be among the most law-abiding, ambitious, family-oriented people in the country. Hispanics are no less proud of their heritage than the Irish, Italians, Jews, Asians, or any other nationality. Only the hard-core bigots in this country would disagree with that. Nevertheless, the flood of illegal immigrants into the US is a serious challenge to our sovereignty and a growing menace to our safety. However, it should in no way be viewed as an example of a nation without compassion. When you look around the world at the way trespassers are treated it’s easy to conclude that we are a glowing tribute to patience and sympathetic consciousness. The question is; should we lead with our... [Read More]

    There must be millions of people around the world who look at our country and wonder if we are experiencing the last gasps of an empire in decline. When radical Islam attacked and killed close to 3000 Americans, in their workplace, on their own soil nine years ago, the world waited for a response that was expected to be cataclysmic. After all, as President Kennedy said in his inaugural speech: “Those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger, ended up inside.” When JFK spoke those words in 1961, only 15 years after the US won its second world war, we were the tiger of the world. Yes, the cold war was still part of the national dialogue, but we felt secure in the knowledge that we would outlast the Soviet threat and continue to prosper. When the Berlin Wall came down and the USSR was dismantled, it seemed like a continuation of Manifest Destiny; as though America was uniquely positioned to spread democracy throughout the world. As the mightiest nation in history, no country stood a chance against us. The closest strike on our interests around the world had been the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Our response to that murderous raid culminated in the atomic bombings of 2 Japanese cities 4 years later.

     Of course, that was when we knew exactly who and where our enemies were and how to pay them back for taking American lives. When radical Muslims bombed the World Trade Center the first time in 1993, killing 6 and injuring over a thousand, the public was outraged, but wasn’t clear about who to strike back at. Inasmuch as terrorists have formed an elusive international conspiracy that is not openly sanctioned by any government, nuclear weapons don’t have the same deterrent power. That makes it difficult to put our enemies in the crosshairs. Add to that the fact that we’re dealing with a group of homicidal fanatics who are willing to give up their own worthless lives in order to kill us and you have a gri... [Read More]

   When the first African-American was elected to the presidency of the United States one would have thought that race would become a less serious issue for the country to deal with. Au contraire; after only about 18 months in office, accusations of racism rival those of a generation ago when the thought of a black president seemed very remote. It was to be expected that blacks would vote in overwhelming numbers (97%) for the first Chief Executive of their race. In addition, it wasn’t hard to imagine that they would be sensitive about criticism toward him. But, one would think, in view of the criticism directed toward every other president, that even the most diehard liberal would realize that it goes with the territory. Given the daily tidal wave of scorn and bitterness toward George W. Bush during his presidency, one wonders how it would have been viewed if he was black. When Bush was frequently referred to as “stupid” or “dumb” by his critics, there wasn’t anyone calling them racists.

   Now that we have a black president, people are wary of using terms that might be considered insensitive (Bush was given no such consideration). Furthermore, most people feel the need to parse every word before uttering something that can be twisted into a vague slur on the man’s color. Knowing that this puts people off balance, supporters of President Obama are using it as a way to control the dialogue and limit any attempt toward negative evaluation of his performance. Now, there are indications that the Attorney General will not prosecute blacks for voter intimidation against whites. Can you imagine a white AG, in contemporary America, refusing to prosecute whites for intimidating blacks at a polling location? Yes, it happened a generation ago and it was just as racist and despicable then as it is now.

   Taking on a president for policies that affect the future of our country is not a black or white issue; it’s a national concern. ... [Read More]

    The most important job of the government is the protection of its people. That protection involves their physical safety and the security of their property. That means providing police presence to deter criminals before they commit crimes and harsh penalties for offenders whose crimes were not deterred. The fact is that most crimes cannot be deterred because the bad guys don’t generally mug people in front of the officer on patrol. Since the police can’t be everywhere, people need a way to protect themselves. That was how Otis McDonald felt when he walked into a Chicago police station and applied for a .22-caliber pistol 2 years ago. The 76 year-old retired maintenance engineer became the public face of one of the most important Second Amendment cases in US history. As the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging Chicago’s 28 year handgun ban, McDonald was a sympathetic figure; an elderly man trying to protect himself from violent hoodlums preying upon his neighborhood.
     One would think that granting him the right to protect himself would be a no-brainer. After all, it’s common knowledge that many street gangs are equipped with enough firearms to take on the Taliban. Our feckless justice system has been proven to be inadequate to disarm the thugs that roam freely throughout the country. Therefore, why not allow the potential victims of those thugs to at least have a fighting chance? How insane is it to tell people that they are prohibited from being armed during a continuous war on crime, especially when they live in crime-ridden areas like Chicago. Thankfully, the Supreme Court behaved sanely when they recently ruled that the Second Amendment to the Constitution gives an individual the right to keep and bear arms. Nevertheless, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, presiding over his personal thugocracy, declared that the Supremes are divorced from reality. “They don't seem to appreciate the full scope of gun violence in America,” sa... [Read More]

     For all those hand-wringers out there who are shaking their collective heads in disbelief that a 15 year-old Mexican boy was shot dead by a Border Patrol agent because he was attempting to brain the guy with a rock, let’s be clear; a rock, colliding with your skull, can kill you just as surely as a bullet. When you watch some of the videos of what these Border Patrol agents have to put up with every day, you have to wonder why more rock-throwers are not shot. I’ve known police officers who were killed with blunt objects and some who were crippled for life after being bludgeoned by someone they allowed to get too close. During the Columbia University war protests in 1968, a cop I had worked with a few times was assigned, along with other officers, to try to contain the marauding students and keep anyone from being injured. Well, many cops were injured while trying to be gentle with that bunch of spoiled brat radicals. One of them was my erstwhile partner. As he was keeping his eyes on a rampaging group several feet away, many of whom were throwing rocks, bottles and other solid objects, some of which were bouncing off his helmet, he paid no attention to a student who had scaled the ledge of a one-story building, just above him. 

     He was totally unprepared for what happened next. One of those “peace activists” leaped from the roof and landed on the cop’s shoulders, breaking the fall of the student, but breaking the back of the cop. The downward thrust of the weight crushed the lower part of his spine, destining him to a wheelchair for the rest of his young life. In Brooklyn, during the riots of the turbulent sixties, I and many of my fellow officers, faced off against street thugs who hurled anything they could get their hands on, in an attempt to injure and intimidate us. Can you imagine standing out in the open, wearing a uniform that represents law and order, and having to bob and weave as you try to avoid being hit by a barrage of weapons, any ... [Read More]