"May I see your papers, please?"

President Bush's approval ratings are at a record low. The war in Iraq has dragged on, thanks to the temporal nature of the terrorists. If you listen to, and believe, the Usual Suspects and the New York Times, he can't do anything right. Everything is his fault, including vagaries of the weather.

Well, I have some blame to affix. Mr. Bush, you missed a good bet the other day. Since you're determined to turn America into a police state, you should have hammered that protest in Chicago.

Dropping the hammer was actually the job of the local authorities, who did nothing because of the stigma of Mayor Daly. It's a response to the '68 convention protests, but it would have been a hoot to watch. There was a reported 100,000 people in the streets protesting the alleged "police state" that will be created if the government takes action on illegal immigration. The "She-devil" from New York has used that phrase: "police state".

I've never been a big fan of the police. Stewart Copeland's okay, but that Sting guy chaps my...

Seriously, the only time I'm crossways with the police is when I get busted driving my Corvette at 110 in a 65 zone. I keep forgetting that our local 4-lane isn't the German autobahn. I'm not happy with my collection of traffic offenses, but I broke the law, and the law won, so I live with the sanctions for speeding.

When all those people took to the streets in Chicago, the locals, ICE, and anyone else taking part of their pay from the Ministry of Homeland Security should have been part of the hammerhead. Like 10,000 lawyers on the bottom of the the ocean, it would have been a good start. With the Illinois National Guard for back-up, they should have sealed off the side streets on that protest, and moved in, asking simply for identification from every participant. I'm sure the traditional "green cards" would have been useful for those of Hispanic persuasion. I'm not a "racist profiler"; this white Southern boy has done more than most to move in the direction away from racism. That dog won't hunt, if the card is played, to mix metaphors.

What a field day ICE could've had, though!

People come to America because we're the last, best hope of humanity. Several posts back, when I was picking fights, I said that someone who doesn't care is second-most dangerous critter only to a father with hungry children. 'Tis true; when I raised my pups, I would've killed to obtain food for them, if we'd lived in some Third World hellhole. We were blessed, because great-great-grandaddy Captain Duncan Possum resigned from the British Navy and settled here...legally. Land grant from the king, and all that. My children didn't have to grow up in poverty and starvation. I don't fault anyone for wanting to come here, or doing whatever has to be done to get here. I have been personal witness to an Arizona horror story about crossing the desert "for the sake of the children", as the She-devil would say. It's darkly funny; people say they hate America, but they'll die to get here.

The key word here is "legally". I'm a scofflaw; ask any State Trooper who patrols the highway between Atlanta and Young Harris, where Senator Zell lives. I break what I consider to be minor laws; those applying to speed limits on open highways in the middle of the night. The troopers have their duty, so I sigh and take the consequences when I blow a radar zone.

Illegal immigrants have blown the radar. Sorry, gang, but those cameras, motion detectors, and angry livestock owners have you busted.

There is a legitimate national security issue at stake here. There is a difference between a father with hungry children, victimized by the corrupt government of his home country, and a devoted jihadist lugging an atomic demolitions munition on his back, across hundreds of miles of inhospitable terrain. However, they are both guided into America by the same coyotes...people who make their livings by the exploitation of those they purport to serve. Service to breaking a law is not a service. Killing my people, even the Yankees, isn't an option. Those ancestors earned the right to shove Yankees around; you ain't there by a long shot.

By all means, come here. Do the paperwork, and cope with the interminable frustrations of the federal government. It isn't easy to get into America. My ancestors slaughtered the "Indians" [read Native Americans, a.k.a Injuns] en masse, as they resisted the influx of white people with a questionable agenda. It's St. Patrick's Day; many of my Irish forebears comprised the cavalry that massacred them Injuns.

Those ancestors earned me the right to say "Injuns" by committing their atrocities against those who opposed them. I personally earned a tribal name by standing up in court for them Injuns. My president is crossways with me, when he speaks of an open border and amnesty program for "guest workers". I'm sorry, kids, but the party's over.

The border should be closed, now. If it takes the automated machine gun nests of the Soviets on the Western Wall, so be it. If it takes the minefields of South Africa, so be it.

Mexicans are beloved to me, and not in a patronistic sense of Third World children that need my Big White Daddy care. If this was 1917, I'd be trying to retake their country. Bottom line: people should not have to flee their country because the government is corrupt.

How many of those limousine liberals actually fled to Canada? If I break the law speeding in my plastic car, I get the hammer. If someone commits a federal felony, like border violation, they are chum in a catch-and-release program that is more merciful than fishing on Nottley Lake.

It would have been interesting to ask for green cards in this gang in Chicago... Is law-breaking so popular that I can take to the streets, knowing I'm a crook, and protest the authority that should be busting me? Look for more of this, as Those People embolden the disenfranchised.

At the risk of sounding like one of Those People, my president is right, the troops are untouchable, but...

I am crossways with my president about this border/amnesty thing. I'm a simple man: Close it, and have the mojados line up.

I'm beginning to build a resentment, as they say in AA. My president knows about AA and spirituality; has he forgotten it in the daily rubbish of the great office he obtained though sobriety and the vaunted "hard work"?

"Reductio ad Hitlerum" Just because Hitler had an idea, that doesn't make it a bad one. In this case, it's good and simple: close the borders...now!