If Governor Brewer is to have any credibility left, she is going to have to start sorting out illegal immigration from drug cartel crime.
From TPM:
The Arizona Guardian followed up, asking the state’s county coroners — who would examine any body connected with a crime — if they’d seen the headless bodies from the desert.
They hadn’t.
(Although one coroner, gruesomely, told the paper they did sometimes get human skulls– but not as a result of a fatal beheading. Such skulls are found after people die in the desert and “the animals … get a hold of them and start moving their body parts around,” the coroner said.)
Asked for comment, a spokesman for Brewer told the Guardian said the governor had never said anyone was beheaded inside Arizona. “I’m not aware of any statements where the governor specifies where any crimes were committed,” he said, despite his boss having made exactly that specific claim on two different news programs. On the contrary, he claimed that Brewer was talking about the fear that crimes that occur in Mexico could spread to Arizona.
“That report, which is based on other news reports, suggests that the drug cartels who operate on both sides of the U.S./Mexico border, have not beheaded their victims,” the spokesman, Paul Senseman, told Politico. “Even a cursory check of news stories on the internet suggests otherwise.” Perhaps his boss should have done one before appearing on news programs to make such a claim.
The great divide just seems to drift further apart when we have to deal with this type of ‘exaggeration’ on the part of a public official, time and time again.
Governor Brewer: “…illegal immigration and everything that comes with it…everything from the crime, and the drugs, the kidnappings, and the extortion, and the beheadings…”
Reporter: “Which beheadings IN ARIZONA were you referring to?”
Governor Brewer: “Oh, OUR law enforcement agencies have found bodies in the desert either buried or just lying out there that have been beheaded.”
Does the Governor’s spokesperson really want us to believe that she was talking about beheadings happening elsewhere? How exactly are we supposed to get that from the above statements? What an irresponsible thing for the Governor to say, and her spokesperson is doing a weak job of spinning this.
Apparently Brewer was wrong. There seems to be no argument there. Now everybody has some happy time ammo to shoot at her and that new Arizona law. O.K. But I have to wonder just how long it might be before that wave of decapitations and all the other murderous rot going on in northern Mexico DOES come across our border. The drug cartel kidnappings are already here. Laugh while ye may.
Does anyone else not understand how rounding up bus boys and maids for jaywalking in Phoenix combats violent drug cartels?
As the deadline for enactment of the Arizona law approaches I’m sure this entire debate will take on a nasty tone. Obama’s speech made sense if you could trust him and the government to carry out the actions proposed. However, this has been preached in the past and look where we’re at now. The government gave amnesty on one hand, but never enforced the workplace laws on the other. We have the laws in place to stop illegal immigration now, it’s the lack of enforcement that is missing, so when I hear about how immigration is broken blame it on those refusing enforcement and not on those fighting for enforcement! Brewer is at least fighting for enforcement.
BTW, did anyone notice that Obama started out referring to the border crossers as ‘undocumented’ individuals, and then shifted to ‘illegals’ as the speech went on. Political correctness is tough to maintain when you’re talking about ‘illegal’ immigration yet many here try their best.
Obama’s speech is more of his untrustworthy b***s***. Talk like a centrist buty hold out to only enforce law if it’s politically expedient.
Obama will help to protect America if and when his opponents can collectively convince America that Obama is playing poltics with this issue, looking to exploit it rather than solve it. When people start to realize the game he’s playing – preserve status quo while giving speeches intended to mine the Hispanic vote – and voters Hispanic and other start turning on his – then and then he’ll deign to do something real.
As to illegal immigrants smuggling drugs, it’s my understanding that they are usually led across the border by drug dealers who they pay money to, and frequently the humans being smuggled are told to wear backpacks and to physically smuggle drugs across the border. The flow of humans and the flow of drugs take the same routes, with the same handlers – they are linked.
The only way to work constructively with Obama is to threaten him politically. He is depending on a coalition of black and Hispanic voters for reelection (having alienated the vast majority of white males in this country).
Hispanic voters aren’t especially obsessed with the illegal immigration issue. It’s not at the top of their list. However, Obama sees it as “the” issue to exploit with them, in his game of racial identity politics.
So he talks about the same thing proposed circa 2006-2007, which everyone knows is a complete non-starter. Short of that, he does nothing. The status quo suits him.
Even if he WANTED to do something, he has no idea of how to lead. His modus operandi is to tell us all what he wants, then go play pick up basketball while various situations in America degrade.
But it would be good for America if we could break through this simple-minded race identity politics and work together towards secure borders and a reduction in labor exploitation. Here’s hoping.
Why many of you here are quick to bash Jan Brewer, Russell Pearce, etc. but give Obama a pass I don’t understand. He has a job to do, he refuses to do it, and he says nonsensical things while preserving a bad situation. This is the exact opposite of leadership.
“Oh but he’s a very effective President. Just look at his TRIUMPH on health care. By abandoning any real reform efforts that could change the high prices, by further institutionalizing the idea that we should pay much more for health care than any other nation on God’s grey earth he was able to sweep the cost issue under the rug for future generations, to enact “heath care insurance reform” and claim political victory. My hero! Great job Barack”.
Enjoy your pickup basketball game you goofy, funny-eared, vampire-lipped poor excuse for a leader.
I think he’s leading some of you here to chase your tails, Pied Piper style. You lose track of what’s real and start spouting these never-never land arguements, along with roughly 40% of America.
In Obama world, like Bush world, we must deficit spend in order to grow.
In Obama world, the 6% profit margin that the health insurance companies made is a big problem in America, moreso than the exorbitant and unnatural price of drugs and care.
In Obama world, we must “hold accountable” illegal immigrants by forcing them to pay a fine and learn English. Then we make them citizens and illegal immigration stops even though it’s “not possible” to meaningfully secure the border. And somehow the issue of reduced wages self-mitigates, because no more of them come in over the border that’s not possible to meaningfully secure. Ah well. I guess if we just cede larger and larger portions of Arizona and Texas to drug cartels, it’ll all work out well somehow.
Maybe eventually we start paying the drug cartels to guard the border for us? Kind of like we work with the Taliban on and off to accomplish certain goals and to constructively engage.
We’ll say, you can run heroin and pot but no meth, and keep illegal immigrants out, and we’ll pay you stipends. And we’ll pick parts of Arizona and Texas for you to control. Because we lack the hair on our balls to know right from wrong, and to fight over what’s right and wrong.
And then if they run meth and illegal immigrants, we’ll pretend it isn’t happening, then decide to forgive them for it if they pay a fine and demonstrate good English skills.
and why not legalize heroin, pot and meth? Tax the crap out of them, take away the reason why we need a drug cartel, and stop the drug wars. If the market was not illegal, many of the problems would just go away. California seems to be moving forward with no issues with the pot selling.
I’m guessing that when other empires fell, like Rome or the USSR, it looked a lot like this.
PH, sorry, but I would never use California as an example of how the rest of the US should conduct themselves. They’re sort of ‘out there’ as in out of the norm. When it falls into the ocean the only headline will be “Dramatic Drop in Illegal Immigration”.
Wow…there are a ton of comments on here that have absolutely NOTHING to do with how Governor Brewer lied about Arizona law enforcement agencies finding victims of beheadings, and how these bodies were tied to illegal immigration. Are we totally changing the subject for a reason. I can be a tangent-queen, but really?!
Anyway…how am I quick to bash Brewer? I looked at the TOPIC, which was a video of Governor Brewer lying to a reporter. I then provided a transcript of what was said to point out that her spokesperson’s comments didn’t make sense. I saw nothing in the topic or video that led me to believe I needed to comment on President Obama. Confusing…
I see the weak-kneed liberal left wants to give those head-chopping, drug smuggling, welfare scamming illegals a path to citizenship … oh wait, that was Republican NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg speaking. There going to kick him off the team if he doesn’t stop making sense … you can’t fearmonger talking like that. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i9_84qBRRjL4TSuW5yEifB7FpJyQD9GMT7UO0
Diversity Gal, that happens around here frequently. One lone voice, up towards the beginning of the post, made by El Guapo, gave me hope. I looked for the bashings but didn’t see them.
I would hope that kidnappings, drug smuggling, human trafficking, beheadings, and all the other hideous things those drug cartels are doing were already against the law. I have a sneaking suspicion that they are. In fact, right after I posted this article, I heard that 29 people had been killed in one of those border towns just south of Tucson last night.
No one has yet explained to me how sb1070 is going to curb the horrible violence being commited by the drug cartels. It seems to be a ruse, as suggested by El Guapo. Once again we are being manipulated. EEEEK! Horrible things are happening in the south west by Mexican drug cartels. Lets enact questionable laws against illegal immigrants to stop the drug cartels. Huh??????
Brewer lied. She also lied about over 50% of those crossing the border illegally being drug cartel also. Just living in Northern VA tells you that one is a big whopper.
Moe, better let Mayor Bloomberg know he is getting ready to get kicked out of the boys’ and girls’ club.
I also read somewhere on a blog that shall go unnamed that the Prez said the border was safer now than it had ever been. That is also another bald faced lie. He said no such thing. He said there were more agents on the border, securing the border, than ever before in history. Big difference.
The drug cartel violence is critical and does present an immediate danger to Americans. No one disputes that. Most of us are all for stopping it, at least at our borders. Doing that will require extraordinary means.
However, sb1070 has a different purpose. Those who want to mislead us would have us believe sb1070 will stop drug cartel atrocities. I don’t think so.
I guess coming here illegally to work makes you behead people?
what can one say – She must be lining herself up to become a talk show pundit, where she can spout something (anything), and not have to back it up.
I just watched the video — the interviewer asked an excellent question regarding whether beheadings actually took place in Arizona. A very good answer would have been: Numerous beheadings have taken place in Mexican cities along the U.S.-Mexican border. With our porous borders, the beheadings could easily spread to the U.S. if the drug cartels so choose.” Unfortunately she exaggerated (or made up stuff) instead.
But it seems to me that parsing Mexican drug cartels and illegal immigrants is a distinction without a difference. If the borders are open to kind-hearted, hard-working illegal immigrants, then they are also open to drug cartels. And as Rick pointed out, it is often the drug dealers who are leading illegal immigrants across the border.
The purpose of sb1070 is to remove people who are in Arizona illegally …. that would include the drug cartels.
Kelly, I am going to agree with you 50%. wowowow. All kidding aside, no one should be downplaying the dangers of those cartels coming across the border and doing their nasty deeds. I would be all for shooting them on sight. Ask questions later. The dangers are real and should not be minimized.
However, I don’t think that a single component of sb1070 is needed to combat what the drug cartels are doing. I am not so sure that I am buying in to drug dealers leading illegal immigrants across the border. I think these killer clowns are coming across in like desert retrofitted suvs, from my readings. That’s not to say that human trafficking isn’t going on. that’s not to say that the coyotes aren’t smuggling people and making money for doing so.
These seem like border problems to me, not sb1070 issues. I have no problem supporting Brewer, Schwartenagger, Richardson, or Texas Pete with the problems at the border. I want the Pres and the Congress to give them whatever they need to stop the problem. I want Napolitano to drive a wedge between environmental issues that restrict fence building. I want private property issues settled. The border issues are so much greater than most of us in Virginia can probably understand.
Brewer needs to stop lying. The facts should be enough to deal with.
Kelly, I don’t want the borders open to kind-hearted, hard working illegal immigrants either. I think we have every right to know who is in our country.
I want people who are here treated with respect. There is too much room for abuse and FAIR needs to stay out of policy making.
“Small Towns Luring Immigrants” – Fairfax County is listed as one of them?
http://realestate.yahoo.com/promo/8-new-american-gateways-for-immigrants
You know, I am not even sure what that means, Cindy.
When I first moved to this area, Fairfax, Arlington, Alexandria were all a Mecca for the foreign born. I can remember us all avoiding going to Bradleys because you would go in the store, get stuck behind a family from Somewhere, World, and never be able to get around them. Immigrant families tend to consider a shopping trip an outting for everyone in the extended family from the oldest to youngest. If you got stuck behind a large group, all walking 10 abreast, you could never escape.
Ah, its awful being so American but that used to drive me nuts. So what has changed? I haven’t done major shopping in Fairfax Co for 25-30 years because of what I just described. I don’t care that they are there. Its sort of cute even. I just don’t want to get stuck behind them. Has Fairfax changed so much that this phenomena no longer exists?
I think sound like Lafayette. I don’t think she crosses Sudley Road if she can help it, much less Bull Run.
I never did see any beheadings but I did see a stabbing once at Springfield Mall. It was a fairly scary situation and it was most definitely gang–Filipino if I am not mistaken.
@Moon-howler
I am not sure about the comment that you read — but
in my usual desire to be accurate, Wolfie,–actually he said “So the bottom line is this: The southern border is more secure today than at any time in the past 20 years.”
Source: The White House
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-comprehensive-immigration-reform
Well, nothing here to do but eat crow…feathers and all. I heard him say that there were more border agents now than ever before. But he coluld have said what you wrote also…..I guess I don’t have to hear everything. 🙄
Rez, [toothy grin] Do I have feathers in my teeth?
I didn’t read it, I listened to his speech on TV while he was giving it live. I heard him say more agents or something to that effect– something that denoted personnel units. He might have changed the text because someone realized how stupid it might sound to just say ‘more secure.’ How does one quantify ‘more secure?’ More agents, a military? better technology? 300 drones? higher walls?
Or maybe I heard what I wanted him to say…rather than what he said because I didn’t want him to say something stupid.
Nice article, now think of our nation instead of a town!
http://thearizonalawmanandphoenixpolicegazette.com/coming-to-your-neighborhood-soon-maywood-ca-–-96-percent-hispanic-sanctuary-city-–-disbands-police-fires-all-employees-to-avoid-financial-collapse/
Here’s a sad joke for you. The San Diego Unified School District recently passed a measure calling for the school system to boycott Arizona. Yep. San Diego. The place with an enhanced border security system which has caused many immigrants and others to move their illegal crossings east toward the more open Arizona border. The measure as originally proposed called for sending a travel advisory to San Diego parents and students recommending that they avoid travel to Arizona because it was too dangerous. That is, until a certain Mrs. Nakamura, member of the school board, rose and asked how the school district could justify such a travel advisory. After all, she said, it was just a short time ago that the board refused to issue such an advisory for travel to Mexico where so many murders, decapitations, and kidnappings, including kidnappings of Americans, are going on. Is the board now saying that Arizona is more dangerous than Mexico? The board decided to drop the parent/student travel advisory for Arizona. Thank you Mrs. Nakamura for showing the idiots their own idiocy. The thank you would be bigger except that I understand you voted for the boycott without the travel advisory.
We hear much from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, San Diego, and West Los Angeles about how those urban paragons of virtue are going to boycott Arizona. Well , other parts of California may be starting to focus on the issue. I understand that the city councils in Hemet and Lake Elsinore in southern California have voted NOT to boycott Arizona. Moreover, when confronted with a request from prominent Dems in the state legislature for a list of all state contracts with Arizona, Governor S responded by indicating that he would be darned if he was going to transfer back to the Golden State all those prisoners they have contracted out to a place like Arizona.
In my opinion, we are starting to put ourselves in a silly box of our own making. We object to stopping immigrants simply on suspicion of illegality by crying out that this might become unconstitutional racial profiling. O.K. So Arizona amended its own law to reflect that constitutional concern. Now an Arizona police officer can only ask for ID and evidence of legal residence if the person in question has committed some other violation of the law. Moreover, nothing he does even in this regard can be oriented toward race. If it is then established in the process of adjudicating that other violation that this person is in the United States illegally in violation of the federal code, he or she can be turned over to federal authorities for deportation. Sounds logical to me. It is, after all, what the federal law says. But now we see the DOJ threatening to sue Arizona over a state law which conforms to the federal laws on immigration. The state is being sued for deigning to assist the federal government in the enforcement of federal laws. That to me sounds more than a bit illogical — except that I see a false, self-centered, ethnic game being played here by our politicians for future votes.
Opposition on constitutional grounds to the Arizona law as originally written I can easily understand. But there are still those who are going hard and fast after Arizona even though the law was amended to guarantee against racial profiling and to conform more closely to federal immigration law. For those still in opposition to the Arizona measure, please at least have the honesty to admit it that you do not want to see any illegal immigrants deported regardless of federal or state law. For whatever personal or philosophical reasons, you seem to want to throw an almost seamless security blanket around the entire illegal immigrant community. Ah, but you are quite willing to make exceptions for those illegal immigrants who commit crimes or who are found to be part of the drug cartels. So, tell me. If you succeed in building that seamless security blanket, just where do you think those criminals and drug cartels will go to hide? That’s right. Behind your seamless security blanket.
You must understand that our opponents are always looking for our weaknesses and ways to exploit them. You can see it right now in Afghanistan. The Taliban has correctly assessed that folly known as the NATO Rules of Engagement with their extreme emphasis on the limiting of civilian casualties even at the possible cost of the lives of our own troops. As a consequence, the Taliban fighters are blending even more into the civilian population in order to have better cover for deadly action. They are taking us for the fools we are. Now, don’t you think that the drug cartels may be as tactically smart as the Taliban? Those cartels will take every possible advantage of our self-limitations with regard to the enforcement of immigration laws per se. Arguments over racial profiling would be a protection behind which they would be overjoyed to hide. Protect the illegal iimmigrants as much as you can, and I am sure you will get a silent thank you from the drug cartels and other criminals operating under the “protected” cover of those same communities.
Too bad Gov. Brewer seems so desperate to be re-elected. She is using this issue dishonestly hoping to appeal to emotions. FAIR admits it is behind her.
As for the boyots, in the end, what difference does it really make who boycots whom? If you want to go see the Grand Canyon, I defy someone to think up a way to do it without going in to Arizona. Not sure how one can go to the Tucson Gem Show either. That is the largest gathering of people involved in jewelry making in the world. I am not sure how anyone will see Sedona, another hot tourist spot, without entering Arizona.
I am just tired of immigration being used as a manipulative political tool. Those who want to find serious fixes to the problem listen to law enforcement. They will tell the politicians what laws they need to get the job done. The political hacks continue to vilify and dismiss those who put their lives on the line daily. We saw that happened here.
@Wolverine
THAT is the BEST description of the situation I’ve seen ANYWHERE! WELL DONE!
Wolverine, I am not sure what the law changed from ..to. It is sort of like the resolution in Prince William Co. It depended on which day you looked, what it said.
I do not like the probable cause component. I didn’t like it when we were implementing it and I don’t like it in the AZ law. The big difference is, I am not an AZ resident. I guess, for the time being, what they do is their business and they will have to deal with DOJ. I will meanwhile be a gatherer and distributor of information, to the best of my ability.