A Story About Terrorism

If there is a 21st century Kafka somewhere in America, he will get his inspiration not from working in an insurance company but with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement branch of the Department of Homeland Security.

Consider this Kafkaesque gem from the McClatchy newspapers today:

"Thomas Warziniack was born in Minnesota and grew up in Georgia, but immigration authorities pronounced him an illegal immigrant from Russia.

"Immigration and Customs Enforcement has held Warziniack for weeks in an Arizona detention facility with the aim of deporting him to a country he's never seen. His jailers shrugged off Warziniack's claims that he was an American citizen, even though they could have retrieved his Minnesota birth certificate in minutes and even though a Colorado court had concluded that he was a US citizen a year before it shipped him to Arizona.

"On Thursday, Warziniack finally became a free man. Immigration officials released him after his family, who learned about his predicament from McClatchy, produced a birth certificate and after a US senator demanded his release.

"'The immigration agents told me they never make mistakes,' Warziniack said..."

According to its web site, "US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) strengthens national security and upholds public safety by closing down homeland security vulnerabilities. Created in March 20003 (sic), ICE was tasked with closing down our nation’s vulnerabilities by targeting the people, money and materials that support terrorism and other criminal activities...an approach not taken prior to 9/11."

Warziniack is not alone. In the new-found fervor over illegal aliens, there is evidence that many other American citizens with no foreign ties are being swept up for deportation.

By the 201st century, our Homeland Security heroes may have figured out how to tell the difference.

Second Commandment and Amendment

To go all the way to the nomination, Mike Huckabee will have to reconcile his party's tension between those who worship God and those who put more faith in guns, a distinction largely lost on liberal Democrats.

Until Iowa Evangelicals embraced him, Huckabee was suspect among Values Voters, who had doubts about what he terms Second Commandment Christianity, which extends more compassion to illegal immigrants and the undeserving poor than other Republican candidates are willing to do.

“I believe,” Huckabee has said, “that life begins at conception, but I don't believe it ends at birth. I believe we have a responsibility to feed the hungry, to provide a good education, a safe neighborhood, health care.”

On the other hand, after criticizing Bush on Iraq, he had to go hunting in Iowa to reassure devotees of the Second Amendment who lean toward Giuliani's macho, John McCain's militant patriotism and Mitt Romney's imitations thereof.

All this has raised doubts about whether he is a "true conservative" across the spectrum from Rush Limbaugh primitives to the National Review intellectual wing of his party.

"Huckabee," Limbaugh contends, "is using his devout Christianity to mask some other things that are distinctively not conservative. He is against free trade. He's really doesn't believe in free market."

NR editor Rich Lowry agrees with the assessment that "Huckabee could be a disaster," likely to "lose conservatives on taxes, spending and immigration and alienate moderates and Democrats on social issues."

From here to Super Tuesday, Huckabee will have to blend the competing strains of his party to lock up the nomination. If he can do that, what they see as his shortcomings could turn out to be pluses with independent voters.

A Lou Dobbs Binge

Avert your eyes. This is going to be ugly, like a drunk falling off the wagon.

Over a year ago, I raised the question, "Is Lou Dobbs running for something?" Today we have the answer:

"Lou Dobbs for President?" John Fund writes in the Wall Street Journal. "Don’t' laugh...Friends of Mr. Dobbs say he is seriously considering a race..."

In a moment of blinding clarity a while back, I swore off writing about Dobbs. Dobbs-bashing was becoming addictive, and friends were threatening an intervention.

But today's news has me bellying up to the bar again for straight shots. So here's Dobbs in your eye.

And here. And here. And here. And here. And here. And here...

I think I'm beginning to slur my links. Somebody, please, call AA.

Fear of the Year

Gays, pro-choicers and the liberal elite can relax. The Republicans have found their domestic target for '08 and, from all indications in New Hampshire, it is now illegal immigrants who are threatening the very fabric of American society.

"It's becoming a litmus test of how conservative you are," according to a professor of political science quoted by the McClatchy newspapers. "Absolutely an important issue," confirms the director of the University of New Hampshire's Granite State Poll.

Following the Karl Rove playbook, GOP contenders are reaching a consensus on this election's objects of fear and loathing for their Base. Rudy Giuliani, Mr. 9/11, has the franchise on external threats--terrorists and, coming up strong on the outside rail, Iran.

But fear-mongering the domestic dangers is up for grabs. Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson want to withhold federal money from cities and states that don't report illegal aliens, toughen border security and speed up the process of deporting them. Duncan Hunter wants to double the fence to keep them out, and Tom Tancredo may soon up the ante with a proposal to nuke them.

Only John McCain, who made the mistake of straight talk on the issue, is not benefiting from the wave of Lou Dobbsian outrage over the threat from people who mow America's lawns and wash dishes in restaurants.

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of such strangers?

Gingrich "Sickened" by Killings

The former Speaker of the House wants to stop the war.

"Why,” he asks, “are the August vacations for the president and the Congress more precious than the lives of young Americans who are being killed because of government incompetence and inaction."

Gingrich is talking about Newark, N.J., where three college students were killed by recent immigrants, some of whom may have been in the country illegally.

Gingrich said that the "war here at home" against illegal immigrants is "even more deadly than the war in Iraq and Afghanistan."

So far this month, 41 “lives of young Americans” have been lost in Iraq while the President and Congress are on vacation. As always, Gingrich has it slightly wrong