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May 22, 2003

border vigilantes

Although the protests against CBS's "The Real Beverly Hillbillies" have me thinking I probably ought to come up with a PC term for rednecks (send your ideas!) and start showing them the compassion I reserve for other disenfranchised minorities, stories like this one on today's Salon show that certain armed, racist Americans don't need any damn help from me. Not as long as the national administration turns a blind eye, anyway, and there's a grandstanding Republican congressman who smells an issue (in someone else's state).

"I dare the president of the United States to arrest Americans who are protecting their own country," Simcox said....

When White House press secretary Ari Fleischer was asked whether President Bush approved of Simcox's militia, his response was carefully ambiguous: "The president believes that the laws of the land need to be observed and the laws need to be enforced."

The president cannot say that he supports hunting Mexicans. But he doesn't have to say that he doesn't.

(I think you have to watch a commercial if you're not a subscriber.)