George Rebane

[This is the transcript of my bi-weekly commentary broadcast on KVMR FM85.9 today 28 May 2010.]

Mexican President Calderon’s lecture to America was a reprehensible piece of hypocritical grandstanding.  Arizona is desperately trying to defend itself against enemies for which it is not supposed to be the first line of defense.  But because of its geography, Arizona is in an untenable position, put there by a federal government that has, through several administrations, abrogated the prime responsibility of all governments – border security and defense of the homeland.

Arizona’s new law is essentially unenforceable.  For it to be effective, the police must violate the profiling prohibition.  Otherwise, under what guise would they be able to fabricate enough other violations in order to stop and inspect the bona fides of latinos and latino look-alikes?

Profiling is the lay term for using likely prior data to combine with new data or observations in order to make correct decisions.  Scientists and engineers use a powerful law of nature, called the Bayes Rule, to do a multitude of beneficial things ranging from detecting breast cancer to controlling the precise orbits of communication satellites.  But we cannot use that important piece of technology to secure American air travel, our communities, and our porous borders.

The circus of protests against Arizona has ramped into high gear with the federal government preparing to sue one of its distressed states.  For what? for attempting to enforce the identical law that it has chosen to ignore for years.  And now cities are piling on to boycott Arizona as if it were some rogue nation that violates human rights or international treaties.  The comedy reaches a pinnacle with Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Sacramento joining in, ignorant that California already has its own illegal alien law that is equivalent to the federal and now Arizona law, all of them unenforced and unenforceable.

These happenings are especially ironic as we head into the weekend during which we remember and honor the memory of those who fought and gave their all so that we could be secure within our borders.

I’m George Rebane, and I expand these and other themes in my Union column, and on georgerebane.com.  The opinions here are mine and not necessarily shared by KVMR.  Thank you for listening.