You know it! They just make me want to squeeze the poop out of something. 
Posted on 09/24/2007 11:19:24 PM PDT by pissant
California Rep. Duncan Hunter isn't happy about what New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson has said to voters about border security, and he made a quick campaign stop in New Hampshire to give his side of the argument.
Hunter, a Republican running for president, defended the use of a fence to reduce crime and quell illegal immigration along the Mexican border, a plan that Richardson, a Democrat, has said won't be as effective as beefing up border patrols and working with the president of Mexico.
"I know Mr. Richardson has been in New Hampshire saying that the fence does not work and that's why he's not for it," Hunter said in a telephone interview yesterday. "I wanted to rebut that statement."
In a meeting with students at New England College, Hunter also condemned administrators at Columbia University for allowing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to visit their campus yesterday before a scheduled address to the U.N. General Assembly.
Hunter arrived in the state Sunday night to attend an event in Nashua celebrating the Constitution, and he met with students at New England College in Henniker yesterday morning. He then headed back to Washington, D.C., for scheduled congressional voting.
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Hunter helped secure funding for the primary border fence, a 10-foot-high wall of welded steel that was built along 14 miles between San Diego and Tijuana in 1993. Since then, double- and triple-fencing has gone up near San Diego to reinforce some parts of the primary fence. "We reduced apprehensions in what was the No. 1 smugglers' corridor in America," Hunter said. "We put gangs out of business."
Opponents of a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border have said that it would not improve security but would only reroute immigrants to less secure sections of the border. Richardson has called for hiring twice as many border patrol agents to protect the entire border and arming them with better surveillance technology, establishing a reasonable path to legalization for immigrants who are already in the country, cracking down on illegal workers and the employers who hire them, increasing the number of legal immigrants allowed in the country, and partnering with Mexico and other Latin American countries.
Although the actual number of illegal immigrants crossing the border is unclear, apprehension rates have long been used as a performance measure by the border patrol, according to a report by the Congressional Research Service in 2006. Apprehensions dropped 94 percent between 1993 and 2004, from 321,560 to 19,035, the report said.
Hunter said the border patrol was able to reduce the number of patrolmen in the San Diego area by more than 50 percent. Along with the drop in apprehensions, the fence also helped stem attacks on border patrol agents, who were shot at and had rocks and Molotov cocktails thrown at them, Hunter said. It has also reduced violent crimes and murders related to gang activity, he said.
"There are 250,000 illegal aliens, criminals, in federal, state penitentiaries," Hunter said. "They didn't come for jobs. They came to hurt Americans."
Hunter also criticized Columbia University for letting Iran's president address students there yesterday afternoon, and he said in a press release that he would move to cut off federal funding for the school. Hunter said he sent a letter to university president Lee Bollinger asking him not to host Ahmadinejad, whom he accused of supplying terrorists in Iraq with roadside bombs.
"I think the idea of the university lending its prestige to his visit is a real slap in the face to our men and women in uniform," Hunter said.
He also criticized the school for getting rid of its Reserve Officers' Training Corps program, which was disbanded there during the Vietnam War.
"They've said no to the armed forces of the United States, but they said yes to the dictator that has killed some of them," he said. "That's a very uneven position, at best, and hypocritical, at worst."
Hunter also said that more Democrats should have condemned the controversial MoveOn.org ad attacking the integrity of Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq. Their refusal to do so is a sign that the "hard left" is starting to dominate the party, he said.
He praised his fellow candidate, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, for his counterattack on MoveOn.org. But Hunter pointed out that he was one of the first Republicans to condemn the ad during Petraeus's testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, of which Hunter is the senior Republican.
Hunter said he expected to be back in the state campaigning within the next several weeks.
B4DH!!
I didn’t see any mention of butterflies in that article other than in the headline.
Let’s pray a President Hillary will never exist except in her fantasies.
Mitt Romney doesn’t think the fence works. Let’s see him climb that one.
Bureau of Land Management
He did lay the smackdown on Mitt over the fence the other day. I have a feeling he is going to start laying the wood to these guys on a variety of issues now.
B4DH
Neil Cavuto is as deliberately rude as Alan Colmes is when it comes to interrupting a guest.
Good for Rep. Hunter, for not letting it stop him from getting his word out. He managed to make Cavuto look like a boor!
If people do not rally around Duncan Hunter, who is the one candidate with all the credentials needed to lead the country, we will have all had it in spades.
Sure it does. The article lists various species.
He wouldn’t climb anything. He might mess up his manicure.
Rally Bump!
‘”There are 250,000 illegal aliens, criminals, in federal, state penitentiaries,” Hunter said. “They didn’t come for jobs. They came to hurt Americans.”’
What about that, Gov. Richardson?
I saw Richardson a bit on PBS yesterday. Such a naive man, and “compassionate” when it comes to illegals, but supports partial-birth infanticide.
The president will not let up on his quest to sink the sovereignty of the U.S.A. with open borders and the NAFTA Highway! He will hang on with his toe nails to his globalist one world government agenda. As will any other globalist voted into that august office.
The BLM does just what the president tells it to do, IMO.
Wellll, BLM wants us all to have plenty of drugs.
If fences don’t work then why is there one around the White House?
Good point. And I’m sure half the idiots in the media live in gated communities too. Patrolled fences work real, real well.
You know it! They just make me want to squeeze the poop out of something.
I agree with you in most cases of border issues, but I think the problem here is NM officials. Though BLM is of course federal- they seem to allow lattitude in decision making to local BLM offices in many cases. The fact that BLM allows BP to have roads on the border in CA and AZ makes me wonder what is different about NM? The only way I can explain it is King Bill.
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