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| Crisis at the Border January to June |
Blumenthal is used to plaudits. One can count on the fingers
of one hand the number of criticisms the left leaning Blumenthal received when
he was Connecticut’s attorney general, a post he held in good odor for more
than twenty years. But then, Blumenthal was expert in the ways of media, having
been in his college years an editor of the Harvard Crimson. His media releases
during his days as attorney general, liberally studded with explosive
adjectives and disguised rhetorical IED’s, read as if they had been written by
the New York Times editorial board.
Moving almost directly from college into politics,
Blumenthal had little experience in the real world of business, an
unfamiliarity that did not prevent him from suing, threatening to sue or
seizing the assets of an assortment of businesses in Connecticut. When finally
he left his safe sinecure, former chairman of Connecticut’s Democrat Party
George Jepsen, who followed Blumenthal into office, quickly disposed of
hundreds of open cases left on the AG’s shelf
by Blumenthal.
At long last, the New York Times finally shot an arrow his
way. Blumenthal had several times said or intimated that he had served as a
marine in Vietnam, a claim exploded by some critics weary of his white-hatted
imposture. Blumenthal said he had misspoken – several times at several
different venues over the years, and his botched stolen valor attempt was soon
forgotten by all but rabid anti-Blumenthalists. The incident did not figure
greatly in Blumenthal’s U.S. senate bid.
In the senate, Blumenthal has stoutly defended Planned
Parenthood from all attempts to regulate the multi-million dollar abortion
business. This seemed to some an odd posture coming from a man who had been, as
attorney general, a perhaps too ardent regulator of businesses whose processes
he little understood.
The day of Blumenthal’s visit, we are told by CTMirror, was
“blisteringly hot.” The GOP was to blame, said Blumenthal and other Democrats,
among them Senator Chuck Schumer of New York,
for “an immigration crisis that
began after President Donald Trump implemented a ‘zero-tolerance’ policy aimed
at detaining all undocumented immigrants who try to enter the United States, even
those who are trying to make asylum claims at border checkpoints.”
The two senators
failed to mention that the real crisis at the vanishing U.S. Mexico border
was in evidence during the administration of Democrat President Barack Obama. Between 2013 and 2014, the number of
unaccompanied children apprehended at the border increased nearly 80%, from
38,759 in fiscal year 2013 to 68,541 in fiscal year 2014. A 1997 federal court
decision, Flores v. Reno, strictly limits the time that children can be
kept in detention and, because parents and children cannot be kept in
immigration detention together, the U.S. government has no choice but to
criminally charge the parent or the presumed custodians of the children and
then send the children to the Department of Health and Human Services as
“unaccompanied alien children.”
The immigration
system was constructed at a time when immigrants passing from Mexico into the
United States applied for legal entree or asylum unaccompanied by children,
who have now become passports all but permitting illegal, unvetted border
crashers to remain in the country and bypass court scrutiny. And that is a problem that cannot be
resolved by professions of concern from Blumenthal standing outside detention
centers in Texas on blistering July days while cutting video clips that may be
utilized in future campaigns.
Here are some few
questions that may help to refocus attention on the real problem:
1) Does Blumenthal
believe that a border is nothing more than a demarcation line on a map, or does
he believe that a border is a series of customs, laws and processes that must be
enforced by something resembling a police power – i.e. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE)?
2) Should border
crashers be punished for having entered the country illegally? If so, what
sanctions should be applied to dissuade others from doing the same?
3) Should a person
who bypasses the usual immigration vetting process have more rights and
privileges than Blumenthal’s campaign customers, the lawful citizens of
Connecticut who regularly return him to office?
4) What positive
recommendations have been offered by Blumenthal – apart from seeking grounds to
impeach Trump – that will permanently settle the problem of unvetted border
crashers who, once let loose in the country, easily avoid court judgments or
the long arm of ICE by fleeing to Connecticut's major sanctuary cities?
Thoughtful, honest
answers to these kinds of questions, rarely asked of Blumenthal by Connecticut’s
media, may help to settle what even he now calls a “crisis” at the border. Media
availabilities spent under a blisteringly hot sun at detention centers while
mouthing the usual campaign slogans – “It’s the policy of deliberate cruelty that’s the
elephant in the room here, not so invisibly”-- will not get the job done.
Comments
What a hypocrite.