More border fun...

While I missed the State of the Union address on Tuesday, I did get a chance to cover Bush's speech in Nashville in person on Wednesday, which was basically a recap of the night before. I have to say, I didn't care for his approach to the immigration problem:

I believe a very significant part of enforcing our border, make it easier for our Border Patrol to do the job, is to end this system that encourages smuggling and pressure on the border by people sneaking across, and saying if there is somebody that's willing to do a job an American won't do, let's give him a fool-proof pass so they can be here on a temporary basis.

Now, I'm against amnesty, and the reason I am is I believe if you grant amnesty to people that are here, it will cause another wave of people to want to come. (Applause.) But I am for recognizing reality and saying that if you're doing a job, if you're an employer and you're looking for somebody to do a job an American won't do, then here is a card for a temporary worker.

It's hard for me to take this seriously when I read things like this:

HOUSTON — A West Texas sheriff's deputy warned federal lawmakers Friday that drug traffickers are helping terrorists with possible al Qaeda ties cross the porous Texas-Mexico border into the United States.

Terry Simons, the chief deputy in Val Verde County, offered little evidence of his claims. An FBI special agent in Houston, Shauna Dunlap, said there is "no credible evidence" that supports the warning.

Or this:

Federal agents and local police assigned to a border security task force have seized two homemade bombs, material for 33 more, grenades, machine gun assembly kits and other weapons, drugs and cash in separate raids in Laredo, Texas.
The bombs and other paraphernalia are thought to belong to or be destined for rival drug cartels across the Rio Grande in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, where a brutal yearlong war over the control of drug and alien smuggling routes into the United States has raged.
More than 150 people -- including the police chief, a city councilman and 13 police officers -- have been killed in the Mexican border town over the last year.

Followed by this:

In the past few days, Hudspeth County Sheriff's Department deputies and their families have received threats to stay off the Rio Grande. Sheriff Arvin West told ABC-7 Thursday morning, before departing for Houston that the Mexican military is behind all of this.

Sheriff West said, "There is no doubt in my mind -- from the first time going back to a couple of years ago and every time in between --- it's the Mexican military. In a nutshell, everybody's been trying to tell everybody that they were here...they've been here ...[and] they come here quite often, regularly."

Now Sheriff West is having to deal with threats being made against his deputies and their families. One Sheriff's Deputy, who refused to appear on camera out of fear, described the situation today in Hudspeth County as "very dangerous." and now, he said, "it's getting personal."