In today’s news…
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials conducted raids throughout the country rounding up 1,187 illegal aliens from the workplace including two locations in CA (Bakersfield and San Bernardino). The announcement yesterday was hailed by some and condemned by others.

I am unimpressed.

The Department of Homeland Security is playing games–shucking and jiving–to make it look like they are doing something when they are falling down on the job. I can walk into the kitchen of my local IHOP or the packing section at the warehouse next door to my office and probably find an illegal alien. So it is no great feat for the DHS to do what they did.

What I take away from the raid is: why weren’t those agents at the border? There are three logical places to catch illegal aliens: 1- at the border, 2- in the workplace and 3- when they commit a crime.

Call me soft on illegal immigration, but I want our federal and local governments to focus their efforts on making sure not just illegal aliens, but drug traffickers and terrorists can’t cross our borders and ID them with they are arrested for committing a crime, make them serve their time and then deport them.

Working illegal aliens are still breaking the law and I am not an advocate of their hiring, but logic dictates that you protect our borders and rid our streets of the criminal element among the illegal alien community.

From the: “Oh no you didn’t”, file…
In Orange County we have a heated race for county supervisor in the fabulous fifth as it is sometimes called. The fifth supervisorial district includes most of South Orange County including the all coastal cities from Laguna Beach south. Former Assemblywoman Patricia Bates, the conservative and endorsed favorite is running against Laguna Niguel Councilwoman Cassie (now going by Cathryn) DeYoung. DeYoung has dropped huge personal coin into the June Primary race, already having mailed at least a half a dozen pieces. Her latest is a peach.

She accuses Bates of voting while in the legislature to increase the number of gambling casinos in California (take it from a guy who has to drive to Commerce every weekend to get a decent poker game, I like those votes) but here is where DeYoung shows her potentially two-faced nature: DeYoung owns an interest in a gambling casino!

Here’s another good one: DeYoung accuses Bates of accepting tens of thousands of dollars from oil companies. The funny thing is, DeYoung is part owner of a gas station.

Some people might just say that’s politics. But voters don’t like duplicitous candidates.

Mr. Chairman
There is the makings of a brutal battle for the GOP nomination in the 65th Assembly District which saddles Riverside and San Bernardino counties. Paul Cook is the leading candidate owning the ballot title of Retired Marine Colonel. Twentynine Palms, home to the world’s largest Marine Corp base is in the district. Cook a client of my research firm, recently secured the endorsement of San Bernardino County Supervisor Bill Postmus.

While a county supervisor’s endorsement is always good, Postmus’ is much better than most because he is chairman of the board and hugely popular. But that’s not what makes his endorsement newsworthy. It’s the fact that Bill Postmus is also the chairman of the San Bernardino Republican Central Committee.

The chief of all county GOPers made a personal pick in a Republican Primary for a legislative race. This is not a regular occurrence. County party chairman mostly stay out of contested primaries.

I understand that Postmus is endorsing Paul Cook supposedly from his position as a county supervisor and not as party chairman, but you can’t separate the man from the elected position. Postmus knew exactly what he was doing when he endorsed Cook. And good for him.

-Adam Probolsky

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This entry was posted on Friday, April 21st, 2006 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.