OPINION:
Whenever I hear the White House insist the border is secure, inflation is no problem, and that boys are really girls if they feel like it, I look around for Rod Serling.
You half expect to see the vintage TV show host emerge from a misty backdrop to say, “What you’re seeing is a replica of reality, not reality itself. You have been transported to a parallel universe where evil is good, wrong is right and bitter is sweet.
“In short, you’re now living life in – The Twilight Zone.”
In this version of America, the president refuses to uphold his oath and defend the nation’s border. Instead, he threatens law-abiding Texans who are trying to stop a full-blown invasion of America by millions of illegal aliens.
U.S. agents are tearing down concertina wire that Texas had erected as a last-ditch defense against the invasion. The state appealed directly to the Supreme Court but got swatted down, 5-4.
Chief Justice John Roberts, who helped midwife Obamacare with some legal sleight-of-hand, voted with the three hard-left justices – Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
So, too, did former President Trump’s last appointee, Amy Coney Barrett, for whom a lot of conservative time and treasure was spent getting her confirmed. The four justices who wanted to hear the case were Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch.
All of them took an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution, which includes Article 4, Section 4: “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.”
If the federal government forsakes its duty to protect the states from invasion, what is Texas to do when the feds instead facilitate it? And when the highest court in the land sides with lawbreakers?
Texas Rep. Chip Roy, a Republican, had this advice: The state should tell the Court to “go to hell” and that Texas has “a duty under the Constitution” to “protect” its citizens. Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz has made similar comments.
Now that the high court has joined the lawless mob, Gov. Greg Abbott is deploying the state police and the National Guard and installing more wire.
Two Democratic Texas congressmen are calling for President Biden to respond by federalizing the Texas National Guard.
It’s a “go ahead, make my day” moment.
I know who to root for in this one. The governor is acting on behalf of millions of Americans who are appalled by the deliberate abandonment of border enforcement and Mr. Biden’s aiding and abetting the lawbreaking migrants.
For the past three years, the administration has been shipping them all over America at taxpayers’ expense.
Only when Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and Gov. Abbott bused some of them north did we hear the squealing commence in Chicago, New York and Washington, D.C.
This was “cruel,” Democrats said with a straight face after yawning about border states being overrun by millions.
I’d like to ask the five justices on the Court who stuck it to Texas this question: What if an army of Russian drug dealers invaded Alaska and the U.S. government refused to step in?
Wait. That’s pretty much what’s happening in Texas and Arizona. Except that it’s ruthless Mexican cartels, not Russians.
The toll has been steep: Hundreds are dying at or near the border annually. Thousands of girls and women are being raped. Illicit drugs are pouring in, with more than 70,000 Americans dying of fentanyl overdoses each year. An unknown number of terror suspects have slipped in, undetected. If you object to this, you lack “compassion.”
American cities are overwhelmed by homeless illegal aliens sheltering in parks, churches, hotels and even Boston’s Logan Airport. A New York school kicked out its own students to turn the facility into a migrant camp.
Billions in taxpayer money has been spent, with no end in sight until the November election.
Often accused of being “the world’s policeman,” America won’t even police its own border.
President Trump wasn’t near being finished with the task, but he showed how it could be done. There is no excuse for the Democrats’ disaster.
It is deliberate, not a result of incompetence. That makes it treasonous.
In Congress, while House Republicans are on the verge of impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Democrats are trying to pull off a huge funding bill for Ukraine and Israel without doing anything serious about the U.S. border.
Like House conservatives, some GOP senators are digging in and warning their own leadership not to get snookered yet again.
“We keep getting told this deal is a great deal. It’s the best deal in the world. That’s what our leadership tells us,” Sen. Josh Hawley, Missouri Republican, said on Wednesday. “And yet they won’t let us see a word of it.”
Sen. John Kennedy, a Louisiana Republican, called it “a gabfest.”
“It’s just been all talk and meanwhile, tens and tens and tens of thousands of people come across the border, and we don’t have the slightest idea who they are,” he told NTD television.
Meanwhile, Democrats are accusing Republicans of being the ones who created the border crisis because they won’t rubber stamp immigration amnesty.
That’s what passes for statesmanship in the Twilight Zone version of America.
Pray that sanity prevails in Texas. There’s precious little of it in Washington right now.
• Robert Knight is a columnist for The Washington Times. His website is roberthknight.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.