An eruption of deadly ambushes, street shootings, home invasions, assassinations, kidnappings and decapitations has brought chaos to Mexican border towns from Juarez to Tijuana and apprehension and worse to American cities near the line. Since Mexican president Felipe Calderon deployed his army in 2006 to dismantle his nation’s all-powerful drug cartels, “over 8,000 casualties have been violently claimed in cartel hot spots across Mexico,” according to the Council on Hemispheric Affairs. And the violence isn’t staying south of the border. According to federal and state authorities, a dangerous and deadly epidemic of kidnapping-for-ransom has hit Phoenix since 2006, over 370 in 2008 alone, making it second only to Mexico City, as the kidnapping capital of the world. In every Arizona case, both the victim and the suspect is a criminal alien connected to the Mexican drug trade.

Driven by the most savage talk radio and cable news anti-immigrant propaganda campaign in our nation's history, the Department of Homeland Security has unleashed an unprecedented crackdown on undocumented workers. In an effort not seen since the panic unleashed by the Great Depression, federal law enforcement has been targeting technically illegal workers who have been long tolerated in industries like meat packing, poultry processing and agriculture. In the terror created, fruit trees are being cut down and fields lie fallow, for want of traditional workers.

It was pathetic, overblown and deeply disrespectful of the pope. On the same day last week the Holy Father and President Bush issued a joint statement affirming the need to treat immigrants humanely, preposterously over-dressed, swat-armored federal agents were arresting 300 of them in raids at five chicken plants. Officials denied the timing was intentional, and claimed the lightening, simultaneous assaults came only after a one-year long investigation.

March 2007

On assignment with the 82nd Airborne Division in Afghanistan in March 2003, we were a week late getting into Iraq.  By the time we got there, the intense 'Shock and Awe' aerial bombardment that almost killed Saddam Hussein was over. It would have ended the war on the first day. But he escaped; the first of many missed opportunities that negatively altered the course of the war.

The next was the failure to secure the huge caches of ammunition discovered on the road to Baghdad, artillery shells and other high explosives that would later be used with such devastating impact when improvised as roadside booby traps.

from my book, 'His Panic'

She is not the first to make a last stand in San Antonio and as dire as her peril, it was worse last time around. In 1836, 189 brave souls perished there after holding off the entire Mexican army for almost two weeks. Given the role the Battle of the Alamo played as one of American history's pivotal moments, it is perhaps ironic that most of the residents of the city more closely resemble the attacking army than the mission's heroic defenders.

Now Hillary is entrenched in the "Alamo City," the state's second largest with 1.3 residents. It has more than doubled in size since 1970; is a whopping 70% Hispanic and the de facto capital of south Texas, a huge area stretching from El Paso across the state to Corpus Christi. It is also an area Senator Clinton must win decisively to have any chance of carrying the Lone Star state in the March 4th primary and remaining in the presidential race.