Another fence post

I migrated over to Firefox this weekend (which took care of some of my previous posting … uh… challenges), and am cleaning out the things I dumped into “Explorer” Favorites, meaning to bring to your attention, but never got back to.

Mariano Castillo of the San Antonio Express-News wrote about reaction to the proposals to build a “REAL” fence (we were promised it would be a high tech virtual one, if it was even built) down our way.

“Life is good on the border, and we don’t want anybody off the border jacking with our way of life,” Eagle Pass Mayor Chad Foster said. “All this spin (in favor of a fence) comes from those who have no concept of what the reality of the border is.”

In Hidalgo, a small city across the Rio Grande from Reynosa, Mexico, the border is a lush area of gardens filled with singing birds. It is the site of the Historic Old Pumphouse Museum and World Birding Center, one of the city’s proudest landmarks and a tourist draw.

Miles of snaking hike and bike trails are a stone’s throw from the international boundary, where dozens of second-graders on a field trip recently piled excitedly onto a trolley for a tour that would take them right to the riverbanks.

“This is not the image that people have of the border,” said John David Franz, the mayor. “They see it as some zone that is out of control, with traffickers and immigrants running rampant. That’s not the reality.”

President Bush last October signed the Secure Fence Act, approving the construction of 700 miles of double-layer fencing along the border.

Texas Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn both voted for the bill.

Any wonder that folks in the Valley, and the Big Bend DIDN’T vote for Hutchison or Cornyn? It’s crossed my mind that the reason Homeland Security didn’t tell anyone what they were up to, and just decided to foist it on us, is that these are solidly Democratic areas of Texas. Chicken or egg?  Are the Valley and the Big Bend “D’s” because the idiots are “Rs”… or are the “Rs” idiots because they listen to Homeland Security wonks?