This Newsbite Deserves Its Own Stand-Alone Posting

Excerpting...

The federal government has posted signs along a major interstate highway in Arizona, more than 100 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border, warning travelers the area is unsafe because of drug and alien smugglers, and a local sheriff says Mexican drug cartels now control some parts of the state.

OBVIOUSLY I KNOW IT'S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN, BUT SERIOUSLY... OBAMA SHOULD BE IMPEACHED. THIS IS HAPPENING UNDER HIS WATCH. THIS IS - OR WOULD BE IF THE INMATES WEREN'T RUNNING THE ASYLUM - TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE.

The signs were posted by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) along a 60-mile stretch of Interstate 8 between Casa Grande and Gila Bend, a major east-west corridor linking Tucson and Phoenix with San Diego.

They warn travelers that they are entering an "active drug and human smuggling area" and they may encounter "armed criminals and smuggling vehicles traveling at high rates of speed." Beginning less than 50 miles south of Phoenix, the signs encourage travelers to "use public lands north of Interstate 8" and to call 911 if they "see suspicious activity."

Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu, whose county lies at the center of major drug and alien smuggling routes to Phoenix and cities east and west, attests to the violence. He said his deputies are out-manned and out-gunned by drug traffickers in the rough-hewn desert stretches of his own county.

PEOPLE... (*WIPING A TEAR FROM MY EYE*)... REMEMBER WHEN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WAS NEVER OUT-GUNNED?

"Mexican drug cartels literally do control parts of Arizona," he said. "They literally have scouts on the high points in the mountains and in the hills and they literally control movement. They have radios, they have optics, they have night-vision goggles as good as anything law enforcement has.

"This is going on here in Arizona," he said. "This is 70 to 80 miles from the border - 30 miles from the fifth-largest city in the United States."

I DON'T KNOW HOW MANY OF THE TROOPS OBAMA PROMISED TO SEND TO THE ARIZONA BORDER HAVE GOTTEN THERE, BUT APPARENTLY THEY'RE NOT BEING USED TO SECURE AMERICAN TERRITORY.

[Sheriff Babeu] said he asked the Obama administration for 3,000 National Guard soldiers to patrol the border, but what he got were 15 signs.

SERIOUSLY... TO REITERATE... THIS SON OF A BITCH SHOULD BE IMPEACHED.

Law enforcement authorities have been warning for more than two years that the dramatic rise in border violence eventually would spread into the U.S.

T.J. Bonner, president of the National Border Patrol Council, which represents all 17,500 of the Border Patrol's front-line agents, said areas well north of the border are so overrun by armed criminals that U.S. citizens are being warned to keep out of those locations.

"The federal government's lack of will to secure our borders is painfully evident when signs are posted well north of the border warning citizens that armed and dangerous criminals are roaming through those areas with impunity," he said.

Michael W. Cutler, a retired 31-year U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) senior criminal investigator and intelligence specialist, said the BLM warning signs suggest the U.S. government is "ceding American territory to armed criminals and smugglers." Meanwhile, he said, politicians in Washington, D.C., including Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, continue to claim the border is now more secure than ever...

ARM YOURSELVES, PEOPLE. BUY AND LEARN HOW TO SAFELY STORE, CLEAN, AND USE FIREARMS.

"How much more land will our nation cede to drug dealers and terrorists? At what point will the administration understand its obligations to really secure our nation's borders and create an immigration system that has real integrity?" Mr. Cutler [asked].

Two years ago, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the investigative arm of Homeland Security, said in a report that border gangs were becoming increasingly ruthless and had begun targeting not only rivals, but federal, state and local police. ICE said the violence had risen dramatically as part of "an unprecedented surge."

The Justice Department's National Drug Intelligence Center, in its 2010 drug threat assessment report, called the cartels "the single greatest drug trafficking threat to the United States." It said Mexican gangs had established operations in every area of the United States and were expanding into rural and suburban areas. It said assaults against U.S. law enforcement officers along the southwestern border were on the increase - up 46% against Border Patrol agents alone.

(At the same time, the Justice Department brought a lawsuit to stop a new immigration enforcement law in Arizona...)

Mr. Cutler said it was "outrageous" for the BLM to direct travelers to dial 911 to report suspicious activities since the calls do not go to the federal government but to state and local police. He said the signs are telling Americans to call state and local law enforcement authorities to deal with border lawlessness while at the same time telling Arizona that only the federal government can write and enforce immigration laws.

"You can't make this stuff up," he said.

Sheriff Babeu has dealt firsthand with the rising violence in his county since his 2008 election. One of his deputies, Louie Puroll, was shot and critically wounded in April after he spotted five men he suspected of transporting drugs along a remote span of desert near Interstate 8 and Arizona 84.

He said his experience makes him see the issue differently from the administration in Washington.

"The president is only looking at this from a political perspective," he said. "Everything is not fine. Everything is not OK."

NOPE. UNFORTUNATELY TODAY - SEPTEMBER 1, 2010; THE AGE OF OBAMA - VERY FEW THINGS IN AMERICA CAN BE SAID TO BE "O.K."