Priorities

This tells you all you need to know about how serious our leaders really are about domestic security:

The Secure Fence Act of 2006 required the construction of 700 miles of border fence, modeled on the success of the border barriers in the San Diego sector of the U.S. border. The operative word is "secure."

That legislation specifically called for "two layers of reinforced fencing" and listed five specific sections of the border where it should be built. The omnibus spending bill removes the requirement for two tiers and the specific list of locations.

The two-tier fence in San Diego runs 14 miles along the border with Tijuana, Mexico. The first layer is a high steel fence, with an inner high anti-climb fence with a no-man's land in between.

It has been amazingly effective. According to a 2005 report by the Congressional Research Service, illegal alien apprehensions in the San Diego sector dropped from 202,000 in 1992 to 9,000 in 2004.

It is that very success, we suspect, that frightens the open-border crowd and their representatives in Congress. How else to explain that, as the citizen watchdog group Grassfire (grassfire.org) notes, just five miles of fence that meets specifications has been built in the first year after the Secure Fence Act was passed.

The spending bill was written by Democrats and passed 253-154 with mostly their votes. Democrats say they weren't deliberately dropping the two-tiered fence or the locations specified. They say they were merely adopting language that passed the Senate several times this year.

Indeed, in the Senate version is a curious amendment by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, R-Texas, that was added on a voice vote. Her amendment reads:

"Nothing in this paragraph shall require the secretary of Homeland Security to install fencing, physical barriers, roads lighting, cameras and sensors in a particular location along an international border of the United States, if the secretary determines that the use or placement of such resources is not the appropriate means to achieve and maintain operational control over the international border at such location."

Hutchinson's office says the amendment merely gives DHS flexibility. What it provides, however, is an excuse to do nothing at all and a license for open-border politicians to pressure DHS.

And of course, some politicians are saying (conveniently) we shouldn't throw large amounts of federal money at a project with a dubious chance of achieving its objective.

You mean like these projects? It's simply amazing how much more concerned our leaders are with securing Iraq's borders than we are with securing our own.