[Califreak]

Ping

[TexasCajun]

Hunter has been the “lead man” on the issue of immigration

Front-runner for me.

[BigFinn]

You go... Hunter. But I fear it will never be built... with the powers that be and the deals they make.

[rineaux]

Good luck to Hunter on this issue. All of Congress could call/demand/ threaten on GW to continue to build the fence, but don’t expect it to happen. 13 or so miles have been built. We may if we are lucky have 20 before GW leaves office in 17 months.

Side note, stayed at the Gaylord for a conference, not a bad place to stay considering everything is under one roof.

[teenyelliott]

Hunter Pushes President to Build Border Fence

We can't possibly do that. We must send more money to Africa, don't you know that?????

[Greg F]

Heh. Next stop Crawford?

[WhyisaTexasgirlinPA]

Presidential candidate Duncan Hunter to hold a press conference Wednesday Aug 21, 2007

Proofreader needs a proofreader.

[ravingnutter]

Hunter is either doing this merely as a campaign ploy or he doesn't deserve to be President because he doesn't understand basic facts such as the difference between authorization and appropriation. Bush can't do a danged thing about the fence without funding and Congress has the sole responsibility for appropriating funds.

Bush signed the bill authorizing the fence, authorized Chertoff to waive all environmental obstacles and successfully beat back the envirowhackos in court on this issue. Now it is up to the Homeland Security Subcommittees of the Senate Appropriations Committees to actually pony up the money.

The truth is that there was initial funding of $1.2 billion to the Department of Homeland Security marked for border security, but not specifically for the border fence and the law withholds $950 million of it until the House and Senate appropriations committees approve the design, location and length of the fence. At the estimated $3M per mile, how much fence are you gonna build with ~$50M? Not much. Also, just like Hunter's grandstanding is now, it was only an election year ploy...they passed the authorization in September, right before the elections.

To make matters worse, Congress is still holding this up, and they went on vacation without taking care of it. Bush had originally threatened to veto the defense bill because Congress added so much pork to it. Congress then attached the funding for the fence to the defense bill to insure Bush couldn't veto all the pork they added to this bill without inflaming his base on the fence issue.

Here's a recent article on the subject:

Conservative lawmakers who say the American people need a signal that Congress is serious about cracking down on illegal immigration pushed Wednesday for more border security funding in a defense spending bill.

The Senate gave a nod to one of those efforts, agreeing 94-3 to an amendment to the Defense Department appropriations bill providing $1.83 billion for 370 miles of triple-layered fencing and 461 miles of vehicle barriers on the U.S.-Mexican border.

The defense bill is far from final. A vote on the larger spending bill is pending and if passed would have to be reconciled with the House bill.

The Senate immigration bill authorizes construction of 370 miles of fencing and several more miles of vehicle barriers but does not provide funding for them. The House has authorized but not funded 700 miles of fencing.

AZ Star

More shenanigans:

Senate Votes Down Funding Of Border Fence

Democrats Vote Against Funding Border Fence

As a side note, I can't believe the number of people on here that don't know the difference between authorization and appropriations:

Authorization and Appropriations

Bottom line, Hunter needs to put our tax money where his mouth is.

[Dr. Thorne]

Idea for a Photo Op:

Hunter shows up at the border with a roll of chicken wire, a couple of wooden stakes, a claw hammer and a staple gun. He offers to help President Bush build the fence that he is bound by law to build. After setting up about 20 feet of chicken wire fence Hunter announces, "It's better than what our President, whose sworn duty it is to protect the American People, has done."

This idea comes without copywrite and may be used by any candidate except Hillary Clinton.

signed,
Dr. Thorne

[Travis McGee]

"Border Reality 101"

This is what most of our southern border looks like: there is no government-built fence at all. There is often just whatever is left over from some forgotten cattle fence, built privately to keep U.S. cattle from wandering freely into Mexico. For hundreds of miles there is not even a broken cattle fence, there is nothing at all.

For comparison, below the broken cattle fence photo is a sample of an inexpensive but highly effective double border fence system, with a plowed strip to reveal footprints. This type of system is very cheap and can be built with great speed.

Here is what some of San Diego County has: a wall made of rusty Viet Nam-era runway mats. The corrugations are even horizontal, (to make climbing easier?)

Here is what the border looks like where the runway mat wall exists. Mexico begins on the other side of the ineffective rusty wall, which actually helps the smugglers, by hiding their movements until the occasional USBP vehicle has driven out of sight.

This is how "the game" is played. Smugglers hide on the other side of the wall with their dope and/or their illegals, out of sight of the USBP. They wait for the highly visible white BP vehicle to drive over the distant hills. Lookouts with cell phones and walkie-talkies report on the current locations of the BP units. They know with certainty that "the coast is clear" for an hour or two, and the smugglers and illegals hop the fence and run into the scrub only 50 yards away. From there, they are out of sight, and they walk 1-2 miles to holding houses. Then they wait for nightfall, and are picked up and driven in vans to LA or San Diego.

Next, we see the Duncan Hunter 15' fence, which is already being built along a few "showplace" miles of San Diego, mainly near the ports of entry, where panderng politicians can conveniently show it off to gullible reporters. As you can see, the rusty runway wall is seen at the left side, Mexico begins on the other side. In areas with the 15 foot fence, dope smugglers and illegals will have to cross the open sand ("the government road" as it is called) before starting to try to get over the 15 foot fence.

This new fence is extremely tough, and resists cutting. Attacking the fence would have to be done right out in the open, in full view of cameras. This type of fence, on the U.S. side of the government road, will give the USBP a barrier to patrol, instead of forcing them to chase illegals around 100,000 square miles of wide-open frontier land, which is a fool's errand. Everywhere this modern multiple fence system has been built, crossings by illegals drop to almost nil.

This ain't rocket science, folks. We're not talking about something like the Hoover Dam project, (which we managed to build 70 years ago). The world's last superpower, which put a man on the moon 35 years ago, can build a couple thousand miles of simple and effective fencing.

This is how it's being built in San Diego county, along the last 14 miles out to the ocean. The total cost of the entire fence from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific would be about 5 billion dollars, or what we spend medicating, hospitalizing, educating, and incarcerating illegal aliens just about every month. In other words, the fence would pay for itself immediately.

Or, we can continue our current policy.

[Convert from ECUSA]

Thank you, Congressman Duncan Hunter!

[Wills Powers]

I don’t hive a shiite which candidate the RINO’s nominate. I will be writing in “Duncan Hunter.”