today's tangential

The tangential news posts all comes from my hometown newspaper -- the illustrious Democrat Herald. In fact, the title of this whole endeavor comes from the name of the small, northwestern city of my origin. Anyway, the DH has been edited since time and all creation by one crazy balding fellow named Hasso Herring. I don't want to totally trash it as a source of news, they did after all give me my first byline as a high schooler (where I authored columns on such pressing topics as what it means to be "goth" and "my trip to new york"). The odd thing about the Democrat Herald is that often when I'm searching google news for breaking world news, a site to them always pops up. Is that because I read it online? Or in some alternate universe, they are on the forefront of journalism?

Anyway, today's news item from the homefront spans many days of the editor's mailbag. It all started with this letter from Harold and Dyann Kliewer about their 45 days of service with the Minute Men organization in Arizona. These small town paranoid retirees expressed their blatant racism by assuring residents of small town Oregon that Arizonia's citizens were overwhelming grateful:

Until you have spent time on the border or surrounding area, it's impossible to form an educated opinion on the issue of illegal immigration and its impact. People in the area thanked us over and over. For the first time in years, they were able to check their mail without carrying a gun for protection. They started sleeping all night without awakened by a patrol of illegals crossing their property.

But the best news of all, the Kliewers assure us, is that they are coming to a town near you:

Minute Men are coming soon to Linn, Benton and Lane counties to verify if employment services, farmers, canneries, potato processors and government agencies are following immigration hiring laws. We will be equipped with video cameras and necessary legal resources to document immigration status.

Great, just what the West needs, a return to cowboy justice. The Kliewers are right, we didn't totally obliterate the "brown menace" back in the day when we overan the West and stole Texas, Arizona, Nevada, California, and parts of Oregon from Mexico...but do they realy think the Minute Men can do it now? At least Marla Lawrence replied to them in a sufficiently sarcastic tone. I was choking on all the "thanks for serving our country" letters the whacked out Sam's Clubbers were receiving. Marla, you made my day by pointing out the history of border patrols (KKK, neo-nazi Tom Metzger, etc). I can always count on my hometown paper to offend, but you, dear Marla, your response made it worth it.