| Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty August 7, 2014 Another Fatal Consequence of Our Political Class's Lack of Interest in a Secure Border Awful, predictable, and awfully predictable: Two illegal immigrants from Mexico who were charged with first-degree murder in the shooting death of an off-duty U.S. Border Patrol agent in front of his family in Texas have been arrested and deported numerous times, police sources told FoxNews.com. One suspect has been arrested no fewer than four times for entering the U.S. illegally, according to federal court records. The other has been deported twice after entering the U.S. illegally, sources said. Gustavo Tijerina, 30, and Ismael Hernandez, 40, were arraigned Tuesday afternoon inside the Willacy County jail library. They were ordered held without bail after being charged with capital murder of a peace officer, attempted murder, and a variety of lesser charges. The pair, who have been living in Texas illegally, confessed after being interviewed multiple times Monday to killing Border Patrol agent Javier Vega Jr. in front of his wife and two kids and his parents Sunday night while they were fishing in Santa Monica, Sheriff Larry Spence told FoxNews.com. The National Border Patrol Council, the union that represented Vega, has set up a memorial fund on behalf of his widow and three young children. Let's face it, a murdered U.S. Border Patrol agent isn't necessarily something new for this administration. We'll have to wait and see if the gun used in this crime was one from Fast & Furious. The unsecure border is an entirely theoretical problem for most of our political class. Lawmakers rarely if ever encounter illegal immigrants, much less dangerous ones, on Capitol Hill, or at their high-dollar fundraisers. Illegal immigrants don't climb over the fence of Camp David or the White House. The president isn't likely to run into many illegal immigrants in his upcoming two-week vacation at Martha's Vineyard. This administration likes to brag about the number of deportations going up, but as the example of these men show, a deportation doesn't mean much if, after they arrive in their home country, they can just turn around and cross the border into the United States. We need a border that is difficult to breach; otherwise our deportation policy amounts to a revolving door. 'The American Spectator' Used to Refer to a Magazine; Now It's Our Policy Anchoress' latest is phenomenally depressing, so I'll just link and mention the quote from an Iraqi Yazidi member of Parliament: "Our sisters are being taken and sold as slaves in the slave market! . . . I speak here in the name of humanity! Save us! Save us! Genocide in the 21st Century! We are being slaughtered! We are being exterminated! An entire religion is being exterminated from the face of the earth!" The plight of the Yazidis, as of this morning: Politicians appealed Wednesday for emergency aid for thousands of minority Iraqis who have been stranded with little food on a mountaintop in the country's north, surrounded by al-Qaeda-inspired rebels. For nearly two months, Kurdish forces had managed to protect the area from the Sunni extremists, who have rampaged through much of northern Iraq, slaughtering opponents, destroying ancient shrines and demanding that people of other religions convert or die. But last weekend the famously tough Kurdish fighters suffered their first setbacks in the Sinjar region, prompting hundreds of thousands of civilians to flee. An estimated 10,000 to 40,000 of them sought refuge on the craggy peaks of Mount Sinjar -- largely members of the minority Yazidi sect. They fear death if they descend into areas controlled by the extremist rebels, who consider them apostates. Kurdish forces have so far failed to break through the militants' lines to reach them, despite launching a counteroffensive early this week. The Iraqi government conducted two airdrops of aid to the desperate refugees on Wednesday, but humanitarian workers said they did not come close to meeting the growing need. Some of the water bottles in the aid bundles cracked open. Remember when we had an administration that referred to people as "evildoers"? And how all of our social betters scoffed at how simplistic and insufficiently nuanced and childish that was? Anybody else have a better term for ISIS, and those pro-Russian separatists shooting down airliners, and Hamas leaders hiding in schools and hospitals, and that Taliban sleeper agent who killed our major general? How about those illegal immigrants who just killed a border patrol agent? Now, today: "I think it is important to remember that Hamas acts extraordinarily irresponsibly," Obama said, "putting civilians at risk" with its taunting of Israel, and its placement of rocket launchers in civilian areas during conflict with the Jewish state. Republicans More Enthusiastic for 2014? Anger Can Be a Powerful Motivator! Most of the conventional wisdom about the 2014 midterms suggests it should be a good year for Republicans. Every once in a while, you see a nugget of data in a poll suggesting that it could be more than just a "good year": The [CBS News] poll, released Wednesday night, shows Democrats actually maintain a lead on the generic ballot -- i.e. do you intend to vote for a generic Republican or a generic Democrat in the upcoming election -- 41-37. That's where they want to be. When you drill down on those most excited about voting in the November election, though, it's a very different story. Among those who say they are "more enthusiastic" than usual about voting -- a little more than one-third of registered voters -- the GOP actually leads . . . by seven points, 47-40. . . What's more, among those who say they are equally as enthusiastic about voting as previous elections, significantly more are Republican-leaning (14 percent of the GOP) than Democratic-leaning (8 percent). In a neutral environment, Democrats are supposed to have a slight lead on the generic ballot. Recent history shows the GOP tends to gain even when the generic ballot is close. If they have a generic-ballot lead, as they did in 2010, it's Bad News Bears for Democrats. ADDENDA: State senator Dave Thompson of Minnesota writes in with some thoughts on whether politicians and officeholders are more prone to abnormal or "insane" behavior: Are people who run for office crazy, or does the process make otherwise normal people crazy? As a State Senator and a guy who came very close to the GOP endorsement for governor, I find this intriguing. My answer to your question is "yes." It takes a certain breed of cat to run for high office, probably not folks who are within one standard deviation from the mean on the psychiatric bell curve (yes I know, that is an indictment of me). But I also believe running for office and governing are not good for anyone's mental health. An elected official is not treated like a "normal" person. When I walk in and out of the Senate chamber, people open the door for me and treat me like royalty. Then I go home and pick up the local paper and some op-ed writer calls me everything but a bastard child. Not exactly a formula for maintaining a balanced, healthy self-image. . . . Our old friend Andrew Stiles examines Hillary Clinton's entrance during her appearance on The Colbert Report and asks, "Creepiest entrance ever?" 
. . . which confirms suspicions that Colbert's studio is right next to this other room with red curtains . . .
By the way, if you had said, "Jim, I'll bet you can get your wife and one of your best friends to scream in terror at a Scooby Doo episode," I would have been skeptical until I saw this particular clip:
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