There is Some Justice in the World

After Michigan's 47-21 thrashing of Notre Dame today, Charlie Weis has become yesterday's genius.

Sunshine for the President

There seems to be a ray of sunshine in the gloom that surrounded President Bush yesterday. Amidst the rebellion against the president's plans for military tribunals, the impending indictiment of Bob Ney, and the continued carnage in Baghdad, it looks like gas prices are headed for a serious drop. An article in the McClatchy papers indicates that prices could fall from the current average of $2.59 all the way to $1.15 in the next few months. Maybe we won't need all that Iraqi oil now.

The Conservative Opposition to Bush

Pres. Bush, VP Dick Cheney, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld spent the better part of two weeks before the 9-11 commemorations seeking to redefine the Iraq War. The line was that bin Laden was like Hitler, that "victory" was the only alternative in Iraq, and that opposition to the war was morally confused at best, vaguely treasonous at worst.

On Sept. 12, Bush's opponents began to strike back, led not by the ineffective Democrats, but by traditional and moderately conservative Republicans and military figures. Democratic leaders like Harry Reid were too busy being offended and outraged to do anything meaningful. However, President Bush's image had barely faded from tv screens when Pentagon officials leaked a report by a Marine intelligence officer claiming that Anbar province was "lost" to the American cause and that al-Qaeda was now the most important political force in Western Iraq. The next day, Marine Maj. General Zilmer dug the knife in deeper by claiming that troop levels in Anbar were fine unless the military actually wanted to defeat the insurgents.

So much for staying the course.

The counter-offensive then spread to the Senate where John McCain mobilized opposition to Bush's plan for military tribunals by producing a letter from former Joint Chiefs Chair John Vessey claiming that Bush was undermining "the moral basis which has generally guided our conduct in war throughout our history." Heavy stuff.

By today, the Republican rebellion had generated enough steam that Bush went to Capital Hill in person. But McCain had another ace up his sleeve, a supportive letter from a figure who has far more credibility than President Bush, Colin Powell.

Whichever side can move opinion among moderates and traditional conservatives will have a good shot at winning elections in 2006 and 2008. The events of the last couple of days indicate that the Bush administration may have already lost that game even if the Democrats have yet to find the stadium.

Victory versus Reality

You know things are bad. The Bush administration must have known that the situation in Iraq are really bad when they felt compelled to call in six conservative columnists on Tuesday to meet with the President. Mona Charen was there and has a column today emphasizing Bush's view that "victory" is the only option in the war against Islamic extremism.

Somebody needs to tell the generals. Unfortunately, the word on victory has not seeped back to American commanders in al-Anbar, the rebellious North Carolina-sized Iraqi provice where we have thirty thousand troops. According to Gen. Richard Zilmer, that's enough to fulfill the current mission of training Iraqi troops, but not nearly enough for defeating the insurgency in Anbar.

"Marine Maj. Gen. Richard C. Zilmer told reporters . . . that he has enough U.S. troops - about 30,000 - to accomplish what he called his main mission: training Iraqi security forces. 'Now, if that mission statement changes - if there is seen a larger role for coalition forces out here to win that insurgency fight - then that is going to change the metrics of what we need out here.'"

Not only is victory not the "only" option, it appears that victory is not an option at all.

Even the right-wing columnists know this. Although sympathetic to Bush, Charen ends her column by quoting Canadian columnist Peter Worthington: "There has never been an unpopular winning war or a popular losing war."

If the generals and the right-wing rats are jumping the "victory" ship, it's time for Bush to think about "reconfiguring" our military posture in Iraq.

Before We Bury Syria

The terrorist attack on the U. S. Embassy in Syria looks like a one day story. But perhaps we should think about it a little longer.

Syrian guards stopped four terrorists from entering the U. S. Embassy compound. According to the Fox web site, there are usually thirty Syrian guards outside the embassy and a contingent of Marines inside. So, if the terrorists had entered the compound, they probably would have been killed quickly anyway.

So, why attack the American embassy? There must have been easier targets in Damascus for Syria's homegrown al-Qaeda group. Why not the Saudi, Egyptian, or Jordanian embassies? Why not Hezbollah offices?

To answer this question, it is useful to think about what would have happened if the Syrian defense of the American Embassy had been half-hearted or cowardly. Of course, the answer is that there would have been plenty of speculation among the American right over whether Syria had sponsored or planned the terrorist attack and increased pressure to launch an invasion of Syria despite the deteriorating situation in Iraq. There are a lot of reasons to think that the al-Qaeda group in Syria would have welcomed such an invasion. Like the American invasion of Iraq, an invasion of Syria would have removed a secular Arab regime and led to a rapid growth of Islamist attitudes among the Syrian population. Even better from the view of the terrorists, an American invasion of Syria would have been likely to help al-Qaeda recruiting and lead to more terrorist incidents in the future.

The American invasion of Iraq has given global terrorism such a lift that it looks like the terrorists are seeking an encore in Syria.

Fortunately, the terrorist attack failed. Unfortunately, the terrorists were probably correct in thinking that the Bush administration could be manipulated into another disastrous invasion.

Blogging about Value

Getting What He Deserves: Congratulations to Deion Branch, wide receiver, for leaving the New England Patriots and getting a $39 million contract from the Seattle Seahawks. It was good to see Branch get what he deserves. Branch is an exciting wide receiver who is making his mark in the NFL after being unfairly ignored at the University of Louisville in Kentucky. The Patriots are a bullying organization dedicated to giving their players the shaft at contract time. Their recent success is an insult to fair-minded people everywhere.

Short-sighted people might kvetch that Branch was already highly paid at $1 million, but we should be congratulating anybody who is able to lift their standard of living against a greedy, bare-knuckled management like that of the Patriots.

Not Adding Much: Sen. Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate, was on the floor today complaining about President Bush "politicizing" the 9-11 remembrances with his speech. That adds nothing to the debate. The Bush administration has been politicizing 9-11 almost from the time that the planes hit the towers. Instead of just criticizing Bush for being partisan, Reid should be a lot more partisan himself and mount an attack on the Bush's administration's obsession with politicking the war in Iraq rather than fighting it. If Harry Reid were half as good at political leadership as Deion Branch is at football, the Democrats would be doing a lot better.

Loss Leader Strikes Again: Fortunately for the Democrats, Dick Cheney is still Vice-President and President Bush still trusts him. Viewing 9-11 as an opportunity to fulfill his dreams of an imperial presidency in a more authoritarian nation, Dick Cheney has used his position to pursue the fantasies of the right rather than promote "the general welfare." One would think that Cheney's stock would have fallen after he lied the country into the pointless invasion of Iraq. However, having repeatedly felt the sting of failure as a presidential son himself, President Bush has an extraordinary level of empathy for high level incompetents like Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. So, Cheney was leading the charge of Bush defenders on last Sunday's talk shows and has been assigned to work out a compromise on Bush's proposal for military tribunals. Needless to say, prospects for success are bleak.

FAA Gambles Again in Lexington

The bodies from the recent crash have barely been buried, but Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, KY has already gone back to its "normal" understaffing.

According to today's Lexington Herald-Leader, the traffic control tower at the airport was getting ready to have a radar unit in Indianapolis take over so that the controllers in Lexington could take a break.

It appears that the FAA normally pays controllers overtime rather than letting them take breaks for meals and refocusing.

One wonders how many crashes it will take before the FAA stops gambling with controller staffing.

Stop Being Offended

I didn't see the ABC docudrama on 9-11. Not having a television is part of the price my wife and I pay for being progressive parents.

But the outrage of the Clinton administration officials goes on. The former counter-terrorism guru Richard Clarke was the one who was outraged tonight.

I'm tired of the outrage. I'm tired of Democrats and liberals being outraged, disgusted, and offended over the provocations of the Bush administration and right-wingers everywhere. I'm tired of seeing Harry Reid, Chuck Shumer, Bill Clinton, and Al Gore acting like they're personally wounded every time the Republicans lie about them. It makes them look weak which, of course, is precisely what the right-wing wants to see.

Instead of being offended, they should just fight. The docudrama on 9-11 should have been seen as an opportunity. If Rush Limbaugh's producer friends can produce trash about 9-11, why can't the thousands of left-leaning writers, producers, and directors start creating shows about the Bush administration's decisions to invade Iraq. Personally, I'd like to see a scene where Dick Cheney explains to a junior staffer that conservatives don't have to tell the truth. I'd also like to see Condi Rice make an aside to Scooter Libby about how easy it was to manipulate the President. A little dramatization would help everybody understand the Bush adminstration better.

The Democratic leadership thinks that people in the Red States want to see the Democrats be more religious. Perhaps. But here in Kentucky, I've found that people want to see the Democrats show more toughness and determination. And they're right. If the Democrats win in 2008, they'll have to take on a debilitating war in Iraq, keep up and expand the police efforts to foil terrorism, and fend off an avalanche of low-blows and innuendo from the right-wing attack machine. People in states like Kentucky want to see that the Democrats are tough enough to handle the job.

One way we can show that is to stop being offended.

9-11: Digging the Hole Deeper

In my office, I keep a picture of a plane plowing into the World Trade Center.

I also keep a picture of an American soldier carrying a body bag of another American soldier.The two photographs go together because the Bush administration decided to leverage the 9-11 attacks into an invasion of Iraq and an effort to establish right-wing social and political dominance in the United States.

The horrific viciousness and destructiveness of the terrorist attacks will always be paired with the monumental cynicism of the Bush administration's response. Defense neo-cons like Paul Wolfowitz had been hoping for a pretext to invade Iraq. 9-11 gave them their chance. Irving Kristol, John Bolton, and John Yoo chafed at the constraints of the American Constitution, American human rights laws, and international law. 9-11 allowed them to luxuriate in the romance of torture, run roughshod over due process, and create an illegal international system of secret prisons. Karl Rove and Dick Cheney wanted a bigger stick for beating the Democrats and liberals. 9-11 was the biggest stick of all.

Ultimately, bin Laden and the Bush administration will only get part of what they deserve. The Bush administration and the right will meet their electoral Dien Bien Phu in 2008 if not this November. But many of them deserve to be arrested for crimes against humanity. Bin Laden won't live long after the Bush administration leaves office. The main thing keeping him alive and global terrorism in business is world-wide revulsion over the Bush administration and the war in Iraq. Yet, even though Bin Laden's days are numbered, he won't receive nearly as many deaths as he deserves.

There is a certain mutual dependence between the Bush administration and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida. More than twenty-nine hundred people died at the World Trade Center and the number of American soldiers who have died in Iraq is also climbing toward 2,900. Al-Qaeda's attack on the World Trade Center gave the Bush administration it's chance to pursue the plans for global political and military domination that conservative think-tankers had been dreaming up since the fall of the Soviet Union. Likewise, Bush's invasion of Iraq allowed bin Laden to see his dreams of global jihad come to life. Both sides get to live out their fantasies.

Still, I should have a third picture-a picture of those who have died in Iraq as a result of the invasion. There have been more than 50,000 deaths in Iraq over the last three years, now at a rate of 1,500 dead civilians per month. It's like Iraq has had more than 16 of it's own 9-11's and Iraq's civilian dead are just as much a part of the 9-11 story as the dead in New York, the Pentagon, and Pennsylvania, or the American combat casualties. It's not like the Bush administration and al-Qaeda have killed all the thousands of Iraqi's themselves, but Bush and bin Laden started the chain reactions that led to the nightmare in Iraq today and they should share in the blame for the many thousands of Iraqis who have died as a result of their fantasies.There may yet be some redemption for 9-11. I hope there is. Right now though, the Bush administration and al-Qaeda have merely teamed up to dig the hole deeper.

Little Sympathy for Clintonistas

Clintonistas like Madeleine Albright and Bruce Lindsey are chuffed that ABC's upcoming docu-drama on 9-11 shows them in a bad light.

Even though I support Hillary for President, I don't have too much sympathy for them. The Clinton Administration didn't mess up as badly as the Bush people, but they still blew it in the run-up to 9-11. After the attacks on the Cole and the African Embassies, the Clinton Administration should have gone to war against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. The Clintonistas had access to the intelligence, they were definitely worried about al-Qaeda, and they had the military at their disposal. They should have acted.

For some reason, however, they were more focused on Saddam Hussein.

Bush Shows Why We're Losing in Iraq

President Bush's speech yesterday was a minor masterpiece of opportunism. Mounting a strong defense of Guantanamo, CIA prisons overseas, rendition of suspects to foreign countries, and the use of torture to interrogate suspects, President Bush argued that all of those illegal procedures had been important in heading off further terrorist attacks after 9-11. The President then capped off the performance by demanding that Congress pass legislation to legitimate military tribunals that used evidence gained through torture and deprived suspects of the right to know much of the evidence being used against them.

What made the speech masterful was that Bush and his team knows that most Americans support the extra-legal apparatus for dealing with terror suspects. As a result, Bush was able to remind voters of their bedrock support for prior Administration initiatives in the war on terror and then demand that the Democrats in Congress either affirm Bush's defiance of the Constitution, American law, and international law as valid or engage in their own defiance of American public opinion. Either way, the Democrats will end up looking weak--weak and ineffective in their opposition to the President or weak in their determination to fight terrorism.

It's all very clever. It's a bold stroke at a time when the Bush administration has looked increasingly inept in its efforts to cope with the deteriorating situation in Iraq.

However, the Bush administration's political opportunism is also a large part of the reason why we are doing so poorly in Iraq. For the Bush administration, the war in Iraq has first and foremost been a political war against the opposition Democrats. Much of the reason the Bush administration did not plan for the occupation, engaged in long-term denial of the seriousness of the insurgency, and took such a blase approach to Abu Ghraib was that they saw political disadvantage in admitting that there were problems to be addressed. After these mistakes, the administration then decided that doing what was necessary to retrieve the situation was intolerable because it would involve admitting errror. Consequently, Bush did not remove Donald Rumsfeld or re-evaluate the ineffective occupation tactics, did not move the increasingly disconnected Dick Cheney out of his policy-making roles, failed to send more troops to Iraq, and gave up on economic reconstruction despite the deterioration of the Iraqi economy.

This was the recipe for disaster in Iraq. Focused on not letting the Democrats get the upper hand in the political debates at home, the Bush administration neglected to do the basic things that were necessary for a successful mission in Iraq. The result has been an on-going failure that has the potential to turn into a major disaster.

Yesterday's speech by President Bush was more of the same. Although effective in the short term, it has to be seen as yet another example of the Bush administration's disastrous prioritizing of short-term political manuevering over effective policy.

Home Schooling Offensive

There isn't much spare money in Eastern Kentucky--for anything but religious education that is. When a schism developed in the Rowan County Christian Academy two years ago, funding quickly materialized for a new K-12 Christian school that was ready to open for the fall 2005 semester.

But the larger schism is within the middle and upper middle-class of rural and Southern states like Kentucky. The majority of the bankers, small businessmen, administrators, government officials teachers, doctors in small towns like Morehead, KY seem to be aligned with the larger urban and secular culture in the United States. They serve on local public school boards, work on the parent-teacher committees, promote science teaching in the school systems, support school theater programs, and engage in health outreach to rural areas.

However, another chunk of the middle-class is so profoundly alienated that they are seeking to create a network of alternative Christianized institutions. Promoting home-schooling is a big part of effort to create an insular, Christian culture. The Rev. R. Albert Mohler, Jr. of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary has called for an "exit strategy" for public schools while the Southern Baptist Convention and other evangelical groups are debating resolutions for an "exodus" toward home schooling.

So, what is so repulsive about public schooling to the hard-core evangelical community? Of course, evangelicals object to mandates against school prayer, initiatives in sex education, teaching of evolution, and tolerance toward gays. Nevertheless, what I hear a lot from home schoolers though is fear of "peer group influence" on religious children.

According to the Considering Homeschooling Ministry, "homeschoolers avoid harmful school environments where God is mocked, where destructive peer influence is the norm, where drugs, alcohol, promiscuity and homosexuality are promoted."

Believe me, there is very little if any mocking of God in public schools in states like Kentucky. But peer influence is the norm and rural kids are pushed by the other kids toward booze, pill-popping, blow-jobs, and premature sex with older guys. Like the larger American society, public school can be a tough, unforgiving and corrupt place where kids can lose their way easily in the complex web of school demands and peer-group temptations. Nevertheless, evangelicals take a very narrow and short-sighted view of the issue. Instead of obsessing so much about the temptations of peer group culture, evangelicals should focus on making schools, and indeed American society at large, into a more forgiving place.

George Allen: Plagiarist

Given Sen. George Allen's bullying mentality and racism, it's no surprise that he lacks a sense of decency in other areas. Today on the Senate floor, Allen cut in front of Dick Durbin to submit a bill on veteran's benefits that was identical except for one word to the bill that Durbin himself was set to submit.

Allen's showing the same sort of self-destructive tendencies that Sen. Jim Bunning showed in his 2004 re-election campaign in Kentucky. However, Allen will have a more difficult time than Bunning because former Navy Secretary James Webb is a much stronger opponent than the Democrat who ran against Bunning.

Allen's leading by three in Slate's most recent poll composite. If Allen's plagiarism has any media legs, it could give Webb the additional two points he needs to nose ahead.

George Allen is the right-wing's favorite son candidate for 2008. Evidently, there aren't any decent and competent bullies out there for the right to back.

The "Chestless" Bush Administration

Quite often, the right-wingers unintentionally reveal truths about themselves and their friends in the Bush administration.

Rush Limbaugh's Viagra sex odyssey to the Dominican Republica is one example. Limbaugh's inability to get it up on his own and his preference for Dominican prostitutes to any girlfriend says volumes about the right-wing fear of women.

Recent articles by Mark Steyne and David Warren about the Fox correspondents recently released in Gaza also say a lot about the Bush administration. Warren accuses Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig of being "chestless" men because they underwent phony conversions to Islam rather than risk being killed by their captors.

Glenn Greenwald hits back by pointing out that right-wingers like Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Pat Roberts of Kansas have no problem citing their fear of terrorism as a motivation for giving up our constitutional rights as Americans.

But Greenwald doesn't go far enough.

Isn't the "chestless" cowardice of the Bush administration one of the main reasons the American mission is going so poorly in Iraq. Of course, what the Bush administration fears most is the American public instead of global terrorism. Bush and his people were afraid to go to the American public and get support for their full ambitions of invading Iraq, Syria and/or Iran. They refused to debate their delusions. Likewise, they were afraid to put the U. S. on a war footing because raising taxes and reinstituting the draft would have entailed a lot of public debate. The Bush administration also was too afraid to ask for more troops and higher levels of resources when the situation started getting tough in 1004. That's because the Bush administration could not bring themselves to admit that they'd been wildly over-optimistic at the beginning of the occupation.

President Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld need the Viagra of absolute certainty to keep themselves going in the face of their fears of the American public, the media, and the Democrats. Bush and his people are afraid of those who disagree with them, afraid of any kind of negotiation, and so afraid of uncertainty that they refuse any kind of internal dialogue when making decisions. As President Bush famously stated, he refuses to negotiate with himself.

Bush, Cheney, and the neo-con utopians of the first George W. administration thought that the invasion and occupation of Iraq would entail as little difficulty as Rush Limbaugh's sex tourism. But the Bush administration's fearful and "chestless" rigidity doomed the American mission to failure as soon as resistance began to coalesce.

Out of Luck in Lexington

The FAA wasn't meeting it's own standards on the morning that Comair Flight 5191 crashed in Lexington, KY. The FAA requires two traffic controllers, one to monitor the radar and one check traffic on the ground. There was only one. The FAA requires controllers to have eight hours of sleep. That controller had only two hours of sleep.

There had been construction at the airport and the pilot ended up going to the wrong runway for his take-off. If the FAA had followed its own procedures, an air traffic controller would have corrected the pilot error.

But they did not and forty-nine people died as a result.

That's one corner the Bush administration shouldn't have cut in order to have lower taxes.

Hook em Rummy

Once again today, Donald Rumsfeld trotted out the Munich analogy when talking about war opponents. In Rummyworld, Osama bin Laden is Hitler and war opponents are all Neville Chamberlains trying to take the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia and give it to Germany.

Of course, Rumsfeld isn't serious. But his comments raise the question of what is the best analogy for the American situation in Iraq.

Let's try sports.

What's happening to the United States in Iraq is the equivalent of the $200 million New York Yankees finishing in last place in a Class A league like the South Atlantic League. Or the Texas Longhorns being regularly beaten by lousy high school football teams. That's how bad the U. S. is doing in Iraq.

Of course, highly successful sports organizations like the Yankees and Texas Longhorns are subject to constant criticism and enormous pressures even if they're winning at the highest levels. If they were doing anywhere nearly as badly as the Bush administration is doing in Iraq, these elite sports organizations would have cleaned house several times, rethought their commitment of resources, and revamped all their strategies.

They certainly wouldn't have been dumb enough to "stay the course."

Signs of the GOP Apocalypse

In my home town in Kentucky, an Iraq veteran just moved next door to a local judge. The vet has "impeach Bush" bumper stickers on his car and a big Kerry/Edwards sign in his living room window.

The John Mark Karr Triangle

John Mark Karr did not develop his fixation with confessing JonBenet Ramsey's murder by himself. To the contrary, Karr's confessions seem to have deep roots in the sprawling culture of American media. In fact, Karr's confessions might be best thought of as emerging out of a triangle of licit and illicit cultural media. One point of the triangle was Karr's own involvement with child pornography and pedophelia which seemed to be both longstanding and intensifying. The child porn interests would have put Karr into contact with a system of sex stereotypes that Karr a different kind of guy than the weird uncles and step-fathers that girls used to be warned about. But Karr's interests were not as far out of the mainstream as Bill O'Reilly and other pedophilia crusaders think.

The media pornographying of JonBenet Ramsey's murder was a strong point of connection to the cultural mainstream for Karr and forms the second point of the Karr triangle. It is doubtful that Karr's sexual fantasies would have focused so intently on JonBenet Ramsey if tabloid magazines and reality tv had not transformed the little girl's murder into a ten-year peep show. Although most people did not go into the same child pornography detail as Karr, his obsessions with Jon Benet were shared by millions. If anything, the long-running JonBenet porn show was heightened by the blanket coverage of every detail of Karr's arrest, flight to LA, and the sexual detail of his phony confessions. Perhaps Karr's ultimate fantasy was to become the new star of the JonBenet sex/murder show in the role of JonBenet's murderer. And it worked for awhile. The coverage was blanket. The ratings were huge. If Karr received a nickel for everytime people peeped in on him as he was being processed in the legal system, he could afford all the child pornography he wanted.

But why was Karr's fantasy focused on "confession" as opposed to copy cat murders, enacting similar kinds of scenarios with girls in Thailand, going to peep shows, or something like that. The principal mainstream cultural reference point for confession in American society would be the vast world of police dramas, crime investigation programs, reality crime shows, local news reporting on crime, and action, police, and investigation movies. Of course, there's plenty of left-wing commentary on the importance of fear in American culture, for example in Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine. However, there is little emphasis on the importance of police images in American society--the pleasures that American audiences derive from entertainment based on the criminal investigations, interrogations, legal manuevering, and imprisonment that break the perpetrator. Perpetually afraid of crime and terrorism, we get a special kick out of the media destruction of the criminal and terrorist. I'm no exception here. I used to love cop shows like NYPD Blue and Homicide: Life on the Streets before I unhooked from television. One of my favorite movies is the incredibly righteous L.A. Confidential.

Just like John Mark Karr seemed eager to get himself inside the on-going JonBenet porn show, he also seemed eager to insert himself into the world of crime drama. Karr has been panting to get into the machinery of criminal investigation and justice--to be interrogated, arrested, and taken before judges and consult with defense lawyers, speak to the media, and finally be committed to prison. A big part of Karr's fantasy was to be punished by the judicial system for the crime of killing JonBenet Ramsey and he might still get his punishment wish from the child porn rap in California. For better or worse, the punishment fantasy is a big part of American culture in general.

A Sobering Moment

An early Delta commuter flight to Atlanta went down in Lexington, KY this morning with reports of 49 dead and one critically injured.

My wife and kids have taken that flight several times.

Other people from my home town as well.

I'm going about my day, but I'm wondering in the back of my mind if anybody I knew was on the plane.

Stumbling Blocks for the Right

The right-wing keeps stumbling. One of their stumbling blocks has become the police. At least some national police organizations have come out in favor of gun control. Likewise, the local cops in Oklahoma think that gaining the cooperation of illegals is more important than enforcing immigration law. Consquently, the police resist efforts by right-wing activists to get them to round up illegal immigrants. Florida police have also made it clear that they aren't going to enforce immigration law as they seek to address "guat-bashing" robberies of Guatemalan immigrants.