Mexicans, Highways, and Conspiracies

There's something about (Mexican) immigration that brings a number of crazy right-wing factions together. Bigots, isolationists, etc. Immigration is a very legitimate issue, but it's one they've successfully turned into one of modern politics' biggest circuses (case in point: formerly-reasonable Rudy Guiliani now sounding like a crazy person on yet another issue).

And after temporarily making sense last week, Newt Gingrich goes back to crazy town-

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Tuesday he is "sickened" that President Bush and Congress went on vacation "while young Americans in our cities are massacred" by illegal immigrants.

He was referring to one incident in NJ, because isolated crimes are always indicative of nationwide crises. And just to make clear how batshit insane he is, he added that-

Gingrich said that the "war here at home" against illegal immigrants is "even more deadly than the war in Iraq and Afghanistan."

"As an American, I am sickened that the political leadership of America could continue to go on vacation and do nothing," he said. "Why are the August vacations for the president and the Congress more precious than the lives of young Americans who are being killed because of government incompetence and inaction."

Señor Gingrich está muy loco.

Speaking of Dobbs-ian paranoia, Steve Benen looks at an urban legend popular with the same type of people who love Ron Paul and 9/11 conspiracy theories... It implies that our government plans "to build a huge NAFTA Super Highway, four football-fields-wide, through the heart of the U.S. along Interstate 35, from the Mexican border at Laredo, Tex., to the Canadian border north of Duluth, Minn." This is, of course, not true.

Stephen Colbert took on this 'conspiracy' recently too. Funny. Nuts. But funny.