Jan Brewer's Photo With Obama

The now-famous picture of Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer shaking her finger at President Barack Obama is both appropriate and deserved. In America, we don't have rulers entitled to the deference and obsequiousness other countries show to their kings; our elected officials are ordinary citizens whom we are free to criticize.

Obama apparently took offense at the way Gov. Brewer described her meeting with the president in the Oval Office. She said he had been "condescending," "patronizing" and just wanted to lecture her, instead of showing any willingness to hear Arizona's concerns about border problems. He also didn't answer the governor's five letters.

Her description sounds authentic because that's exactly how he treated her when they met on the tarmac as he was campaigning for re-election. The background of this meeting is the insulting way Obama is treating Arizona by suing that state for trying to enforce laws against illegal aliens, withdrawing National Guardsmen from the Mexican border, initiating a civil rights investigation of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and the scandal of the "Fast and Furious" gun-sale operation.

Fast and Furious was a secret Obama administration program to sell guns to Mexican gangs, so the Democrats could later make a political case for gun control. It backfired when some of those guns were found at the scene of the murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

The U.S. Supreme Court has affirmed the power of states to take steps to enforce laws against illegal immigration. The Legal Arizona Workers Act of 2007, which requires Arizona employers to use the Internet-based, E-Verify system to confirm that a new employee is lawfully in the U.S. was upheld by the Supreme Court last year.

Obama is now having his Justice Department sue Arizona to try to get the court to strike down another Arizona law. It authorizes police to question people about their immigration status if the police have reason to believe the person is an illegal alien.

There are many other ways that Obama is trying to frustrate state and citizen efforts to stop the tide of illegal aliens crossing our southern border. He shows no respect for the financial burden this puts on states from problems of crime, illegal drugs, public schools and hospital care.

Illegal aliens from Mexico are believed responsible for more than a third of deliberately ignited wildfires in Arizona over the last five years, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office. Illegal aliens are believed to have started 30 of 77 fires from 2006 through 2010 that were investigated, and that figure doesn't include 2010, the worst fire year in Arizona history, when two fires destroyed more than 60 homes.

In December 2010, Obama's Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano flew to Mexico City to sign a "trusted traveler" agreement.

I'm curious. Why couldn't Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., have been labeled a trusted traveler so he also could avoid airport hassle?

Word has leaked out which proves that, despite congressional law to the contrary, the Obama administration is granting amnesty to illegal aliens through backdoor procedures. The smoking gun is the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Memorandum called "Administrative Alternatives to Comprehensive Immigration Reform."

This memorandum asserts that because Congress has not passed comprehensive immigration reform, USCIS can extend benefits and/or protections to many individuals and groups by issuing new guidance and regulations, exercising discretion with regard to parole-in-place, deferred action and the issuance of notices to appear, and adopting significant process improvements. These policies will enable thousands of aliens who entered the U.S. illegally to become lawful permanent residents.

For example, USCIS could allow employment authorization for H-4 dependent spouses of H-1B visa holders who are applicants for permanent residence. And where there is no authority for granting residency to an illegal alien, USCIS could grant it anyway by alleging "extreme hardship."

The 72-page "National Drug Threat Assessment 2011" issued by the U.S. Department of Justice National Drug Intelligence Center warns us that "The illicit trafficking and abuse of drugs present a challenging, dynamic threat to the United States. ... Major Mexican-based TCOs (transnational criminal organizations) ... control the movement of most of the foreign-produced drug supply across the U S. Southwest Border. ... The Southwest Border remains the primary gateway for moving illicit drugs into the United States."

Barack Obama wasn't interested in accepting Gov. Brewer's invitation to visit the border himself. He just wants to use executive-branch powers to stop Arizona from doing anything to defend itself.

Obama picked a fight with a female governor and she didn't roll over. Three cheers for Jan Brewer.

Phyllis Schlafly is a lawyer, conservative political analyst and author of 20 books. Her latest, written with co-author Suzanne Venker, is "The Flipside of Feminism" published by WorldNetDaily. She can be contacted by e-mail at phyllis@eagleforum.org. To find out more about Phyllis Schlafly and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Website at www.creators.com.

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