Closing down the border

I see that the Obama Administration, apparently as paranoid as the Bushites about “security” is warning Canada it is going to get the same treatment as Mexico when it comes to crossing the border.

It’s maddening to see our big neighbor behaving in a such an irrational way, which can only hurt trade and commerce between the two countries. But it’s also evidence, I think, of the further decline of the American empire. Empires always retreat into themselves and adopt a fortress mentality when confronted with the inevitable end.

Janet Napolitano, Mr. Obama’s secretary for Homeland Security (and former governor of Arizona) , put Canada in the same bracket as drug-infested Mexico when she warned:

One of the things that we need to be sensitive to is the very real feeling among southern border states and in Mexico that if things are being done on the Mexican border, they should also be done on the Canadian border,

On the Mexican border, of course, there’s massive smuggling of aliens and an immense amount of drug trafficking. True, we ship some B.C. Bud down to the States, but the two situations are hardly comparable.

The idea that Canada needs to be treated like Mexico sounds like some kind of political correctness carried to an especially irrational level.

Hilary Clinton sounded a small note of common sense in all this when she said the U.S., because it’s the woprld’s  biggest consumer of illegal drugs, shares a lot of the blame for the Mexican drug situation.

The border issue came up in connection with the law requiring anyone entering the U.S. from Canada to carry a passport as of June 1.

By itself, that’s not unreasonable. I never go anywhere without my passport. It’s all the havoc that’s already developing at the broder, where trucks line up for hours in both directions before being allowed to cross over with their goods.

So get ready, Canadians (attention Mr. Harper) to realize that Canada and the U.S. are actually separate countries.

A QUESTIONABLE CONCLUSION ON CIRCUMCISION

There’s a study in the New England Journal of Medicine claiming that circumcision helps protect heterosexual men against genital herpes and a virus that causes genital warts and cancer.

Where was the study carried out? In Uganda, a country where the hygiene standards are not excactly those of North America.

The Canadian Pediactric Society says it will take the study into consideration in its current review of the advisability of circumcision. The practice has been in decline in Canada since the 1970s, when the Society cautioned against routinely performing the procedure.

Some would say, “If God gave man a foreskin …” I prefer to say let’s follow nature’s course, and not resort to surgical practices that may have had a benefit in times past, but are not needed where water and soap is available and in daily use.