Today's story comes from Texas rancher/writer Elizabeth Burns whom I asked to contribute a Dispatch from Tamaulipas. She keeps a blog from South Texas from where she chronicles the fiascos of the Texas oil fortunes, Rancho Los Malulos, an entertaining read.

THE BORDER REPORT

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THE BORDER REPORT

Guess that little tip about the drunken driving Border Patrol agent checked out. The Tucson NBC affiliate, KVOA, has the story here. Agent Victor Zavala blew a .20 breathalyzer when he was finally stopped after nearly careening into five cars while driving down the wrong side of the road in a Border Patrol vehicle on March 12.

He's now being charged with six felonies: three DUI, reckless driving and endangerment.

THE BORDER REPORT

The Supreme Court backed away from the sticky issue of illegal immigration today, putting the country right back in the comfortable Limbo of cheap, unacknowledged and exploitative labor, just the way we like it.

The Court ruled that illegal migrants using other people's identities can't be charged with a felony unless they knew the documents belonged to someone else. It was one of the most important cases concerning illegal immigration in months; today's Supreme Court's unanimous decision gets us absolutely nowhere in addressing the situation.

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THE BORDER REPORT

This poor bastard is a U.S. Border Patrol agent from Tucson sector who someone hit on the head with a broken cinderblock, Monday afternoon. The agent had walked up to the border wall west of Nogales to look at a hole when someone clambered up to the top of the wall from the Mexican side and dropped the block on his head. You have to give the Border Patrol credit for audacity. Even though the agent was hospitalized, Border Patrol officials still managed to take this photo of him and disseminate it to the media this morning. Along with the photo, this message from ever-persistent Tucson sector chief Ron Gilbert: "As we gain operational control of our border, smugglers and other types of criminal elements have become frustrated and the result is an increase in assaults." The man is immutable in his insistence that every incident that goes down on this border, good, bad or both, is one more clear signal that the Border Patrol is winning. It's not his fault of course, he has to say that, he has jefes too. And they've been boasting about operational control of the border since the Clinton era. I just hadn't seen them out drag out their wounded agents to try and illustrate the point before.

THE BORDER REPORT

A few weeks ago, I speculated that the incoming Obama Administration was heavily interested in putting the military on the Mexican border.

Since then, there's been a steady drumbeat of U.S. Army officials whispering to the press that putting the military on the border is precisely what the president wants to do.

This story from The Associated Press is one of the more glaring examples. If you notice, the source for the story is a military official, not a White House staffer. The story is nothing more than a plant, since there's no way a U.S. military officer is going to tell a reporter what the institution's plans are, not without orders from a higher-up. Clearly, the military wants us to know what it wants to do in Mexico.

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