Amazing.  Incredible.  Stunning.

No other words come close to capturing the abject hypocrisy of Phoenix mayor Phil Gordon’s attack on Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio regarding the latter’s efforts to identify, arrest and turn over to federal ICE authorities small portions of the flood of illegal aliens now inundating the city, the county, the state and the nation.  And that doesn’t even count the new drop houses that will be discovered as you read this.

Make no mistake, there are plenty of things over which Joe Arpaio can and should be criticized.  But his stance on illegal aliens is not one of them.

To add pandering insult to his hypocrisy, Gordon told a supportive group of Hispanics at a luncheon commemorating Cesar Chavez that Arpaio’s actions “could endanger police” and that he should “stop rounding up Hispanics who commit traffic violations and instead pursue ‘dangerous criminals’.”  Cheers and applause erupted in the audience.

Amnesia and selective memory are two of the critical capacities of the liberal mind, and Gordon now proves he is the master of both.  Certain audiences share the same abilities.

For those of you who may have forgotten — and especially for those of you who want to forget — recall that on Tuesday, September 18, 2007, Erik Martinez, an illegal alien from Mexico, was jaywalking across 24^th Street north of Thomas Road in Phoenix.  Martinez had in 2006 been deported following a felony theft conviction.  Question for Pandering Phil: did that make him a “dangerous criminal?”  Shockingly, he had re-entered the United States.  Illegally.  Again.

Phoenix Police Officer Nick Erfle saw Martinez jaywalking (ummmm….. Phil: is that a “traffic violation?”) and was attempting to stop him for questioning.  Martinez - presumably here only to find day-labor tasks that Americans won’t perform - pulled a gun and shot Officer Erfle point blank in the face, killing him instantly.

Martinez fled the scene, carjacking a motorist’s vehicle.  A short time later he was cornered by other Phoenix Police officers and, when he refused to surrender and threatened the officers, he was dispatched to his fate.  No word yet on protests from the ACLU, the Mexican consulate or Salvador Reza on the inhumane treatment Martinez received.

Had Gordon’s sacrosanct Phoenix Police policy Operations Order 1.4 (forbidding officers from inquiring into the “immigration status” of misdemeanor violators) not been in place for some twenty years prior to September 18, 2007, perhaps on the morning of September 19, 2007, Officer Erfle would have awakened at his home, had breakfast, and again told his wife and children that he would see them when he got back home.

For the mayor of the fifth largest city in the nation to criticize Arpaio on these facts is to give hypocrisy a new and tragically more dangerous meaning. 

Gordon should be ashamed of himself.  But as a liberal politician, shame is a characteristic he long ago discarded.  And apparently, he doesn’t miss it.  

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 29th, 2008 at 8:22 am and is filed under Immigration, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.