Farmers Branch fallout

As expected, a federal judge has temporarily suspended the recently approved city ordinance in Farmers Branch, a Dallas suburb, that would have required apartment owners to verify the residency status of those seeking to rent. The idea is to prevent illegal aliens from establishing residency in the town. Though the ordinance backers were outspent 7 to 1 in the recent referendum, they won by a decisive 68 percent of the vote. And now, in a stroke, a federal judge has overturned that decision, saying that only the federal government has the right to determine who is in the country illegally.

To be sure, if the ordinance violates federal law, the judge had no choice but to suspend it. But consider the message here. We all know that the federal government has abdicated its responsibility to control the US-Mexico border. Yet the judge is telling local communities that they have no right to act to prevent people who by definition have no right to be in this country from living there. The message from the federal government, therefore, is, "We won't protect you from this invasion of lawbreakers, but you don't have the right to protect yourselves either."

If the judge's ruling is upheld, you are going to see communities that find themselves under siege by illegal aliens -- who, let's not kid ourselves, are going to continue to pour over the border that neither George W. Bush or anybody else intends to secure -- selling out and moving away. But because there is no defense allowed under current law, you are going to see an angry anti-government populist movement arise from people who are sick and tired of having this happen to their communities, and being told by the establishment that they just have to live with it -- and who are sick and tired of being portrayed by the news media as nothing but simple-minded racists.