Pressure Mounting on TX Attorney General

& Illegal Alien Activity Increasingly Likely Cause in W. Nueces Fire

Good Morning Friends,

We’re back again, sooner than anticipated— after receipt of a copy of a letter that by now should be on the Attorney General’s desk. Or, in his mail room at least.

We’ll share it with you in just a moment— first, some background.

Many in Texas have been wondering why Attorney General Ken Paxton has seemed unwilling to go quite as far as his contemporary in Arizona, Mark Brnovich, who issued an official opinion on the subject of border security.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, Image Courtesy: Erica Gay, Associated Press

For those unfamiliar, official opinions carry something of the weight of law, in absence of law. In other words, if events lend themselves to some sort of needful situation that current statutes don’t seem to cover, and law enforcement agencies and others need some form of guidance, State Attorney Generals are supposed to be able to offer a way forward that rests on a legal foundation— at least until the legislature or a court can address things.

Two weeks ago, Texas Conservatives began pressing for such an opinion from the AG’s office, but seem to have been mostly ignored. It’s debatable, of course. Certainly, the public-at-large doesn’t have intimate access to the inner workings of things in Austin, and such a process with its weight of law would seem to be a rather delicate thing that one would want to avoid seeming to politicize.

Even so— here’s that letter we were talking about:

If you squint, or double click on it, you’ll see it appears to be an official document and inquiry from Matt Krause, the Chair of the Texas House Committee on General Investigating. Krause is a Republican from the Fort Worth area.

Rep. Matt Krause, R- Dist. 93, Fort Worth

In the document, he is soliciting an official opinion on “Whether the federal government has failed to uphold its obligations to protect Texas from invasion under Article IV, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution, and whether Texas has the sovereign power to defend itself from invasion?”

Krause goes on to reference recent hearings on border security in Austin, and his belief that the opinion already issued in Arizona is compelling.

There hasn’t been a peep on the subject from Austin, of course, but it’s not hard to imagine a few reasons why.

Take a moment and imagine that you are a strict constitutionalist sort of a person. The sort that believes in the Document with a Capital D. A sort of Cato the Elder kind of person in the last days of the Roman Republic. Each word is important— each distinction is necessary— laid down in the days of yore by men who were not only perhaps intellectually superior— but also perhaps morally too. Titans of liberty and thought. Captains of conscience with the kind of capital-c Courage that makes lawmakers today seem like squeaking little gerbils by comparison.

Now imagine the stones it would take for someone like that to even consider tampering with elements of law that might impact that document. Don’t know about you readers— but it must be something like the feeling a gentle ape might have, surrounded by delicate, irreplaceable machinery and being asked to figure out how to fix it.

Or perhaps something like the feeling a truly devout individual at the Council of Trent in 1545 must have had when being tasked with modifying the Church as set down by the time of Constantine & Ancient Rome. The Council of Trent lasted roughly 18 years by the way.

No thank you! Can’t you find someone else for this job? Why me, would be the question.

It must be the most horrible kind of pressure. Not only fraught with the weight of respect for the work of other, perhaps better, men— but also the pressures of the present.

We may be giving Ken Paxton too much credit as a Constitutionalist— certainly we may be exaggerating for effect. Even so, it’s not too great a leap to imagine there’s some hesitance in wanting to go all the way to the Constitution— some hope that there might be some other way to find a solution in all of this.

It may simply be that he feels such an opinion would be pointless and quickly struck down by some Austin court.

However— going back to the idea of that ape surrounded by the machinery, and the wish for someone else to come along with a golden solution: Friends, there is no one else. There will be no superhero flying to the rescue. As the years pile onto each other in the beckoning rush of middle age and beyond, one learns over and over again— problems are only ever truly solved by those who are facing them, and when you’re the man or woman of the moment— sometimes the only thing you can do is tighten your shoe laces and take that impossible-seeming first step.

Or to put it another way— that poor dumb ape in the machine is almost certainly the only one for the job, and no matter how much he might wish there was someone else— the odds are he’s the closest thing to a subject matter expert we have. Just as our imaginary ape will have to find the courage to try pulling one of the bright shiny knobs and levers, so too will strict Constitutionalists have to face the possibility of actually using the document.

Closing eyes and plugging ears will not make the border crisis go away. And Operation Lone Star, while of utility and a seeming step in the right direction, seems to have the flavor of managed care, not a cure.

While we’re at it, a small update to the wildfire we told you about yesterday morning. Kinney County EMS Director Henry Garcia disputes the acreage count coming from Texas A & M Forest Service, which has increased it to 1500 and says it’s about 20-percent controlled.

W. Nueces Fire, Image Courtesy: Facebook, Kinney County Sheriff’s Office

Garcia flatly asserted Monday that it’s about 6,000 acres now. It’s tempting to want to take A & M’s number— to shuffle and cower behind the aegis of outside authority, but we are reminded of occasions when our reporting here has been contradicted by other sources in Austin or other locations and we knew we were correct.

If Garcia says it’s 6,000, we believe him. He’s one of the men on the ground actually fighting this thing. It’s still a crazy-large fire, whether it’s 1500 acres or 6000.

Authorities say the fire appears to have begun inside of a dry creek bed— lending even more credence to the supposition that it was started by illegal aliens.

Illegal aliens will frequently use natural landmarks, like creek beds, as guideposts as they move cross country to avoid the U.S. Border Patrol and other authorities.

Also— being down in a creek bed, there just aren’t going to be any powerlines or other infrastructure that might accidentally cause a burn.

At last report, firefighters were working to establish firebreaks and other measures to help contain the blaze— and also there’s word that the Forest Service is making a helicopter available for aerial drops.

The West Nueces fire has been something of a low-priority because of its remoteness. Yesterday and the day before, the Forest Service was tied up with other fires that were threatening more structures.

Garcia tells us the fire remains about 1-or-2 ridgelines away from a few structures to the southeast. “Structures” could mean homes— but in this case, it probably refers to barns, storerooms, or other sorts of ag-related buildings.

Also too— this is a good time for a small apology to our email readership: yesterday morning we got our rights and lefts and Wests and Easts mixed up and declared the fire was in the Northwest part of the County. Obviously, being near the Uvalde and Edwards County lines, it is in the Northeast part of the County. We had West on the brain, because it’s being called the West Nueces Fire. So, apologies again for that.

That should do it for now friends— thanks as always for reading. We still expect to have 1 or 2 more newsletters coming up later this week. We hope this one found you healthy, happy, and with good prospects for the future.

As always we should mention our employment with the Kinney County Sheriff’s Office, while stressing that any opinions and errors associated with this newsletter are ours alone— tossed out into the world without the input or oversight of Kinney County officials.

Have a great day, and we’ll see you again later on down the road.