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It's time to secure our borders with Mexico THE WAY I SEE IT Marty Backus Well, we're just two days away from scraping the first month of 2006, so with one down and 11 to go lets rid ourselves of the things to talk about in January. I guess the first is to wonder again why President George W. Bush and Congress are so reluctant to secure our borders with Mexico? Especially with the recent developments of finding a number of sophisticated tunnels from Mexico to the U.S., plus the stand-off between Mexican soldiers and American law officers inside our borders. It's a serious problem with drugs and possible terrorists slipping in through these tunnels along with illegal aliens. Lets clamp down on all of these and think first about us in this country and quit worrying about offending the illegals and the countries they come from. Maybe that's why the president and Congress are afraid to act because it might cost them some votes. The way I see it is kick the illegals out and keep them out until they can come in the lawful way. If we can find one cow out of thousands which has the dreaded mad cow disease, it seems we can find illegal aliens, too. -- “This city will be a majority African-American city. It's the way God wants it to be.” A statement made recently by New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, who also said the city will be a chocolate majority. He is still in office and really didn't get much flack from those “racist” comments. What do you think would have happened if a white mayor said, “This city will be a majority of White Americans and it will be a vanilla majority?” I think he would have been drummed out of office by the NAACP, the press and folks like Teddy Kennedy. Double standards and the lack of backbones are alive and well. -- There will be one rising star as a result of the recent disasters in our mining communities. That is West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin who has been to and stayed at the scenes of the two Mountain State mining incidents and has moved that state to pass laws to insure coal miners have more safety than they do now. Right now, he has the highest rating of any governor in the United States. His citizens give him an 80 percent approval rating, and if the National Democratic Party is looking for a new hero then they need to keep an eye on Manchin. -- Don't be surprised if we get some kind of news about a new business concern at Mossey Bottom. If you drive by the industrial park notice how crews have cleared off a section of that area on the river bank side. When I see something like that going on I assume something is going to happen. Follow this column for more details as they come. -- Tuesday is the last day those wanting to run in this May's primary can toss their hat in the ring. A couple of the old Pike County political know-alls say, at this point, filings appear to be down. Especially for such a big primary. They give a couple of reasons for this: the big bust that took place by the feds on several area citizens or the outrageous money which has to be spent to get elected. Well, I have a couple more I could throw in. We just might have a few fence straddlers who are waiting until the very last minute to see who will be running before they file. And another thing I see is there are some folks who believe elections have gotten to be just too mean and evil-spirited to take a chance of having their good reputations destroyed. -- Hazard Mayor Bill Gorman is not holding back on his criticism of the Courier-Journal closing its Hazard Regional Bureau which provides news from Eastern Kentucky. He says it will cause all of Kentucky to suffer. Two other bureaus will be closed in Paducah and Elizabethtown. Publisher Edward Manassah says the paper wants to grow its suburban coverage and intensify its online presense. Remember when the big dailies used to be plentiful around here. Papers from Ashland, Huntington, Louisville, but all have pulled out of our area. But don't worry, we're here to provide you with the news happenings in Pike County and with some news from Kentucky. We're here to stay with you Pike County! Publisher Marty Backus can be reached at mbackus@news-expressky.com.
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