The mother of all fire ants attacked me last night.

While I slept. The coward. I have six red welts with pinpoint orange peaks, waiting for me to foolishly scratch them off, whereupon the stinging would multiply to remind me, You knew that would hurt, didn't you? But you did it anyway, because humans scratch at hard things on their skin the way dogs bite their own stitches.

Instead, as a responsible, experienced adult, I scratch around the little red battlefields where my immune system seems to be warring against whatever calling card the ant left behind. Days, this will take, with Yoda syntax added for emphasis.

Ants are an especially fearsome insect because they never give up. Willing to sacrifice themselves in waves, and to work 24-hour shifts, they will eventually accomplish their mission. For carpenter ants, the mission seems to be eating the core out of my hackberry tree, or maybe my house, which they also have a trail encircling. For fire ants, it is the ruination of all likely picnic spots and neighborhood yard sports. That, or their queen has bet long on Amdro stock, so they win, one way or another.

this week, the elephant in dallas' living room is our neighbor Farmers Branch, which passed some sort of ordinance last Saturday requiring tenants to prove their right to be in the U.S. when signing a lease.

I have chosen not to get distracted by immigration issues because they merely split my party in half and benefit the opposition. My belief is, the other party raises this issue every 20 years or so and puts a fresh spin on it, and we take the bait every time.

This go-round, it's national security at stake. As if Al Qaeda has ever done anything conspicuously illegal in preparing a strike. No, that particular bad-guy prefers to operate within the law until all assets are in place, then hit hard. Running operatives across the border at night is risky, along the lines of smuggling a pistol through airport security. Get caught, and your whole operation fails. So they don't take preliminary chances.

but farmers branch, insecure over its status as not-rich-enough-to-be-Addison and not-big-enough-to-be-Dallas—and, I suspect, frustrated that it can't police even its own apostrophe—has decided illegal aliens are its most pressing problem.

The real mistake here is not bigotry, but ignoring the concept of federalism. In plain language, FB's trying to do Washington's work. It is the State Department and Congress who set unreasonably low quotas and high hurdles for people who just want to come here and work. The Border Patrol can't keep up with all those hungry people streaming across the border.

But the municipality of Farmers Branch has no right or responsibility pertaining to immigration law. It is a city; it should be doing city things, like maintaining street lights and parks. And I would bet that if opponents had calmly spelled this out for them—instead of just ranting about the inhumanity of the proposal—the voters might have sent this proposal to the trash can.

Who in Farmers Branch appreciates federal intervention in, say, the local school district? Well, it works both ways. The feds don't like FB meddling in immigration law. You know, the Tenth Amendment, and all that stuff we thought only historians cared about.

But this isn't a debate about what's right. It's about how we feel. And those debates always end up in court, where they don't belong.

to wrap the day up, Squinx and I took Wolf Dog to Big Box Pet Supplies Inc., one of the few places he doesn't terrify everyone who lays eyes on him. But this may have been the last visit for him. He spent the whole time marking every vertical protrusion in the store, most of which were already rusty and yellowed from other dogs who'd gotten there first. I spent most of my time scurrying around for paper towels and cleaning spray, and the rest monitoring him constantly in case he tried to take another surprise whiz.

We made one more stop at Big Box Natural Foods Corp., where I was disappointed at the dearth of hemp waffles.  But the coffee aisle kept me amused, as there is evidence of a simmering conflict between organic and nonorganic users of the in-store grinder.  A harried staff member tried to make peace through signage:

I'd have paid admission to see the complaint that triggered such an admirably restrained response.

That'll do for today.  Thanks for reading.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 05:11 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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