Did anyone else experience a paradigm shift last evening? The PBS News Hour did something very uncharacteristic - they allowed an articulate conservative to have the floor, explain why liberal talking points were wrong, what the actual facts were, and put the entire interview on air.
The other DrC and I were watching the PBS News Hour when Jeffrey Brown interviewed Sheriff Thomas Hodgson of Bristol County in southeastern Massachusetts. Brown asked Hodgson about the impact of unaccompanied minor illegal immigrants on his community.
Hodgson really had his stuff together; he pointed out in no uncertain terms what is needed is a law change to permit repatriation of kids from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras in the same no-nonsense fashion as we do kids from Mexico.
Brown tried to inject questions about mercy and compassion. Hodgson replied who really should get our compassion is Christians and Yazidis from Iraq, who face actual extermination by ISIS. His further point, the U.S. cannot take in everyone in the world whose life circumstances are hard, and shouldn't try.
Asked by Brown about gang violence in the three countries, Hodgson replied those violent conditions have existed for several years but the flood of kids happened after our hapless President announced they probably could stay if they got here. Hodgson's point: the kids are coming because they were encouraged by Obama, not because things suddenly got worse in their country, which didn't happen.
I invite you to go to the PBS News Hour website and view the interview in its entirety. Sheriff Hodgson hits a home run and has a political future.
