Denny Hastert did it.

Tonight's "Law & Order" focused on the Minutemen and pulled no punches. One need only look at the Google results (the episode was broadcast previously) to get a whiff of the indignation from the white, toothless, scared fat-asses who consider murdering Mexicans their patriotic duty.

And not five minutes later, I run across this story:

Marijuana smuggler killed by gunfire was Mexican, 23

A Mexican man who was killed while smuggling marijuana into the country Friday has been identified as a 23-year-old from Choix, Sinaloa.

Rosario Cuberto Corrales-Vega was shot to death in the desert somewhere between Arivaca and Amado while walking with several others carrying marijuana in backpacks, said Deputy Dawn Barkman, a Pima County Sheriff's Department spokeswoman.

The group was walking along when they heard someone yell "stop" in English, she said. Gunfire followed.

Corrales-Vega was struck and a friend of his helped him over to a roadway, where they flagged down a sport utility vehicle, Barkman said.

The driver of the SUV dropped the men off at Kino Hospital, where Corrales-Vega was pronounced dead a short time later, she said.

The Pima County Sheriff's Department has not been able to determine where the slaying occurred and asks that the driver of the SUV come forward for questioning.

Anyone with information is asked to call 911 or 88-CRIME, the anonymous tip line of the Pima County Attorney's Office.

The cops are all over it. Sure, they are.


Meanwhile, the RepubliFascii are wailing on this issue like Tom Sizemore on Heidi Fleiss. From the Chicago Tribune:

Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) made a decision last fall to use "illegal immigration" as the Republican Party's next emotionally charged wedge issue. The political calculation is that the resentment and latent racism felt toward our Mexican neighbors can be demagogued for political advantage this year, dividing the Democrats and keeping the House in Republican hands.

Such good old-fashioned "unity" the Grand Ole Pricks are always promoting.

From the same previously linked article:

However, in what appears to be an entirely predictable example of the law of unintended consequences, the immigrant communities in general and the Mexican community in particular have declined to allow themselves to be passive punching bags.

There are few communities in the U.S. that work harder at lower pay and in worse conditions than the Mexican community. Mexicans do this with few complaints in exchange for the promise that their children might live better lives. But the community does not appreciate having its hard work denigrated by being called "criminals" or "terrorists." Signs on Friday said it all: "We are America."

The last big spasm of immigrant bashing was in California during the mid-1990s by then-Republican Gov. Pete Wilson and Proposition 187. Mexican immigrants responded by first marching and then becoming American citizens and voting Democratic in record numbers.

Hastert's short-sighted strategy has gored the Republican business community that understands our nation's labor needs and energized a national Roman Catholic immigrant-justice campaign so muscular that last week Cardinal Roger Mahoney of Los Angeles threatened massive civil disobedience. The anti-immigrant demagoguery also launched an unprecedented national political mobilization by the Mexican and immigrant community. Oops!

A little-noted fact about the 2004 presidential election was that socially conservative immigrant Latinos were 40 percent more likely to vote for President Bush than U.S.-born Latinos. Now Bush's and Karl Rove's carefully crafted and successful Hispanic outreach strategy is shredded lettuce.

Like the darkening pigment of America, that last paragraph is pure gold.