The latest crime trend in Mexico City is “express kidnapping” in which a person is held for a couple hours and forced to hand over their bank debit card and pin number. The victim is often snatched when innocently taking a cab [Mexico City style applied economics 101, Reuters 8/31/06].

FYI, Mexico ranks #2 in the world for kidnapping.

“I’m really sorry. This is my job,” the man said, wiping his fingerprints from my debit card.

He slipped it back to me under a table in a crowded downtown restaurant where a Mexican friend and I had been held hostage for a half an hour that felt like two days. [...]

Express kidnappings have become so common in Mexico that taking a street taxi — which thieves often use to capture their victims — is akin to playing Russian roulette. Many end in violence and sometimes death.

It’s this failing state, crumbling from crime and corruption, that Presidente Bush wants to join with America in the shotgun marriage from hell, aka the North American Union.

An Anglo Lawyer in Texas writes, in response to my previous item:

I would like to recommend that you read The Texas Rangersby Walter Prescott Webb which he wrote in 1938 while some of the Rangers who were active in the fight against Mexican raiders were still alive.

I have been reading this book lately and I now realize this border stuff is nothing new. The inaction of the Feds is nothing new.

In the 1800’s and 1900’s, the Mexicans were coming across to raid, murder and pillage. They were supported by the Mexican military. They were also supported by some of the Mexicans on this side of the Rio Grande.

Reconquista was alive then and it’s alive now.

What you say about the Spanish-surnamed city officials in Laredo is nothing new. For example,it is rare for the top lawfirms in Texas to send Anglo (or Scots-Irish descendant) lawyers to Laredo or the Valley for trial–unless they speak fluent Spanish. Courtroom lore is rife with examples of judges allowing everyone in the courtroom to speak Spanish in those courtrooms to the disadvantage of the American non-Spanish speakers. I have always had a Spanish-speaking lawyer lined up to help me with clients in South Texas and Laredo because of this.

A review of history will again prove that there is truly nothing new under the sun.