From the department of the ridiculous and sublime, we are now at the point in this country where fishing has become a national security matter.

That’s right. Going fishing? If so, better pack your passport if you’re a fisherman venturing off the shores of Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York. The Department of Homeland Security’s never ending war on terrorism now extends to keeping a more watchful eye on those ever dangerous sportsmen who enjoy fishing on Lake Erie and the other Great Lakes. You never know when one of those fishermen might be packing a weapon of mass destruction along with a tackle box of plastic lures.

I wish I was kidding, but I’m not. Page 1, the March 27 issue of USA Today, reports that beginning in April, Homeland Security will require U.S. citizens who enjoy the fishing life on Lake Erie to bring either a passport or two other IDs if they plan to cross the lake’s invisible watery border line with neighboring Canada. Then, when the fishermen get back to shore on the U.S. side, they will have to drive to a local governmental reporting station and pose for pictures, so Customs officers can get a look at them via videophone connection.

As Homeland Security Secretary, the always personable Michael Chertoff likes to say, they’re just there to enforce the law. They may not like the laws, but it’s not their job to like or dislike, be nice guys or mean guys, use common sense or no common sense. Their job, folks, is to enforce the law. Border security is border security, sorry, but you northern fishermen will have to adhere to the same sort of sillyness as us southerners who now need stepped-up security credentials just to cross over and have lunch in Matamoros.

“How does this secure our country?” asks Rick Ungar, a retired Ohio police chief and owner of a charter fishing service who takes sportsmen out over the waters of Lake Erie. “I’m not insensitive to law enforcement issues, but these are fishermen, for God’s sake.”

It’s interesting to read how folks in northern climes are chafing at dealing with the sort of hassles and federal law enforcement inspections that we southern border people have long dealt with. Do you think New Yorkers or Ohioans would enjoy sitting in long traffic lines at border check points everytime they wanted to drive into the interior U.S., and having to roll down their car windows while Sparky the German shephard looks at you suspiciously and his Border Patrol agent/handler asks the inevitable: “U.S. citizens?”

U.S. senators from places like Vermont are  now railing against excessive security regulations, (in wake of 9/11 and subsequent immigration hysteria from right-leaning Republicans), like southern border congressmen from Texas. Get use to it guys, and really, Chertoff and his guys are just doing their jobs.

In reference to keeping an eagle eye watch on those dangerous Great Lakes fishermen, here is what one of Chertoff’s flacks had to say in USA Today.

“Our concerns are anything from terrorists and terrorist weapons to drugs and undocumented aliens,” said one Brett Sturgeon, (isn’t that the name of a fish?), a spokesman for Customs and Border Protection.

Just to make sure all of those would-be terrorist fishermen get any ideas, CP&B will requring the following:

Fishing service operators along the Great Lakes will have to fax in passengers’ personal information, you know, name, DOB, government ID number to the local CP&B office an hour before they leave shore. Then, said fishermen/passengers will need to carry a passport or govt ID and a proof-of-citizenship document. And when they’re done, these would-be terrorists of leisure will need to troop down to a local border protection office so the feds can eyeball them via videophone.

“It’s a waste of taxpayers’ money,” said Jim Bonner, in the USA Today article. Bonner, who has run and owned a fishing charter business on Lake Erie for 25 years goes on to say, “It’s a shame. It’s just open water.”

Alas, open water, open lands, why, we can’t have open borders, Mr. Bonner, so if your fishermen drift over to Canadian waters, ni modo, as we southern border folk say, you have to deal with The Man, or maybe The Dog. We feel for our northern friends and fellow Americans. But if we’re going to have deal with a 20-foot metal pipe fence right behind the outfield fence at the UTB-TSC baseball field, the lest y’all can do is have your fishermen smile and say `hi’ to the feds via videophone. Maybe they can hold up their lines of fish and tell real fish stories.

It’s all part of securing our borders and being good `Mericans.

- Joaquin C. Tijerina, Official Chisme Blogger y Columinsta

There’s a picture in the March 25 issue of the New York Times  of staff Sgt. Juan Campos of McAllen. It’s a photo taken at the McAllen airport as Campos embarked on another trip to Iraq in serving his latest leg of duty overseas.

Campos’ 9-year-old stepson, Andre, is shown wearing the sergeant’s military cap with the three bars signifying his rank in the U.S. Army. His right arm around his stepson and his left arm holding his wife, Jamie, Campos has a rueful smile, and for good reason.

At the airport, Jamie Campos said she lost her usual steely resolove to stay strong in seeing her husband leave yet again.

“I cried and I have never ever cried before,” Ms. Campos told The Times. “It was just really, really weird. He knew and I kind of knew. It felt different. We both knew it was the last goodbye.”

Sadly, that prediction came true. On June 1, 2007, Sgt. Campos died at a San Antonio hospital from injuries received while serving his country in Iraq. At this, the five year anniversary of the wars in Iraq and Afganistan, it’s a sad marker to note that the Rio Grande Valley has lost 28 of its sons to these wars, with the 28th coming just this week with the loss of Spc. Joe Rubio of Mission. Rubio’s was one of four soldiers killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq on Sunday, bringing the U.S. death toll in Iraq to an even 4,000.

Each name, every soldier, belonged to a family, had a story to tell, and many sent dispatches home of the fears and hopes they face daily in Iraq.

“I don’t know how much more of this place i (sic) can take,” Campos wrote to his wife in a Dec. 12, 2006 letter published in The Times.  “i try to be hard and brave for my guys but i dont know how long i can keep that up you know.”

Campos was part of the surge to Iraq that has been much reported and analyzed. The sergeant and his men were sent deep into insurgent neighborhoods, The Times reported, where they patrolled on foot, cleared houses, and mingled with Iraqis. Just yesterday, (Monday), President Bush said all those who have died in this war did not die in vain, and that their sacrifices will eventually help to build a lasting peace. Let’s hope so.

It’s clear from his letters that Sgt. Campos, one of our own, a young man from McAllen, always knew he was in danger, but pressed on in the traditions of the finest service given by young men and women to their country.

“The life of an infantryman is never safe..how do I know, well I live it every day,” Campos wrote in his MySpace blog, as published in The Times. “I for one would like to make it home to my family one day. Pray for us and keep us in your thoughts…for an infantryman’s life is never safe.”

For every analysis on whether the surge is working, or which military and political strategies should be taken, we should always remember there are real people behind the numbers. There are young men like Juan Campos, who wrote their last goodbyes.

A touchstone of my South Texas youth was the church, as it is the case for many in this region of often deep faith.

But in my case it wasn’t the Catholic Church. I grew up Baptist, from the time I was about five to 15, a faithful Baptist was I, tagging along with my Mom and brothers to Sunday school and listening to the good reverend lay down the gospel every week. In the style and culture of where I grew up, the church I attended reflected my faith at that point, and my community as well.

My church was the Primera Iglesia Bautista,  a Rio Grande Valley church where the kids spoke mostly in English and all of the adults spoke in Spanish. Sunday school for the youth was delivered in English. The Rev’s weekly sermon was all Spanish, all of the time, no translations needed.  The kids understood every word of it while peeking glances at the wall clock, hoping the Rev. Rodriguez could finish in time before the Cowboys kicked off.

The church’s historical roots came a generation or two before mine when Mexican-American community leaders of their faith knew they needed their own church for their own people. Anglo Baptists had their church. The Mexican-Americans needed one of their own, knowing while the Anglos of that day wouldn’t exactly turn them away, they wouldn’t exactly welcome them either.  

So the Primeria Iglesia Bautistas of their day started up, mostly in the first half of the 20th Century as the Valley became a Mexican-American beacon for immigrants from the south and north and west, (with my mother’s family coming here right after World War II to escape the harshness of West Texas cultural views, among other things).

 These churches became ingrained in our communities, in our neighborhoods, in our families. As a kid, I looked at the elders of my little Baptist church as surrogate mothers, fathers and grandparents. My youthful peers and I carried absolute respect for them, whether it was la senora Perez or el hermano Ramos, they looked out for us, gave us a pat on the head or a warm embrace. It was unthinkable to show any grain of disrespect to them.

Same went for the preacher. I recall him being on the young side for having such responsiblities and bringing spirtual guidance over adults that were often a generation older than he was, but he made up for it in firmness and certitude. The Rev. Rodriguez could bring it on the pulpit. Often starting in gentle tones, his sermons would rise to a crescendo with an open Bible to his hand, yelling out the gospel and lashing out at sinners. There were more than a few times when I was sure his fierce eyes had caught mine, looking at the clock in seeing how close we were getting to the Cowboy game. Talk about serious guilt trips.

On more than a few occasions, the reverend’s words of passion would jolt me. It was fire and damnation stuff, the God is angry type of sermons that would make a kid wonder if he was headed for the fires of hell later in the week. I would bring this up to my mother now and then, wondering if maybe the preacher was laying it on too thick.

“That’s his job,” she would say. “He’s suppose to say those things to make us think.”

I thought back to my preacher with the recent flap about Barack Obama’s pastor. My Baptist pastor never lashed out at America the way Obama’s rev did, as has been shown endlessly on Fox News, so they can remind all of their conservative viewers just how scary it would be to have a black president. But my guy did say some pretty strong stuff in his own right. And in the hallways and corridors of my church, I didn’t always over hear the nicest of things from adults about the Anglos across town who were praising Jesus in a bigger and nicer church.

But we didn’t quit the church - and didn’t quit the preacher either. Like African-American churches, my iglesia bautista  served its purpose, bounding together faith with community, spirtuality with the culture of our families. Barack Obama wouldn’t disown his pastor or his church even if he vehemently disagreed with some of the things he heard. Same goes here. I would never disown the church of my youth or the reverend who would thunder things that to this day I find to be over the top. But it was my church, my community, my little slice of America.

“We’ve had pastors I haven’t agreed with, but I didn’t stop going to church,” said Deborah Parish, 57, of Fayetteville, N.C., in an interview with NBC after the Obama-pastor flap broke. “I’m not going for the pastor. I’m going for the soul.”

The Rev. Rodriguez looked out for my soul, and as he would say, condemn the sin and love the sinner.

Joaquin Tijerina, Official Chisme Blogger

Scattershooting while wondering what happened, after all, to the Brownsville sports complex?

I borrow generously in using the `scattershoooting’ line from Blackie Sherrod, a legendary Dallas sports columnist, who would often bring up an athlete from the distant past in wondering whatever had happened to said sports figure of long ago.

Same goes with the sports complex. You probably have to search back in the old memory backs to recall the sports complex. `Member? With a good degree of fanfare, city officials, especially city Commissioner Ricardo Longoria, hailed the location of where the complex would be built, believing somehow that a site which is  practically in Rancho Viejo would be the ideal spot. With today’s gas prices, it’ll cost a couple of Whatburgers, at least, to get way out on Merryman Road, where the long-awaited sports complex is supposedly going to be built.

I say supposedly because nothing appears to be happening out on Merryman when it comes to the sports complex. After getting a road built into the site, it’s all quiet on the far north Brownsville sports front, with jack rabbits offering more action than actual construction. What pray tell, as the Brits would say, is the holdup?

The money for the project was secured long, long ago, (two mayors ago), when voters approved dedicating a small portion of local sales tax revenues for the constructon of a fab sports complex. It would be replete with soccer fields, baseball fields, basketball courts, diamonds for little miss kickball action, and all sorts of other fine athletic endeavors to fill the lungs of our young people with the thrill of sports and competition. There was so much  money to be had, in fact, that wise heads at City Hall decided to hire an executive director to oversee development of the sports complex and related activities. To make sure a good job would be had, the wise heads coughed up a hefty salary to pay this person to make sure the dirt would fly.

And now, two presidential elections later, Brownsville is still waiting for the thing to get built. Meanwhile, in nearby Harlingen, just months after that city announced plans to build a sprawling soccer complex the by airport, that thing is going up faster than a carnvial getting ready for Charro Days. While Brownsville fiddles, Harlingen builds. Kids in Harlingen will be kicking around soccer balls before Brownsville clears the jack rabbits from the big, empty field by Merryman Road.

I checked with some of the hard-working reporter types in the local newsroom to ask what gives with the Bro-ville sports complex getting nowhere. Don’t know, they told me, saying it’s tough to get information out of City Hall these days when it comes to the sports complex to be built 15 miles north of town. Maybe it’s a design thing. Maybe it’s taking five years to get all of the bids in. Maybe it’s because Harlingen City Hall does a better job of making the trains run on time. Maybe they need to pay the executive director more money to get the project going.

Who knows. And then last week, Mayor Pat announces his latest plan of adventure, this one to sell a portion of the city-owned country club/golf course, and use part of the proceeds to buy land adjacent to the sports complex that has never been built. Mayor Pat sees a new 18-hole golf course by the sports complex that has never been built, saying it could all be a one-stop sports center.

How exciting. On the flip side: Brownsville may get another bridge before it gets the sports complex built. Oh well, there will be plenty of tournaments to be had at Harlingen’s new soccer/sports complex, and it’s not very far at all from Merryman Road.

We’re declaring Election Day a torta-free zone in Chisme Country.

That’s not to be confused with Clinton Country as declared repeatedly in recent weeks by the Clintonistas of South Texas. Hill and Bill pack plenty of popularity in the Rio Grande Valley, and my gosh it has been like Little Rock of the 1980s around here lately with the whole Clinton clan coming a calling, even daughter Chelsea joining Mom and Dad with Valley visits leading up to today’s primary.

The former Arkansas first family continued their up close and personal South Texas tour on Monday with Big Bill visiting Brownsville, McAllen, Laredo, and who knows where else. Maybe he stopped in for barbecue in Robstown. Hey, nice touch for the former president to do his stump speech at Dean Porter Park while standing on the bed of a Ford pickup. Very Texan, very LBJ-ish, and I’m guessing Big Bill was wearing cowboy boots to clinch the Lone Star effect.

We’ve gone really upscale in our politics lately, no? I mean, usually if it’s early March and election time our political diet is relegated to chewing over the latest Gilberto Hinojosa comments on why he hates Carlos Cascos so much. But this year? Hey, one day you could be chowing down with Barack at Sombrero Festival where Obama enjoyed the above-mentioned sandwich variety we’re not mentioning today. And then a couple of days later, just down the block from Washington Park where a possible future prez was discovering the T-sandwich, there was a former prez channeling LBJ at Dean Porter by a resaca.

I think the take away from all of this political hub-bub is that if Hillary somehow beats the long odds and ultimately snatches the Dem’s presidential nomination from Barack, she owes us. Big time. If not for the undying love y carino of RGV and South Texas types, Hillary would have no shot at carrying Texas. A win in this state is a must for Hillary. Without it, she will likely have to hang up her pant suits on an `08 presidential bid. The good  news for the Clintonistas is that Hill & Bill’s numbers in Ohio are on the uptick, and the numbers over the weekend in Texas look to be breaking in Billary’s favor.

Barack’s chilling with the locals at Sombrero Festival was cute and all, but a Houston Chronicle released over the weekend shows Hillary is still drawing about 67 percent support in South Texas. Man, raza, are y’all loyal or what? Monica-gate, lying to the country about it, getting impeached, y que? Bill was the greatest president, ever, dude! Hillary was the first lady, she’s smart, Bill will help her, she knows where the Valley is since she’s come down here to raise bukos of cash at $5 million mansions in north McAllen. You go Hill!

How important is that nearly 70 percent support in South Texas? The Chronicle polls shows Obama beating Clinton, the Hillary model, by around 60-40 in Houston and Dallas. Can you imagine the Clinton carnage if the RGV and So Tex weren’t so sweet on Bill y Hill? We won’t get into all of that boring stuff about how even if Hillary gets more primary votes than Barack in Texas he might still get more delegates than her because this state also does the caucus thing, and Obama is better organized for those meetings. Whatever.

 All I know is that if Hillary pulls this thing off, and has Bill in the corner office helping her run the country, we better get rewarded. Words are nice, Hill, but we’re in the solutions business, baby. Pick up that red phone. I’m talking a veteran’s hospital. Make it happen, Hillary, put those 35 years of experience to work, girl. I’m talking tearing down the border fence, if it’s up. We’ll call you at 3 a.m., if you want President Hillary, with this message: Tear down this wall, Mr. Chertoff! And the whole NAFTA-bashing thing. Lose it, forget it, start caring as much about us as the Rust Belt, labor union types the Dems always go ga-ga over. Feel our pain, too, Hill and Bill!

Enough of the emotions, guys, for today is the day we go out and vote to save the Clinton legacy just like we’re expected to, just like the polls say. And that funny story today about ex-Brownsville mayors, (Eddie, Nacho y Blanca), endorsing Obama? Oh yea, wow, that’s a game changer around here. And speaking of funny, hey George Lopez, the funnyman who is touting Obama, sorry bro, on election day we’re going to `member Hillary.

 Hillary is the dama that will beat Obama. It starts here, today, because after all, Latinos love name brands. We keep buying Kenmore washers at Sears and we keep voting for the Clintons. We got one more Clinton to go. Chelsea in 2020!

Joaquin Tijerina, Official Chisme Blogger Y Columnista

Hey, I said to my 80-something old mother, did you hear Barack Obama dropped in on Sombrero Festival, unannounced and mingled with the locals for half an hour?

“Pues si,” my mother said rather cooly, “Obama no conoce la gente Mexicana muy bien.”

But he sure has been trying, hasn’t he? The unsaid assumption in my mother’s simple statement is that Obama’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, knows South Texas and Latinos as well as her Senate constituents in upstate New York. I’m not buying that one, or the notion that because Clinton has come here plenty for lucrative fundraisers in ritzy north McAllen means she has a great personal connection with Rio Grande Valley locals.

Both candidates, of course, have self-serving reasons for their newfound interest in South Texas. The state’s primary is on tap for tomorrow, March 4, and Obama can either close out the Dem nomination by winning here and/or in Ohio, or Clinton can save her struggling presidential bid by doing the same.

In addition to each candidate visiting the Valley twice in recent weeks, and sending high-profile surrogates ranging from Hill’s hub, Bill, to JFK’s daughter, Carolina, (for Obama), we’ve witnessed the media blitz of each campaign. Both campaigns are flushed with cash, so we’ve seen more Obama and Clinton TV ads than those from local candidates. And it’s just not the generic national ads running everywhere. One Obama radio ad aired locally talks about the need for a veterans’ hospital in the Valley, the decades-long wish of many in our area.

If nothing else, all of the attention has been nice. Just from an entertainment standpoint, Obama’s impromptu drop-in at Sombrero Festival was quite remarkable. After speaking at a private gathering of religious leaders at UT-Brownsville, Obama was apparently driven around town some before coming to Washington Park in the heart of Brownsville, where the festival was being held.

Out pops the Dem presidential frontrunner for a 30-minute visit with the locals, munching on a torta and signing autographs and taking photos with young and old. It wasn’t a planned event. The only local media there was a contigent from The Brownsville Herald, which happened to be tailing Obama’s mini-caravan. So, given the scant media there, Obama wasn’t trying to milk media coverage by dropping in on the festival. Maybe he just felt like taking a brief break from the rigors of an intense campaign.

And so, a prez candidate who just a few days before was fending off Hillary barbs at a high-stakes debate in Cleveland, was now munching on a torta and shaking hands with pretty little Brownsville girls at Somberero Festival. What made the festival visit even more remarkable was that just days earlier the New York Times  had published a page 1 story which detailed concerns about Obama’s personal safety. The story reported that Obama is already getting presidential-level Secret Service protection because of safety concerns, and now here he was with nothing between him and a Sombrero Festival torta.

A half-hour visit may not do much to dent the Clinton name brand in South Texas, but still, it was a nice gesture on Obama’s part. Maybe my dear Mom is right in saying Obama doesn’t know Hispanics in Texas very well, but one poll out over the weekend, (Survey USA), shows Clinton’s lead among Texas Hispanics has shrunk from a 33 percent edge a week ago to a current 13 percent gap.

The Chisme guess is that Obama wins Texas, where his numbers have been climbing, but Clinton holds on to prevail in Ohio. A split decision means the race will go on, getting grubbier by the day and week because the Clintons won’t give up, no matter what.

But, alas, for at least half an hour Obama got a taste of Brownsville and a torta stuffed with cabbage and roast beef, with a sprinkling of salsa.

“It’s good,” Obama said taking a bite out of a sandwich prepared by a 17-year-old Pace High School student, who said he was shaking while preparing a torta for the palate of a man who might be this country’s next president.

Yes, senator, it’s good, it’s all good.