"Comprehensive" immigration reform and border control.

Within the last week, we heard U.S. Sen. John McCain on talk radio with Laura Ingraham. He reiterated the teeth grinding mantra of our need to have "comprehensive" immigration reform.

This really frosts Colonel Bunny, as nowhere else in life do problem solvers descend into a state of bewildered paralysis at the thought of all their other existing problems when faced with simple tasks.

The knee jerk reiteration of this mindless precondition by Mr. McCain and by President Bush, among others, is akin to saying that we can't make a decision about allowing for more oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico until we solve the problem of getting power from the sun, the moon, the wind, the atom, rocks, and sullen Muslims, not to mention solving the problems of refinery underconstruction and Chinese investment in American oil companies.

Does Mom condition the preparation of the evening meal on her children's successfully gaining admission to Harvard? Getting a good education for one's children is as much a part of one's parenting responsibilities as providing sustenance for their bodies, right?

Of course, what these political leaders really favor is the "y'all come" school of immigration policy making. What they really mean when they say "comprehensive" is "simultaneous" so that the inconvenient issue of closing the border can be finessed (read, tide of illegals flowing across the border can continue) while they "debate" straightforward issues such as (1) how craven we can be in rewarding previous law breakers and (2) whether suckling anchor babes should (a) be snatched from the breasts of their desperatemotherseekingreleasefromalifeofpovertyanddespair and cast into for-profit orphanages run by Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay and Karl Rove or (b) impaled on stakes south of Tucson.

These kinds of issues can be resolved in no time by people of good will and in no time at all we'll have hundreds -- hundreds -- of National Guardsmen down on the border drafting memos and warming their hands by the fire. The line for visas at the Mexico City embassy will soon stretch for miles.

Mr. McCain and Mr. Bush act as though everyone knows that Americans yearn not to close the borders unless and until there is first a clear resolution of the immigration status of Jesus Gonzalez, an illegal immigrant now residing with his family in Winnetka, Ill.

The Colonel doesn't know that at all.

No he doesn't.