One of my friends (yes, I have some, even in liberal Aspen) is a mountaineering guide.

He communicates concepts of climbing and safety to people who have never been in the mountains. He has a spatial ability to see the terrain in his mind’s eye. He provides emergency medical treatment for injuries ranging from foot blisters to pulmonary edema. He’s smart, articulate and well-read.

He never went to college.

I have another acquaintance who owns a concrete company. His idea of a “concrete solution” is something that is poured out of a cement truck and into a set of forms. And I don’t mean the printed kind.

He figures out the cost of a project. He lines up and manages the necessary staffing. He knows both how low he must bid and how high he might. He does well and, like my mountaineering guide friend, in his spare time he also does good.

He too never got a college degree.

Meanwhile, Continue reading →

Here in Aspen, the Democrat sheriff for the county recently announced that he doesn’t like a set of federal laws duly enacted over the course of decades by overwhelming bipartisan majorities in Congress and signed by both Democrat and Republican presidents.

Therefore, he boasts, he won’t cooperate with the enforcement of those laws.

The laws at issue, of course, are the immigration laws.

Our local sheriff is not the first political opportunist to defy the nation’s laws while entrusted with enforcing them. Back in the 1960s, there was another Democrat law enforcement official who refused to enforce federal law. The laws at issue then were the new civil rights laws, and the Democrat at issue was the commissioner of public safety for Birmingham, Alabama.

His name was Theophilus Eugene Connor, better known as “Bull Connor.” He’s now buried in Birmingham, but still lives in infamy. Continue reading →