The Minuteman Project is already working.

The mother of all neighborhood watch programs, as Michelle Malkin has

called it, doesn’t even start til tomorrow with its month-long effort to

assist the Border Patrol in southeast Arizona. But in anticipation, the

Border Patrol has launched a new billboard campaign urging

the public to report alien and drug smugglers. Of course, the main goal is

to draw attention to a broken border, which they’ve already done, with

hundreds of news stories, discussion in the blogosphere, and a scheduled visit from Rep.

Tom Tancredo.

It’s unfortunate that citizens have to shame their government into action

on immigration, but it’s not new; in 1990, hundreds of people in San Diego,

led by Border Patrol widow Muriel Watson, line up their cars at the border

and turned on the headlights, in what was called Light Up the Border. Mrs.

Watson’s idea was denounced by the usual suspects but resulted in political

change that has made that part of the border, at least, less anarchic.

The Minutemen have also been denounced by the usual suspects (which now, I

am ashamed to say, include the President of the United States) — it

remains to be seen what its political outcome will be.