With regard to the issue of President Bush trying to strong-arm Texas courts in the Medellin illegal-alien murder-rape case (which Andy throughly examines in Human Events today): Georgia is planning a novel approach to the issue of alerting foreign nationals under arrest of their right to contact their consulates, as required by Article 36 of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. I don’t know the state of implementation (or whether it would apply only to state troopers or also to local cops), but they want to avoid problems similar to the Medellin case by asking each person arrested whether he’s an American citizen, then verify the information. Of course, the “transnational progressives” so outraged by the Medellin case will go bonkers over this, because it will expose those foreigners who are here illegally. My prediction: open borders are even more important to the post-Americans than opposition to the death penalty, so they’ll call for an end to this practice, even if it means more executions. As I wrote a couple years back, “open immigration has become an immutable value of the Left. There is no policy the liberal establishment won’t abandon, no election it won’t forfeit, no constituency it won’t sacrifice to ensure the survival and success of open borders.”