The MSM won’t say it, but President Obama just declared to a national audience that Republican want Mexicans who cross the border to be eaten by alligators. So much for the civility in D.C.

This same lie arose in 2007, from Michael Chertoff:

I understand that some people think it’s not tough enough. Maybe they want people thrown in jail for 10 years or they want people executed.

Chertoff was in an interview with MSDNC’s Richard Wolffe at the time, who of course, didn’t challenge his assertion that Republicans want illegal immigrants executed.

On a brighter note, I’m not sure President Obama fooled anyone with his speech yesterday.

The editors of the New York Times write: “A strong vow is made to move forward on immigration reform. But to make progress, he will have to do a lot more.”

MSDNC’s Luke Russert tweets:

#Obama blames Dream Act’s failure in Sen on #GOP. Remember, had Baucus, Hagan, Nelson, Pryor & Tester voted Yea, bill wld have passed in Dec

Jake Tapper fact-checks. Here’s an excerpt, but read the whole thing:

1) “They wanted a fence,” the president said. “Well, that fence is now basically complete.”
The president is referring to the fact that 649 miles of fencing have been completed out of 652 miles of fencing mandated by Congress. (Out of 1,969 miles of border with Mexico.) That is factually correct, according to a February 2011 study of the border by the Government Accountability Office.
But that standard ignores calls some on the border have made for the fence to be made more impenetrable. Some have called for “double-fencing”; only approximately 30 miles of fence are so reinforced, in San Diego, California and Yuma, Arizona.
More to the point, the border remains quite porous.
The Border Patrol, per the GAO study, has achieved “varying levels of operational control for 873 of the nearly 2,000 southwest border miles at the end of fiscal year 2010…GAO’s preliminary analysis of the 873 border miles under operational control in 2010 showed that about 129 miles (15 percent) were classified as ‘controlled’ and the remaining 85 percent were classified as ‘managed.’”

And from the editors of the Washington Post:

President Obama went to the border in El Paso on Tuesday and delivered a speech on immigration reform. He didn’t present a bill or issue any executive orders or set deadlines for action. Aides say his goal was to “create a pathway” and “a sense of urgency” to “move forward.” That is a start but not nearly enough.

Yesterday was a checkmark on the president’s bucket list of items to address before 2012 — nothing more.