The Arizona governor, seemingly determined to repel every last tourist dollar from her pariah state, has sounded a new alarm about border violence. “Our law enforcement agencies have found bodies in the desert either buried or just lying out there that have been beheaded,” she announced on local television.

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“The Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office was notified and they took possession of the head on that same date. We suspect that the head may have been placed along side the trail as a warning to other drug and alien traffickers using the trail.”

A spokesman for Rep. Bishop told me they had confirmed the details of the incident described by Lowell.

Curious, I contacted Lowell and asked him if he was willing to talk to Milbank. Here’s what Lowell said:

“I would be happy to talk to Dana Milbank and, in fact, I would like to invite him to a picnic. We could walk a mile or so up Peck Canyon from the Atascosa Ranch headquarters past where the body was found, which is being autopsied to the place where five (or more) innocent Mexicans (who claim they had broken only a few Federal laws) were fired on about two weeks ago by gentlemen in black camo shooting AK 47’s,” he said.

Lowell added that “there’s been one other shooting incident seven days ago in about the same place. We will supply the weenies and potato salad but Dana will have to walk about 200 yards ahead.” (via Fausta Wertz)

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Associated Press state and local wire, July 7, 2009 (purchased through Lexis-Nexis, emphasis mine):

(PHOENIX) State police, members of Phoenix police and federal immigration agents busted two suspected drop houses in west Phoenix rescuing 13 people and arresting 15 suspected smugglers.

Police began moving on one drop house Sunday after ransom demands were issued.

A woman said captors held her boyfriend since June 26th and threatened to beat and behead him if they weren’t paid a $3,000 ransom.

Police found the drop house and arrested seven suspected human smugglers Monday.  A second west Phoenix drop house found Monday led to 15 people.

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After decades of anti-pot campaigns, from Reefer Madness to zero tolerance, so many Americans choose to smoke marijuana that the Mexican cartels have become an international threat to law and order.

Instead of paying taxes on their vice, pot smokers are enriching thugs and murderers.

“People who smoke pot in the United States don’t think they are connected to the cartels,” Brown says. “Actually, they are very connected.”

American drug users help sharpen the knives that cartel henchmen use to behead their enemies and terrorize Mexican border towns.

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A shootout that left 21 people dead and six wounded on the road last week is the most gruesome sign that a relatively tranquil pocket of northern Mexico quickly is turning into a hotbed of drug-fueled violence on Arizona’s doorstep. The violence in recent months is grist for supporters of the state’s tough new law against illegal immigration. They are eager to portray the border as a lawless battlefield of smugglers both of drugs and humans.

Nogales, the main city in the region, which shares a border with the Arizona city of the same name, has had 131 murders so far this year, nearly surpassing 135 for all of 2009, according to a tally by the newspaper Diario de Sonora. That includes two heads found Thursday stuffed side-by-side between the bars of a cemetery fence.

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Tony Estrada, sheriff of Santa Cruz County, Arizona, said the killings were very troubling amid concerns that drug violence could spill over the border, but he believes Mexico’s drug traffickers don’t want to tangle with U.S. authorities.

“Their turf wars are on the Mexican side right now, and that’s where they’re concentrating all of their violence,” Estrada said. “And we’re hopeful that’s where it will stay.”

The U.S. State Department recently offered to compensate its employees in Nogales and other border cities who send family members out of the area because of concerns about rising drug violence.