I would like to send my thanks to our friend Jim Geraghty at National Review for pointing out something which I’m sure a lot of you have noticed and ruminated upon but really needed to be stated loudly in a public forum. There are definitely “two Americas” when it comes to the current White House administration and how they view crime. Much more to the point, this dichotomy is particularly evident when you consider how personally the White House, either directly or through the auspices of the Justice Department, chooses to involve themselves or take to the bully pulpit to lecture the country. By now you can probably guess what both Jim and I are talking about. Take a look at how loudly the President and the Attorney General respond when there is a shooting of a suspect by a police officer and contrast that with the stone wall of silence coming from those same sources when an illegal alien murders a citizen in cold blood. (From today’s Morning Jolt)

We have real divisions in this country. But there sure as heck are folks who enjoy pouring gasoline on the fire. Megyn Kelly pointed out that some acts of violence get enormous attention from this White House, while others don’t:

Kate [Steinle]’s murder has since exploded into a national debate on illegal immigrants, sanctuary cities, and crime. With the White House ducking the issue of its own acquiescence in these cities’ decision to flout the federal immigration laws which were duly enacted. When asked repeatedly this week to speak to this case, White House spokesman Josh Earnest declined to weigh in other than to refer folks to the Department of Homeland Security.

A stark contrast to what we saw after Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson. A man we know was attacking a police officer at the time of his death. His funeral saw three Obama officials in attendance, his death drew comments from President Obama personally and his administration also sent in the DOJ and 40 FBI agents dispatched to Missouri after Michael Brown was killed. Where is the swarm of agents in San Francisco?…

How many people would riot if no one ever called for riots? How many people would riot if no one sought to justify and excuse them?

The message from the White House was pretty clear after the Trayvon Martin shooting, Ferguson, and Baltimore: This is a legitimate reason for outrage, and we’re as outraged as you are. The silence from the White House indicates Katie Steinle’s murder is not a cause for outrage.

Jim is exactly right and we need some folks in Congress pointing this out loudly and repeatedly until we get some answers. How is it that the death of Katie Steinle is somehow unworthy of attention? It’s true that, sadly, far too many murders take place each and every week and each one can not be a cause for a national discussion, but there seems to be plenty of bandwidth for Barack Obama to fan the flames and provide veiled accusations whenever a (white) cop uses lethal force on a (minority) suspect. And yet when an illegal alien murders someone in cold blood the result is the sound of crickets chirping in the Rose Garden.

I’m also getting a little tired of the people like Tavis Smiley going on the Sunday shows (as he did this weekend) and insisting that crimes committed by “undocumented immigrants” (he should really switch to “Americans in waiting” like the rest of the Democrats) are so few as to be negligible and are only brought up in the immigration debate by racists. This is complete horse hockey.

Jim helpfully points us to the actual FBI figures released by General Accounting Office for 2011.

The number of criminal aliens in federal prisons in fiscal year 2010 was about 55,000, and the number of SCAAP criminal alien incarcerations in state prison systems and local jails was about 296,000 in fiscal year 2009 (the most recent data available), and the majority were from Mexico.

Here’s the good news in that report: “Of the nearly 3 million arrest offenses in our study population, we estimate that about 50 percent were related to immigration, drugs, or traffic violations.” The bad news is that other 50 percent. Out of the 2.8 million arrests in the dataset, the report estimates 213,047 arrests for assaults, 125,322 thefts, 120,810 cases of fraud, forgery, and counterfeiting; 115,045 burglaries, 69,929 sex offenses, 25,064 homicides, 14,788 kidnappings, and 2,005 arsons.

Can somebody do a quick bit of Common Core math for me and figure out the ratio between the number of questionable police shootings currently under loud, regular discussion and the roughly 675,000 major and predominantly violent crimes committed by illegal aliens, all of whom probably carry Google maps guiding them to the nearest sanctuary city? But let’s not talk about that, right? I suppose this is just another one of those inconvenient truths.