The Hightower Report

Great news for you lovers of Wild West, shoot-'em-up, pulp-fiction tales: Rick "Rootie-Toot-Toot" Perry is making a one-man stand on the Texas-Mexico border!

A political stand, that is. He's been tongue-lashing Obama for not doing enough to seal the border by dispatching a human line of armed National Guard troops to protect America from ... well, from what? Children, that's what. Nearly 60,000 terrorized, impoverished, and traumatized little ones have fled their hellish existences in Central America – where rape, murder, conscription into drug cartels, and hopeless poverty is their future – trekking all the way to the U.S. for a chance at something better.

No way, shouts Sheriff Perry. This guy routinely flaunts his Christianity for political purposes, but he seems to have forgotten that Jesus said: "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them." Instead, the presidential wannabe bellows for their immediate deportation, claiming they'll commit crimes, bring diseases, and burden taxpayers with welfare costs.

Burden taxpayers? Perry's "Grand Stand on the Border" will cost taxpayers about $12 million a month to cover the state police and 1,000 National Guard troops he has deployed to the border. It's a political stunt cynically exploiting children trying to escape unspeakable violence and poverty. But it's not his money, so what the hell?

It is, however, his morality. He's so morally stunted that he's willing to militarize a humanitarian crisis and summarily send children back to their deaths. But it's not their future that concerns Perry. Rather, this whole show is about his own political future, for he's playing to the fear and loathing of Tea Party extremists who'll dominate the upcoming Repub­lic­an presidential primaries.

Perry is not just callously ambitious, he's disgusting.