President George W. Bush, in China attending the Olympic Games, responded promptly to Russia's invasion of Georgia with the caveat that "territorial integrity must be respected." We're still waiting to hear the Bush administration's response to this month's invasion of Arizona's territorial integrity by the Mexican military.

More than 40 times this year, the Mexican military has crossed the U.S.-Mexico border. The Mexicans even held a U.S. border guard at gunpoint.

How long are we going to put up with Mexican impudence and federal neglect of duty? One of the most emphatic duties set forth in the U.S. Constitution is that the federal government "shall protect each of them (every State) against invasion."

Some pretend there is a "misunderstanding" about exactly where the border is. But border guards say there is a barbed-wire fence at the point where the Mexican military entered the United States.

Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., immediately pointed out that if the Bush administration had built the double fence Congress had ordered, the Mexican vehicles would not have been able to invade U.S. territory. The open-borders crowd claims that a fence is useless because people can easily climb it, but a Mexican army truck can't do that.

Nor can Mexican vans loaded with illegal drugs climb a fence. All the talk we hear about our "war on drugs" is totally hypocritical so long as no fence is built to keep out the drug-laden trucks.

It's not just Mexican military vehicles that are invading our space. Again this month we read about an SUV packed with illegal immigrants that evaded detection by our Border Patrol and then rolled over on a highway southeast of Phoenix, killing nine people and injuring the other 10 on board.

They were crammed into two bucket seats in front and three seats in the back of a speeding Chevrolet Suburban. A border patrol spokesman commented, "The smuggler doesn't care if their cargo lives or dies" because he's already been paid.

But we care about the law, about highway safety, and about the cost. Ten people with critical injuries, who had no right to be here, are now being treated in Arizona hospitals at U.S. taxpayer expense. Continued...