As someone who hears the word ‘deport’ or some variation of it on a daily basis, I don’t get too excited when someone says that someone else should be deported. In fact, it induces yawns. Just because you might want a fellow to be deported (the correct term of art is ‘removed’) does not mean that they should be, will be or even can be. For example, the Boston Globe recently did a profoundly troubling expose about criminal aliens who cannot be deported from the United States even though they have committed horrific crimes simply because their own countries of origin will not take them back (no big surprise there…)
But it’s not too often that I get to hear the word ‘deport’ in the same sentence as ‘Big CNN journalist.’ More specifically, it’s the rare moment when someone with the high profile of a Piers Morgan gets people ready and willing to ship him back to the mother country. In his case-and ours, that would be the Mother of All Countries, Great Britain.
Morgan is a subject of Good Queen Bess, as anyone who listens to him speak for thirty seconds already knows. To my knowledge, he has neither applied for nor obtained a US passport. This means that he could be kicked out on his arse if Uncle Sam wished to do the kicking. But there would have to be a pretty good reason to do so.
Personally, while I find him immensely obnoxious, I do not think that calling for the abolition of the Second Amendment is a deportable offense. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's not. When referring to the index in the Bill of Rights, you generally trip over the First Amendment before you make it to the Second. They are equally important, and equally beloved by their supporters. And the one does not cancel the other out. Therefore, while I think that Morgan has gone off the hysterical cliff with his ravings about guns and babies and the evil men in the NRA, it should not be enough to get him shown to the border. Or wherever.
Just in case, though, I’m sending him my business card