Elvira Arellano, an illegal immigrant who had been given "sanctuary" at the Adalberto United Methodist Church in the Humboldt Park section of Chicago for a year slipped out the back door and headed to Los Angeles to participate in an immigration march. At the last minute, though, she bagged the march and holed up in Our Lady Queen of Angels Church (AKA Iglesia Nuestra Señora Reina de los Angeles and La Placita Church) – where she held several press conferences attended by reporters who almost universally refer to her as an "immigrant activist."

Arellano must have been disappointed that fewer than 500 demonstrators showed up to witness her martyrdom and no doubt decided to wait for a more high-profile event from which to be dragged off in manacles by jackbooted immigration agents. She’ll likely go back to Plan A, which is to travel to Washington, D.C. to pray and fast at the National Mall on Sept. 12 in hopes of pressuring Congress to enact immigration reform that will allow her to trade "sanctuary" for amnesty.

Arellano illegally entered WA in 1997 and was deported to Mexico soon after, only to sneak across the border again. She moved to IL in 2000, and began working at O‘Hare International Airport cleaning planes (using a fake Social Security number to get the job, of course).

Radio talk show host Mike Gallagher gives us his take on the Rev. Walter Coleman, the misguided – and limelight-seeking – pastor who sheltered her for a year:

Last year, Gail Montenegro, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spokesperson in Chicago, told The Washington Post that, "ICE has the authority to arrest anyone in violation of immigration law anywhere in the U.S" – even a church.

The Apostle Paul advised, "Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from G-d, and those that exist have been instituted by G-d. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what G-d has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment." [Romans 13:1 and 13:2]

Clearly, under both Caesar’s law and G-d’s law (second item), Rev. Coleman had no justification to aid and abet Arellano’s lawbreaking, and federal immigration officers were free to enter the church and arrest her at will.

So why didn’t they? Because Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff lacks the will.

According to the Chicago Tribune, "with worldwide publicity surrounding her case, officials have avoided the symbolism of raiding a church, referring anyone who asks about their intentions to a prepared statement that calls Arellano a fugitive and explains that all arrests are prioritized."

What does Chertoff mean by "prioritized?" This is what he told attendees at the at the Fourth Annual Border Security Conference last week at the University of Texas (El Paso):

Since we do not know who is coming into or leaving our country, and do not track – and therefore do not know - where they go once they’re inside our borders, how can we assume that they are all here "to work." How do we know whether a particular illegal alien isn’t here to further the reach of criminal enterprises, such as MS-13 or Mexican drug cartels – which have ties to Al-Qaeda?

The truth is, we have no idea who is "coming do harm" and cannot pursue them until after they have done harm."

Chicago Tribune metro columnist Eric Zorn argues that the government’s inaction validated "an idea that's unconstitutional and potentially dangerous - that she was somehow safe from the law inside the four walls of a church." He adds that the government "had their chance [to arrest her]. For whatever reason, they passed. Game over. She won. Move on."

But that’s not how Gallagher sees it:

Like the majority of Zorn’s readers, The Stiletto is in Gallagher’s camp: Better late than never. No federal, state or local statute enshrines the concept of "sanctuary" in a house of worship.

Arellano’s new "sanctuary" in LA is one of more than a dozen churches nationwide that have sheltered illegal immigrants who have been ordered to leave our country, reports the Chicago Tribune. Any illegal alien who pulls this stunt, and the cleric extending bogus "sanctuary" to him or her, ought to be arrested. And since flouting our laws and sheltering illegal aliens who have been ordered deported is a blatantly political act, these churches should lose their tax-exempt status.

This is the real world, not a Victor Hugo novel.

Editorial Note: Elvira Arellano was arrested Sunday evening, Eastern time. ICE released this statement: "Arellano, who was taken into custody without incident, is being processed for removal to Mexico based upon a deportation order originally issued by a federal immigration judge in 1997. Arresting and removing criminal aliens is one of ICE's top enforcement priorities and the agency will continue to pursue these cases vigorously." She has since been deported to Tijuana. Mexico.

Gifted Children Left Behind (Literally)

Time magazine writer John Cloud introduces us to Annalisee Brasil, a 14-year old who lives in Longview, TX, and "has the looks of a South American model," is a "gifted singer" and has an IQ "comfortably above 145, placing the girl in the top 0.1% of the population." No public school was willing to do what it took to educate her - even though the solution would have cost nothing:

Cloud notes that of the 62 million school-age kids in the U.S., roughly equal numbers have IQs above 145 and IQs below 55 (about 62,000 students in each group). "That's a small number, but they appear in every demographic, in every community." And yet American schools spend more 10 times as much on the retarded as on the gifted ($8 billion v. $800 million per year).

So not only public school systems aren’t allocating resources to educating our best and brightest, they are using gifted students as unpaid workers in place of hiring enough school aides to work with kids who need one-on-one attention.

When you have an educational system that utterly ignores the needs of gifted children, it’s not just their loss but ours. Notes Cloud; "Squandered potential is always unfortunate, but presumably it is these powerful young minds that, if nourished, could one day cure leukemia or stop global warming or become the next James Joyce - or at least J.K. Rowling."

Editorial Note: From the ages of 6 to 16, The Stiletto read a book a day. By 10 years old, she had devoured nearly everything the Brontë sisters had written (Jane Eyre was a particular favorite, and she could recite certain passages verbatim), and had already discovered Thomas Hardy, Honoré de Balzac and Theodore Dreiser. Unfortunately, while her reading level was years ahead of her peers, she was only six months past grade level in math and was not skipped even one grade. By high school she couldn’t endure the soul-crushing boredom any longer, and applied her intellect to finding creative ways to cut class - attending only advanced placement English, history and science courses - without being marked "absent." For all intents and purposes, The Stiletto went straight from junior high to college, only without skipping any grades - and with a perfect attendance record!

Dems Do Des Moines

Like most voters, The Stiletto has gotten debate-weary by now. The same warmed-over scripted answers brought to the lectern over and over again, like a leftover tuna casserole that makes the roundtrip from the fridge to the microwave to the table over and over again.

Let’s face it, by now all we’re watching for is that flash of humor to savor, like a bit of truffle that has somehow found its way into the casserole, or the occasional misstep to chew on.

Here’s the truffle from yesterday’s Dem debate (transcript): Dennis Kucinich - who had earlier complained to moderator George Stephanopoulos that the debate questions weren’t being meted out equitably - was dead last in getting to answer a question put to the field on what to do about Iraq, and dead last again in responding to a question by a voter in UT on - of all things – the power of prayer. When his turn finally came, he quipped: "I have been standing here for the last 45 minutes praying you were going to call on me."

As it happens, Kucinich was also responsible for the most toothsome exchange of the debate, in The Stiletto’s opinion. A voter from AL had this question for all the candidates: "Can you name a major issue where you didn't tell the whole truth and describe what you left out?"

Like Edwards, who answered just before her, Hillary admitted to regretting her vote to authorize the Iraq war. Stephanopoulos tried to steer her back to the central premise of the question: "But did you tell the whole truth when discussing it?":

Richardson rescued Hillary by recasting the question as being about "past regrets and mistakes," and making a lame joke that, "I'm making, at this rate, about one mistake a week."

Of course Hillary wasn’t "tricked." She just didn’t bother reading the National Intelligence Estimate report on Iraq before casting her vote.