THE CONVICTED FELON WHO PROBABLY INSPIRED TED CRUZ'S LATEST KNEESLAPPER

Talking Points Memo reports:

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) joked that media outlets should refer to the man who jumped the White House fence, made it across the lawn, and got inside as an "undocumented White House visitor.

"We should insist that ABC, NBC, CBS, they refer to the visitor according to the term that is politically correct: an undocumented White House visitor," Cruz, a hardliner on immigration reform, said during his speech at the Values Voter Summit on Friday.

Where did Cruz get that from? My guess is that this was his inspiration:

The man who jumped the White House railing Sept. 19 deserves the right to live in President Barack Obama's home, just as the president is allowing hundreds of thousands of border-jumping Central Americans to live in Americans' homeland, says a new tongue-in-cheek petition posted at the White House website.

"We urge President Obama to immediately and publicly recognize that Mr. Omar J. Gonzalez, an oppressed migrant, was merely looking for a better life when he entered the White House after going over the classist, divisive and needless fence," says the petition, which was authored by D.A. King, founder of the Georgia-based Dustin Inman Society, which advocates for actual enforcement of immigration law....

"For justice and peace, upon his next return from the back-nine, Mr. Obama must award permanent lawful WH residency to Mr. Gonzalez and his family, along with a permit to work there. Because." concludes the petition, which can be electronically signed at the White House website.

That report was from the Daily Caller, and also appeared at Fox Nation, Free Republic, Lucianne.com, and quite a few other right-wing sites. Cruz's wording is a lot more direct, but the idea is basically the same.

Now, who's D.A. King? He was the principal lobbyist for a tough immigration law passed in his home state of Georgia last year:

He says the United States is filling up with immigrants who do not respect the law or the American way of life. He refers to Latino groups as "the tribalists," saying they seek to impose a divisive ethnic agenda. Of his many adversaries, he says: "The illegal alien lobby never changes. It's the Wall Street wing of the Republican Party joining forces with the Chamber of Commerce, the far left and the Democrats in an effort to expand cheap labor and increase voting for the Democratic Party."

D. A. King, who quit his job as an insurance agent a decade ago to wage a full-time campaign against illegal immigration in Georgia, is one reason this state rivals Arizona for the toughest legal crackdown in the country. With his Southern manners and seersucker jackets, he works the halls of the gold-domed statehouse, familiar to all, polite and uncompromising....

An AP/Fox News Latino story tells us more:

... The Montgomery, Ala.-based Southern Poverty Law Center hasn't put King's organization on its list of hate groups. But the center lists him as a "nativist" and has expressed concern about his tendency to call undocumented immigrants "invaders" and his contact with other more extreme activists....

Other critics take a harsher view.

"I think he works to push his agenda in a very divisive way," said Jerry Gonzalez, executive director of the Georgia Association of Latino Elected Officials. "One has to look at who this man is. He is a convicted felon who is advising our legislators and our governor on very important policy matters."

King talks openly about his felony conviction. He pleaded guilty in 1977 to a charge of interstate gambling, stemming from work he did answering phones and picking up money for a bookmaker taking bets on sporting events in Alabama. He was ordered to pay a fine and to serve two years of probation.

The grandson of a Detroit police officer, King grew up in the suburbs of that city, served two years in the U.S. Marine Corps and built a career as an insurance agent. He had no interest in politics or activism and didn't vote.

"What happened is when I started learning about illegal immigration, I went from being very, very shy to being very, very upset," he said.

In the late 1990s, a Mexican family moved in across the street from the house he shares with his wife in suburban Atlanta. Before long, there were about 20 people he suspected were in the country illegally living in the three-bedroom home, the yard was full of old vehicles and loud parties disrupted the neighborhood, King said. He complained to his local government about code violations but got no response, he said.

Then the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks marked his "aha moment," he said.

"I realized if I could have people living illegally across the street from me and there are people in the country who are flying planes into our buildings, this doesn't seem like a big effort at national security," he said....

His organization is called the Dustin Inman Society. It's named after an "a sixteen-year-old American boy" who was killed in 2000 by a driver who was an undocumented immigrant -- because, y'know, no U.S. citizen has ever killed anyone on the highway.

That's where the hero of the right gets his ideas, I think. How's that GOP rebranding coming along?