The old joke that if it weren't for double standards, the MSM would have no standards at all certainly applies to the cascade of hysterical media coverage of the use of tear gas to repel rock-throwing invaders at the San Ysidro border crossing. When the Obama administration used tear gas at the border to repel invaders, there was no tidal wave of outrage.

The same tear-gas agent that the Trump administration is taking heat for deploying against a border mob this weekend is actually used fairly frequently – including more than once a month during the later years of President Barack Obama's administration, according to Homeland Security data. U.S. Customs and Border Protection has used 2-chlorobenzylidene malononitrile, or CS, since 2010, and deployed it 26 times in fiscal 2012 and 27 times in 2013. The use dropped after that, but was still deployed three times in 2016, Mr. Obama's final full year in office. ... Border authorities also use another agent, pepper spray, frequently – including a decade-high record of 151 instances in 2013, also under Mr. Obama. Pepper spray, officially known as Pava Capsaicin, was used 43 times in fiscal year 2018, according to the CBP numbers.

Senator Brian Schatz – evidently ignorant of this track record – beclowned himself with the invocation of a war crime of "chemical weapons" before deleting his ridiculous tweet.

The fact is that rock-throwers assaulting border guards were lucky that such restraint was exercised during their assault. As I predicted yesterday, nobody in the MSM admits that the Obama administration not only used bullets in response to rock-throwers attacking border guards, a Department of Justice study justified it.

The new angle being used by some is to decry "using tear gas on children." Don Lemon of CNN went on a rant yesterday denouncing President Trump for this sin, and for not acknowledging that children were being used as human shields during the border assault, much as Saddam Hussein used innocent civilians to deter bombing of his war-making facilities. Allowing such human shields to achieve their goal only encourages more abuse of innocents.



CNN screen grab via Grabien.

That stream visible behind the children is sewage. What kind of parent brings young children traipsing across a river of sewage to attack a border? That is child abuse, but nary a peep from Lemon or any of the other Trump critics about that.

Update: The picture used by Lemon is apparently faked – posed, as this tweet shows: