Democratic senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii is "confused" about why illegals get detained by lawmen.

No, really. Apparently, Democrats have skidded so far downhill that they don't even understand that illegals are here illegally. As the word says.

Yesterday's lovely exchange between a lawyerly Immigration and Customs Enforcement official and Hirono was the proof of it. After the ICE official had to take the time to school her in basic immigration law, all she could respond with was, "I'm confused."

Take a gander:

Or you can see it here. "FRC," by the way, is ICE-speak for "Family Residential Center."

Hirono was busy trying to make political hay for Democrats out of the issue of family separations of illegal border-crossers as somehow being especially inhuman. Never mind that family separations occur pretty much any time anyone is hauled in by the law, whether for bank robberies, muggings, drunk driving, or another crime. Getting hauled in is precisely why people with kids shouldn't want to break the law at all, but we know that some still do.

She rapidly got off track by her presumption that border enforcement is a matter of President Trump's whims, rather than Trump's mere allowance of border enforcement agents to enforce the actual laws on the books, which is their job. That's where she ran into her "I'm confused" trouble. Apparently, she decided that President Obama's capricious approach to enforcing only the laws he liked was actually how the law is supposed to be done.

This shows she's got the blinders on and can no longer distinguish solid law from Obama's world of decrees, which in fact excused and encouraged a lot of illegality in the name of political advantage.

It's weird stuff, and it highlights the Democrats' sharp swing to the left and its lunatic visions of laws not being laws, or laws being only what Obama says they are. It's an unusually sorry thing to see in an actual lawmaker.

Shouldn't she be advocating for the people of Hawaii? Where is she, given that a third of the housing stock of the Big Island has been trashed by a volcano, and the tourism industry that keeps her state economically going is totally wrecked, quite possibly because there are no hotels for tourists to go to, what with the available space now filled with volcano refugees? Where is she now that Lloyd's of London is denying payouts to people who bought volcano insurance, even as Hawaii's governor has encouraged volcano residents to consult their insurance policies instead of the state? These were people trying to do the right thing by buying the only volcano insurance out there – it's not in the state regulatory apparatus – and Hirono hasn't said anything. Is she saying anything about the questionable permitting process for housing in the lava zone that was not disclosed to buyers of the homes? What about some aid for those displaced residents now living with great mind-wearing uncertainty as months go by, while the political elites, including Hirono, do nothing? Hirono so far has visited the volcano zone twice (enjoying the lava tourism, no doubt) and gotten some money for a centralized volcano-monitoring system as well as aid for the tiny number of farms affected, which frankly is a meager record for a large visible event from her state.

Yet there she goes, fascinated with helping illegals she knows nothing about, under the guise of "compassion," and "confused" about what U.S. immigration law is to boot. Where's her compassion for her own state's neglected residents?

What we are seeing here is nothing but a political hack, in perfect line with the Democratic Party priorities, yet not quite understanding what is going on, given that she's a pretty "confused" one. Obviously, she's a hack who's been at it so long she can no longer distinguish fantasy from reality. Among Democrats, Nancy Pelosi, apparently, isn't the only one with this problem.