But is it a crisis? Both left and right publications/broadcasts use that word to inflame. It's seldom actually a crisis. The Cuban Missile Crisis was a real crisis...being days away from Armageddon. Katrina (where thousands of people were in peril) would qualify. Etc.

Is apprehending tens of thousands of illegal border crossers a crisis? I wouldn't say so. After all, we're supposed to be apprehending them. ("Encounters" means they were caught.) I don't intend to minimize the problem on our southern border, but it's far deeper than just trying to prevent people from crossing, and the solution isn't to "build a wall" (just ask the Chinese...didn't work for them either).

I think "crisis" really became the news term du-jour during the Iran Hostage "Crisis", where we were bombarded every night by Koppel going on about the crisis. Sure it was a bad situation, but a crisis? Don't think so. But now everything the news reports is either a "Gate" or a "crisis", and it's complete crap.