"I'm not promoting killing anyone," Kennewick city council candidate Loren Nichols told a local radio audience last week, before clarifying that undocumented immigrants "should be shot at the border." If elected, Nichols says he will push the council to make Kennewick an English-only community and impose a ban on undocumented immigrants, giving them 30 days to leave town.

"If they value their lives, they would leave," Nichols told KONA radio's Jeff Phillips.

The 55-year-old Nichols (whose name sounds kinda French) went on to tactfully compare illegal immigration both to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, and to rape:

"Rape of our city and rape of our country is something that should be dealt with by the highest penalty," he added.

"(Illegal aliens) should be shot at the border. That's how much I value America," Nichols said.

Because nothing says "America" like shooting people.

Of course, by "highest penalty," Nichols means death. "I asked him if he was saying we should have capital punishment for people who come into this country illegally," Phillips told the Tri-City Herald. "He said that was what he was saying. He just affirmed it."

And if you're wondering if this is yet another case of a hostile, brown-people-loving, liberal press deliberately misinterpreting a true patriot like Nichols... uh-uh. KEPR-TV followed up with Nichols, asking him if he was proposing to "Mandate death as the penalty if you get caught in Kennewick?" To which Nichols replied: "Correct."

"Kennewick needs to do what's best for Kennewick. We need to take jurisdiction for ourselves and mandate that as the penalty," Nichols told KEPR, displaying the sort of tenuous grasp on reality, let alone the law, that makes covering city council contests in places like Kennewick so much fun.