Right about now, Rick Perry is hosting a press conference. What's he going to announce? Is he launching his bid for the 2016 Republican presidential campaign? Well, kind of. The Washington Post reports:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) reportedly plans to dispatch the Texas National Guard to the U.S. border with Mexico, according to news reports.

Perry will announce his plans Monday to mobilize some 1,000 guardsmen to the Rio Grande Valley to increase security at the border, according to the Monitor, a south Texas newspaper. The newspaper quoted a state senator and an internal memo it obtained from a state official’s office.

Here's a link to the Monitor's coverage of the memo. Politico quotes Democratic Texas Representative Joaquin Castro on this matter:

Texas Rep. Joaquín Castro on Monday said Gov. Rick Perry’s is “militarizing our border” with his reported decision to deploy state National Guard troops there.

“We should be sending the Red Cross to the border not the National Guard to deal with this humanitarian crisis,” the Democratic congressman said in an email. “The children fleeing violence in Central America are seeking out border patrol agents. They are not trying to evade them. Why send soldiers to confront these kids?”

This news causes so many questions to volley around in my head: Does Rick Perry know it's not legal for a governor to declare war? And what will the National Guard do if they catch a bunch of children trying to sneak over the border? Just send them back where they came from? Take them into custody? Can this really be considered anything other than a political move? And do small-government Texans really want to pay the estimated $5 million a week this military escalation will cost them?