Here we go again.

A politician known for being tough on illegal immigrants apparently has been caught hiring them himself.

Tsk, tsk.

Texas state Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, is one of four men seeking the Republican nomination for Texas lieutenant governor. He has talked about how tough he’d be on undocumented immigrants. He’d ship ’em out of Texas, by golly.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/02/19/brief/

It turns out he reportedly hired them to work at his Houston sports bar way back in the 1980s. The Dallas Morning News reported it, talking to one of them who allegedly worked for Patrick back then. Patrick calls it dirty politics and blames one of his rivals for the lieutenant governor’s office, Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson, of playing dirty.

I know it’s an old story. Maybe the senator went through a change of heart since the days when perhaps he didn’t look as harshly at illegal immigrants as he does now.

Still, when you stake out a position as Patrick has done on illegal immigrants, you have to be sure you have nothing in your past you want to be kept secret.

Will these people ever learn?