Our nation's debt is literally indenturing our children to our international debt holders, but most Americans don't care because they are more concerned about the latest saga involving Snooki on Jersey Shore rather than what really matters, our country’s future.
The Mayor of New Haven, CT has announced that he hopes to ask the
state legislators to allow illegal aliens in his city to be granted the
right to vote.
Why is John DeStefano Jr. pressing for a change in the law that would
allow people living illegally in the country (and his city) to vote?
He says “to build a more engaged participatory community”
The New Haven Register reports that
the change to the law could bring a substantial pool of new voters to
DeStefano’s camp. The paper estimates as many as 12,000 undocumented
people are living in the New Haven area.
That begs the question: Is there another motive besides building “a more engaged participatory community” behind DeStephano’s idea? Possibly.
Just last month Mr. DeStefano was re-elected to a record 10th term as mayor of New Haven,
but the margin of victory was not that large. Of the estimated 64,000
registered voters in the city, fewer than 15,000 participated in the
last election. Adding a potential pool of 10-12,000 new voters could
make certain that DeStefano doesn’t face such a problem in the future.
I think the real reason for the cut is Obama is behind in the polls and needs more voters to cross the border before November.
Blaming budget cuts, the Obama administration early next year will cut the number of National Guard troops patrolling the U.S.-Mexico border by at least half, according to a congressman who was briefed on the plan.
The National Guard said an announcement will be made by the White House “in the near future,” but Rep. Duncan Hunter,
a California Republican who has learned of the plans, said slashing the
deployment in half is the minimum number, and he said it will mean
reshuffling the remaining troops along the nearly 2,000-mile border.
In California, that will mean going from 264 Guard troops down to just 14, he said.
Mr. Hunter said the pending cuts are another reason Congress
and President Obama should revisit the automatic defense spending
reductions that kicked in with the failure last month of the deficit
super-committee to reach a broader spending deal.
“What’s apparent
now is that a decision not to continue their deployment, even though it
might be in the national interest to do so, would be based entirely on
budget constraints on the Defense Department,” Mr. Hunter said.
Mr.
Obama deployed 1,200 guard troops to the border in June 2010 in an
effort to bolster the U.S. Border Patrol and try to prevent the growing
drug violence in Mexico from spilling into the U.S.
People filing tax returns using Individual Tax Identification Numbers
(ITINs) collected $4.2 billion in Additional Child Tax Credits (ACTC)
in 2010, according to the Department of Treasury Inspector General (IG).
The vast majority of people filing ITIN returns are illegal aliens who
are ineligible to receive Social Security numbers (SSNs). The ACTC
allows low-income earners to receive a credit of $1,000 per child, and
if they owe no taxes, like virtually all illegal alien households, they
get that $1,000 per child paid to them.
According to the IG report, 72 percent of tax returns filed by ITIN
users claimed the ACTC, compared with just 14 percent of returns filed
by people using SSNs. The report, which was issued September 1, states,
“The payment of federal funds through this tax benefit appears to
provide an additional incentive for aliens to enter, reside, and work in
the United States without authorization, which contradicts federal law
and policy to remove such incentives.”
The IG’s hypothesis is borne out by the sharp increase in payouts
from the Treasury under the ACTC program, rising from $924 million in
2005 to $4.2 billion last year. One of the likely reasons for the
dramatic increase in ACTC claims by ITIN filers is the influence of
illegal alien advocacy groups (some of which receive government
funding). These groups counsel illegal aliens to file returns because
doing so would be beneficial to them if amnesty were to be enacted, and
to take advantage of provisions and loopholes in the tax law that allow
them to receive billions of dollars from the government. In addition, it
is virtually impossible for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to
verify or disprove the existence of a dependent minor who resides
outside the U.S.
Even more alarming is the IRS’s laissez-faire attitude about illegal
aliens claiming the ACTC. The IG notes that in 1996, Congress attempted
to prevent ITIN filers from claiming the Earned Income Tax Credit
(EITC) and most other public benefits by limiting them to people who
file returns under a work-eligible SSN. Because the ACTC had not been
created at the time, and is not specifically mentioned in the 1996 law,
the IRS claims it has no choice but to dole out billions of dollars of
government money to ITIN filers, absent new legislation. That position
was explicitly rejected by the IG.
If you are an illegal immigrant and you have not been arrested for committing a crime, the odds that you will ever be deported have now gone way, way down. With the Republicans in control of the House of Representatives, Barack Obama knows that he simply is not going to be able to get amnesty for illegal immigrants passed by Congress. But instead of giving up, Obama has decided to ram amnesty for illegal immigrants down our throats any way that he can. The head of the Department of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, has announced that there will now be a case-by-case review of all deportation cases involving illegal immigrants. Those involving "criminals" will be prioritized and almost all the rest will be thrown out. In essence, this is "backdoor amnesty" for illegal immigrants and it also represents a stunning admission by the Obama administration that it is simply going to refuse to enforce our immigration laws.
Yes, deportation cases for criminals should be moved to the top of the list, but openly announcing that almost all other illegal immigrants will not be deported is just going to encourage millions more illegal immigrants to come pouring in to this country.
Government officials have now been given a list of 19 factors to use when deciding whether to use "prosecutorial discretion" in deportation cases.
Essentially, what is going to happen now is that illegal immigrants are going to get to stay in the United States if any of the following apply....
-arrival in the U.S. as a young child
-actively "pursuing an education"
-serving or served in the U.S. military
-spouse of someone in the U.S. military
-18 years old or younger
-"elderly"
-pregnant or nursing
-victim of a "serious crime"
-serious disability or health problem
-caring for a family member with a serious disability or health problem
As you can see, these categories are so broad that almost all illegal immigrants will be able to fit into at least one of them.
Our government once again bends over backwards to grant special rights to illegal aliens but punishes legal residents and citizens for the very same crime.
March 2011
Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck announced Monday that his officers will no longer automatically tow the cars of illegal immigrant drivers stopped at sobriety checkpoints.
The policy comes in response to the concerns of Latino civil rights activists, who say impound fees are unfairly costing otherwise hardworking illegal immigrant drivers hundreds of dollars.
Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said his department impounds about 1,000 cars a year from illegal immigrants at sobriety checkpoints – not because they’re drunk but because they don’t have driver’s licenses.
“As we reviewed our impound policies it became obvious to me that they had disparate impact on individuals based on something that was entirely out of their control," Beck said.
California doesn’t issue driver’s licenses to undocumented immigrants.
Under the new policy, officers will give unlicensed illegal immigrants “reasonable time” to find someone else to drive their cars home.
“No longer will these checkpoints have an adverse impact on somebody merely because of their (immigration) status," Beck said. "The sad truth is that the people who were most impacted by this law were the people that could afford it the least.”
The chief said unlicensed U.S. citizens and legal residents stopped at checkpoints will also be allowed “reasonable time” to find someone else to drive their car home.
Critics of Beck's policy have said undocumented immigrants are not supposed to be in the United States in the first place, and should not be driving.
Latino civil rights activists hailed the Beck’s decision.
"I think that in the course of time he will be acknowledged as a great police chief and a very wise man because this is the right thing to do," said Juan Jose Gutierrez of Vamos Unidos U.S.A.
Gutierrez said some cities - including Bell - target undocumented drivers for impounds as a revenue source.
He and other Latino activists called on those cities to also change their impound policies.
President Barack Obama’s administration is quietly offering a quasi-amnesty for hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants, while aiming to win reelection by mobilizing a wave of new Hispanic voters, say supporters of stronger immigration law enforcement.
The new rules were quietly announced Friday with a new memo from top officials at the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. The “prosecutorial discretion” memo says officials need not enforce immigration laws if illegal immigrants are enrolled in an education center or if their relatives have volunteered for the US military.
“They’re pushing the [immigration] agents to be even more lax, to go further in not enforcing the law,” said Kris Kobach, Kansas’ secretary of state. “At a time when millions of Americans are unemployed and looking for work, this is more bad news coming from the Obama administration… [if the administration] really cared about putting Americans back to work, it would be vigorously enforcing the law,” said Kobach, who has helped legislators in several states draft local immigration-related laws.
“We think it is an excellent step,” said Laura Vasquez, at the Hispanic-advocacy group, La Raza, which pushed for the policies, and which is working with other groups to register Hispanics to vote in 2012. “What’s very important is how the prosecutorial discretion memo is implemented” on the streets, she said.
The Hispanic vote could be crucial in the 2012 election, because the Obama campaign hopes to offset its declining poll ratings by registering new Hispanic voters in crucial swing states, such as Virginia and North Carolina.
To boost the Hispanic vote, the administration has enlisted support from Hispanic media figures, appointed an experienced Hispanic political operative to run the political side of the Obama reelection campaign, and has maintained close ties to Hispanic advocacy groups, including La Raza. For example, La Raza’s former senior vice president and lobbyist, Cecilia Munoz, was hired by the Obama administration as director of intergovernmental affairs in 2009.
On Friday, officials at ICE announced several new administrative changes to immigration enforcement.
Homeland Security officials misled the public and Congress last year in an effort to downplay a wave of immigration case dismissals in Houston and other cities amid accusations that they had created a "back-door amnesty," newly released records show.
The records, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, include a series of internal memos from Immigration and Customs Enforcement's chief counsel in Houston dated last August ordering attorneys to review all new, incoming cases and thousands already pending on the immigration court docket and to file paperwork to dismiss any that did not meet the agency's "top priorities." (Read documents from the FOIA request here.)
The secretive review process resulted in the dismissal of hundreds of cases in Houston, most of them involving illegal immigrants who had lived in the United States for years without committing serious crimes.
A string of emails shows the dismissals had the blessings of top attorneys at ICE headquarters in Washington, D.C., last summer and that other ICE legal offices across the country were encouraged to consider measures to better use the agency's limited resources to target dangerous criminals.
The records also document for the first time that the agency quietly rescinded the Houston memo on Aug. 25 — the day the Houston Chronicle broke the story on the dismissals — amid allegations from conservatives that the Obama administration had created a stealth amnesty program for illegal immigrants.
ICE public affairs officials in Washington initially refused either to confirm or deny the dismissals, and then told several news outlets that they affected only a very narrow class of illegal immigrants with pending green card applications described in a different agency memo. After Senate Judiciary Committee members demanded an investigation last fall into the Houston dismissals, Homeland Security officials reiterated the same claim they made to the media.
However, the newly released documents show conclusively that government attorneys in Houston were given wide latitude to file motions to dismiss cases, including some involving immigrants with convictions for primarily misdemeanor offenses.
"It now appears that DHS attempted to mislead the public and Congress on its policy of directing dismissals of cases against criminal aliens," said Jessica Sandlin, Sen. John Cornyn's Texas press secretary. "After this failed attempt at stonewalling and obstruction of the public's right to know, the truth is now coming out
Now that the WaPo knows he is illegal they have to fire him...right? When any small business finds out that they have hired an illegal alien they are required by law to fire the person otherwise they face stiff fines from the Feds. Somehow I don't see the DOJ fining the WaPo so long as they continue to support Obama.
The newly publicized life-story of award winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas seems to be one of those revelatory stories that tends to confirm some of the worst charges against liberals and the Old Media. The media sees no reason not to break the law, it employs people with political agendas, and all the while refuses to inform customers of the “news” that this is the case. As it happens, Vargas is an illegal immigrant in this country and has been for decades.
Vargas won a Pulitzer Prize for his 2007 coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings, he also made tongues wag recently with an exclusive interview with the reclusive founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg. But his chief journalistic interest has been as a political reporter for the Washington Post.
Vargas tells ABC News that he found out that he had a fraudulent green card when he was a 16-year-old boy trying to apply for a California Driver’s license. The DMV told him his immigration card bought by his family in the Philippines was fake and “warned him not to return.”
Breakdown of the law number one was his family’s purposeful commission of a crime. Breakdown number two was a government agency assisting after the fact. The California DMV directly assisted an illegal immigrant and his entire family stay here as law breakers by telling a 16-year-old Vargas to run and hide from authorities.
Vargas took the DMV’s advice and began to train himself to speak without his native accent.
“I remember the very first instinct was, okay, that’s it, get rid of the accent… ‘Because I just thought to myself, you know, I couldn’t give anybody any reason to ever doubt that I’m an American,” Vargas said.
Notice how his “very first instinct” was to continue to break the law and compound that by engaging in subterfuge. Not to try and become a legal citizen.
Breakdown in law number three: Vargas enlisted the aid of some highly placed California public school officials to help him falsify documents so that he could get a fake Oregon Driver’s license to get his job with the Washington Post.
As you are no doubt aware, America the Great is quickly becoming America the Gray. The so-called “boomer” generation, comprised of scores of million of Americans, will soon reach retirement age.
As they age, America’s boomers yearn for a less frantic pace—-and a lifestyle that allows one to pause and smell the roses now and again.
In other words, boomers are looking for the “Good Life” which is supposed to accrue to those who work 45 years, pay ungodly amounts in taxes, raise a family, put children through college, and baby-sit the grandchildren.
Unfortunately, the United States is no longer as hospitable as it once was to graying citizens, especially now that our economy has collapsed.
As a result, boomers have decided to move to your beloved Mexico.
Knowing that the Mexican government is a strong supporter of open borders and liberal immigration policies, as least with respect to migrations from Mexico to America, boomers anticipate that their needs and wishes will be fully accommodated with minimal interference and bureaucratic hassle.
In plain English, boomers expect to be treated like upscale Mexican citizens, with all the perks and advantages attendant thereto.
Incidentally, we prefer to be called “undocumented boomers.”
President Calderon, I am delighted to announce that just in time for summer millions of undocumented American boomers are headed to Mexico!
Viva America!
Current plans call for about 500,000 boomers to cross the border into Mexico each month.
As with any complex transition, there are several “ground rules” that must be followed in order to make this change seamless.
Accordingly, your attention is directed to the following:
Mexican sovereignty, borders, and immigration laws are essentially null and void with respect to undocumented boomers. No attempt should be made to enforce said restrictions on good hearted, formerly hard working Americans.
Undocumented boomers shall receive unlimited education, food, housing, legal assistance, and geriatric care on demand, the cost of which shall be borne solely by Mexican taxpayers.
Mexican hospitals, medical clinics, and emergency rooms shall be obligated to meet the medical needs of all undocumented boomers, without regard to ability to pay.
This obligation shall not be limited or restricted in any way because of any real or projected negative impact on Mexico’s medical systems, including the loss of vital services to Mexican citizens.
Although undocumented boomers shall not be obligated to pay for medical services received, they shall be entitled to send $30-50 billion a year back to the United States with impunity. The Mexican government shall actively facilitate the transfer of such funds to America.
English is the only language used by undocumented boomers; boomers have no desire or obligation to learn Spanish.
America’s historic free speech, free love, and anti-war revolutions originated with activists in the boomer generation.
In keeping with the boomer tradition of aggressive activism, from time to time it may be necessary for millions of boomers to take over the streets of Mexico’s large cities in order to protest proposed new laws when the “rights” of undocumented boomers are in jeopardy.
During such protests, boomers will wave Old Glory and scream “Yes, we can!” and “We are Mexico!” in English, as they protest the rule of law.
All such activities are valid free speech expressions in a thriving Democracy. As a consequence, the Mexican government shall take no action to limit or impede protests by undocumented boomers.
We Americans celebrate the 4th of July to commemorate our independence from Great Britain. Undocumented boomers prefer to conduct business as normal on May 5 and September 16, and to reserve the 4th of July for fireworks, BBQs, and displaying Red, White, and Blue everywhere.
Undocumented boomers shall be licensed to drive without regard to immigration status. All driver instruction and testing materials shall be in English.
Blood relatives of undocumented boomers shall be eligible for the same reduced tuition rates offered to Mexican students in the nation legally. Immersion for the purpose of teaching Spanish is a failed concept and shall not even be attempted.
Undocumented boomers shall be eligible to vote in Mexican elections without any requirement to prove identity.
Grandchildren of undocumented boomers born in Mexico shall be Mexican citizens by virtue of their birth, regardless of the immigration status of their parents and grand parents, and
Undocumented boomers are very sensitive and are easily offended. Therefore, Mexicans shall refrain from using terms like “illegal alien,” “Red Neck,” “Cracker,“or “Gringo” when addressing or discussing boomers.
In closing, Mr. President, let me assure you that undocumented boomers will attempt to do for Mexico what 38 million Mexican illegal aliens are currently doing to America!
With best regards and wishes for a diverse and free Mexico!
John W. Lillpop is a Capitol Hill Coffee House staff writer.
If ICE and the BATFE had been doing their jobs number one this guy wouldn't be here in the United States and two he wouldn't have been in possession of an illegal gun. Instead these two agencies do their jobs in a half-assed manner and the result is that three people are dead.
A Salvadoran man who was ordered deported nearly a decade ago but never left has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder in a series of shootings and a knife attack in a Virginia suburb of Washington.
Jose Oswaldo Reyes Alfaro, an illegal immigrant, was charged in the pair of attacks blocks apart on Thursday night that left three people dead and three others injured, Police Chief Doug Keen said.
Brenda Ashcraft, 56, and her son William Ashcraft, 37, were shot and killed in the first attack shortly after 7pm on Thursday.
A 34-year-old woman was injured and remains hospitalised, and a 15-year-old girl was treated and released.
In the second attack, 48-year-old Julio Cesar Ulloa was shot and killed, and a 77-year-old woman suffered head wounds from a large knife.
Reyes Alfaro knew all of the victims, Chief Keen said, but police would not release details until they had sorted out the exact relationships.
That foul smell isn’t emanating from Denmark (apologies to Shakespeare). No, the stench comes from the Obama Department of Justice.
What is supposed to be the nation’s apolitical top law enforcement agency protecting the rights of Americans, the U.S. Department of Justice, has been exposed for colluding with the most left-wing legal organization in the country, the falsely named American Civil Liberties Union.
The legal watchdog group, Judicial Watch, has made public documents it forced into the open through the Freedom of Information Act. Those Justice Department documents prove that DOJ and the ACLU closely cooperated in legal strategies against the state of Arizona. Not only that, but the documents evidence that the U.S. Justice Department worked in close cooperation with the government of Mexico to overturn the duly adopted law of a U.S. state.
Both the administration, via DOJ, and the ACLU (along with a slew of open-borders advocacy and ethnic identity politics groups) sued Arizona over its S.B. 1070. That state law sought to exercise Arizona’s inherent authority to deal as it sees fit with exigencies arising from runaway illegal immigration, cartel warfare, and human trafficking.
Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, captured the essence of the problem this exposes: “It is one thing to share the ACLU’s disrespect for the rule of law but it is quite another to collude with the organization on a prosecutorial strategy against the State of Arizona. Frankly, these new documents show it is hard to tell where the ACLU ends and the Justice Department begins.”
There’s good reason that the line between the two is so blurry in this case. Monica Ramirez, the counsel to the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at Justice and whose name appears in many of the disclosed e-mails, came from the ACLU. She’s the DOJ person who collected all the opposition materials, including from the National Immigration Law Center and the Mexican embassy.
Why is it that articles like these are not reported by the WP and the NYT?
When chaos reigns supreme in a nation that shares an almost two-thousand mile border with the United States, and that border is not protected to the extent it should be, undesirable elements sneaking their way from Mexico into the U.S. becomes the rule instead of the exception. We have all been made aware of the drug shipments that come into the U.S. through the porous and undermanned Mexican border, and we all know of the steady stream of Mexicans that for decades have snuck through looking for a better life in the U.S. for themselves and their families back in Mexico. However, it is next to impossible to tell who else comes across the U.S./Mexico border until they are apprehended, or worse.
On January 11, U.S. Border Patrol agents pulled over a BMW near the Golden Acorn Casino, 50 miles east of San Diego, California. The vehicle was driven by Kenneth R. Lawler. Border Patrol agents found Lawler had tucked away in the trunk of his car a souvenir of sorts from Mexico: a radical Muslim cleric by the name ofSaid Jaziri.
Lawler was arrested and is being held on charges of alien smuggling, while Jaziri is being held for illegally entering the country as well as being a material witness to the crime.
The DREAM act has been hidden in H.R.5281 "Removal Clarification Act of 2010". This bill is having differences resolved and is about to pass.
Check about 1/3 of the way down, Thanks Harry for hiding this in a non-issue bill.
Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act of 2010 or DREAM Act of 2010 - (Sec. 6) Authorizes the Secretary of Homeland Security (DHS) to cancel the removal of, and adjust to conditional nonimmigrant status, an alien who: (1) entered the United States before his or her 16th birthday and has been present in the United States for at least five years immediately preceding enactment of this Act; (2) has been a person of good moral character since entering the United States; (3) is not inadmissible for reasons of health, criminality, security, public charge, smuggling, student visa abuse, citizenship ineligibility, polygamy, international child abduction, or unlawful voting; (4) is not deportable for reasons of smuggling, marriage fraud, criminality, security, public charge, or unlawful voting; (5) has not participated in the persecution of any person on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion; (6) has not been convicted of certain offenses under federal or state law; (7) has been admitted to an institution of higher education (IHE) or has earned a high school diploma or general education development certificate in the United States; (8) has never been under a final order of exclusion, deportation, or removal unless the alien has remained in the United States under color of law after such order's issuance, or received the order before attaining the age of 16; and (9) was under age 30 on the date of enactment of this Act.
According to the following website once the Senators and Representatives resolve the differences between the bill it goes to the President for his signature.
The bill may now proceed to a conference committee of senators and representatives to work out differences in the versions of the bill each chamber approved. The bill then goes to the President for signature.
In an upsetting kind of year, there are bound to be more surprise upsets when votes actually are counted next week. So this is a good time to look ahead in an attempt to figure out where those final upsets might pop up.
Bryan Curtis on The Daily Beast offers up one potential shocker: Immigration hawk Tom Tamcerdo, running as a third-party candidate, could win the Colorado governor’s race:
Let’s stipulate that at least one wild and inexplicable event will occur on Election Night. Here’s a nominee: Tom Tancredo, a man whose immigration rhetoric was so rough that he was banned from the Bush White House, becomes governor of Colorado.
We feel fantastic,” Bay Buchanan, Tancredo’s campaign manager, said Tuesday. “We’ve gone from 14 points in August to the low 40s now. It’s a climb of nearly 30 points in a couple months.”
This is Posturing Week in American politics, and all numbers tend to be highly bogus. But in a year in which immigration has captured the public imagination, the notion of Governor Tancredo is gaining currency. An October 25 Public Policy Polling survey showed Tancredo three points behind the Democratic candidate, Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper. That tracks with a Republican poll last week that showed Tancredo trailing by just one point among likely voters. A Denver Post poll from the weekend showed Hickenlooper with a 10-point lead.
John Rossomando of the Daily Caller suggests another potential upset coming out of the blue:
Democratic Rep. Jim Moran’s 8th Congressional District is considered the second bluest district in Virginia, and the 19-year incumbent has consistently demolished his GOP challengers, but internal polling conducted by his current GOP opponent’s campaign suggests this year could be different.
Republican candidate Col. Patrick Murray’s most recent internal numbers from the last four days show Moran leading with 32.3 percent compared with Murray’s 29.7 percent. 30.5 percent are shown to be undecided.
The Murray campaign’s internal numbers also suggest Moran has high negatives (you can read more about why the anti-gun, anti-semetic Moran needs to lose this race below). A Sept. 22 poll conducted by McLaughlin & Associates found Moran’s support at below 50 percent ̶ with only 42 percent of those polled rating him as good or excellent and 41 percent rating him as fair or poor.
Meanwhile, there’s one race that was defying conventional wisdom because the vulnerable Democratic incumbent seemed to be in pretty good shape. Now, Michael Ames of Politics Daily says that picture may be changing:
The Idaho congressional race that had been defying national trends seems to be finally conforming. A new Mason-Dixon poll sponsored by seven Idaho newspapers shows conservative Republican challenger Raul Labrador pulling into a statistical dead heat with incumbent Blue Dog Democrat Walt Minnick. The poll has Minnick leading Labrador 44 to 41 percent, a seven point tightening since the last Mason-Dixon survey in mid-September.
The poll spells out explicitly what many insiders have been saying about this race for months — regardless of Minnick’s wide leads in fundraising and name recognition, the freshman Democrat is an endangered incumbent in one of the most conservative districts in the country.
A Virginian congressman facing a tough political battle for reelection made comments about his opponents qualifications that have resulted in a backlash against his own campaign and political party.
During this election cycle, when Democrats are facing a potential tidal wave of opposition, Democrat incumbents are disparaging their opponents while boasting about their own service with statements they believe will resonant with voters fed up with the Washington, DC status quo.
The strategy is to diminish the achievements and service of their opponents while puffing up their own. And they are kicking honesty and integrity to the wayside. For example, Nevada Senator Harry Reid, the current Senate Majority Leader, said during a television interview that had it not been for him, there would have been a worldwide economic depression. Of course, MSNBC host Ed Schultz, a staunch progressive and decidedly partisan television commentator, did not ask Reid to explain how he achieved his miraculous feat.
Unfortunately, the whoppers don't stop at the U.S. Congress. On Sunday, President Barack Obama told the American people that Congresswomen Nancy Pelosi is the best Speaker of the House who ever served.
This past week, Rep. Jim Moran, the longtime Democrat incumbent in Virginia’s 8th district, unleashed a firestorm of controversy when he disparaged the service of millions of troops and veterans. Moran diminished the value of their service by implying that the sacrifices and service our troops give while on active duty did not count as “public service” in the same way that elected officials are public servants.
The statement shocked and offended millions of veterans around the country as well as patriots who all agree that military service is a more pure and essential public service than being a politician, according to Betty Presley of Move America Forward Freedom PAC.
Moran was at a private meeting with other Democrats, deriding his opponent, Republican Patrick Murray, when he said this:
“What [Republicans] do is find candidates, usually stealth candidates, that haven’t been in office, haven’t served or performed in any kind of public service. My opponent [Murray] is typical, frankly." n reality, Colonel Patrick Murray is a 24-year U.S. Army Veteran. And most Americans will agree a veteran with a decades-long record of defending our country deserves better.
After enrolling in the Reserve Officers Training Corp (ROTC) program at Oklahoma State University, Murray graduated as an officer in the US Army and went on to train as a tank commander and later, an intelligence officer. Murray has been deployed to Russia, Belarus, Bosnia, Yugoslavia, Kosovo, and most recently Iraq as part of the Bush Surge -- a successful military operation that Democrats Barack Obama and Joe Biden claimed as their own.
"Murray has been an outstanding soldier and his life of PUBLIC SERVICE has been marked by selflessness and dedication," said Presley.
"What’s more of a PUBLIC SERVICE? Spending 24 years defending your nation, or 20 years (that’s how long Jim Moran has been in congress) behind a desk taxing hardworking Americans and spending their money?" Presley asks.
Prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Moran told an antiwar audience in Reston, Virginia, that "If it were not for the strong support of the Jewish community for this war with Iraq, we would not be doing this. The leaders of the Jewish community are influential enough that they could change the direction of where this is going, and I think they should."
Another common sense law struck down by the 9th Circuit. Oh well all this means now is that the illegal immigrants will have to swear that they are citizens before casting a vote otherwise they will be committing perjury. I don't see how repealing this law could possibly lead to voter fraud. I mean if you listen to the left you would understand how much these people respect our laws except of course when it comes to visas, deportation hearings, drivers licences, DUI laws, drug laws, well you get the point.
PHOENIX -- A federal appeals court on Tuesday struck down a key part of Arizona's law requiring voters to prove they are citizens before registering to vote and to show identification before casting ballots.
The decision by a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that the law requiring voters to prove their citizenship while registering is inconsistent with the National Voter Registration Act. That federal law allows voters to fill out a mail-in voter registration card and swear they are citizens under penalty of perjury, but doesn't require them to show proof as Arizona's law does.
The ruling left in place a requirement that voters provide proof of identity when casting ballots.
Lawyers for several civil rights groups that sued argued thousands of Arizonans have had their federal registration forms rejected because they failed to provide other documents required by the state. That violates the federal law, they argued.
The state law in question, Proposition 200, was passed by voters in 2004. It required proof of citizenship during voter registration and of identity at the polls, and also while receiving certain state benefits.
It has been upheld by state and federal courts until Tuesday's decision.
In a statement, one of the attorneys who argued the case said his group was "elated" by the decision.
"This will enable the many poor people in Arizona who lack driver's licenses and birth certificates to register to vote," said Jon Greenbaum, legal director for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard's office issued a statement saying it intends to ask a full panel of 9th Circuit judges to reconsider the case.
The ruling applies only to voter registration and the deadline for voting in the Nov. 2 general election has passed, so it will have no practical effect on voting, the statement said.
Appeals Court Judge Sandra S. Ikuta's opinion was joined by retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who heard the case as a temporary appeals court judge. Ikuta said the federal voter registration law laid out specific requirements for the mail-in registration form that the state can't make more onerous.
"There is no room for Arizona to impose ... an additional identification requirement as a prerequisite to federal voter registration for registrants using that form," Ikuta wrote.
The panel's ruling overturned a previous 9th Circuit panel ruling that found Proposition 200 did not violate the National Voter Registration Act.
The 9th Circuit's chief judge, Alex Kozinski, wrote a sharp dissent, saying the ruling ignored precedent and was flat wrong on its legal analysis.
"Few panels are able to upset quite so many apple carts all at once," Kozinski concluded. "Count me out."
Gov. Jan Brewer and Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett issued a joint statement calling the decision an "outrage and a slap in the face to all Arizonans who care about the integrity of their elections."
"Arizona voters have made their will crystal clear -- non-citizens do not have the right to vote," they wrote. "We will continue to pursue any and all legal remedies to prevent fraudulent voter registration in the State of Arizona, as well as the right of our state citizens to craft appropriate protections."
The panel agreed with a district court judge who ruled in 2008 that the law does not constitutes a poll tax or disproportionally impact minority voting. It also rejected two constitutional arguments brought by the groups that sued.
I think its time to take the gloves off when it comes to Mexico. If Mexico can't or won't stop its citizens from invading the U.S. and is unable to investigate criminal acts by the cartels it’s time to quit the diplomacy and start playing hardball.
I say we drop the 101st Airborne into Mexico and send the 1st Cav, which by the way is stationed at Fort Hood in Texas across the border to secure a demilitarized zone. We currently have 24,000 American soldiers and airmen in Korea that have successfully prevented the North Koreans from crossing the Korean demilitarized zone since 1953.
Obama recently agreed to send a pitiful contingent of only 1,200 National Guardsmen to cover the 1969-mile border shared by Mexico and the U.S. In comparison the border between the Koreas is only 160 miles long, which means that there are 155 Americans per mile that willing to die each any every day to protect South Korea from an invasion from the North but only 1 American solider for every 1.5 miles willing to defend America from these Mexican terrorists.
If you don’t like the idea of invading Mexico then we simply buy a 3-mile strip of land between Mexico and the U.S. and turn it into a Demilitarized Zone. The Korean zone is only 2.5 miles wide and it seems to have prevented unwanted travel from the North to the South for 57 years.
So you may be asking yourself how can the U.S. afford this very expensive endeavour? Simple. Its time for the South Koreans and the Germans to stand on their own two feet. Its been 57 years since the end of hostilities in Korea and over 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. However, we still have over 80,000 Americans deployed to defend these two countries from invasions by foreign nations.
Now I'm not suggesting cutting military spending or reducing the amount of troops currently in the military but rather lets have these brave men and women serve their tours here in the United States. First and foremost this would begin to actually secure our borders. Second this would be a tremendous boost to the American economy. These soldiers would be spending their hard earned dollars here in America rather than in Korea and Germany.
80,000 American soldiers would mean 40 soldiers per mile of the Mexican border and to me that sounds like a small price to pay to protect our citizens from these terrorists.
Policeman possibly linked to Falcon Lake case beheaded
The head of a Mexican police commander presumed to be investigating the reported pirate attack against David Michael Hartley on Falcon Lake was delivered to Mexican military, sources said Tuesday.
State Rep. Aaron Pena, D-Edinburg, said he was told that Rolando Flores’ head was delivered Tuesday in a suitcase.
Ruben Rios, spokesman for the Tamaulipas state prosecutor’s office, told the Associated Press that Flores is the head of state investigators in the border city of Ciudad Miguel Alemán, a small city directly across the border from Roma, Texas.
Lesley Lopez, a spokeswoman for U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, said the head was delivered in the vicinity of Miguel Alemán.
The area is known to be under control of the Zeta drug cartel, which fiercely protects the remotely populated ranchland lining the Texas-Mexico border, as well as the Mexican side of the vast Falcon Lake reservoir.
Rios also told the Associated Press that the killing was unrelated to Hartley’s investigation.
Hartley has been missing since Sept. 30, when he and his wife took their personal watercraft into Mexican waters to photograph a partially submerged town.
Investigators have been hampered on this side by an inability to cross the border. Mexican investigators have meanwhile expressed fears of searching in Zeta turf.
Eleven signs have been posted at four federal properties, including Sonoran Desert National Monument, and two more are planned to alert guests to the possibility of running across smugglers. Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument is considered the most dangerous national park; many of its roads are closed and overnight stays in the backcountry are prohibited.
The environmental impact of all these illegal aliens should have Green Peace and the Sierra Club cheering the decision by Arizona to enforce our immigration laws. However, these organizations more often than not oppose the construction of a border fence even though the fence would be far less invasive in the environment then the thousands of illegal immigrants crossing the border.
In 1971, the environmental organization Keep America Beautiful launched a Public Service Announcement featuring a crying Indian lamenting the litter that supposedly coated America’s landscape. If in the 1970s the crying Indian was tearing up over some Coke cans on the bank of a river, today he would be sobbing at the environmental devastation occurring on the U.S.-Mexico border due to illegal immigration.
The Arizona Bureau of Land Management (BML) reports that in 2009 alone environmental groups collected over 234 tons of trash, 800 tires, 404 bicycles, and 62 vehicles left behind by illegals crossing the border. Special assistant for the Arizona BLM, Kathy Pedrick, told The Daily Caller that last year the agency spent over one million dollars of federal money just clearing the mess along the border.
Pedrick’s colleague, deputy state director for communications, Deborah E. Stevens, told TheDC that the clean up crews are outnumbered. “The impact of the environmental pollution far exceeds the amount of clean up,” she said. “We cannot keep up with it. We distribute the work, but there is too much.”
On Capitol Hill, Republican Congressmen are beginning to take notice. “Arizona is getting the brunt of the traffic now because it is so lax on the border security….The trash is a natural byproduct of the number of illegals who are coming in specifically with the purpose of human trafficking and drug smuggling,” Utah Republican Rep. Rob Bishop said in an interview with TheDC. “They [illegal immigrants] come with provisions that they will just drop along the way. So they will purposely leave everything behind and change clothing to go either up into Phoenix or further on north.”
According to Bishop, “wilderness areas,” or land set aside for protection — which limits border patrol access to surveillance on foot or on horseback, and limits vehicle access to emergencies on approved roads — have actually compounded the environmental problem as less supervision allows for more border crossings and polluting residue.
The Congressional Research Service reports that within 100 miles of the border there are 4.3 million acres of wilderness areas.
In a field hearing for the Natural Resources Committee in April of last year, George Taylor, a member of the National Association of Former Border Patrol Officers and a former field supervisory Border Patrol agent, explained, “When a wilderness or refuge area is established near the border, the criminal element moves in and trashes it because the restrictive wilderness or refuge status accorded to these lands effectively prevents all law enforcement from effectively working the area. In other words, the refuge or wilderness designation actually serves to put the environment at greater risk of being seriously damaged and defaced.”
The Department Homeland Security has recognized the problem, but to little avail. In October 2009, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano responded to a letter from Bishop in which he pleaded with her to work to loosen the restrictions on agents in wilderness areas. While she conceded that increased surveillance would improve the environment, she has taken little action to date on the matter.
“Though Organ Pipe is a backwater in the National Park system, it almost certainly leads the Park Service in number of backcountry stays. On any given night, rangers estimate, up to 1,000 people are inside the park. Nearly all of them have entered illegally across the park’s 31-mile (50-kilometer) southern boundary, which also happens to be the dividing line between two nations—one with jobs, the other with people who need them.
“Last year, Organ Pipe rangers seized some 13,000 pounds (4,850 kilograms) of marijuana, one-third of the total seized in all national parks and monuments combined.”
Want to hear the latest idiocy against the Arizona anti-illegal immigrant law dreamed up by open-border advocates and illegal alien supporters? Well, try this on for size: Arizona’s SB 1070 helps men beat their wives and girlfriends.
No, really. That is their argument.
A national organization called Legal Momentum has asked a federal court to block implementation of Arizona’s SB 1070 because they feel that immigrant women will be afraid to report abuse for fear of being deported.
