Define Rich

But first a Border Update:

El Paso, TX — Border Patrol agents will no longer serve as interpreters when local law enforcement agencies request language help; that according to a new decree issued by the department of homeland security.

From now on language assistance requests will be referred to private companies.    

Before, if another agency needed language assistance the border patrol would be called per protocol.

Immigration advocates have complained in the past Border Patrol agents ask people questions about immigration and in some cases arrest immigrants suspected of being in the country illegally.

The Problem: Border Patrol agents might actually ask questions about the Illegals Illegal status and then have to arrest them!!

OMG! The Horror!!!

“The concept of language access should be without people being questioned about their immigration status,” said Jorge Baron, executive director of the Seattle-based Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, a legal aid organization.

So, the solution, just don’t have them ask the question in the first place!!!

Now that’s doing your job! (when your job is to NOT do your job and arrest people illegally in this country that is)

Talk about “Don’t ask, Don’t Tell”!!!!!

Now, isn’t that special….

Victor Davis Hanson:Who exactly were the rich who, as the president said, were not “paying their fair share”? The rapper Jay-Z (net worth: nearly $500 million)? The actor Johnny Depp (2011 income: $50 million)? Neither seems to have heard the president’s earlier warning that “at a certain point you’ve made enough money.”

Could both zillionaires simply have quit making money at $10 million — and thereby given their poorer audiences a break on ticket prices?

With all the talk of raising taxes on the supposedly conservative rich who make more than $250,000 per year, why not levy a $3 surcharge on tickets for movies, concerts, and sporting events to “spread the wealth” from multimillionaires? That way, LeBron James (approximate annual earnings: $53 million) or Oliver Stone (net worth: approximately $50 million) might at last begin to “level the playing field.”

Is Michael Moore (net worth: approximately $50 million) a one-tenth-of-one-percenter? If so, why do mansion-living-grandee movie directors like Moore and Stone need state subsidies and tax breaks to produce their films, when most states are nearly as insolvent as the federal government?

Warren Buffett likewise did not heed the president’s advice that after 2008 it was not the time to profit. Did he pay any attention to Obama’s additional warning that, “if you own a business, you didn’t build that”? Apparently not.

Otherwise, Buffett would not think that his own expertise and hard work had built Berkshire Hathaway, or that he has the right to leave his $50 billion fortune to nonprofit institutions of his choice — thereby shorting the Internal Revenue Service billions of dollars in lost estate taxes. With a trillion-dollar-plus annual federal deficit, either the Department of Housing and Urban Development or the Department of Health and Human Services surely could use Buffett’s loot far more than the already well-endowed Gates Foundation.

If the country is going to turn redistributionist, then we might as well do so whole-hog — given that eight of the wealthiest ten counties in America voted for Obama. Why not limit mortgage-interest deductions to just one loan under $100,000 — while ending tax breaks altogether for second and third vacation houses?

Under the present system, the beleaguered 99 percent are subsidizing the abodes of Hollywood and Silicon Valley “millionaires and billionaires” — many of whom themselves have been railing against the 1 percent. Should the government provide tens of thousands of dollars in tax breaks for a blue-state 1-percenter to live in tony Palo Alto or Newport Beach when there are plenty of fine homes far cheaper and sitting empty not far away in Stockton and Bakersfield?

Blue states usually have far higher state income taxes that are used as deductions to reduce what is owed on federal income tax. Why should working folks in Nevada or Texas have to pay their fair share, while Wall Streeters get huge federal write-offs from their New York or Connecticut state income taxes?

With the new obsessions over income and net worth, we might as well also means-test all federal programs. Should anyone — do we remember Solyndra? — be eligible for federal cash loans if he makes over $250,000 per year? Why would affirmative action apply to the children of millionaires like the offspring of Eric Holder, Susan Rice, or, for that matter, Barack Obama, while excluding the destitute children of Appalachian coal miners and the poor clingers of Pennsylvania?

Remember the revolving door that Barack Obama once promised to end? The former head of his Office of Management and Budget, Peter Orszag, used his title and insider contacts to walk right into a Citigroup fat-cat banker’s job that pays him an estimated $2 million to $3 million a year. 

Clinton administration apparatchiks such as Jamie Gorelick, James Johnson, and Franklin Raines — without much banking experience — reaped millions of dollars working at Fannie Mae as it went nearly bankrupt. If you leave government and immediately make more than $1 million, why not pay a 50 percent tax on your income for five years — given that “somebody else made that happen”? Why does Google have tax havens in the Caribbean, and why do six-figure-income college presidents have their taxes paid by their universities?

For much of 2012, Obama waged a veritable class war against conservatives, as if they were all right-wing clones of Donald Trump and the Koch brothers. But modern Democrats — Nancy Pelosi, George Soros, Steven Spielberg, Brian Williams, or Oprah Winfrey — are as likely to be very wealthy as are Republicans, who increasingly better represent small-business owners desperately struggling to become affluent.

Next time around, Republicans might remind us of that paradox by nominating a small-business scrapper, who — unlike millionaires such as Al Gore, John Kerry, or Barack Obama — did not go to prep school and the Ivy League. And they might find better ways for those in academia, entertainment, sports, big law, and the media to pay their fair share.

And I would add The Democrats favorite money bag- Unions.

And 7 of the Top 10 richest in Congress are Democrats.

But remember, it’s evil to be rich, but only if you’re not a Democrat.

 

 

There is Only Me! There is no U.S.

“Beyond the pandering, beyond the politics, beyond the process is simple constitutional decency. This is out-and-out lawlessness. You had a clip of the president himself say months ago ‘I cannot do this on my own because there are laws on the books.’ Well, I have news for the president: The laws remain on the books, they haven’t changed,” syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer said on “FOX News” tonight.

“He proposed the DREAM Act of which the executive order is a variation. He proposed a DREAM Act. The Congress said no. The Congress is the one who makes the laws. What the administration does is it administers law. And in fact, what it’s pretending to do is to use discretion, that’s what the Homeland Security Secretary said,” Dr. Krauthammer said.

“This is not discretion,” he said. “Discretion is when you treat it on a one-by-one basis on the grounds of extenuating circumstances. This is the declaration of a whole new set of criteria, which is essentially resurrecting the legislation that the Congress has said no to.”

“And I think this is not how you run a constitutional Republic. This ought to be in the hands of Congress, and it is an end-run. What’s ironic of course is for eight years, the Democrats have been screaming about the imperial presidency with the Bush administration, the nonsense about the unitary executive. This is out-and-out lawlessness. This is not how you govern. And I think that’s the first issue that should be on the table,” Krauthammer concluded.

MSDNC:“This is just so unprecedented and outrageous, that you have to ask the question, would the right-wing be doing this if we had a white president there?” MSNBC guest and Democratic strategist Julian Epstein said on the channel this afternoon.

So you’re a racist if you oppose Executive Fiats by a black president.

America, What A Country.

“They play in our neighborhoods, they’re friends with our kids, they pledge allegiance to our flag. They are Americans in their heart, in their minds, in every single way but one — on paper,” President Obama said in the Rose Garden about his policy change in deporting young illegal immigrants.

Ah, look ma, it’s the old Liberal guilt hoary of “it’s for the Children”…ah isn’t that special… <<Barf>>

Gee, I guess “I will selectively enforce laws, make new laws up on my own, and disregard laws anytime I want if it is to MY OWN Personal political advantage” is now the new standard.

Krauthammer is correct, it’s lawlessness because now the law serve the politics not the people.

And that Illegal alien/Hispanic Racist Activist/Squishy Liberal/For the Children Vote is far more important than any legal American white racists after all.

And the Border patrol has a new mission. If you see an Illegal who’s under 16, (or a pregnant woman) you don’t arrest them, you give them a work permit, say “Welcome to America” to take the job (cheaper) than the American who was here legally.

Now that’s fair! isn’t it?

Mr. Obama angrily shot down a reporter for the conservative Daily Caller who interrupted his remarks with the question, “Why do you favor foreigners over American workers?”

After all, that’s a racist question. The President is Black, so he cannot be questioned. He must simply be obeyed without fail.

RUSH: I have a name for this new Obama immigration policy. In case you haven’t heard, folks, very quickly. The regime today told the border agents: “If you catch young illegals, let ‘em go and grant ‘em work permits.” No more deportation of illegal immigrants. They are to be given work permits and they can stay in the country. So what this is is “Catch, Release, Vote.

I mean, he’s being literally reamed over the speech. And I’ll tell you what’s coming next. Here we go. We just went through the brief overview. First, War on Churches. Second, create (as part of it) a phony Republican War on Women. And then go after Mitt Romney and Bain Capital. Then come out for gay marriage.

And now: Don’t deport the young illegals; give ‘em work permits.

What’s that gonna do to the unemployment number? Are we gonna count ‘em looking for work or not? If we don’t, the number won’t drop. If we do, the number will go up. What’s it gonna do for those of you trying to get work to learn that 800,000 new illegals are in the job market who will work cheaper than you do? And what’s next is home mortgages and student loans. Those are the next two things that are gonna fall. They’ll throw it all up against the wall. You watch.

And we’ll completely ignore the Drug Runners, gun runners, human smugglers and violent felons and murders. They don’t exist. It’s “for The Children” only. They are the only ones that exist.

La Raza and MeCHA and groups like that now run the Democrats.

After all, you don’t want to be a racist now do you?

For years the administration had said it didn’t have the authority to make such a move, saying it couldn’t decide to stop deporting wide categories of people on its own without approval from Congress.

But on Friday President Obama says administration now interprets the law to give it the discretion.

Because his own Political needs supersede everything else in life.

“Effective immediately, the Department of Homeland Security is taking steps to lift the shadow of deportation from these young people,” Mr. Obama said in an appearance in the White House Rose Garden. “Over the next few months, eligible individuals who do not present a risk to national security or public safety will be able to request temporary relief from deportation proceedings and apply for work authorization.”

“This is not amnesty,” Mr. Obama said.

OH YES IT IS!

“This is not immunity.

OH YES IT IS.

This is not a path to citizenship. It’s not a permanent fix. This is a temporary stopgap measure that lets us focus our resources wisely, while giving a degree of relief and hope to talented, driven, patriotic young people. It is the right thing to do.”

<<Barf Overload!>>

But at least he’s sowed up the Illegal Alien/Radical Aztlan Hispanic Vote!

“I never made a commitment that somehow we were going to give carte blanche to large-scale producers and operators of marijuana—and the reason is, because it’s against federal law. I can’t nullify congressional law.”

But I can go around it and that’s all I ever do anymore because I want what I want when I want it. So there! -

“I can’t ask the Justice Department to say, ‘Ignore completely a federal law that’s on the books,’” the president continued,

BWAH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA

“What I can say is, ‘Use your prosecutorial discretion and properly prioritize your resources to go after things that are really doing folks damage.’”

But only if it serves my own personal political needs. Everyone else can just get screwed!

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith, Texas Republican, said the new amnesty will become “a magnet for fraud,” and will end up letting jobs go to current illegal immigrants.

“How can the Administration justify allowing illegal immigrants to work in the U.S. when millions of Americans are unemployed?” Mr. Smith said. “President Obama and his administration once again have put partisan politics and illegal immigrants ahead of the rule of law and the American people.”

Because it’s all about HIM, that’s how.

Reason.com writer, Mike Riggs, also questioned the difference between the two positions. In a blog post“Why Can Obama Bend the Law for Young Immigrants but nor for Drug Users?,” he wrote, “Today’s immigration announcement makes a compelling case that Obama is capable of using his executive powers to *not* enforce the law, and will do so when it’s politically advantageous.”

As I have said many, many times before, Liberals have no morals or ethics and their Ends justifies the means, no holds barred hubris is just how they are.

Like a 3 year old, they want what they want when they want it and no one is going to stop them from getting it. Morals, Ethics, Laws, who give a rip about those when I want what i want when I want it and because I want it and I want it NOW!

If it “feels good” do it. If it’s good for ME, do it.

F*ck you and your objections. I am vastly superior to you and I have sanctimonious Self-righteousness on my side.

And if that doesn’t work, well, you’re just a racist anyhow so you’re not important.

They are Watching You

“It’s all about the data this year and Obama has that. When a race is as close as this one promises to be, any small advantage could absolutely make the difference,” says Andrew Rasiej, a technology strategist and publisher of TechPresident. “More and more accurate data means more insight, more money, more message distribution, and more votes.”

“They are way ahead of Romney micro-targeting and it’s a level of precision we haven’t seen before,” says Darrell M. West, a leading scholar on technology innovation at the Brookings Institution. “[The Obama campaign has] been able to work on it under the radar during the Republican primary season.”

“More than 40 percent of all our donors are new, and a lot of them are coming in because of things like this,” says Messina. “Call up our website and try to donate on your phone and then do Romney’s. … Those things are important, because people are busy and people want to help us and they think about — ‘Oh, yeah, I saw the president on TV. I want to give them money. How hard is it?’ ”

Adds Nicco Mele, a Harvard professor and social media guru: “The fabric of our public and political space is shifting. If the Obama campaign can combine its data efforts with the way people now live their lives online, a new kind of political engagement — and political persuasion — is possible.” (Politico)

*******

Washington Post: A federal department ruled last week that the Forest Service violated a Spanish-speaking woman’s civil rights by calling the Border Patrol to help translate during a routine stop, saying it was “humiliating” to Hispanics and an illicit backdoor way to capture more illegal immigrants.

The ruling by the Agriculture Department’s assistant secretary for civil rights could change policies nationwide as law enforcement agencies grapple with how far they can go in trying to help the Border Patrol while not running afoul of racial profiling standards.

Assistant Secretary Joe Leonard Jr. said calling the Border Patrol automatically “escalates” encounters between Hispanics and law enforcement. He ruled that the Forest Service cannot routinely summon the Border Patrol for assistance and said the agency now must document suspected racial profiling nationwide.

“Given the increased risk of being questioned about immigration status during an interaction with [Border Patrol], the policy of using BP for interpretation assistance is problematic in all situations because it places a burden on [limited English proficient] individuals that non-LEP individuals do not experience,” Mr. Leonard ruled.

The case stems from a 2011 incident in Olympic National Forest in Washington in which a Forest Service officer encountered a Hispanic couple who he said appeared to be illegally harvesting plants on the federal lands.

The couple didn’t speak English and he didn’t speak fluent Spanish and, anticipating that situation, he called the Border Patrol for backup and translating.

But when a Border Patrol agent arrived, the couple fled. The woman was apprehended, but the man jumped into a river to try to escape and drowned. The Border Patrol took the woman into custody but released her several days later, reportedly on humanitarian grounds.

The Northwest Immigrant Rights Project complained to the Agriculture Department, which oversees the Forest Service, and last week’s ruling was the result.

Matt Adams, legal director of the project, said the Border Patrol has been expanding its reach in the Northwest and that has meant more encounters well away from the border.

“They’ve got nothing to do out there as far as their traditional mission, that is enforcing people coming through the border. So in order to justify those expanded numbers, they utilize these other tactics,” Mr. Adams said. “At the end of the day, they can drag in bigger numbers, but it’s not focused on the border.”

His group is challenging other federal agencies’ use of the Border Patrol for translation services, and has filed requests under the Freedom of Information Act seeking logs for how often agents are used for translation.

Last week’s ruling relies in part on an executive order issued during the Clinton administration that says language is interchangeable with national origin, which is protected by federal law.

Groups that push for English-language policies in the U.S. called the new ruling illegal and said the government appeared to be granting special language rights to illegal immigrants.

“The ACLU and illegal alien rights groups are well aware that American courts have never upheld their argument that language and national origin are equal, so they battle out these disputes in private between the agencies in order to come to a settlement where both the courts and the taxpayers are absent from the table,” said Suzanne Bibby, director of government relations for ProEnglish. “This is their new strategy because they know they will lose in the courts.”

A spokeswoman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which oversees the Border Patrol, said the agency is reviewing the ruling but is committed to civil rights.

The union that represents Forest Service employees didn’t return a call seeking comment.

In the proceedings, the Forest Service fought on behalf of its officer. It pointed to an operational memo with the Border Patrol that said they are allowed to back up each other. Since Forest Service employees generally are not trained in Spanish, Border Patrol agents are particularly helpful in backing up encounters with Hispanics, the agency said.

Mr. Leonard’s 40-page ruling underscored deep mutual distrust on both sides in the town of Forks, in northwestern Washington.

Town residents who told the review board that the Forest Service officer involved in the 2011 stop was known for harassing Hispanics and for working with the Border Patrol.

Meanwhile, the Forest Service officer said he felt like the Hispanic community had been “tracing” his movements.

Mr. Leonard was skeptical of the officer’s reasoning and said he found the complaints from the community more convincing.

The ruling doesn’t reveal the names of those involved.

Underpinning the ruling were some key legal arguments: First, that the complainant was entitled to visit the national forest; second, that a law enforcement stop affects the availability of the service provided by the national forest; and third, that the Forest Service must take steps to protect those with limited English, including making them not feel unduly threatened.

“A policy that causes individuals to actually flee from the service being provided does not provide meaningful access,” Mr. Leonard wrote.

************

Judge Andrew Napolitano:

…Nevertheless, what Jeffersonians are among us today? When drones take pictures of us on our private property and in our homes and the government uses the photos as it wishes, what will we do about it? Jefferson understood that when the government assaults our privacy and dignity, it is the moral equivalent of violence against us. Folks who hear about this, who either laugh or groan, cannot find it humorous or boring that their every move will be monitored and photographed by the government.

Don’t believe me that this is coming? The photos that the drones will take may be retained and used or even distributed to others in the government so long as the “recipient is reasonably perceived to have a specific, lawful governmental function” in requiring them. And for the first time since the Civil War, the federal government will deploy military personnel insidetheUnitedStates and publicly acknowledge that it is deploying them “to collect information about U.S. persons.”

It gets worse. If the military personnel see something of interest from a drone, they may apply to a military judge or “military commander” for permission to conduct a physical search of the private property that intrigues them. Any “incidentally acquired information” can be retained or turned over to local law enforcement. What’s next? Prosecutions before military tribunals in the United States?

The quoted phrases above are extracted from a now-public 30-page memorandum issued by President Obama’s secretary of the Air Force on April 23. The purpose of the memorandum is stated as “balancing … obtaining intelligence information … and protecting individual rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.” Note the primacy of intelligence-gathering over protection of freedom, and note the peculiar use of the word “balancing.”

When liberty and safety clash, do we really expect the government to balance those values? Of course not. The government cannot be trusted to restrain itself in the face of individual choices to pursue happiness. That’s why we have a Constitution and a life-tenured judiciary: to protect the minority from the liberty-stealing impulses of the majority. And that’s why the Air Force memo has its priorities reversed – intelligence-gathering first, protecting freedom second – and the mechanism of reconciling the two – balancing them – constitutionally incorrect.

Everyone who works for the government swears to uphold the Constitution. It was written to define and restrain the government. According to the Declaration of Independence, the government’s powers come from the consent of the governed. The government in America was not created by a powerful king reluctantly granting liberty to his subjects. It was created by free people willingly granting limited power to their government – and retaining that which they did not delegate.

The Declaration also defines our liberties as coming from our Creator, as integral to our humanity and inseparable from us, unless we give them up by violating someone else’s liberties. Hence, the Jeffersonian and constitutional beef with the word “balancing” when it comes to government power versus individual liberty.

The Judeo-Christian and constitutionally mandated relationship between government power and individual liberty is not balance. It is bias – a bias in favor of liberty. All presumptions should favor the natural rights of individuals, not the delegated and seized powers of the government. Individual liberty, not government power, is the default position because persons are immortal and created in God’s image, and governments are temporary and based on force.

Hence my outrage at the coming use of drones – some as small as golf balls – to watch us, listen to us and record us. Did you consent to the government having that power? Did you consent to the American military spying on Americans in America? I don’t know a single person who has, but I know only a few who are complaining.

If we remain silent when our popularly elected government violates the laws it has sworn to uphold and steals the freedoms we elected it to protect, we will have only ourselves to blame when Big Brother is everywhere. Somehow, I doubt my father’s generation fought the Nazis in World War II only to permit a totalitarian government to flourish here.

Is President Obama prepared to defend this? Is Mitt Romney prepared to challenge it? Are you prepared for its consequences?

 

Transparency

Another book for the Liberals to ban.

Prefacing her work with an apt introduction from ATF Special Agent Jay Dobyns, one of the whistleblowers who have selflessly helped to illuminate this very dark (redacted!) splotch on the Obama administration’s record, Dobyns lays out the landscape in which Fast and Furious was a ticking time bomb just waiting to explode. Over his decades of service, Dobyns witnessed the slow but sure shift in the management of the U.S. Justice Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives: from dedicated men with boots-on-the-ground know-how and well-weathered experience, to well-suited, expensively educated yuppies with agendas other than protecting the United States in mind. The instances of corruption, the ideological feuds, and the lack of integrity eventually began to dominate the agency in a way that could have only heralded disaster.

Katie takes it away from there, further setting the Fast and Furious stage by taking us through the horrendous death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, and then detailing the well-documented anti-gun history of Obama and his cronies—and that’s when things start to get really hairy for the Obama administration. From the seeming pointlessness of allowing straw purchasers to send untraceable (until they turn up at crime scenes, that is) guns into Mexico, with no hope of catching the cartel kingpins; to forcing individual gun-shop business owners to sell their products to known criminals, regardless of the bewildered protestations of honest ATF agents; to the ATF’s bitter and dangerous retaliation against said honest agents—the possible motives of the people in charge become more and more ominous with every detail.

Despite the involved Obama appointees’ best efforts to downplay the impact of their recklessness, shift blame, avoid accountability, stonewall their watchdogs, and perpetuate the “botched” narrative, the unremitting investigations of Congressmen Darrell Issa, Charles Grassley, John Cornyn, and others have eventually revealed that there is something much deeper, and much more formidable, at play here than the perpetrators would like to portray.

In a readable style that’s thorough yet concise, detailed but not overwhelming, Katie presents all of the relevant players in this bloody scandal, and demonstrates the power of smaller media, the blogosphere, and determined individuals like her in uncovering the stories that the mainstream media would be all-too-willing to ignore, instead forcing the nation to finally sit up and pay attention.

While the dubious nature of outrages like the Obama administration’s Department of Energy loan guarantees and financial bailouts have illustrated the president’s willingness to throw taxpayers’ money around, the consequences of this scandal were, and will likely continue to be, American lives. As Katie points out, if the Obama administration is ready to be so cavalier with the Constitution and a few American lives here and there, just to push their leftist agenda—of what else are they capable? (DC)

ObamaCare for one. The EPA for for another.The DOJ in general. Dictatorship for the coup de tat. After all then it would be “fair” because they would get to run everyone’s life on micromanagement scale. How much more “fair” can you be?

Obama 2009: “The way to make government responsible is to hold it accountable.  The way to make government accountable is to make it transparent, so the American people can know exactly what decisions are being made, how they’re being well made, and whether their interests are being well served…For a long time now, there’s been too much secrecy in this city.  The old rules said that if there was a defensible argument for not disclosing something to the American people, then it should not be disclosed.  That era is now over, starting today.”

You may now laugh cynically…

Former Bush adviser Pete Wehner writes in the Weekly Standard that Republicans ought to “relentlessly” expose the president’s untrustworthiness through a robust program of fact-checking and timely flashbacks to his previous statements:
 

What is required when dealing with a man who habitually deconstructs truth is to destroy his public credibility. Voters need to be shown that Obama’s words and claims are, quite literally, unbelievable, whether they have to do with the past or the future, himself or others. That can be done in a manner that is tough-minded but not mean-spirited?—?by referring to the public record of Obama’s counterfeit charges and broken promises, which are now sufficiently numerous that they could fill the Library of Congress…

In ads and speeches, during interviews and through the use of surrogates, Romney and his party need to prosecute their case relentlessly. They need to imprint into the mind of voters a basic proposition: Barack Obama’s claims are worthless. They need to accomplish this with an avalanche of facts and by using Obama’s own words against him. The effect will be that Americans will appropriately devalue the president’s words. They will, in increasing numbers, reject his claims because they do not trust the source of the claims. This approach relies on a truth as old as the Scriptures, which teach that fresh water and salt water cannot flow from the same spring. (DC)

I agree. Also because since Liberals have no moral standards and will say or do anything to win regardless you have hit them back to beat them back.

(Mike Opelka) — People in NYC are lining up because they heard that people were getting a debit card loaded with as much as $1,000 of stimulus money. However, based on the latest information, there is no money to be given away. And yet people continue to line up and turn over their sensitive, personal information.

E & M Multi-Services is a tax preparation service that operates out of the back of a “dollar store” in the Fordham section of the Bronx. The company is reportedly collecting copies of Social Security cards, state ID cards and in exchange people are given a debit card from First California Bank. One small problem with this program — the cards are not loaded with $1,000 — not from Obama or anyone. Although, at least one person on the scene believed that the card would contain funds from President Obama:

“They said it was money from Obama.”

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/investigators&id=8623276

There is no more greedy with other people’s money than Liberals.

And they are so Transparent about it.

More on that Secured Border

The bloody drug war in Mexico shows no sign of relenting. Neither do calls for tighter border security amid rising fears of spillover violence.

This hardly seems a time the U.S. would be willing to allow people to cross the border legally from Mexico without a customs officer in sight. But in this rugged, remote West Texas terrain where wading across the shallow Rio Grande undetected is all too easy, federal authorities are touting a proposal to open an unmanned port of entry as a security upgrade.

By the spring, kiosks could open up in Big Bend National Park allowing people from the tiny Mexican town of Boquillas del Carmen to scan their identity documents and talk to a customs officer in another location, at least 100 miles away.

The crossing, which would be the nation’s first such port of entry with Mexico, has sparked opposition from some who see it as counterintuitive in these days of heightened border security. Supporters say the crossing would give the isolated Mexican town long-awaited access to U.S. commerce, improve conservation efforts and be an unlikely target for criminal operations. (KFYI)

So given that stupidity, this will make you even happier.

Terrorists from several Middle Eastern groups have infiltrated Latin American countries — especially Mexico — in order to plot and carry out attacks against the United States, according to an alarming exposé broadcast this week by the world’s largest Spanish news network.

While the news media in Latin American countries are covering this ongoing story, the U.S. media is delivering scant coverage — or no coverage at all – a U.S. law enforcement commander told the Law Enforcement Examiner. 

Univision, a multi-national Spanish-language TV network, this week aired a disturbing documentary titled, “La Amenaza Irani,” (Iranian Threat), The documentary uses undercover, never-before-seen video footage to illustrate how Iran’s growing political, economic and military ties to Latin America threaten U.S. security, according to a blog published by the Washington, DC-based watchdog group Judicial Watch. 

According to the JW blogger, Univision documentary is the result of a seven-month investigative report in which college-aged Mexicans infiltrated diplomatic circles in Mexico to obtain recordings that prove diplomats from Iran, Venezuela and Cuba planned a cybernetic attack against the White House, FBI, Pentagon and U.S. nuclear plants.

The documentary reportedly features secret video taken by extremists linked to Iran and footage from an undercover journalist who infiltrated Venezuelan military camps where terrorists trained. The news network’s investigative team also tracked the expansion of Iranian interests in the hemisphere, including money-laundering and drug-trafficking activities by terrorist groups supported by Iran, the Judicial Watch blog detailed.

A segment of the often shocking documentary is allegedly dedicated to the connection between Mexican drug cartels and the foiled plot to murder the Saudi ambassador in Washington D.C. a few months ago. One of the Iranians charged had been ordered by that country’s Special Forces to travel to Mexico to recruit members of the notorious drug cartel “Los Zetas” to carry out the plot.

The massive scheme against U.S. government information and computer systems had been in the works years earlier, the documentary reveals.

The ties between Middle Eastern terrorists and Latin America are nothing new, though specific plots against the U.S. from the region have likely not been exposed in this manner. Since 1982 Cuba has appeared on the State Department’s list of countries that have repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism, which means restrictions on U.S. foreign assistance, a ban on defense exports and sales and other financial restrictions.

Earlier this year the Congressional Research Service (CRS), which examines issues for federal lawmakers, published a report on Latin American terrorist concerns to the United States. According to the Judicial Watch blog, the CRS report points out that, while Latin America has not been the focal point of the U.S. war on terrorism, the region has struggled with domestic terrorism for decades and international terrorist groups have used it as a battle ground to advance their causes.

The report specifically mentions Iran’s increasing activities in Latin America in its attempt to circumvent U.S. sanctions as well as its ties to the radical Lebanon-based Islamic group Hezbollah. In the past, both the Law Enforcement Examiner and Judicial Watch reported on several occasions that Hezbollah and other terrorist groups are active south of the border.

In fact, the CRS report quotes a separate State Department antiterrorism document that says the U.S. remains concerned that sympathizers of Hezbollah and the Sunni Muslim Palestinian group Hamas are raising money among the sizable Middle Eastern communities in the tri-border area of Argentina.

This confirms an earlier report by former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Marine General Peter Pace, who as far back as 2007 warned the US Congress about terrorists in South America. (examiner)

Thanks, Janet, I feel so much better now.

But someone is watching YOU…

Unmanned aircraft from an Air Force base in North Dakota help local police with surveillance, raising questions that trouble privacy advocates.

Police were searching for three men believed to be armed.

As the unmanned aircraft circled 2 miles overhead the next morning, sophisticated sensors under the nose helped pinpoint the three suspects and showed they were unarmed. Police rushed in and made the first known arrests of U.S. citizens with help from a Predator, the spy drone that has helped revolutionize modern warfare.

But that was just the start. Local police say they have used two unarmed Predators based at Grand Forks Air Force Base to fly at least two dozen surveillance flights since June. The FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration have used Predators for other domestic investigations, officials said.

The drones belong to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which operates eight Predators on the country’s northern and southwestern borders to search for illegal immigrants and smugglers. The previously unreported use of its drones to assist local, state and federal law enforcement has occurred without any public acknowledgment or debate.

Proponents say the high-resolution cameras, heat sensors and sophisticated radar on the border protection drones can help track criminal activity in the United States, just as the CIA uses Predators and other drones to spy on militants in Pakistan , nuclear sites in Iran and other targets around the globe.

For decades, U.S. courts have allowed law enforcement to conduct aerial surveillance without a warrant. They have ruled that what a person does in the open, even behind a backyard fence, can be seen from a passing airplane and is not protected by privacy laws.

So That buzzing notice may not be a mosquito. But don’t worry, The Border is more secure than ever before!

Security, It’s Our Job

Notes on that “more secure” Border.

PHOENIX (KPHO) -   A suspected human smuggler who  has been deported 14 times was among a group of illegal immigrants  arrested Monday night in Arizona, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office  said.

Juan Ramos-Alegria was most recently arrested one week ago in Colorado, MCSO said.

Five suspected illegal immigrants, including Ramos-Alegria, were apprehended without incident.

Sheriff’s investigators said the immigrants  had paid anywhere from $1,500 to $2,000 each to be smuggled into the  U.S. Those arrested reported to be heading to Arkansas and Georgia as  their final destination, MCSO said.

So how long before #15??

Just days prior to that:

(Maricopa County, AZ) Sheriff Joe Arpaio reports that the Maricopa County
Sheriffs Office Human Smuggling Unit arrested 12 illegal aliens involved in
smuggling operations last night in the north valley, including the smuggler Ivan
Lara-Roque who has been previously deported from the United States 13 times
and has been permanently banned from entering the United States.

But don’t worry, if you want to enforce the law Attorney General Holder will just sue you and sell guns to the Drug Cartel members who are trying to kill you.

No Problem. If they, the Government, want to ignore the law and the security and safety of the US Citizens there is nothing you can do. Just suck it up, even if it’s lead.

Documents show that the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) discussed using their covert operation “Fast and Furious” to argue for controversial new rules about gun sales.

In Fast and Furious, ATF secretly encouraged gun dealers to sell to suspected traffickers for Mexican drug cartels to go after the “big fish.” But ATF whistleblowers told Congress it was a dangerous practice called “gunwalking,” and it put thousands of weapons on the street. Many were used in violent crimes in Mexico. Two were found at the murder scene of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.

ATF officials didn’t intend to publicly disclose their own role in letting Mexican cartels obtain the weapons, but emails show they discussed using the sales, including sales encouraged by ATF, to justify a new gun regulation called “Demand Letter 3″. That would require some U.S. gun shops to report the sale of multiple rifles or “long guns.” Demand Letter 3 was so named because it would be the third ATF program demanding gun dealers report tracing information.

On July 14, 2010 after ATF headquarters in Washington D.C. received an update on Fast and Furious, ATF Field Ops Assistant Director Mark Chait emailed Bill Newell, ATF’s Phoenix Special Agent in Charge of Fast and Furious:

“Bill – can you see if these guns were all purchased from the same (licensed gun dealer) and at one time. We are looking at anecdotal cases to support a demand letter on long gun multiple sales. Thanks.”

At least 300 people in Mexico have been killed with Fast and Furious weapons, as was U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry who records were sealed by the Administration so no one can see them. But they have nothing to hide.

And who will Holder through under the bus tomorrow to deflect blame from himself and his cronies???

Now, Would you like some salt for those wounds?

The House committee probing government gun-running now sets it sights on possible money-laundering involving drug cartel funds run in the name of drug enforcement. Why should we believe DOJ this time?It’s an old adage that when investigating criminal activity you should follow the money. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has announced an investigation into a money-laundering operation allegedly run by the Drug Enforcement Administration. We may need to follow the people following the money.

Just as Fast and Furious was allegedly intended to track and interdict gun-trafficking into Mexico, this operation, detailed in a New York Times article Sunday, is said to have as its purpose to follow how criminal organizations move their money, where they keep their assets and, most important, who their leaders are.

But the question once again arises: Have the feds interrupted or aided the flow?

After a Friday document dump showing how deliberately deceptive the Department of Justice and Attorney General Eric Holder were regarding Operation Fast and Furious, the government’s gun-running operation that led to the death of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry, it’s hard to believe this latest scheme was well-run.

In a Monday letter to Holder, Issa noted that as in Fast and Furious “this same goal of dismantling Mexican drug cartels motivated the Drug Enforcement Administration in aiding and abetting these same cartels in laundering millions of dollars in cash.”

It may have produced equally tragic results.

According to the Times report, agents said the requirement that the laundering of amounts greater than $10 million get formal DOJ approval was routinely waived.

According to Issa, that means “hundreds of millions of dollars” could’ve been “laundered” into the hands of drug cartels by the Obama administration and Holder’s Justice Department.

The Times quoted an agency official, who asked not to be identified: “My rule was that if we are going to launder money, we better show results. Otherwise, the DEA could wind up being the largest money launderer in the business, and that money results in violence and deaths.”

Is that the case?

In anticipation of Holder’s testimony on Thursday, Issa requested that his staff be fully briefed on the money-laundering operation no later than 5 p.m. Wednesday and that he would not accept on Thursday another my-dog-ate-the-memo excuse for not knowing what his department and its agencies were doing.

If this was a clone of Fast and Furious, this time involving money rather than guns, we need to know the extent of the damage. Money is the lifeblood of drug-trafficking, and we may have only succeeded in giving the drug lords a transfusion.

We have argued the possibility that Fast and Furious was a planned attempt to augment gun violence in Mexico using U.S. weapons as a predicate to pushing for more gun control.

Aiding and abetting the money laundering of these same drug cartels is equally unconscionable.

We agree with Issa that it is “almost unfathomable to contemplate the degree to which the United States government has made itself an accomplice to the Mexican drug trade, which has thus far left more than 40,000 people dead in Mexico since December 2006.”

This latest scheme involves handling blood money.

Some 52 GOP congressmen and two senators have called for Eric Holder’s resignation or firing. Maybe when President Obama gets back from his 17-day vacation. (IBD)

Poke the Tiger

Now that the Justice Department got Brian Terry’s record sealed and it’s Friday (so the news media is away for the weekend) they finally decided who to throw under the bus for “Fast & Furious” and then baffle everyone else with bullshit.

Not Holder. It would never have been Holder.

With Grassley and Issa on their trail like a pack of raptors they threw one of their own out and apparent “apology” for lying as a distraction.

Just two days ago: The Obama Administration has abruptly sealed court records containing alarming details of how Mexican drug smugglers murdered a U.S. Border patrol agent with a gun connected to a failed federal experiment that allowed firearms to be smuggled into Mexico.

Yep, we’ve been lying, but here’s why…  (that beeping bus noise you here is Eric Holder driving)…

The Justice Department on Friday provided Congress with documents detailing how department officials gave inaccurate information to a U.S. senator in the controversy surrounding Operation Fast and Furious, the flawed law enforcement initiative aimed at dismantling major arms trafficking networks on the Southwest border.

The materials contain clues into how misleading information about the botched gun trafficking operation made it into a Feb. 4, 2011 letter to Congress that department leaders have since acknowledged was false.

The February 2011 letter said that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives makes “every effort” to interdict weapons that have been purchased illegally before they cross into Mexico. It added that the allegation that the ATF had “sanctioned or otherwise knowingly allowed the sale of assault weapons” to suspicious people was false.

— Jason Weinstein, a senior aide in the Justice Department’s criminal division, played a key role in drafting the February 2011 letter. So he’s a target for “underling” assassination.

7 Months later and with no buying the bovine fecal matter, Time to get out the bus and start baffling them with bullshit.

Misleading Congress can be a prosecutable offense if a person who makes the statements knows they are false. But Attorney General Eric Holder has told lawmakers that so far he has no evidence anyone intended to deceive them. The matter remains under investigation not only by Republicans in Congress but also the Justice Department’s inspector general.

This distraction brought to you by Attorney General Eric Holder.

In a letter last February to Charles Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Justice Department said that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms had not sanctioned the sale of assault weapons to a straw purchaser and that the agency makes every effort to intercept weapons that have been purchased illegally. In Operation Fast and Furious, both statements turned out to be incorrect.

The Justice Department letter was responding to Grassley’s statements that the Senate Judiciary Committee had received allegations the ATF had sanctioned the sale of hundreds of assault weapons to suspected straw purchasers. Grassley also said there were allegations that two of the assault weapons had been used in a shootout that killed customs agent Brian Terry.

In an email four days later to Justice Department colleagues, then-U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke in Phoenix said that “Grassley’s assertions regarding the Arizona investigation and the weapons recovered” at the “murder scene are based on categorical falsehoods. I worry that ATF will take 8 months to answer this when they should be refuting its underlying accusations right now.” That email marked the start of an internal debate in the Justice Department over what and how much to say in response to Grassley’s allegations. The fact that there was an ongoing criminal investigation into Terry’s murder prompted some at the Justice Department to argue for less disclosure.

Some of what turned out to be incorrect information was emailed to Lanny Breuer, the assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s criminal division. Breuer sent an email saying “let’s help as much as we can” in responding to Grassley.

The emails sent to Capitol Hill on Friday showed that Burke supplied additional incorrect information to the Justice Department’s criminal division that ended up being forwarded to Breuer. For example, Burke said that the guns found at the Terry murder scene were purchased at a Phoenix gun shop before Operation Fast and Furious began. In fact, the operation was under way at the time and the guns found at the Terry murder scene were part of the probe. Breuer was one of the recipients of that information. In written comments this week to Grassley, Breuer said that he was on a three-day official trip to Mexico at the time of the Justice Department response and that he was aware of, but not involved in, drafting the Justice Department statements to Grassley. Breuer says he cannot say for sure whether he saw a draft of the letter before it was sent to Grassley.

And with the records sealed who can argue?

Attorney General Eric Holder said it’s not fair to assume that mistakes in Operation Fast and Furious led to Terry’s death.

He’s sorry, and the records are sealed, so just forget it.

Where Burke got the inaccurate information is now part of an inquiry conducted by the inspector general’s office at the Justice Department.

But since some of those records are likely sealed unless there is more pressure what do you want to bet nothing new will come out until…2013 or never!

Burke’s information was followed by a three-day struggle in which officials in the office of the deputy attorney general, the criminal division and the ATF came up with what turned out to be an inaccurate response to Grassley’s assertions.

Meaning no one bought the bullshit, now what!?

The process became so intensive that Breuer aide Jason Weinstein emailed his boss, “The Magna Carta was easier to get done than this was.” A copy of the latest draft was attached to the emails.

Initial drafts of the letter reflected the hard tone of Burke’s unequivocal assertions that the allegations Grassley was hearing from ATF agents were wrong. Later drafts were more measured, prompting Burke to complain in one email: “Every version gets weaker. We will be apologizing” to Grassley “by tomorrow afternoon.” Regarding the allegation that ATF sanctioned the sale of assault weapons to a straw purchaser, the Justice Department denial was scaled back slightly from “categorically false” to “false.” ”Why poke the tiger,” Lisa Monaco, the top aide to the deputy attorney general, explained in an email to Ron Weich, the assistant attorney general for legislative affairs whose signature was on the letter.

In another email, Burke wrote, “By the way, what is so offensive about this whole project” of response “is that Grassley’s staff, acting as willing stooges for the Gun Lobby, have attempted to distract from the incredible success in dismantling” Southwest Border “gun trafficking operations” and “not uttering one word of rightful praise and thanks to ATF — but, instead, lobbing this reckless despicable accusation that ATF is complicit in the murder of a fellow federal law enforcement officer.”

It just more and more incredible doesn’t it.

On Friday night, Grassley spokeswoman Beth Levine said that “Burke personally apologized to Sen. Grassley’s staff for the tone and the content of the emails” after learning from the Justice Department that the emails would be released.

Whoops!

It is unusual for the Justice Department to provide such detail of its internal deliberations as it did on Friday with Congress.

The department turned over 1,364 pages of material after concluding “that we will make a rare exception to the department’s recognized protocols and provide you with information related to how the inaccurate information came to be included in the letter,” Deputy Attorney General James Cole wrote Grassley and Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which is looking into the Obama administration’s handling of Operation Fast and Furious.

Please Make this go away…Please!! (Holder and the ATF to Grassley and Issa)

“After a first glance at today’s document dump from the Justice Department, there appears to be even more questions for Assistant Attorney General Breuer, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Weinstein and former U.S. Attorney Dennis Burke,” said Beth Levine, spokesperson for Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IW), who has been leading a congressional investigation of the gunrunning program. “The congressional investigators will continue to scour the documents over the upcoming days and will have further questions for department officials.”

Operation Fast and Furious involved more than 2,000 weapons that were purchased by straw buyers at Phoenix-area gun stores. Nearly 700 of the Fast and Furious guns have been recovered — 276 in Mexico and 389 in the United States, according to ATF data as of Oct. 20.

Amid probes by Republicans in Congress and the IG, the Justice Department in August replaced Burke, acting ATF Director Kenneth Melson and the lead prosecutor in Operation Fast and Furious.

But they were too cowardly to do any other time than late on Friday when everyone had gone home.

And remember, Burke is the one guy in all of this that quit. The others were merely “reassigned” to other desk jobs in Washington where Daddy Holder can keep an eye on them.

Grassley, who has been leading an investigation into what went wrong in the Fast and Furious operation for most of this year, says, “the Justice Department can’t have it both ways.” He took to the Senate floor Thursday night to raise a series of new questions about the operation. Many of them could emerge anew next week, when Attorney General Holder testifies in a House oversight hearing December 8^th.

“It is not about one person,” said Mr. Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, during a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.

“It is about a failure that seems to be pervasive within Justice that investigations play fast and loose with the expectations of what is right or wrong when it comes to what I am going to call collateral damage,” he said.

Like Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry.

Transparent Seal

The Obama Administration has abruptly sealed court records containing alarming details of how Mexican drug smugglers murdered a U.S. Border patrol agent with a gun connected to a failed federal experiment that allowed firearms to be smuggled into Mexico.

This means information will now be kept from the public as well as the media. Could this be a cover-up on the part of the “most transparent” administration in history? After all, the rifle used to kill the federal agent (Brian Terry) last December in Arizona’s Peck Canyon was part of the now infamous Operation Fast and Furious. Conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the disastrous scheme allowed guns to be smuggled into Mexico so they could eventually be traced to drug cartels.

Instead, federal law enforcement officers lost track of more than 1,000 guns which have been used in numerous crimes. In Terry’s case, five illegal immigrants armed with at least two semi-automatic assault rifles were hunting for U.S. Border Patrol agents near a desert watering hole just north of the Arizona-Mexico border when a firefight erupted and Terry got hit.

In Truth they had NO way to track these guns and had no intention of tracking them.

We know this only because Washington D.C.’s conservative newspaper, the Washington Times, got ahold of the court documents before the government suddenly made them off limits. The now-sealed federal grand jury indictment tells the frightening story of how Terry was gunned down by Mexican drug smugglers patrolling the rugged desert with the intent to “intentionally and forcibly assault” Border Patrol agents.  

You can see why the administration wants to keep this information from the public and the media, considering the smugglers were essentially armed by the U.S. government. Truth is, no one will know the reason for the confiscation of public court records in this case because the judge’s decision to seal it was also sealed, according to the news story. That means the public or media won’t have access to any new or old evidence, filings, rulings or arguments.

A number of high-ranking Border Patrol officials are questioning how the case is being handled. For instance, they wonder why the defendant (Manuel Osorio-Arellanes) hasn’t been tried even though it’s been almost a year since Terry’s murder. They also have concerns about the lack of transparency in the investigation, not to mention the recent sealing of the court case.

Osorio-Arellanes is charged with second-degree murder. The four other drug smugglers fled the scene and their names were blacked out in the indictment. In 2006 Osorio-Arellanes had been convicted in Phoenix of felony aggravated assault and in 2010 he was twice detained for being in the U.S. illegally.

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing this month to address the flawed gun-tracking program, Attorney General Eric Holder said it’s not fair to assume that mistakes in Operation Fast and Furious led to Terry’s death. Holder also expressed regret to the federal agent’s family, saying that he can only imagine their pain. (Judical Watch)

Nope, no cover up here. “transparency” is our middle name. What’s transparent is the cover up.

Washington Times: Five illegal immigrants armed with at least two AK-47 semi-automatic assault rifles were hunting for U.S. Border Patrol agents near a desert watering hole known as Mesquite Seep just north of the Arizona-Mexico border when a firefight erupted and one U.S. agent was killed, records show.

A now-sealed federal grand jury indictment in the death of Border Patrol agent Brian A. Terry says the Mexican nationals were “patrolling” the rugged desert area of Peck Canyon at about 11:15 p.m. on Dec. 14 with the intent to “intentionally and forcibly assault” Border Patrol agents.

At least two of the Mexicans carried their assault rifles “at the ready position,” one of several details about the attack showing that Mexican smugglers are becoming more aggressive on the U.S. side of the border.

According to the indictment, the Mexicans were “patrolling the area in single-file formation” a dozen miles northwest of the border town of Nogales and — in the darkness of the Arizona night — opened fire on four Border Patrol agents after the agents identified themselves in Spanish as police officers.

Two AK-47 assault rifles found at the scene came from the failed Fast and Furious operation.

Using thermal binoculars, one of the agents determined that at least two of the Mexicans were carrying rifles, but according to an affidavit in the case by FBI agent Scott Hunter, when the Mexicans did not drop their weapons as ordered, two agents used their shotguns to fire “less than lethal” beanbags at them.

At least one of the Mexicans opened fire and, according to the affidavit, Terry, a 40-year-old former U.S. Marine, was shot in the back. A Border Patrol shooting-incident report said that Terry called out, “I’m hit,” and then fell to the ground, a bullet having pierced his aorta. “I can’t feel my legs,” Terry told one of the agents who cradled him. “I think I’m paralyzed.”

Bleeding profusely, he died at the scene.

After the initial shots, two agents returned fire, hitting Manuel Osorio-Arellanes, 33, in the abdomen and leg. The others fled. The FBI affidavit said Osorio-Arellanes admitted during an interview that all five of the Mexicans were armed.

Peck Canyon is a notorious drug-smuggling corridor.

Osorio-Arellanes initially was charged with illegal entry, but that case was dismissed when the indictment was handed up. It named Osorio-Arellanes on a charge of second-degree murder, but did not identify him as the likely shooter, saying only that Osorio-Arellanes and others whose names were blacked out “did unlawfully kill with malice aforethought United States Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry while Agent Terry was engaged in … his official duties.”

The indictment also noted that Osorio-Arellanes had been convicted in Phoenix in 2006 of felony aggravated assault, had been detained twice in 2010 as an illegal immigrant, and had been returned to Mexico repeatedly.

Bill Brooks, U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s acting southwest border field branch chief, referred inquiries to the FBI, which is conducting the investigation. The FBI declined to comment.

The case against Osorio-Arellanes and others involved in the shooting has since been sealed, meaning that neither the public nor the media has access to any evidence, filings, rulings or arguments.

The U.S. attorney’s office in San Diego, which is prosecuting the case, would confirm only that it was sealed. Also sealed was the judge’s reason for sealing the case.

The indictment lists the names of other suspects in the shooting, but they are redacted.

In the Terry killing, two Romanian-built AK-47 assault rifles found at the scene were identified as having been purchased in a Glendale, Ariz., gun shop as part of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ (ATF) failed Fast and Furious investigation.

A number of rank-and-file Border Patrol agents have questioned why the case has not gone to trial, nearly a year after Terry’s killing. Several also have concerns about the lack of transparency in the investigation, compounded now by the fact that the court case has been sealed.

Shawn P. Moran, vice president of the National Border Patrol Council, which represents all 17,000 nonsupervisory agents, said it is rare for illegal immigrants or drug smugglers to engage agents in the desert, saying they usually “drop their loads and take off south.”

“The Brian Terry murder was a real wake-up call,” Mr. Moran said. “It emphasizes the failed state of security on the U.S. border, which poses more of a threat to us than either Iraq or Afghanistan. We have terrorism going on right on the other side of the fence, and we’re arming the drug cartels.

“My biggest fear is that someday a cartel member is going to go berserk, stick a rifle through the fence and kill as many Border Patrol agents as he can,” he said.

Mr. Moran said he understood the “rationale of working things up the food chain,” as suggested in the Fast and Furious probe, but had no idea how ATF planned to arrest cartel members who ultimately purchased the weapons since the agency lacks jurisdiction south of the border and never advised Mexican authorities about the operation.

“It was a ridiculous idea from the beginning, and it baffles us on how it was ever approved,” he said.

Mr. Moran also challenged the use of less-than-lethal s in the shooting incident, saying field agents have been “strong-armed” by the agency’s leadership to use nonlethal weapons. He said they were not appropriate for the incident in which Terry was killed.

“That was no place for beanbag rounds,” he said, noting that the encounter was at least 12 miles inside the U.S. and was carried out by armed men looking specifically to target Border Patrol agents.

CBP has said Terry and the agents with him carried fully loaded sidearms, along with two additional magazines, and were not under orders to use nonlethal ammunition first.

Mr. Moran, himself a veteran Border Patrol agent, said he also was “surprised” that the suspected Mexican gunmen were carrying their weapons at the ready position, meaning that the butts of the weapons were placed firmly in the pocket of the shoulder with the barrels pointed down at a 45-degree angle. He said this probably meant they had some level of military training.

More than 250 incursions by Mexican military personnel into the United States have been documented over the past several years.

The Border Patrol has warned agents in Arizona that many of the intruders were “trained to escape, evade and counter-ambush” if detected. The agency cautioned agents to keep “a low profile,” to use “cover and concealment” in approaching the Mexican units, to employ “shadows and camouflage” to conceal themselves and to “stay as quiet as possible.”

Several of the incursions occurred in the same area where Terry was killed, including a 2005 incident in which two agents were shot and wounded by assailants dressed in black commando-type clothing in what law-enforcement authorities said was a planned ambush. More than 50 rounds were fired at the agents after they spotted the suspected gunmen.

Many of the Mexican drug cartels use former Mexican soldiers, police and federal agents to protect drug loads headed into the U.S. Many cartel leaders also have targeted U.S. Border Patrol agents and state and local police, sometimes offering bounties of up to $50,000.

But it’s “more Secure than it has been” according to Big Sis Janet.

Feel better??

More Border Security

At least he’s consistent: Consistently Pro-Illegal and utterly Political.

(and wordpress is being very ugly to me today-Maybe it’s Big Brother! )

First there was Arizona. Then Alabama. Now South Carolina.

The Obama administration has boosted its efforts to bar state-level enforcement of the nation’s immigration laws by suing South Carolina over its new immigration reform law. The Monday announcement by the Department of Justice follows the news that the Department of Homeland Security has quietly canceled long-standing checks of transportation hubs for illegal immigrants. Administration officials defended the controversial lawsuit Monday, despite the nation’s unemployment rate of at least 9 percent. “Today’s lawsuit makes clear once again that the Justice Department will not hesitate to challenge a state’s immigration law, as we have in Arizona, Alabama and South Carolina, if we find that the law interferes with the federal government’s enforcement of immigration,” read a statement from embattled Attorney General Eric Holder.

(Yeah, but we will sell Mexican Drug Cartels thousands of weapons and then try desperately to cover it up!)

But South Carolina officials pushed back. “If the feds were doing their job, we wouldn’t have had to address illegal immigration reform at the state level,” said Rob Godfrey, a spokesman for the Republican Gov. Nikki Haley. “Until they do, we’re going to keep fighting in South Carolina to be able to enforce our laws.” (DC)

FEDS: IF WE WANT TO IGNORE THE LAW YOU CAN’T DO ANYTHING ABOUT THAT! AND YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO DO YOURSELF IT EITHER!  WE ARE SUPREME! WE HAVE ULTIMATE POWER!!

Big Brother will crush you if you try to enforce federal laws that we are ignoring!

Under the South Carolina reform, police officers are required to summon federal immigration authorities if they suspect an arrested person is an illegal alien. The law also makes it a felony for people to use fake identification documents for illegal immigrants, and for people to transport illegal immigrants. The law also allows state residents to sue state officials who do not enforce the law.

The administration’s intensified efforts to avoid enforcing the law are likely intended to complement the administration’s efforts to spur turnout in 2012 by immigrant groups, including Hispanics, Asians and Arabs.

Advocacy groups claiming to represent immigrants, such as the National Council of La Raza (“The Race”), have repeatedly urged the administration to further loosen immigration enforcement, despite a national unemployment rate of more than 9 percent.

Democratic officials have repeatedly stated that they expect to win a high proportion of immigrants’ votes in critical swing states, such as North Carolina, Virginia and Colorado.

Democratic governors or legislators have blocked immigration-related reforms in several states, including North Carolina and Virginia. Federal officials have already sued to block enforcement of immigration reforms passed in Arizona and Alabama, Also, federal agency officials have adopted new rules that slow the deportation of illegals, prompted the release of many illegals being processed for deportation and curbed long-standing efforts to find illegal immigrants.

This weekend, the Associated Press reported that border patrol agents revealed that they had been quietly ordered to stop seeking illegal immigrants passing through bus stations and other transportation hubs. “Orders have been sent out from Border Patrol headquarters in Washington, D.C., to Border Patrol sectors nationwide that checks of transportation hubs and systems located away from the southwest border of the United States will only be conducted if there is intelligence indicating a threat,” such as terrorism, said a Oct. 27 statement from the National Border Patrol Council, which is an affiliate of the AFL-CIO union group. (DC)

We don’t want to find anything, so we’ll stop looking. The Re-election campaign politics of the Border. Isn’t that what we’ve always needed.

After all, nothing is more important than Democrats winning 2012, including the Border.

The Democrats want all those new Democrats to come in and vote for them. Who gives a crap about Border Security. We are more secure than ever before, according to Big Sis. And Big Brother is watching you!

Oh Joy. Oh Rapture. I feel better now! Don’t you!

See Something, Say Nothing

Janeane Garofalo stopped being funny in…let’s see, what year was she born? Now, while accusing others of racism (over and over with the Tea Party), she proves what a racist she is on Keith Olberman’s show (The one on Al Gore’s Current TV that only the far left would watch) by suggesting that businessman and presidential candidate Herman Cain is being paid by somebody to run as a Republican and that he’s suffering from “Stockholm Syndrome.” (Stockholm syndrome is a term used to describe a real paradoxical psychological phenomenon wherein hostages express empathy and have positive feelings towards their captors, sometimes to the point of defending them).

That’s right Janeane, a Black man can’t possibly think that taxes are too high, the federal government is too big and that regulations are killing small businesses and innovation. Why? Because that doesn’t fit your preconceived idea of what being Black means. Uh, that’s racism.

IF YOU’RE ILLEGAL, SO WHAT!

WASHINGTON (AP) – The Obama administration said Thursday it will allow many illegal immigrants facing deportation the chance to stay in this country and apply for a work permit, while focusing on removing from the U.S. convicted criminals and those who might be a national security or public safety threat. (Just not AT the border).

That will mean a case-by-case review of approximately 300,000 illegal immigrants facing possible deportation in federal immigration courts, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said in announcing the policy change.

Advocates for an immigration overhaul have said that the administration, by placing all illegal immigrants in the same category for deportation, has failed to live up to its promise to only deport the “worst of the worst,” as President Barack Obama has said.

“From a law enforcement and public safety perspective, DHS enforcement resources must continue to be focused on our highest priorities,”  (The 97 year old dying grandma, 18 month olds with diapers, white people, Tea Party Terrorists!…the usual suspects!) Napolitano wrote a group of senators supporting new immigration legislation. “Doing otherwise hinders our public safety mission – clogging immigration court dockets and diverting DHS enforcement resources away from the individuals who pose a threat to public safety.” (translation: actually doing our job!)

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., a longtime supporter of immigration overhaul and the DREAM Act, applauded the policy change.

“These students are the future doctors, lawyers, teachers and, maybe, senators, who will make America stronger,” Durbin said in an emailed statement. “We need to be doing all we can to keep these talented, dedicated, American students here, not wasting increasingly precious resources sending them away to countries they barely remember.” (Barf Bag Overload, I think I choked back a tear…nope that was my breakfast!)

Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said the Obama administration was implementing reforms “against the will of Congress and the majority of American people we represent.”

“It is just the latest attempt by this president to bypass the intended legislative process when he does not get his way,” McCaul said in a statement. “The fact that we have a backlog and prioritize deportations is nothing new. This policy goes a step further granting illegal immigrants a fast-track to gaining a work permit where they will now unfairly compete with more than 9 percent of Americans who are still looking for jobs.”

And the illegal alien wouldn’t show up on unemployment stats either! What a great deal!

But…

“Terrorist Group Setting Up Operations Near Border: Hezbollah Considered To Be More Advanced Than Al-Qaida,” from 10News.com.

SAN DIEGO — A terrorist organization whose home base is in the Middle East has established another home base across the border in Mexico.

“They are recognized by many experts as the ‘A’ team of Muslim terrorist organizations,” a former U.S. intelligence agent told 10News.

The former agent, referring to Shi’a Muslim terrorist group Hezbollah, added, “They certainly have had successes in big-ticket bombings.”

Some of the group’s bombings include the U.S. embassy in Beirut and Israeli embassy in Argentina.

However, the group is now active much closer to San Diego.

“We are looking at 15 or 20 years that Hezbollah has been setting up shop in Mexico,” the agent told 10News.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, U.S. policy has focused on al-Qaida and its offshoots.

“They are more shooters than thinkers … it’s a lot of muscles, courage, desire but not a lot of training,” the agent said, referring to al-Qaida.

Hezbollah, he said, is far more advanced.

“Their operators are far more skilled … they are the equals of Russians, Chinese or Cubans,” he said. “I consider Hezbollah much more dangerous in that sense because of strategic thinking; they think more long-term.”

Hezbolah has operated in South America for decades and then Central America, along with their sometime rival, sometime ally Hamas.

Now, the group is blending into Shi’a Muslim communities in Mexico, including Tijuana. Other pockets along the U.S.-Mexico border region remain largely unidentified as U.S. intelligence agencies are focused on the drug trade.

“They have had clandestine training in how to live in foreign hostile territories,” the agent said. [...]

“If they really wanted to start blowing stuff up, they could do it,” the agent said.

According to the agent, the organization sees the U.S. as their “cash cow,” with illegal drug and immigration operations. Many senior Hezbollah leaders are wealthy businessmen, the agent said.

“The money they are sending back to Lebanon is too important right now to jeopardize those operations,” he said.

The agent said the real concern is the group’s long-term goal of radicalizing Muslim communities.

“They’re focusing on developing … infiltrating communities within North America,” the agent told 10News.

And…

SAN DIEGO (AP) - Federal officials said Thursday they’ve taken down a drug and weapons trafficking ring involving members of San Diego’s Iraqi community and a major Mexican drug cartel that was caught selling large amounts of drugs, guns and grenades.

Police in El Cajon said more than 60 suspects linked to the Chaldean Organized Crime Syndicate were arrested.

Smugglers were shipping drugs from El Cajon to Iraqis in Detroit, where the Chaldean syndicate is based, authorities said.

El Cajon and federal police say they have seized 18 pounds of methamphetamine, narcotics, cocaine and other drugs; more than 3,500 pounds of marijuana; $630,000 in cash; four IEDs; and more than 30 guns, including assault rifles.

In April, a Drug Enforcement Agency undercover agent was shown a hand grenade by an immigrant and was told additional grenades were available from a Mexican military source.

The cartel, Sinaloa, is Mexico’s most powerful drug cartel, led by Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who has become one of the world’s richest and most-wanted men since he escaped from a Mexican prison 10 years ago.

The investigation focused on an Iraqi social club in El Cajon that authorities said is a hub of criminal activity conducted by Iraqi organized crime. Crimes including attempted murder, sales of meth and marijuana, gambling and illegal firearms sales have been reported at the club.

El Cajon police have for years received complaints from neighbors and the wives of men who attended the club. The managers of the club are aware of the criminal activity and demand a cut of the money, according to authorities. Armed guards are allegedly provided during high-states card games.

The club’s troubles go back more than a decade. In 1998, police seized illegal slot machines. In 2007, it was identified as a gathering spot for Iraqi narcotics distributors. In 2009, authorities started investigating the illegal sale of firearms and possession of hand grenades.

Four indictments were unsealed Thursday charging nine people with federal narcotics and weapons trafficking charges and the unlawful possession of various firearms and explosives. One of the suspects, Nofel Noel Suleyman, was also charged with engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, which carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years in prison.

Under Guzman, Sinaloa grew bloodier and more powerful, controlling cocaine trafficking on the Mexican border with California, while expanding eastward to the corridor between Sonora and Arizona and waging a fierce battle for Chihuahua state bordering Texas. That war made the border city of Ciudad Juarez one of the world’s most dangerous cities.

In October 2010, Mexico made its largest marijuana bust _ 134 tons _ in Tijuana and said markings on the packages linked the haul to El Chapo, showing that he was also running drugs smoothly through a city once controlled by his archrivals, the Arrellano Felix gang.

But if you “see something, say something”. Just as long as it’s not about Illegal Aliens, Hispanics, or terrorists crossing/or crossed the border!!

Especially, if they are terrorists!

So “see something, say nothing”.

Big Sis and Big Brother aren’t interested.

But if you see a Tea Party Terrorist or a Black politician/man with “Stockholm Syndrome” then say something!

America, what a country!

But I have to go on vacation first!

They are More Important

You remember “Fast & Furious” don’t you?

Where the government deliberately sold 1,400+ guns to known drug cartel members and when gun owners and ATF field agents objected they made let them go to Mexico.

Then they lost them (they were supposed to be “tracking” them-at least that was there story).

Then one shows up at the scene of a Border Patrol agent being killed by drug smugglers. It’s the murder weapon.

The administration has been trying to suppress it ever since.

Well here’s an Update:

U.S. Attorney, Dennis Burke is opposing a motion routinely approved by prosecutors, that would have the family of murdered Border Patrol Agent, Brian Terry, recognized as crime victims, Fox News is reporting.

Burke claims the gun purchases made by Jamie Avila, whose purchases of guns included the one that was allegedly used to kill Terry, “is not any particular person, but society in general.”

Being recognized as crime victims, the Terry family would have been able to speak at Avila’s sentencing, as well as conferring with prosecutors.

Former U,S, Attorney in Florida, Kendall Coffey, told in a Fox News report, “The government leaders responsible for the tragic mistakes of Operation Fast and Furious have a lot of explaining to do before Congress. But at the same time, they still have a duty under federal law to give answers, to consult and extend respect to the family.

Paul Charlton, the Terry’s attorney, alludes this may be a tactic used by the federal government to possibly cover their tracks.

“The government’s already been put on notice that they might be facing a wrongful action by the family. And you have to wonder if the government’s efforts to deny the family the status of ‘crime victims’ is part of a strategy to avoid legal responsibility for some of the tragic mistakes of Operation Fast and Furious,” Charlton told The Fox News Report.

Burke also writes in the case, the family is not a crime victim because they were not “directly of proximately harmed,” by the illegal purchase of murder weapon.

They actually want to screw over the family of a dead Border Agent in order to lessen the damage from the government deliberately selling guns to known drug cartel buyers.

They are more important than you are.

Which brings me to The “Emergency” Food Tax here in Phoenix.

If there was no food tax, there would be no pay raises, DiCiccio
said. Its as simple as that. The Arizona Republic, June 14, 2011

The food tax is expected to bring in $28 million this year. Meanwhile,
city employees got $27 million in raises and bonuses this year. Now
the Phoenix City Council has tentatively approved a budget that
includes another $28.9 million in pay raises and bonuses for the
coming year. – Arizona Republic columnist Laurie Roberts, May 28, 2011

City management has admitted that they can find no documents that show
they told the City Council or public the AMOUNT of employee pay raises
until a month and a half after the budget was approved.

City Manager David Cavazos was given until noon today (Aug. 10, 2011)
to show that his staff didnt hide that information while the budget
was being formed and debated. He was unable to produce anything
showing that staff informed anyone of the pay raise amounts until
April 21, 2010. That is a month and a half after the budget was
approved and 2 1/2 months after the city imposed a 2 percent food tax
essentially equal to the amount of pay raises.

City Attorney Gary Verburg confirmed that City Manager Cavazos has no
more records to turn over nothing that supports his contention that
the Council knew the amount of the pay raises. Verburg wrote that the
documents provided to you contain whatever information the City has,
to my knowledge, relevant to your request.

During the budget process when the pay raises went unmentioned the
city said the food tax was needed or managers would have to lay off
police officers and cut back senior centers, libraries, pools, transit
routes, recreation and programs for schoolchildren.

Its taken more than a year to drag an admission out of the city that
no one was told the amount of pay raises and bonuses until long after
the budget was approved, said Councilman Sal DiCiccio, who had made
multiple requests of the city manager to produce that information.
City Manager Cavazos produced reams of documents talking about the
budget process, but he never answered the question about when the pay
raise amounts were first mentioned.

The simple question City Manager Cavazos refused to answer is:

Mr. Cavazos, when was the first time city staff told Council members
the AMOUNT of employee raises?

I challenge the press and the public to see if even today they can
get a direct and clear answer from him to that question without trying
to divert it to other issues, DiCiccio said.

Even today, he continues to dodge the question in spite of the
citys admission that no document exists prior to April 21.  Its time
for Mr. Cavazos to start leveling with the citizens of Phoenix about
budget matters rather than hiding behind a blizzard of diversion.

The April 21, 2010 document shows that the public was not told the
full amount of the pay raises until after the food tax was passed
(Feb. 2, 2010), 15 public hearings were held (February, 2010) and the
City Council voted on the budget and union contracts (March, 2010).

Phoenix faced the worst budget shortfall in history, $270 million,
closing pools, cuttings libraries and services for seniors and
schoolchildren. It still managed to give out $29 million in pay raises
and bonuses by adding a new food tax, which hurt the poor the most.

The public deserves better from the city of Phoenix.

Its one thing to refuse a councilman requested information. Its
worse to hide information from the public about how its taxes are
raised and spent. Phoenix has an obligation to provide information,
and taxpayers deserve to know how their city is being managed.

The reason this remains important to me is because a well-run Phoenix
that is citizen- and business-friendly could and should be leading the
nation out of this recession. We have great assets, including a
citizenry that truly cares about the community. We owe them honesty
and our best performance in their interest.

Thank you,
Sal DiCiccio
City of Phoenix
Councilman, District 6

So lying is now acceptable as a way to get your apparatchiks a raise when the City is facing the worst budget crisis in it’s history.

Everyone get’s a 2% hike on all their food to feed the greed of City Workers.

And you know what the liberals I have shown this to say?

“Well, they had a Union Contract they had to honor.”

Seriously…no joke.

Partisanship is that bad in this country that lying is ok if it fits in with your ideology.

Moral and ethics, honor, decency can just be chucked out the window at a seconds notice if you can find an ideological reason to support the lies.

No wonder we have young people who have no sense of right or wrong. Everything is relative….to your Political views.

And that way lies disaster.

“You’ve got to tell them you’ve had enough of the theatrics, you’ve had enough of the politics, stop sending out press releases. Start passing some bills that we all know will help the economy right now,” he said. “That’s what they need to do. They’ve got to hear from you.”–President in Michigan this week at a $35,000 a plate fundraiser (no evil “rich” people here).

That’s why he and they all went on vacation for a month! And you know he means it (not just Republicans).

Is that an Iceberg I see up ahead?…

Government Gold

Typical Campaign Obama Vs. President Obama: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZHep3gE87A&feature=player_embedded

It’s Your Ice Maker’s Fault:

In its latest effort to save the planet from global warming, the U.S. government is on the verge of regulating ice makers commonly found in many refrigerators because they increase energy consumption by a good 12 to 20%.

This could be detrimental to the environment since there are more than 100 million refrigerators across the nation and they devour a substantial chunk of the electricity used by all households. Energy consumed by refrigerators as a whole has long been documented but not what the ice makers inside their freezers use individually.

Americans can finally sleep soundly through the night because government scientists have completed the ice maker study and the findings have been beautifully laid out in a 79-page report titled Energy Consumption of Automatic Ice Makers Installed in Domestic Refrigerators
http://www.nist.gov/customcf/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=907664. The information is being used to make a case for regulating the popular little machines that are contributing to the planet’s destruction.

In a nutshell, the culprit is the tiny motor inside the freezing system that’s used to release ice from the mold and into a tray. Because the motor is specially built to function in a cold setting, it requires an internal heater to keep it from freezing up. Here’s where it gets serious; heating elements require a lot of power and that’s where the extra energy consumption kicks in.

The study was conducted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a federal agency with a billion-dollar annual budget that claims to promote U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards and technology in ways that enhance economic security and quality of life. That description is straight out of the agency’s website- http://www.nist.gov/index.html for those who care to sort through it.

The bottom line is that the NIST’s research is often used by regulatory agencies as ammo to control private enterprise. In this case the Department of Energy, which incidentally financed the ice maker investigation, will set new standards for refrigerators that come equipped with the devices. The DOE will add 84 kilowatt hours to the efficiency rating of every fridge that comes with an ice maker. That means consumers will pay more money.

Big Brother wants to see your Phone

Coming soon to a police department near you…

The Michigan State Police have a high-tech mobile forensics device that can be used to extract information from cell phones belonging to motorists stopped for minor traffic violations. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Michigan last Wednesday demanded that state officials stop stonewalling freedom of information requests for information on the program.

ACLU learned that the police had acquired the cell phone scanning devices and in August 2008 filed an official request for records on the program, including logs of how the devices were used. The state police responded by saying they would provide the information only in return for a payment of $544,680.

A US Department of Justice test of the CelleBrite UFED used by Michigan police found the device could grab all of the photos and video off of an iPhone within one-and-a-half minutes. The device works with 3000 different phone models and can even defeat password protections.

“Complete extraction of existing, hidden, and deleted phone data, including call history, text messages, contacts, images, and geotags,” a CelleBrite brochure explains regarding the device’s capabilities.

Border Security

For the third time in a few months a federal report exposes how the U.S. government prioritizes environmental preservation over national security by keeping Border Patrol agents out of wildlife refuges that are heavily transited by Mexican drug and human smugglers.

Among them is a popular smugglers’ corridor, the 2,300-acre San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge, used by an illegal immigrant who murdered an Arizona rancher last spring. For years, Border Patrol agents have been prohibited by the Interior Department and the U.S. Forest Service from actively patrolling such areas because it threatens natural resources.

Motorized vehicles, road construction and the installation of surveillance structures required to adequately secure the vast areas are forbidden because it could endanger the environment and its wildlife. In the meantime, Mexican drug cartels and human smugglers regularly use the sprawling, unmanned and federally protected land to enter the U.S. The areas have become the path of choice for illicit operations that endanger American lives and, ironically, cause severe environmental damage.

Adding insult to injury, Interior officials charge the Department of Homeland Security millions of dollars for conducting preapproved Border Patrol operations on its land. Since 2007, Homeland Security has paid the Interior Department more than $9 million to mitigate the “environmental damage” of protecting the border.

A group of lawmakers have introduced legislation  to prohibit any federal agency—especially the Department of the Interior—from using environmental regulations to hinder the Border Patrol from securing the area. The measure would essentially ensure that Border Patrol, not federal land managers, have operational control of the nation’s borders.

Imagine that!!

More Study on Gas User Fees

GOLDEN VALLEY, Minn. — The Minnesota Department of Transportation is looking for 500 people to test technology that could someday be used to collect a mileage-based user fee.

Mn/DOT anticipates a fee on road usage might someday be necessary as more fuel efficient and hybrid cars are on the road, decreasing revenue from the gas tax.

“This research will provide important feedback from motorists about the effectiveness of using technology in a car or truck to gather mileage information,” said Cory Johnson, project manager.

“We are researching alternative financing methods today that could be used 10 or 20 years from now when the number of fuel efficient and hybrid cars increase and no longer produce enough revenue from a gas tax to build and repair roads.” (KARE-TV)

The McJob are Golden Arches

When a fast-food “National Hiring Day” resembles the Depression’s unruly food lines, it doesn’t back up President Obama’s rosy picture of economic recovery. Want some fries with that “hope and change”?

If it were a Republican president in office at a time when high unemployment is so persistent that McDonald’s holds a nationwide help-wanted day, the establishment media would be sinking their teeth into him like a Quarter Pounder with Cheese.

The legendary hamburger chain has promised to expand its company workforce by 7% by hiring 50,000 new employees in a single day, thus scoring a publicity boon by having Ronald McDonald personally give the jobs market a shot in the arm.

But the event comes after Obama and the Congress have spent trillions on a stimulus strategy that hasn’t stimulated.

Companies sit on potential investments that could generate many millions of jobs — because they see no hope of this ever-increasingly regulated economy rewarding them for their risk.

Yet the president gets a pass from the liberal-dominated press for his McJobs economy — and for claiming to have “saved millions of jobs” and promising to “keep making the investments that create jobs.”

Government spending is not “investment.” Investment is what investors do with their own money.

When the government spends at unprecedented levels, as it is doing today, it leaves investors with neither enough of their own money to invest, nor feasible destinations for their investments.

Nearly two years ago Obama’s Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, brandished the president’s hit-the-ground-running policy “to enact the largest economic recovery plan since World War II.”

Geithner promised that “by the time the plan has been fully implemented by the end of next year, we will have injected nearly $800 billion into the U.S. economy, saved or created 3.5 million jobs and raised our real gross domestic product over where it would otherwise have been by more than 3%.”

Since we remain in the economic doldrums, the president and his minions have been forced to make the absurd contention that his administration saved America from another Great Depression.

But it’s what we saw at all those McDonalds this week — massive throngs unhappily settling for work burger-flipping, and nearly rioting in Cleveland, where three were hit by a car because of a fight — that is reminiscent of the 1930s slump.

Ronald Reagan was falsely accused by Democrats of presiding over a recovery that produced miserable “McJobs.” In Obama’s case, unexpectedly large crowds around the country are vying to get hired for actual jobs working at McDonald’s. (IBD)

McDonald’s didn’t have a complete count on how many applicants showed up Tuesday, but so many arrived on some local McDonald’s doorsteps that restaurant owners were nearly overwhelmed.

“At one point, we had 120 people outside the door, but we were able to get all 120 interviewed,” said Courtney Ristuben at her Citrus Heights location on Sunrise Boulevard and Old Auburn Road.

Halfway through her four-hour afternoon hiring session, from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m., Ristuben and her team had seen 300 job seekers. She anticipated another 300 by dinner time.

“We’ve seen 15- and 16-year-olds looking for their first job to people 50, 55 and over, first-time high schoolers to 20 years’ experience looking for anything we have to offer,” Ristuben said.

It’s a sobering sign of the times in Sacramento and across the country.

McDonald’s and other fast-food chains, once a first job for teenagers, appear to be turning into an employer of more adults: The average age of a fast-food worker is 29.5, up from 22 in 2000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

For many older job seekers, a job with health benefits is as important as the paycheck. Medical insurance, prescription drug coverage, 401(k) retirement and educational assistance are offered at some McDonald’s locations. (SacBee)

And just remember it was McDonald’s ObamaCare waiver that touched off the 1200 other ones we’ve had since. <<wink wink>>

Imagine what it would be like if they didn’t have the waiver?

In fact, what we really need is a rollback of big government, high taxes and hyper-regulation — the kinds of things that are inimical to job creation. And that begins with a repeal of the ObamaCare government health care takeover.

Nothing against McDonald’s, mind you. It’s a fine corporation. But it’s time to give anxious-to-work Americans the break they deserve, and get up and get away from Obamanomics. (IBD)

And then there always $5 a Gallon Gas.

It just appeared in Washington D.C.

Gee, how prophetic…

Bargaining For Your Life

Government Collective Bargaining 101

Members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1260 rejected a contract offer by HECO. Contracts between the IBEW represent 1,200 employees at HECO, Maui Electric Co. and Hawaii Electric Light Co.

The business manager Lance Miyake for the IBEW issued a statement: “As of 3:30 pm today, March 4, 2011, IBEW Local Union 1260 will be on strike against Hawaiian Electric Company, Maui Electric Company and Hawaii Electric Light Company.”

This is just after a big storm struck the island and left thousands without power to begin with. So that’s the perfect time to go on strike!

The move comes as dozens of HECO workers are scrambling to fix power outages around Oahu and fallen power lines in Ewa. About 8,000 customers remain without power, a HECO representative said.Leeward Oahu lawmakers voiced outrage over the walkout.”It is unacceptable for union members to put their pay before the safety of my community. Many people in Ewa Beach are already out of work and for them to walk off in a state of crisis is egregious,” Rep. Kymberly Pine said.The union has said it opposes management’s proposal to require employees to work two more years to get full retirement benefits, pushing back their retirement age to 62 from 60. (KITV)

It has now gone to mediation.

***************************************************

BEANBAGS Vs. AK-47′s & More

A policy requiring U.S. Border Patrol agents to use nonlethal bean bags as a first line of defense evidently led to the murder of an agent who was gunned down by a heavily armed group of illegal immigrants in Arizona.

The deadly gun battle took place on December 14, but the Department of Homeland Security has kept details from the public under the often-invoked premise that it’s an “ongoing investigation.”

The murdered agent, Brian Terry, and his colleague encountered five illegal border crossers at around 11:15 p.m. in an area known as Peck Canyon, northwest of Nogales. The illegal aliens refused commands to drop their weapons and the two federal agents proceeded to fire beanbags, as per Border Patrol policy to use nonlethal force against migrants.

Turns out the illegal immigrants were heavily armed with sophisticated assault weapons known as AK-47s. They responded to the beanbags with gunfire and agent Terry was mortally shot in the back.

Making matters worse, a separate new reports indicates that the gun used to murder Terry was actually part of a federal experiment that allowed firearms from the U.S. to be smuggled into Mexico so they could eventually be traced to drug cartels. Instead, federal law enforcement officers have lost track of hundreds of guns which have been used in numerous crimes.

A federal operation that allowed weapons from the U.S. to pass into the hands of suspected gun smugglers so they could be traced to the higher echelons of Mexican drug cartels has lost track of hundreds of firearms, many of which have been linked to crimes, including the fatal shooting of a Border Patrol agent in December. John Dodson, an agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who worked on Operation Fast and Furious, said in an interview with the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit research group based in Washington, that he was still haunted by his participation in the investigation.

“With the number of guns we let walk, we’ll never know how many people were killed, raped, robbed,” he said. “There is nothing we can do to round up those guns. They are gone.”(LA Times)

Among them were at least three guns found at the Peck Canyon scene of Terry’s murder. The weapons were traced through their serial numbers to a gun shop in Glendale, Arizona, which led to a Phoenix man (Jaime Avila) that the feds repeatedly allowed to smuggle firearms into Mexico. Known as Operation Fast and Furious, the disastrous project was run by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

But it gets Better, with Big Sis:

Newly-released documents obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) reveal that the US Depart of Homeland Security has been working on plans to roll out a new wave of mobile surveillance technologies at train stations, stadiums and streets. These new technologies will track your eye movements, capture and record your facial dimensions for face-recognition processing, bathe you in X-rays to look under your clothes, and even image your naked body using whole-body infrared that were banned from consumer video cameras because they allowed the camera owners to take “nude” of people at the beach.

Most importantly, many of these technologies are designed to be completely hidden, allowing the government to implement “covert inspection of moving subjects.” You could be walking down a hallway at a sports stadium, in other words, never knowing that you’re being bathed in X-rays from the Department of Homeland Security, whose operators are covertly looking under your clothes to see if you’re carrying any weapons.

According to a Forbes.com article one project pursued by DHS using technology from Siemens would “mount backscatter x-ray scanners and video cameras on roving vans, along with other cameras on buildings and utility poles, to monitor groups of pedestrians, assess what they carried, and even track their eye movements.”

Forbes Blog: American Science & Engineering, a company based in Billerica, Massachusetts, has sold U.S. and foreign government agencies more than 500 backscatter x-ray scanners mounted in vans that can be driven past neighboring vehicles to see their contents, Joe Reiss, a vice president of marketing at the company told me in an interview. While the biggest buyer of AS&E’s machines over the last seven years has been the Department of Defense operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, Reiss says law enforcement agencies have also deployed the vans to search for vehicle-based bombs in the U.S.

“This product is now the largest selling cargo and vehicle inspection system ever,” says Reiss.

Another project involved developing “a system of long range x-ray scanning to determine what metal objects an individual might have on his or her body at distances up to thirty feet.”

We already know that the U.S. government has purchased 500 vans using covert backscatter technology to covertly scan people on the streets They’re called “Z Backscatter Vans, or ZBVs.”

“This would allow them to take these technologies out of the airport and into other contexts like public streets, special events and ground transit,” says Ginger McCall, an attorney with EPIC. “It’s a clear violation of the fourth amendment that’s very invasive, not necessarily effective, and poses all the same radiation risks as the airport scans.”

It’s not clear to what degree the technologies outlined in the DHS documents have been implemented. Multiple contacts at the DHS public affairs office didn’t respond to a request for comment Wednesday afternoon.

Then a TSA official responds in a statement that the “TSA has not tested the advanced imaging technology that is currently used at airports in mass transit environments and does not have plans to do so.”

Which mean they have. This government after all, and especially Big Sis.

“When you’re out walking on the street, it’s not acceptable for an officer to come up and search your bag without probable cause or consent.,” EPIC’s  Mcall says. “This is the digital equivalent.”

We are from the Government and we are here to help you!

And we are NOT looking at your naked body!

We do not suspect you!

And Muslim Terrorism is not terrorism. The Border is secure even though we admit to having very little “operational” control over it!

But we are fighting the  armed Drug Cartels with bean bags and just watching as known Cartel buyers buy guns to kill us and Mexicans alike.

Rejoice!

We have everything under Control. Trust us.

But at least you have ObamaCare.

The number of temporary healthcare reform waivers granted by the Obama administration to organizations climbed to more than 1,000, according to new numbers disclosed by the Department of Health and Human Services.

HHS posted 126 new waivers on Friday, bringing the total to 1,040 organizations that have been granted a one-year exemption from a new coverage requirement included in the healthcare reform law enacted almost a year ago.

And…

The pension funds for state and local workers in the United States are understating the amount they will owe workers by $1.5 trillion or more, according to some economists who have studied the issue, meaning that the benefits are much costlier than many governments and taxpayers thought.

Doubts about government pension accounting have been voiced by analysts for years, but with shortfalls in state and local pension plans exacerbated by the recession, the push to refigure pension fund shortfalls has gained political momentum.

The trillion-dollar gap arises from the government method of accounting, which several experts say significantly underestimates the cost of future pension payments.

When the accounting is revised to value future payments more accurately, in the critics’ view, the amount that pensions are underfunded grows to more than $1.9 trillion, according to Munnell’s calculations for 126 large plans.

Those calculations have been published in part in a working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research.

But don’t worry, be happy. The Government is here to save you!

Trust Us.

START DADT DREAM & Big Sis Too!

Any time you kill a bloated, $1.27 trillion spending bill that includes more than 6,000 earmarks worth $8 billion, it’s a good day’s work. But as far as this lame-duck Congress is concerned, the work isn’t done.

And a bloated trillion dollar monster escaped.

As this is written, Reid and his congressional allies are trying to force votes on the Dream Act; the New START treaty; “don’t ask, don’t tell”; and a massive environmental bill — all in the final days of the year if not this very weekend before Christmas.

Got to get in that last Lame Duck Poison. Gotta push on and get as much of it injected as possible.

Screw the people. This is THE AGENDA we are talking about.

And nothing on earth is more important than THE AGENDA!

As a final insult to American voters, and virtually unnoticed by the media, Reid & Co. have rolled some 100 separate environmental bills into one — creating a giant land and private-property grab that again will have consequences well beyond the here and now.

Reid hasn’t even allowed this omnibus measure to be debated. And yet, as Landon Zida reported on the Heritage Foundation’s blog, the bill would “designate hundreds of thousands of acres of land under the control of federal government.” And all of it, as columnist Michelle Malkin has noted, with virtually no input. (IBD)

CRAM IT DOWN! CRAM IT DOWN! CRAM IT DOWN!

THE AGENDA UBER ALLES!!

The Democrats Christmas (politically incorrect)…Holiday Gift to all is to disarm our country against it’s enemies, give amnesty to illegals and to cram gays down your throat (even if you think the whole thing is silly) because these are the most important things in the universe to Liberals– THE AGENDA!

And they must get them in before Mommy & Daddy come home on Jan 5th and force them to clean up the mess they’ve made, kicking and screaming that it was someone else’s fault!

Meanwhile, Big Sis who’s I-can-see-you-naked Scanner have scientifically been proven to be incapable of detecting things like GUNS and a Border Patrol agent is killed by Mexican drug dealers on our own soil she’s gone all Al Gore!

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced that her department is creating a new task force to battle the effects of climate change on domestic security operations.

Speaking at the first White House Forum on Environmental Justice on Thursday, Napolitano discussed the initial findings of the department’s recently created “Climate Change and Adaptation Task Force.”

Napolitano explained that the task force was charged with “identifying and assessing the impact that climate change could have on the missions and operations of the Department of Homeland Security.” (CNS)

The all day White House Forum on Environmental Justice also included talks by White House Council on Environmental Quality Chair Nancy Sutley, EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, Attorney General Eric Holder, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis, and Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius.

But don’t worry, they don’t have an AGENDA!

The two scientists most responsible for the development magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines used in hospitals have reached the conclusion that these currently deployed contraptions are not effective at preventing terrorists from carrying explosives aboard aircraft.

Basically, Leon Kaufman and Joseph W. Carlson, described as the “scientific genius” behind the MRIs, claim that TSA and the manufactureres, in order to show effectiveness, have biased the studies and left out known limitations of the machines.

Mr. Kaufman and Mr. Carlson showed less restraint in a peer-reviewed article posted online Nov. 26 by The Journal of Transportation Security. They created a computer model to simulate scanner operation and conclude an Islamic terrorist could easily sneak a large quantity of explosives past the device. “It is very likely that a large (15-20 cm in diameter), irregularly-shaped, cm-thick pancake with beveled edges, taped to the abdomen, would be invisible to this technology, ironically, because of its large volume, since it is easily confused with normal anatomy,” the study explains.

The researchers pointed out that the manufacturers of airport scanners positioned contraband like guns, knives and drugs in unnatural ways to conceal the limitations of their device. For example, the simulated drugs are always packed into tight rectangles that show up distinctly on the machine. TSA employees would have a far more difficult time spotting less tidy terrorists. “The eye is a good signal averager at certain spatial frequencies, but it is doubtful that an operator can be trained to detect these differences unless the material is hard-edged, not too large and regular shaped,” Mr. Kaufman and Mr. Carlson wrote.

Theirs is not the only such study. Last March the government’s own GAO reported that it was “unclear” whether airport scanners would have detected Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s botched Christmas Day underwear bombing attempt.

As TSA begins to touch more and more Americans in ways that they feel “ain’t right,” and more whole body scanners are deployed, the concerns of the public will increase. Even TSA officials admit that less that 10 percent of the flying public have faced a whole body scanner or an enhanced pat-down and there is already an uproar.

Add to that, radiation questions that are sure to emerge from these latest investigations and scientific evidence that the whole body scanner billion-dollar contraptions can’t spot a reasonably well-hidden bomb and TSA is going to have a growing problem.

But at least they can see yours!

And the Border will be made safe from Global Warming Threats!

And those nasty old Russians, Chinese and North Koreans won’t have to worry about our big stick because we’ll emasculate ourselves for them! Isn’t that nice of us.

But at at least we’ll have openly gay people in the military.

After all, that’s what’s MORE IMPORTANT.

All Hail THE AGENDA!!

Incompetence

“TSA is responsible for checking foreign nationals who apply for flight training in the United States or with FAA-certified flight training providers anywhere in the world. TSA performs a thorough background check on each applicant at the time of application to include terrorism and other watch list matching, a criminal history check and checks for available disqualifying immigration information,” TSA said in a statement.

This was AFTER it was discovered that they had allowed Illegal Aliens take flight lessons because they didn’t bother to check!

The owner of the TJ Aviation Flight Academy and more than 30 students accused of being in the United States illegally received clearance to train as pilots despite strict security controls put in place after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.Each of the three showed documents from the TSA approving pilot lessons through the federal agency’s alien flight student program.

The unbelievable story comes via a Massachusetts news station that exposes the government’s failure to adequately protect the nation since Middle Eastern terrorists, trained at American flight schools, crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon. As a result of the 2001 massacre, the government supposedly implemented strict security measures to prevent undocumented foreigners from training at American flight schools.

Incredibly, illegal immigrants still get cleared to take flight lessons because the Homeland Security agency (Transportation Security Administration—TSA) that approves candidates doesn’t bother checking the central agency’s immigration database when it screens foreign flight-school applicants. That means flight schools throughout the U.S. could easily be filled with undocumented foreigners that could represent a national security threat. (boston.com and others)

BORDER

The Department of Homeland Security is sending out smoke signals that it’s on the verge of pulling the plug on SBInet, a high-tech border security system being tested in the Arizona border region.

DHS’ decision could prove to be bad news for border states that need all the help they can get from the federal government in gaining control of our southern border.

SBInet is comprised of a system of ground sensors, mobile surveillance units and radars integrated into a common operating picture that is designed to serve as a force multiplier for Border Patrol agents working in the field. The system represents an ambitious use of technology that can aid in drug interdiction, apprehension of illegal aliens and can save immigrants’ lives out in the desert.

SBInet represents the type of forward thinking we need when it comes to border security. We’ll never have enough Border Patrol agents to cover the vast area between San Diego, Calif., and Brownsville, Texas, never mind the huge expanse of the U.S.-Canada border.

As for a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, wasn’t it current DHS Secretary and former Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano who said, “You show me a 50-foot wall and I’ll show you a 51-foot ladder at the border”?

DHS, unfortunately, citing cost overruns and poor performance, is poised to cut off funding of the system.

So the government can’t even get the crappy border “security” right.

Here’s an idea….BUILD THE DAMN WALL!

You can’t seem to do any better, after all this the “most secure” the border has been in decades after all, according to Big Sis!

 

Nuts to You

This is my kind of pizza!

I would add the ObamaCare Special: “I’m Sorry that’s bad for your Health, how about a nice organically grown  salad instead? no dressing, of course that’s evil fat”

But if you insist, that will $1,000.00 (That’s 992.00 for your Health insurance cost and 8.00 for the pizza with $50 per topping extra)

The Stimulus Pizza:  $1 Trillion dollars. And they serve you an empty plate because it will do nothing in the end so why bother but if you don’t buy it, the economy will crash!

The Mexican Pizza: If you don’t buy it you’re a Racist!

The Ground Zero Pizza: Islamic toppings but if you object you’re a Bigot!

Ever notice, Liberals are always wanting to point to a “few nuts” of their opponents as the mainstream way all of them are.

But you point to their “nuts” and you’re racist or a bigot for pointing to a “few nuts” as indicative of all of them.

Take Radical Islam. You point to the ground Zero Mosque and you are just overgeneralizing you bigot, but when they point to the 1 guy in 300,000 tea partiers who has a “nut” sign that’s indicative of the whole movement.

And the Liberal Media will be right their to ignore the Left’s “nuts” and 24/7 specials on the on the other “nut” (who may even be a plant by the Left to make it look like a “nut”). The Ministry of Truth really doesn’t care about silly little details like that.

Now that’s “journalism”.

*********************************************************************

Now, this was funny, to a cynic like me.

The Federal government has turned Arizona in as a Human Rights abuser (for crimes that haven’t actually been committed but because they COULD be committed) for wanting to enforce immigration laws and if we pull people over legally and then ask them if they are citizens.

The Horror! The Racism! Evil! Pure Evil!

So, now we get this from The Progressive Liberals Bible, The New York Times:

The Lake Shore Limited runs between Chicago and New York City without crossing the Canadian border. But when it stops at Amtrak stations in western New York State, armed Border Patrol agents routinely board the train, question passengers about their citizenship and take away noncitizens who cannot produce satisfactory immigration papers.

That’s right. The Feds can do the racial profiling (“your papers please”) but if anyone else does it, you’re a racist and human right abuser!

Or as two lawyers on The O’reilly factor last night said when ask what’s the difference? They both said in near-unison, “It’s the Federal government not the States”.

So yet again, if the government wants to selectively enforce the law you aren’t allowed to protest or object and you sure as hell can’t do it yourself! God Forbid!

We are the Government and we are here to protect you. Doesn’t that swell your heart with Hope and love and peace.

“Are you a U.S. citizen?” agents asked one recent morning, moving through a Rochester-bound train full of dozing passengers at a station outside Buffalo. “What country were you born in?”

And since all the leftist think those kind of questions are racist, except when they are doing it of course.

When the answer came back, “the U.S.,” they moved on.

So if you are an illegal, all you have to do is lie and the liberals will just move on.

It’s not like if they arrest you and you have no criminal record that they will deport you. The ICE policy detailed in an earlier blog details that you’re not a “priority” so they will just let you go EVEN IF you are arrested for being here illegally. They don’t really care.

So this is just a game. They can claim they caught X number of illegals. They just don’t mention they let most of them go afterwards. Details…Details…Details….

The deportation of criminals is up. The dismissal of cases against “non-criminal” (which is laughable on it’s face since it IS A CRIME to be here illegally to begin with) is also up. But we just won’t talk about that one.

But Ruth Fernandez, 60, a naturalized citizen born in Ecuador, was asked for identification. And though she was only traveling home to New York City from her sister’s in Ohio, she had made sure to carry her American passport. On earlier trips, she said, agents had photographed her, and taken away a nervous Hispanic man.

RACIAL PROFILING!!!

He was one of hundreds of passengers taken to detention each year from domestic trains and buses along the nation’s northern border. The little-publicized transportation checks are the result of the Border Patrol’s growth since 9/11, fueled by Congressional antiterrorism spending and an expanding definition of border jurisdiction. In the Rochester area, where the border is miles away in the middle of Lake Ontario, the patrol arrested 2,788 passengers from October 2005 through last September.

The checks are “a vital component to our overall border security efforts” to prevent terrorism and illegal entry, said Rafael Lemaitre, a spokesman for United States Customs and Border Protection. He said that the patrol had jurisdiction to enforce immigration laws within 100 miles of the border, and that one mission was preventing smugglers and human traffickers from exploiting inland transit hubs.

In New York yes, In Arizona. Hell No! Too Dangerous. Let’s just put up signs warning people to stay away instead!

The patrol says that answering agents’ questions is voluntary, part of a “consensual and nonintrusive conversation” Some passengers agree, though they are not told that they can keep silent. But others, from immigration lawyers and university officials to American-born travelers startled by an agent’s flashlight in their eyes, say the practice is coercive, unconstitutional and tainted by racial profiling.

Well, if it’s done on the Mexican Border it sure is, according to Liberals.

The Lake Shore Limited route is a journey across the spectrum of public attitudes toward illegal immigrants — from cities where they have been accepted and often treated as future citizens, to places where they are seen as lawbreakers the federal government is doing too little to expel.

The journey also highlights conflicting enforcement policies. Immigration authorities, vowing to concentrate resources on deporting immigrants with serious criminal convictions, have recently been halting the deportation of students who were brought to the country as children without papers — a group the Obama administration favors for legalization.

But some of the same kinds of students are being jailed by the patrol, like a Taiwan-born Ph.D. candidate who had excelled in New York City public schools since age 11. Two days after he gave a paper on Chaucer at a conference in Chicago last year, he was taken from his train seat and strip-searched at a detention center in Batavia, N.Y., facing deportation for an expired visa.

Where’s La Raza!? the ACLU!? Rev. Al?  This is an outrage!

For some, the patrol’s practices evoke the same fears as a new immigration law in Arizona — that anyone, anytime, can be interrogated without cause.

Don’t you love the mischaracterization and overgeneralization fallacies of that statement.

The federal government is authorized to do just that at places where people enter and leave the country, and at a “reasonable distance” from the border.

But doing it 40 Miles south of Phoenix and hundreds of miles from the border is “racial Profiling” and could lead to human rights abuse!

But as the patrol expands and tries to raise falling arrest numbers, critics say, the concept of the border is becoming more fluid, eroding Constitutional limits on search and seizure. And unlike Arizona’s law, the change is happening without public debate.

“It’s turned into a police state on the northern border,” said Cary M. Jensen, director of international services for the University of Rochester, whose foreign students, scholars and parents have been questioned and jailed, often because the patrol did not recognize their legal status. “It’s essentially become an internal document check.”

YOUR PAPERS PLEASE!

Domestic transportation checks are not mentioned in a report on the northern border strategy that Customs and Border Protection delivered last year to Congress, which has more than doubled the patrol since 2006, to 2,212 agents, with plans to double it again soon. The data available suggests that such stops account for as many as half the reported 6,000 arrests a year.

In Rochester, the Border Patrol station opened in 2004, with four agents to screen passengers of a new ferry from Toronto. The ferry went bankrupt, but the unit has since grown tenfold; its agents have one of the highest arrest rates on the northern border — 1,040 people in the 2008 fiscal year, 95 percent of them from buses and trains — though officials say numbers have fallen as word of the patrols reached immigrant communities.

“Our mission is to defend the homeland, primarily against terrorists and terrorist weapons,” said Thomas Pocorobba Jr., the agent in charge of the Rochester station, one of 55 between Washington State and Maine. “We still do our traditional mission, which is to enforce the nation’s immigration laws.”

Just Not in Arizona! That’s racist!

Legal scholars say the government’s border authority, which extends to fixed checkpoints intercepting cross-border traffic, cannot be broadly applied to roving patrols in a swath of territory. But such authority is not needed to ask questions if people can refuse to answer. The patrol does not track how many people decline, Mr. Pocorobba said.

Asked if agents could question people in Times Square, which like most of the nation’s population centers is within 100 miles of international waters, Mr. Pocorobba replied, “Technically, we can, but we don’t.” He added, “Our job is strictly cross-border.”

So as long as you lie, they move on and don’t feel any need to do more.

Note to terrorists: Just Lie. They won’t notice.

Lawyers challenging the stops in several deportation cases questioned the rationale that they were aimed at border traffic. Government data obtained in litigation shows that at least three-quarters of those arrested since 2006 had been in the country more than a year.

Though many Americans may welcome such arrests, the patrol’s costly expansion was based on a bipartisan consensus about border security, not interior enforcement to sweep up farm workers and students, said Nancy Morawetz, who directs the immigration rights clinic at New York University.

One case she is challenging involves a Nassau County high school graduate taken from the Lake Shore Limited in Rochester in 2007. The government says the graduate, then 21, voluntarily produced a Guatemalan passport and could not prove she was in the country legally. A database later showed she had an expired visitor’s visa.

Unlike a criminal arrest, such detentions come with few due process protections. The woman was held at a county jail, then transferred across the country while her mother, a house cleaner, and a high school teacher tried to reach her. The woman first saw an immigration judge more than three weeks after her arrest. He halved the $10,000 bail set by the patrol, and she was eventually released at night at a rural Texas gas station.

“I was shocked,” said the teacher, Susanne Marcus, who said her former student had been awarded a $2,000 college scholarship.

Another challenge is pending in the 2009 train arrest of the Taiwan-born doctoral student, who had to answer the agent after being singled out for intense questioning because of his “Asian appearance,” he said. His account was corroborated in an affidavit filed this month by another passenger.

OOH!!! MORE RACIAL PROFILING!

Similar complaints have been made by others, including a Chicago couple who encountered the patrol on a train to Poughkeepsie, N.Y., for the woman’s graduation from Vassar College.

“At least in Arizona, you have to be doing something wrong to be stopped,” said the woman, a citizen of Chinese-American descent who said her Mexican boyfriend was sleeping when an agent started questioning him. “Here, you’re sitting on the train asleep and if you don’t look like a U.S. citizen, it’s ‘Wake up!’ ”

Mr. Pocorobba denied that agents used racial profiling; the proof, he said, was that those arrested had come from 96 countries.

So how’s that different from Arizona? 43% of illegals are from other countries other than Mexico. OTM= Other Than Mexican to use Customs parlance.

So we have another liberal hypocrisy. It’s not racial profiling when they do it, but it is if the State does it or it’s the Mexican Border. I see…

Agents say they often act on suspicion, prompted by a passenger’s demeanor. Of those detained, most were in the country illegally — including the Mexican, 24, who admitted that he had sneaked across the southern border at 16 to find his father. Others were supposed to be carrying their papers, like a Pakistani college student detained for two weeks before authorities confirmed that he was a legal resident.

Some American-born passengers welcome the patrol. “It makes me feel safe,” volunteered Katie Miller, 34, who was riding Amtrak to New York from Ohio. “I don’t mind being monitored.”

To others, it evokes travel through the old Communist bloc. “I was actually woken up with a flashlight in my face,” recalled Mike Santomauro, 27, a law student who encountered the patrol in April, at 2 a.m. on a train in Rochester.

Across the aisle, he said, six agents grilled a student with a computer who had only an electronic version of his immigration documents. Through the window, Mr. Santomauro said, he could see three black passengers, standing with arms raised beside a Border Patrol van.

“As a citizen I’m offended,” he said. But he added, “To say I didn’t want to answer didn’t seem a viable option.”

Don’t do as I do, Do as I say!

How To Stay Here Illegally 101

Big Sis, DHS Secretary and Pro-Illegal Janet Napalitano has figured out a new strategy for creating a de-facto amnesty.

If they aren’t “serious criminals” you let them walk. Period.

So all you have to do to be an illegal alien permanently in this country is not be a “serious”  criminal in this country.

More or less. More on that after a this…

The Department of Homeland Security is systematically reviewing thousands of pending immigration cases and moving to dismiss those filed against suspected illegal immigrants who have no serious criminal records, according to several sources familiar with the efforts.

Culling the immigration court system dockets of noncriminals started in earnest in Houston about a month ago and has stunned local immigration attorneys, who have reported coming to court anticipating clients’ deportations only to learn that the government was dismissing their cases.

Richard Rocha, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman, said Tuesday that the review is part of the agency’s broader, nationwide strategy to prioritize the deportations of illegal immigrants who pose a threat to national security and public safety. Rocha declined to provide further details.

Critics assailed the plan as another sign that the Obama administration is trying to create a kind of backdoor “amnesty” program.

Raed Gonzalez, an immigration attorney who was briefed on the effort by Homeland Security’s deputy chief counsel in Houston, said DHS confirmed that it’s reviewing cases nationwide, though not yet to the pace of the local office. He said the others are expected to follow suit soon.

Gonzalez, the liaison between the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which administers the immigration court system, and the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said DHS now has five attorneys assigned full time to reviewing all active cases in Houston’s immigration court.

Gonzalez said DHS attorneys are conducting the reviews on a case-by-case basis. However, he said they are following general guidelines that allow for the dismissal of cases for defendants who have been in the country for two or more years and have no felony convictions.

In some instances, defendants can have one misdemeanor conviction, but it cannot involve a DWI, family violence or sexual crime, Gonzalez said.

Massive backlog of cases

Opponents of illegal immigration were critical of the dismissals.

“They’ve made clear that they have no interest in enforcing immigration laws against people who are not convicted criminals,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for strict controls.

“This situation is just another side effect of President Obama’s failure to deliver on his campaign promise to make immigration reform a priority in his first year,” said U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas. “Until he does, state and local authorities are left with no choice but to pick up the slack for prosecuting and detaining criminal aliens.”

Gonzalez called the dismissals a necessary step in unclogging a massive backlog in the immigration court system. In June, there were more than 248,000 cases pending in immigration courts across the country, including about 23,000 in Texas, according to data compiled by researchers at Syracuse University.

‘Absolutely fantastic’

Gonzalez said he went into immigration court downtown on Monday and was given a court date in October 2011 for one client. But, he said, the government’s attorney requested the dismissal of that case and those of two more of his clients, and the cases were dispatched by the judge.

The court “was terminating all of the cases that came up,” Gonzalez said. “It was absolutely fantastic.”

“We’re all calling each other saying, ‘Can you believe this?’ ” said John Nechman, another Houston immigration attorney, who had two cases dismissed.

Attorney Elizabeth Mendoza Macias, who has practiced in Houston for 17 years, said she had cases for several clients dismissed during the past month and eventually called DHS to find out what was going on. She said she was told by a DHS trial attorney that 2,500 cases were under review in Houston.

“I had five (dismissed) in one week, and two more that I just received,” Mendoza said. “And I am expecting many more, many more, in the next month.”

Her clients, all previously charged with being in the country illegally, included:

An El Salvadoran man married to a U.S. citizen who has two U.S.-born children. The client had a pending asylum case in the court system, but the case was not particularly strong. Now that his case is terminated, he will be eligible to obtain permanent residency through his wife, Mendoza said.

A woman from Cameroon, who was in removal proceedings after being caught by the U.S. Border Patrol, had her case terminated by the government. She meets the criteria of a trafficking victim, Mendoza said, and can now apply for a visa.

Memo outlines priorities

Immigrants who have had their cases terminated are frequently left in limbo, immigration attorneys said, and are not granted any form of legal status.

“It’s very, very key to understand that these aliens are not being granted anything in court. They are still here illegally. They don’t have work permits. They don’t have Social Security numbers,” Mendoza said. “ICE is just saying, ‘At this particular moment, we are not going to proceed with trying to remove you from the United States.’ ”

In a June 30 memo, ICE Assistant Secretary John Morton outlined the agency’s priorities, saying it had the capacity to remove about 400,000 illegal immigrants annually — about 4 percent of the estimated illegal immigrant population in the country. The memo outlines priorities for the detention and removal system, putting criminals and threats to national security at the top of the list.

Up to 17,000 cases

On Tuesday, ICE officials provided a copy of a new policy memo from Morton dated Aug. 20 that instructs government attorneys to review the court cases of people with pending applications to adjust status based on their relation to a U.S. citizen. Morton estimates in the memo that the effort could affect up to 17,000 cases.

Tre Rebsock, the ICE union representative in Houston, said even if the efforts involve only a fraction of the pending immigration cases, “that’s going to make our officers feel even more powerless to enforce the laws.” (Houston Chronicle)

Mind you bullets from the recent gun battles in Mexico have been flying across the border and hitting building, including the University of Tex El Paso, but don’t worry about that DHS has it all under control.

Now to that “less” I spoke of…

An illegal immigrant arrested five times for driving offenses, including a 2005 hit-and-run that ultimately left an elderly Dacula man dead, was voluntarily deported last October, the Gwinnett County Sheriff’s office said Monday. Whether he will be involuntarily deported following his latest charge remains uncertain.

“He either didn’t leave the country as agreed or he left and came back,” said sheriff’s spokeswoman Stacey Bourbonnais. Added Sheriff Butch Conway, “they put him on the honor system, more or less.”

Celso Campo-Duartes’ current whereabouts are no mystery. He’s been in Gwinnett’s custody since May 28, when he was charged with disorderly conduct and unlicensed driving.

In January 2008, the suspect entered a negotiated plea to a charge of failure to stop at or return to the scene of an accident in the death of Aubrey Sosebee, an 83-year-old World War II veteran who was run over by the plumber as he was retrieving his mail. Campo-Duartes was sentenced to two years in prison and three years of probation and was released for time served.

A little more than a year ago, he was arrested for driving without a license and released the same day on $760 bond. In October, he was arrested on the same charge. (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

So is he “serious” enough” or are the drug runners, smugglers, and coyotes coming across the border with impunity “serious” enough for DHS??

Like I have said before, now we know why the judge put SB1070′s enforcement provision on hold because they would “overwhelm” the system.

The problem is so big they don’t, cant, and won’t deal with it. But they will lie about it and call anyone who disagrees with them a racist!

The Obama administration said it would focus its enforcement of illegal immigration laws by targeting workplace activities, but a recent report shows that while audits of employers are slightly up over the Bush administration, worker arrests are down drastically since the end of 2008.

Under Obama, employer audits are up 50 percent, fines have tripled to almost $3 million and the number of executives arrested is slightly up over the Bush administration.

But under President Obama, the numbers of arrests and deportations of illegals taken into custody at work sites plummeted by more than 80 percent from the last year of the Bush administration. In the current fiscal year 2010, which ends Sept. 30, ICE has arrested 900 workers.

That compares to immigration agents under Bush raiding hundreds of businesses from factory to farm — and arresting and deporting more than 6,000 illegal immigrants in raids in 2008 — more than 5,000 simply for being in the country illegally.

“No administration in the history of this nation removed more illegal immigrants from the country than we did last year and I expect the records to continue. We’re serious about enforcement. We’re going to go out and we’re just going to do it,” he said.

Can you guess if this was Obama, Napalitano or ICE? they’ve all said the same talking point.

But if they aren’t “serious” criminals they can now walk. And even if they are “serious” they can always self-deport so they can walk across the border again tomorrow. No problem.

So we raid your business, we fine you, you’re workers are taken by ICE. Then if they aren’t “serious” criminals they let them go so you can rehire them again or you can hire the group let go by another employer yesterday.

Let’s just swap workers and call that jobs “saved or created”. Yeah, that’s the ticket!

That is unless you’re a chronic drunk in Atlanta who kills people at their mailbox that is. Maybe…

So just like the Blank Panther case and others, the government has made the decision on what selective enforcement they wish to pursue. The law is mailable to their political whims of the moment.

“It is tough when you have law enforcement turning a blind eye to entire categories of aliens — and that is what is happening here — it is a de facto amnesty,” Julie Myers, an ICE director under Bush said.

“No one is talking about giving a free pass for fraud, or ID theft is to be taken lightly, but we know the vast majority of the workforce did not commit any crime,” Marshall Fitz, director of immigration policy at the Center for American Progress (a liberal think tank) said.

After all, being her illegally is not a crime to Liberals. It is to Federal law, but not to Liberals. So it’s no big deal.

And you’re a racist if you disagree, just remember that.

The law is there to enforced when they feel like it and how they feel like it.

SAN DIEGO — The speedboat is about three miles offshore when a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent cuts the engine to drift on the current in quiet darkness, hoping for the telltale signs of immigrant smuggling — sulfur fumes or a motor’s whirr.

“It’s like trying to find a needle in a haystack, and the haystack is the Pacific Ocean,” agent Tim Feige says minutes before sunrise marks the end to another uneventful shift.

This is a new frontier for illegal immigrants entering the United States — a roughly 400-square-mile ocean expanse that stretches from a bullring on the shores of Tijuana, Mexico, to suburban Los Angeles. In growing numbers, migrants are gambling their lives at sea as land crossings become even more arduous and likely to end in arrest.

Sea interdictions and arrests have spiked year-over-year for three years, as enforcement efforts ramp up to meet the challenge.

And that doesn’t even count the sea piracy on the lake in Zapata in Texas.

1 if by land 2 if by Sea. The Illegals are Coming! The Illegals are coming!

But don’t worry, if you’re not a “serious” criminal Big Sis and her pals don’t actually care. And even if you are, it depends on their mood ring at that moment. And you can always self-deport yourself so you can come back tomorrow.

No big deal. But it looks like we give a damn.

And if criticize us you’re a racist!

So why are they so against securing the border against the drug dealer, coyotes and bullets? Hmmm…

So lesson #1 for Terrorists coming across the border, keep your nose clean and no one will be paying any attention to you, or at the very least just don’t be “serious”, until you set off your bomb!

If unrestricted illegal immigration is unsatisfactory and “sealing the border” is unsatisfactory, where is the path ahead?

How to look like we’re are doing something, but in fact we aren’t doing diddly.

SNAFU

Reality is a Dish Best Served Cold

Optimists think that if we manage to turn a few things around, their kids may have it . . . almost as good. The country they inherit may be . . . almost as good. And it’s kind of a shock to think like this; pessimism isn’t in our DNA. But it isn’t pessimism, really, it’s a kind of tough knowingness, combined, in most cases, with a daily, personal commitment to keep plugging.

But do our political leaders have any sense of what people are feeling deep down? They don’t act as if they do. I think their detachment from how normal people think is more dangerous and disturbing than it has been in the past. I started noticing in the 1980s the growing gulf between the country’s thought leaders, as they’re called—the political and media class, the universities—and those living what for lack of a better word we’ll call normal lives on the ground in America. The two groups were agitated by different things, concerned about different things, had different focuses, different world views.

But I’ve never seen the gap wider than it is now. I think it is a chasm. In Washington they don’t seem to be looking around and thinking, Hmmm, this nation is in trouble, it needs help. They’re thinking something else. I’m not sure they understand the American Dream itself needs a boost, needs encouragement and protection. They don’t seem to know or have a sense of the mood of the country.

And so they make their moves, manipulate this issue and that, and keep things at a high boil. And this at a time when people are already in about as much hot water as they can take.

To take just one example from the past 10 days, the federal government continues its standoff with the state of Arizona over how to handle illegal immigration. The point of view of our thought leaders is, in general, that borders that are essentially open are good, or not so bad. The point of view of those on the ground who are anxious about our nation’s future, however, is different, more like: “We live in a welfare state and we’ve just expanded health care. Unemployment’s up. Could we sort of calm down, stop illegal immigration, and absorb what we’ve got?” No is, in essence, the answer.

An irony here is that if we stopped the illegal flow and removed the sense of emergency it generates, comprehensive reform would, in time, follow. Because we’re not going to send the estimated 10 million to 15 million illegals already here back. We’re not going to put sobbing children on a million buses. That would not be in our nature. (Do our leaders even know what’s in our nature?) As years passed, those here would be absorbed, and everyone in the country would come to see the benefit of integrating them fully into the tax system. So it’s ironic that our leaders don’t do what in the end would get them what they say they want, which is comprehensive reform.

When the adults of a great nation feel long-term pessimism, it only makes matters worse when those in authority take actions that reveal their detachment from the concerns—even from the essential nature—of their fellow citizens. And it makes those citizens feel powerless.

Inner pessimism and powerlessness: That is a dangerous combination. (Peggy Noonan)

And as one who was not abundant, and still isn’t, when I see what I see and the complete disconnect from reality that is the Twilight Zone at the Beltway around D.C. I do wonder about this.

I have no kids, I probably never will.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t look at the kids I see on the street and wonder what life is going to be like for them when they are my age.

And I don’t think it will be that good, certainly not like their childhood.

And that is a sad legacy.

But to pick up on Mrs. Noonan’s point about Arizona. (as an aside, where is the lawsuit against Missouri for slapping the government in the face? Are there not enough Latinos in the state to warrant it?).

IBD: In federal lawsuits, defendants may answer litigation filed against them with a counterclaim against the plaintiff for damages or other relief.

The Constitution of the United States mandates at Article 4: “The United States shall guarantee to every state in this Union a republican form of government … that the United States shall protect each of them (the states) against invasion and … against domestic violence.”

“Republican form of government” is defined as a republic that is a system of government in which the people hold sovereign power and elect representatives to exercise that power.

To “guarantee” means to warrant or undertake that something has happened or will happen. The term “invasion” is (regarding a country or territory ) a hostile incursion.

The term “shall” used in the third person singular denotes an imperative, without discretion or choice. Thus, the phrase “shall guarantee” leaves no wiggle room.

Remedies for breach of guarantee are damages (expenses incurred in repairing guaranteed product) or rescission (return of product for refund of purchase price — i.e., “money back” guarantee).

Recently, the federal government — the present regime in particular — has not only violated the guarantee of republican form of government and the pledge to protect Arizona from invasion and domestic violence, but has actively worked to achieve the exact opposite result.

By the federal government’s determined resistance to enforcing existing federal law against illegal immigration and attempting to penalize Arizona for attempting to cope with illegal immigration on its own, the federal government has crassly flouted its obligation to guarantee a republican form of government for the state of Arizona.

One of the most effective means for destroying a republic is to bankrupt it and beggar its people.

It’s the only thing Obama & Co ARE good at.

This is what befell Rome, which went from a republic to what would now be called a dictatorship as a result of the financial drain on the country resulting from the empire.

In the case of Arizona, recent figures disclose that illegal immigration costs the state $2.5 billion annually. This amounts to approximately $400 for every man, woman and child in the state, which has a population of less than 7 million.

The federal government has not only filed litigation against Arizona, but informed an association of Arizona sheriffs that it intends to prosecute as an example at least one deputy for enforcing Arizona’s anti-illegal immigration legislation (SB 1070).

There are reports the administration is seeking ways to cease doing business with Arizona and is encouraging other states to do the same, to exercise economic coercion on the state.
The administration has praised the efforts of states such as California for economically boycotting Arizona. The sanctions the administration has imposed on Arizona are hardly less draconian than those that the same administration has imposed on Iran to prevent Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. All this for Arizona’s daring to exercise its republican form of government and passing widely popular legislation in a manner completely consistent with Arizona’s Constitution.

The Obama administration has thus tried to take control of Arizona and abridge/suppress its republican government in substance and in process.

Also violated by the federal government is the pledge to protect Arizona from invasion. The enormous influx of illegal immigrants into Arizona—uninvited, demanding and belligerent—clearly constitutes a hostile incursion.

The surge in illegal immigration has brought with it crime and violence. Phoenix is now the kidnap capital of America as a result of the Mexican gangs that have invaded Arizona using kidnapping as a form of turf acquisition and protection.

Notably, on the Independence Day weekend this year a Mexican drug gang announced that the border with Mexico and Arizona was “moved” several miles into Arizona whereby Interstate Highway 8 would now be the border. There was no response to this by the Obama administration.

I feel I should point out that Insterstate 8 is not “several miles from the border. It is a LOT of miles from the border!!

Interstate 8 starts/ends at  Interstate 10 just south of  Casa Grande, AZ. THAT IS 40 Miles from My house in South Phoenix!!!!

That is 134 miles from the Nogales, AZ on the border!!!

What we do have at the border are signs warning Americans to stay away from the gangs and cartels!!

It is undeniable that the federal government has shamelessly and willfully violated its guarantee and pledges under Article 4, constituting suitable grounds for counterclaims by Arizona against the federal government.

The question is whether the remedy for such violation should be rescission or damages. If the latter, a figure of $2.5 billion annually could be employed per the latest studies projected backward as well as forward. As to the rescission alternative (the “money back” guarantee, whereby the contract is undone or rescinded), this would constitute rescission of the breached agreement whereby Arizona entered the union in 1912.

Gaspers in disbelief regarding rescission/secession should know that there is nothing sacrosanct about the federal government; only the Constitution is inviolable. When the federal government willfully refuses to comply with a constitutional mandate, the Constitution can be upheld only by implementing its provisions, in this case the “money back” guarantee.

An independent Arizona can contract with the federal government for defense, as do small cities with the counties in which they are located, for police/fire protection. The outsourcing of defense by an independent Arizona might be expensive, but with the money saved from illegal immigration, Arizona could afford it.

The federal government might even make money on the deal and, for the first time, turn a profit on something.

To those who would label this “draconian,” the answer is this is a race to a precipice with a sheer drop greater than that of Arizona’s crown jewel, the Grand Canyon.

Personally, we’d go for damages. What’s 10 or 20 billion nowadays anyway? If the verdict came down in the early-ish morning, the Obama administration could have the money printed up by lunchtime.

After all, after the $4 Trillion Dollars in 19 Months with nothing to so for it,so what if they’d spend what another few billion…

It’s not like it’s real money to them anyhow…

Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality. –Martin Luther King, Jr.

The challenge that is already with us is the temptation to accept as true freedom what in reality is only a new form of slavery. —Pope John Paul II

Familiarity Breeds

“It’s a great moment. I’m proud to have been here,” said a teary-eyed Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), who as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee led the effort in the Senate. “No one will know until this is actually in place how it works. But we believe we’ve done something that has been needed for a long time. It took a crisis to bring us to the point where we could actually get this job done.”

Financial Reform is done.

Sound familiar?

“You’ve heard about the controversies within the bill, the process about the bill, one or the other. But I don’t know if you have heard that it is legislation for the future, not just about health care for America, but about a healthier America, where preventive care is not something that you have to pay a deductible for or out of pocket. Prevention, prevention, prevention—it’s about diet, not diabetes. It’s going to be very, very exciting.

“But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.” – House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, speaking at the 2010 Legislative Conference for National Association of Counties, 3/9/10

A brother of the Same Mother(f*kers!)

And having one of the architect of this the mess ‘fix’ it feels me with confidence, especially when he is not running for re-election.

********

Now for comedy you can’t make up:

Community activist Elena Herrada speaking on a panel discussion at the US Social Forum in Detroit, MI yesterday – compares the border patrol to the KKK. Herrada encouraged her audience to not sit next to border patrol officers in restaurants, asking, “Would you sit next to the Ku Klux Klan if they were sitting in a restaurant with a hood on over their head?” She continued, “There is no place for border patrol in our community, they have no good intentions. So when you see them refuse to sit with them, refuse to eat with them, pretend like they are the menace that they are.”

Mind you, there is a foreign country just across the not-that-wide Detroit River, it’s Called CANADA!! so the only real Border Patrol she’s likely to see is at the Bridge going over to Windsor!

******

More Comedy:

From 620-WTMJ

MILWAUKEE – The Milwaukee County Board spent part of the day debating a measure that would call for the county to boycott doing business with companies in Arizona.

Communities around the nation have passed similar measures in response to a law in Arizona that makes it a state crime to be in the country illegally.
There was an odd moment during the debate when Supervisor Peggy West stood up and seemed to be confused about her geography.  “If this was Texas, which is a state that is directly on the border with Mexico, and they were calling for a measure like this saying that they had a major issue with undocumented people flooding their borders, I would have to look twice at this.  But this is a state that is a ways removed from the border,” West said during debate.

Her colleague, Joe Rice, quickly corrected her, “I just want to assure my colleague that Arizona does in fact share a border with the country of Mexico.”

WELCOME TO LIBERAL EDUCATION.

And, you have a foreign border just north of you too, it’s called CANADA!!

“I did get a passing grade in Geography in high school and in college and I do obviously know that Arizona is on the border,” West said in an interview after today’s meeting.

Oh Really? Are you sure about that?

Maybe they just “deemed” it.

The board tabled the measure, taking no action on it today.

The Video:

http://www.kfyi.com/pages/broomhead.html

*******

NOW IT’S THE STATE’S TURN:

Dozens of California lawmakers are pushing to make their state the first in the nation to impose an across-the-board boycott on Arizona over its immigration law — though the state’s largest city just voted to selectively scale back its boycott after local lawmakers realized it could backfire.

The Democratic state lawmakers on Wednesday unveiled a resolution that would impose several restrictions against Arizona. The measure calls for California to issue a travel advisory on visits to its eastern neighbor, halt state investment there and urge Major League Baseball to reconsider letting the state host the 2011 All-Star Game.

Though dozens of cities and organizations have voiced their opposition to Arizona’s law by instituting bans on employee travel, canceling conventions in the state and threatening to pull contracts, California would be the first state to do so.

Sen. Gil Cedillo, a Democrat from Los Angeles who introduced the proposal, said the Arizona law “undermines fundamental civil rights and civil liberties.”

He said it poses a “special threat to people of color” who live and travel through Arizona.

Though Arizona officials argue that the boycotts do little to change policy and only hurt businesses and workers in the state, proponents of the policies say they passed them out of concern over racial profiling.

However, the Los Angeles City Council — one of the cities leading the charge against Arizona — just backed off part of its boycott because it didn’t want to cut ties with an Arizona-based company that operates enforcement cameras at Los Angeles intersections and generated $6 million for the city last year.

The metropolis had previously banned most city travel to Arizona, as well as future contracts with Arizona companies. That kind of policy has since been replicated by other city governments.

But council members decided to make an exception on Wednesday, voting to extend a lucrative contract with red-light camera operator American Traffic Solutions, based in Scottsdale.

“The boycott never intended to impede public safety,” Los Angeles Councilman Richard Alarcon said during a meeting Wednesday.

Just mature, rational, logical thinking!

*******

NOW IT’S THE FEDS TURN

Two federal agencies have denied U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ charge they are boycotting Arizona because of SB 1070. The congresswoman earlier this week chastised the Border Patrol and the Department of Education for canceling scheduled events.

Border Patrol officials say they did not cancel any Arizona events, according to a statement issued by the agency’s public-affairs office in Washington, D.C.

The Border Patrol’s parent agency “has not canceled any conferences in Arizona. We conducted a thorough review across our organization to ensure this is, in fact, the case,” the statement says.

The Education Department says it moved a joint event with Mexican and Canadian attendees at the request of the Mexicans, The Associated Press reported. However, the Education Department said it still plans to hold other upcoming conferences in Arizona.

Giffords’ office stands by its news release, said C.J. Karamargin, Giffords’ spokesman. “Meetings were scheduled, meetings were canceled and the reason was SB 1070,” he said.

Giffords is an Arizona Democrat opposed to SB-1070!!

Ever since U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton confirmed – apparently prematurely – that the Justice Department would be bringing suit against the state of Arizona over its controversial new immigration law, we’ve all been watching anxiously for the DOJ’s official filing.

That was almost a week ago, and Justice is still saying they are “reviewing” the possibility.

Well, this may be the reason for the delay:

Arizona Democrats, with tough re-election battles looming, have urged the Obama administration not to sue the state over its controversial immigration job.

The Hill reported yesterday that Democratic congressman Harry Mitchell has sent President Obama a “sharply worded letter” urging him to call off plans for Justice to sue his state. Two other House Dems, Gabrielle Giffords and Ann Kirkpatrick, are also calling for Obama to back off of SB 1070.

The problem, it seems, is that widespread support for the law among Arizonians has caused trouble for AZ Dems in tough reelection battles. Republican opponents have been turning up the heat, painting the Democrats as unsupportive of the law and soft on illegal immigration. In an effort to respond to this tactic, Dems have tried to avoid mentioning SB 1070 while talking up the need for immigration reform and increased border security. If Justice brings suit, the election rhetoric will necessarily be once again focused on the law itself.

Mitchell’s letter seems to strike a distinctly Republican tone:

“I believe your administration’s time, efforts and resources would be much better spent securing the border and fixing our broken immigration system,” the two-term congressman wrote in the letter. “Arizonans are tired of the grandstanding, and tired of waiting for help from Washington. … [A] lawsuit won’t solve the problem. It won’t secure the border, and it won’t fix our broken immigration system.” (Blue Wave news)

Strange bedfellows indeed!

***********

Notice in this next one, Border Security is  not only not mentioned it’s not even referenced:

WASHINGTON – House Democrats on Thursday marked what they called a “milestone” of 100 co-sponsors for a comprehensive immigration overhaul bill that includes a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

Flanked by a group of immigrants from across the country, Democratic lawmakers said at a news conference that achieving 100 co-sponsors shows the immigration bill has the momentum necessary to become law.

The bill faces an uphill battle in Congress. House members are wary of facing voters in November who are split on what to do about immigration. Arizona’s controversial immigration law is adding considerable fuel to the fire.

The Arizona law requires law-enforcement officers, while stopping someone for another reason, to check immigration status when there is “reasonable suspicion” that the person is in the U.S. illegally. It also makes being an illegal immigrant a state crime.

At a news conference on Capitol Hill, Rep. Solomon Ortiz, D-Texas – who along with Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., introduced the federal immigration bill last December – said the legislation is not an “amnesty bill” for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. and that it would not grant citizenship without punishment.

Rather, he said the bill would create a system that “is tough on enforcement, fair to taxpayers, and enforceable.”

The House bill would increase the number of green cards available and would create a program for illegal immigrants and their families giving them semi-legal status for six years if they learned English and U.S. civics.

The program also would require applicants to pay a fine of $500 and undergo a background check. The bill also would increase border security.

“Never have I seen the division that I see today and the hate that I see today,” Ortiz said in reference to the Arizona law, which barring any legal action will go into effect next month. “But people are beginning to understand the necessity of passing this important comprehensive immigration reform bill.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has said in the past, however, that she would not bring a comprehensive immigration bill to the floor until the Senate has passed its own version.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, called the climate surrounding the immigration issue “hostile” and added that not passing a comprehensive immigration measure would be the “BP oil spill of not doing the right thing.”

The Democrats’ immigration proposal, Jackson Lee said, “is going to save this nation.” (AZ Daily Star)

Still believe any time a Democrat is talking about “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” that it’s not AMNESTY and has nothing at all to do with Border Security?

And still don’t believe Jon Kyl when he said that Obama was going to hold Border Security hostage to the Agenda?

I would hope not.

Whining in Good Faith

There is an old axiom, you’re not paranoid if they really are out to get you.

The New Boy Scouts

FYI: This has been going on for a year by the way.

NYTimes 2009:

Ten minutes into arrant mayhem in this town near the Mexican border, and the gunman, a disgruntled Iraq war veteran, has already taken out two people, one slumped in his desk, the other covered in blood on the floor.// The responding officers — eight teenage boys and girls, the youngest 14 — face tripwire, a thin cloud of poisonous gas and loud shots — BAM! BAM! — fired from behind a flimsy wall. They move quickly, pellet guns drawn and masks affixed.

“United States Border Patrol! Put your hands up!” screams one in a voice cracking with adolescent determination as the suspect is subdued.

It is all quite a step up from the square knot.

The Explorers program, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America that began 60 years ago, is training thousands of young people in skills used to confront terrorism, illegal immigration and escalating border violence — an intense ratcheting up of one of the group’s longtime missions to prepare youths for more traditional jobs as police officers and firefighters.

“This is about being a true-blooded American guy and girl,” said A. J. Lowenthal, a sheriff’s deputy here in Imperial County, whose life clock, he says, is set around the Explorers events he helps run. “It fits right in with the honor and bravery of the Boy Scouts.”

The training, which leaders say is not intended to be applied outside the simulated Explorer setting, can involve chasing down illegal border crossers as well as more dangerous situations that include facing down terrorists and taking out “active shooters,” like those who bring gunfire and death to college campuses. In a simulation here of a raid on a marijuana field, several Explorers were instructed on how to quiet an obstreperous lookout.

“Put him on his face and put a knee in his back,” a Border Patrol agent explained. “I guarantee that he’ll shut up.”

What about “Right wing Extremists”??

Hitler Youth anyone??

*******************

HARRY REID SAYS STOP WHINING!

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid told reporters Tuesday that Republicans “should stop crying” about the possible use of the parliamentary procedure known as budget reconciliation to pass a health care reform bill.

Under reconciliation, Democrats would need a simple majority in the Senate to pass legislation, as opposed to the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster.
“They should stop crying about reconciliation as if it’s never been done before,” Reid said.

“The question is: Is reconciliation the only way we can do health-care reform?” he said. “The answer to that is no. But I’ve been told that my Republican friends are lamenting reconciliation, but I would recommend for them to go back and look at history.”(CBS)

http://www.brendan-nyhan.com/blog/2009/04/the-legislative-history-of-reconciliation-19802008.html

“It’s done almost every Congress, and they’re the ones that used it more than anyone else,” he added.

But what was it used for:

You’ll find Food stamps,welfare, tax cuts, COBRA, Ordered the sale of Conrail, Made minor changes to Medicare hospital provisions, Other medicare and Medicaid changes, previous paygo provision, Clinton’s welfare reforms, etc.

The Democrats are only obsessed with Bush’s tax cuts. Before that they can’t see anything.

And the context is not important to them.

It’s more Liberal excess dismissed as nothing special.

It has never been used to subvert the process like the Democrats still want to.

And tomorrow Obama is going to have his reportedly 6 hour Infomercial, but he wants to hear the Republicans ideas.

These would be the ideas he’s been ignoring for the last year.

So he’ll have his Liberal Media pundits red meat soundbite conference, then proclaim the Republicans didn’t take it seriously so we’re going ahead with MY plan.

Yes, he is that arrogant.

President Obama presented a new health care plan on Monday that calls for raising the Medicare payroll tax on some households earning less than $250,000, an apparent breach of his campaign pledge not to raise taxes on families earning less than that amount. The president’s plan also calls for increasing taxes on interest, dividends, annuities, royalties and rents.(CNS)

In his own press availability Tuesday, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said “it appears as if the administration has already made up their mind to go forward with a beefed up Senate version and to try to jam it through under a seldom-used process that we commonly refer to around here as reconciliation.”

Republican Whip Sen. Jon Kyl told reporters that “it’s hard for us to quite understand why, with reconciliation being planned, we’re having a meeting [Thursday] which is allegedly designed to engender some bipartisan agreement for a way forward.”

“It seems to me at least that, until the Democratic leaders take reconciliation off the table, it’ll be very hard for Republicans to believe that they intend to engage us in good faith,” Kyl added.

That’s the rub.

There is no “Good Faith”.

But complain too much and you could be labeled a “disgruntled” “Right wing extremist” and they’ll send the Boy scouts to take you down…