AMSTERDAM – Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders is facing criminal charges in Amsterdam for allegedly inciting hatred against Muslims.
On Wednesday, he nodded as prosecutors read aloud a hundred remarks he has made condemning Islam, Muslims, and immigrants — notably one comparing the Quran to Hitler’s Mein Kampf.
Wilders is one of a dozen European politicians who are testing the limits of freedom of speech while voicing voters’ concerns at the growth of Islam.
At Wednesday’s hearing, Wilders told the judges he has nothing against Muslims, but opposes the “Islamization” of the Netherlands because he believes “Islam is diametrically opposed to freedom.”
Muslims make up about six percent of the Dutch population of 16 million.
Sure, President Obama’s appointment of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court is blatantly racist. Few dispute this fact, even members of the Hispanic community.
The smiling senorita was chosen simply because she is a Latina. If Sotomayor had been a lily-white Methodist from Minnesota, she would not have received the slightest chance for consideration.
Her gender also serves to affirm the patronizing nature of Obama’s appointment.
Strange to say, the mass media is applauding the president’s appointment not because of Sotomayor’s judicial acumen, let alone her rather abysmal courtroom record, but rather because of the fact that she is brown and from the Bronx barrio.
Few commentators note that 60% of Sotomayor’s rulings were overturned by the Supreme Court – - a fact, as Wendy Wright, president of the Concerned Women for America, notes that should cause legislators to “pause and take a good look at her record.”
But a good look at her judicial record is secondary to the good look at her Puerto-Rican ancestry.
Sonia’s supporters, however, are quick to point out that she pulled herself up by the proverbial bootstraps – - that she went from a housing project to Princeton University.
Few note that Ms. Sotomayor received her education in the heyday of affirmative action – - a time when functional illiterates were entry to the hallowed halls of ivy for the sake of diversity – - a time when standardized test scores, including law board examinations, were adjusted to compensate for “cultural disadvantages.”
Race remains a concern in the Sotomayor appointment – - particularly because of her strong ties to La Raza, the Latino answer to the KKK.
As a member of the National Council of La Raza, Ms. Sotomayor said: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion as a judge than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”
La Raza teaches that Colorado, California, Arizona, Texas, Utah, New Mexico, Oregon and parts of Washington State make up an area known as “Aztlan” — a fictional ancestral homeland of the Aztecs before Europeans arrived in North America.
These areas belong to the Latinos and Latinas and must be surrendered to “La Raza” once enough immigrants, legal or illegal, come to constitute a majority, as in Los Angeles. Once this is achieved, the current borders of the United States will simply be obliterated.
But the “reconquista” won’t end with territorial occupation and secession. The final plan for the La Raza movement includes the ethnic cleansing of Americans of European, African, and Asian descent out of “Aztlan.”
Miguel Perez, a La Raza spokesman at Cal State-Northridge, has been quoted as saying: “The ultimate ideology is the liberation of Aztlan. Communism would be closest [to it]. Once Aztlan is established, ethnic cleansing would commence: Non-Chicanos would have to be expelled — opposition groups would be quashed because you have to keep power.”
And so, our new Supreme Court appointee and self-professed advocate of La Raza approves of the reformation of the United States, the creation of a separate Chicano country, and widespread ethnic cleansing.
This assertion may not raise conservative eyebrows, let alone Christian opposition to Sotomayor’s ascendancy to the Supreme Court, save for the fact that La Raza and other Latino activist groups have expressed widespread anti-Jewish sentiments and support for radical Islam. This finding is supported by articles in “The Voice of Aztlan” with such lurid titles as “That Shitty Little Country Israel,” “Pat Tillman Got What Was coming to Him,” and “Osama bin Laden: the ‘Pancho Villa’ of Islam.”
Intrepid columnist Michelle Malkin maintains that all Americans should be aware of the following fifteen facts regarding La Raza (“The Race”):
15. “The Race” supports the issuance of driver’s licenses to illegal aliens.
14.”The Race” demands in-state tuition discounts for illegal alien students – - discounts are not available to law-abiding U.S. citizens and law-abiding legal immigrants.
13. “The Race” opposes cooperative immigration enforcement efforts between local, state, and federal authorities.
12. “The Race” calls for the immediate removal of fences along the Mexican border.
11. “The Race” joined the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in a failed lawsuit attempt to prevent federal officials from entering immigration information into a key national crime database.
10. “The Race” decried Oklahoma’s tough immigration-enforcement-first laws, which cut off welfare to illegal aliens, put teeth in employer sanctions, and strengthened local-federal cooperation and information sharing.
9. “The Race” initiated a lawsuit to prevent Proposition 227, California’s bilingual education reform ballot initiative, from becoming law.
8. “The Race” condemned common-sense voter ID provisions as an “absolute disgrace.”
7. “The Race” has opposed post-9/11 national security measures at every turn.
6. Former “Race” president Raul Yzaguirre, Hillary Clinton’s Hispanic outreach adviser, said this: “U.S. English is to Hispanics as the Ku Klux Klan is to blacks.” He was referring to U.S. English, the nation’s oldest, largest citizens’ action group dedicated to preserving the unifying role of the English language in the United States.
5. “The Race” spawned and supported a poisonous subset of ideological satellites, including Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA). The late GOP Rep. Charlie Norwood rightly characterized MEChA as “the most anti-American groups in the country.”
4. “The Race” has conducted a smear campaign against staunch immigration-enforcement leaders and has called for TV and cable news networks to keep immigration enforcement proponents off the airwaves.
3. “The Race” sponsors and supports militant ethnic nationalist charter schools subsidized by your public tax dollars (at least $8 million in federal education grants). The schools include Aztlan Academy in Tucson, Ariz., the Mexicayotl Academy in Nogales, Ariz., Academia Cesar Chavez Charter School in St. Paul, Minn., and La Academia Semillas del Pueblo in Los Angeles, whose principal inveighed: “We don’t want to drink from a White water fountain, we have our own wells and our natural reservoirs and our way of collecting rain in our aqueducts. We don’t need a White water fountain . . . ultimately the White way, the American way, the neo liberal, capitalist way of life will eventually lead to our own destruction.”
2. “The Race” has honed the practice of the politically correct shakedown at taxpayer expense, pushing relentlessly to lower home-loan standards for Hispanic borrowers, reaping millions in federal “mortgage counseling” grants, seeking special multimillion-dollar earmarks, and partnering with banks that do business with illegal aliens.
1. “The Race” thrives on ethnic supremacy — and the politically correct elite’s unwillingness to call it what it is. Prominent historian Victor Davis Hanson observes: “[The] organization’s very nomenclature ‘The National Council of La Raza’ is hate speech to the core. Despite all the contortions of the group, Raza (as its Latin cognate suggests) reflects the meaning of ‘race’ in Spanish, not ‘the people’ — and that’s precisely why we don’t hear of something like ‘The National Council of the People,’ which would not confer the buzz notion of ethnic, racial and tribal chauvinism.”
Sotomayor, let’s remember, is a leader of La Raza – - an individual who has shaped its policies, its ideology, and its racist demands.
“No one,” President Obama said today, “can oppose this appointment.”
I oppose it, and, if you are a red-blooded American, you should oppose it as well.
Sure, President Obama’s appointment of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court is blatantly racist. Few dispute this fact, even members of the Hispanic community.
The smiling senorita was chosen simply because she is a Latina. If Sotomayor had been a lily-white Methodist from Minnesota, she would not have received the slightest chance for consideration.
Her gender also serves to affirm the patronizing nature of Obama’s appointment.
Strange to say, the mass media is applauding the president’s appointment not because of Sotomayor’s judicial acumen, let alone her rather abysmal courtroom record, but rather because of the fact that she is brown and from the Bronx barrio.
Few commentators note that 60% of Sotomayor’s rulings were overturned by the Supreme Court – - a fact, as Wendy Wright, president of the Concerned Women for America, notes that should cause legislators to “pause and take a good look at her record.”
But a good look at her judicial record is secondary to the good look at her Puerto-Rican ancestry.
Sonia’s supporters, however, are quick to point out that she pulled herself up by the proverbial bootstraps – - that she went from a housing project to Princeton University.
Few note that Ms. Sotomayor received her education in the heyday of affirmative action – - a time when functional illiterates were entry to the hallowed halls of ivy for the sake of diversity – - a time when standardized test scores, including law board examinations, were adjusted to compensate for “cultural disadvantages.”
Race remains a concern in the Sotomayor appointment – - particularly because of her strong ties to La Raza, the Latino answer to the KKK.
As a member of the National Council of La Raza, Ms. Sotomayor said: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion as a judge than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”
La Raza teaches that Colorado, California, Arizona, Texas, Utah, New Mexico, Oregon and parts of Washington State make up an area known as “Aztlan” — a fictional ancestral homeland of the Aztecs before Europeans arrived in North America.
These areas belong to the Latinos and Latinas and must be surrendered to “La Raza” once enough immigrants, legal or illegal, come to constitute a majority, as in Los Angeles. Once this is achieved, the current borders of the United States will simply be obliterated.
But the “reconquista” won’t end with territorial occupation and secession. The final plan for the La Raza movement includes the ethnic cleansing of Americans of European, African, and Asian descent out of “Aztlan.”
Miguel Perez, a La Raza spokesman at Cal State-Northridge, has been quoted as saying: “The ultimate ideology is the liberation of Aztlan. Communism would be closest [to it]. Once Aztlan is established, ethnic cleansing would commence: Non-Chicanos would have to be expelled — opposition groups would be quashed because you have to keep power.”
And so, our new Supreme Court appointee and self-professed advocate of La Raza approves of the reformation of the United States, the creation of a separate Chicano country, and widespread ethnic cleansing.
This assertion may not raise conservative eyebrows, let alone Christian opposition to Sotomayor’s ascendancy to the Supreme Court, save for the fact that La Raza and other Latino activist groups have expressed widespread anti-Jewish sentiments and support for radical Islam. This finding is supported by articles in “The Voice of Aztlan” with such lurid titles as “That Shitty Little Country Israel,” “Pat Tillman Got What Was coming to Him,” and “Osama bin Laden: the ‘Pancho Villa’ of Islam.”
Intrepid columnist Michelle Malkin maintains that all Americans should be aware of the following fifteen facts regarding La Raza (“The Race”):
15. “The Race” supports the issuance of driver’s licenses to illegal aliens.
14.”The Race” demands in-state tuition discounts for illegal alien students – - discounts are not available to law-abiding U.S. citizens and law-abiding legal immigrants.
13. “The Race” opposes cooperative immigration enforcement efforts between local, state, and federal authorities.
12. “The Race” calls for the immediate removal of fences along the Mexican border.
11. “The Race” joined the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in a failed lawsuit attempt to prevent federal officials from entering immigration information into a key national crime database.
10. “The Race” decried Oklahoma’s tough immigration-enforcement-first laws, which cut off welfare to illegal aliens, put teeth in employer sanctions, and strengthened local-federal cooperation and information sharing.
9. “The Race” initiated a lawsuit to prevent Proposition 227, California’s bilingual education reform ballot initiative, from becoming law.
8. “The Race” condemned common-sense voter ID provisions as an “absolute disgrace.”
7. “The Race” has opposed post-9/11 national security measures at every turn.
6. Former “Race” president Raul Yzaguirre, Hillary Clinton’s Hispanic outreach adviser, said this: “U.S. English is to Hispanics as the Ku Klux Klan is to blacks.” He was referring to U.S. English, the nation’s oldest, largest citizens’ action group dedicated to preserving the unifying role of the English language in the United States.
5. “The Race” spawned and supported a poisonous subset of ideological satellites, including Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA). The late GOP Rep. Charlie Norwood rightly characterized MEChA as “the most anti-American groups in the country.”
4. “The Race” has conducted a smear campaign against staunch immigration-enforcement leaders and has called for TV and cable news networks to keep immigration enforcement proponents off the airwaves.
3. “The Race” sponsors and supports militant ethnic nationalist charter schools subsidized by your public tax dollars (at least $8 million in federal education grants). The schools include Aztlan Academy in Tucson, Ariz., the Mexicayotl Academy in Nogales, Ariz., Academia Cesar Chavez Charter School in St. Paul, Minn., and La Academia Semillas del Pueblo in Los Angeles, whose principal inveighed: “We don’t want to drink from a White water fountain, we have our own wells and our natural reservoirs and our way of collecting rain in our aqueducts. We don’t need a White water fountain . . . ultimately the White way, the American way, the neo liberal, capitalist way of life will eventually lead to our own destruction.”
2. “The Race” has honed the practice of the politically correct shakedown at taxpayer expense, pushing relentlessly to lower home-loan standards for Hispanic borrowers, reaping millions in federal “mortgage counseling” grants, seeking special multimillion-dollar earmarks, and partnering with banks that do business with illegal aliens.
1. “The Race” thrives on ethnic supremacy — and the politically correct elite’s unwillingness to call it what it is. Prominent historian Victor Davis Hanson observes: “[The] organization’s very nomenclature ‘The National Council of La Raza’ is hate speech to the core. Despite all the contortions of the group, Raza (as its Latin cognate suggests) reflects the meaning of ‘race’ in Spanish, not ‘the people’ — and that’s precisely why we don’t hear of something like ‘The National Council of the People,’ which would not confer the buzz notion of ethnic, racial and tribal chauvinism.”
Sotomayor, let’s remember, is a leader of La Raza – - an individual who has shaped its policies, its ideology, and its racist demands.
“No one,” President Obama said today, “can oppose this appointment.”
I oppose it, and, if you are a red-blooded American, you should oppose it as well.
Senator Harry Reid’s stance on “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” is reported in two recent news articles. The first of the two articles appeared on June 6th in the Washington Post.
What an irony!
This June 6th was the 65th anniversary of the massive offensive coordinated by then Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Dwight D. Eisenhower under what he called “Operation Overlord.” It is most commonly remembered as “D-Day!”
How many American soldiers and their allied comrades were killed or grievously wounded defending our country and our allies?
It is important to never forget those sacrifices and never forget what they were fighting for!
It is absolutely clear that Reid is determined to ram Comprehensive Immigration Reform through the legislative process notwithstanding the great resistance that this proposal met two years ago from the citizens of our country. As I will also make clear in this commentary, Comprehensive Immigration Reform would create incredible risks for our nation.
Let us consider Harry Reid’s own words: Passing immigration reform is “going to happen this session,” Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), referring to the 111th Congress. “But I want it this year if at all possible.”
At a press conference with Hispanic leaders touting the Supreme Court nomination of the Sonia Sotomayor, Reid said that he wants Congress to pass a bill with tougher border security measures, improved employer sanctions, a guest-worker program and a path for citizenship to the country’s illegal immigrants – a policy critics have called “amnesty.”
“We have to have a pathway for legalization,” Reid said. “I believe what we need to do is have penalties, fines, I think they have to learn English, stay out of trouble, pay their taxes, and then they don’t go to the end of the line, they go to the back of the line. But at least it keeps them so that they are not subject to arrest and that they are more productive than they are.”
If you have read my commentaries, listened to my statements in the media or know of my testimony before Congressional hearings on the issue of “Comprehensive Immigration Reform, you know that I am adamantly and unequivocally opposed to Comprehensive Immigration Reform.
There are many reasons I oppose Comprehensive Immigration Reform but first and foremost, my concerns can be summed up by two words:
“NATIONAL SECURITY!”
Reid stated that improved employer sanctions and tougher border security measures are what are needed to justify a path to United States citizenship for illegal aliens. This statement ignores the two most important issues.
First of all, at present, USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services) is utterly unable to cope with its workload today. Without the addition of potentially 20 million or more applications to be presumably filed by aliens who cannot prove their identities and hence their date of entry into the United States. Furthermore, because they are “undocumented” there will be no way for the adjudicators at USCIS to know anything about the backgrounds or affiliations or intentions of millions of illegal aliens whose presence in the United States represents a violation of law.
Fraud permeates the entire bureaucracy at USCIS. There have been a succession of reports issued by the GAO that make it clear that most aliens are easily able to commit fraud successfully and acquire resident alien status and United States citizenship even though they lied on their applications. Marriage fraud is as commonplace as snowflakes in a blizzard, perhaps, in part, because each and every day a veritable blizzard of applications are filed with USCIS by aliens seeking all sorts of immigration benefits including resident alien status and United States citizenship.
In fact, each year, more than 6 million applications are filed with USCIS.
In all too many cases, immigration fraud enabled terrorists and spies to acquire security clearances and jobs in sensitive positions. A young Lebanese woman by the name of Nada Nadim Prouty entered our country on a student visa in 1988. She overstayed her authorized period in the United States, failing to depart from the Unite States when required and then took a job as a waitress in a restaurant in further violation of our immigration laws. She then acquired resident alien status by entering into a marriage fruad and subsequently naturalized. She went on to parlay her certificate of naturalization and her language skills in Middle-Eastern languages into a job at the FBI as a special agent and then, at the CIA.
When it was discovered that she was accessing sensitive databases on Hezbollah, a terrorist organization, her superiors became alarmed. She had no “Need to Know” the information contained in those databases. As the investigation ran its course, it was discovered that the man who had arranged for her marriage is now a fugitive and wanted for allegedly funneling millions of dollars from his chain of restaurants in Michigan to Hezbollah.
Of 94 terrorists who were identified as operating in the United States in the decade leading up to the attacks of 9/11, some 59 of those individuals were found to have used immigration fraud to either enter the United States and/or embed themselves in the United States.
The situation of rampant fraud also emboldens more aliens to file more applications that contain fraud. As more applications are filed, the bureaucracy is made to run ever faster, further eroding any effort at quality control.
Yet, even after the publication of so many of those GAO reports that are supposed to be used by members of Congress to alert them to problems within the agencies over which they are supposed to exercise oversight, Harry Reid and the other “usual suspects” on Capitol Hill absolutely never, ever discuss the many problems at USCIS and a lack of integrity of the system that they would have process millions of applications that would undoubtedly filed by millions of illegal aliens who will do just about anything to remain here.
Also you must realize that at a time when so many opinion poles have made it clear that virtually all Americans, irrespective of political orientation believe that our immigration levels are far too high, a massive program to place so many millions of illegal aliens on a “pathway to United States citizenship” would also furnish those millions of aliens with the absolute right to petition the government, once they become citizens, to enable their parents and their siblings and their siblings nuclear families with green cards.
Stop and let that sink in.
If an alien naturalizes (acquires United States citizenship) he (she) is immediately entitled to file an application to provide resident alien status for his mother, his father and each of his brothers and sisters and their spouses and children!
To provide a hypothetical case – if such an alien had 6 brothers and sisters, not unusual in many countries around the world, especially “Third World” countries, and if each of these siblings were married and had an average of 5 minor, unmarried children, on the day of naturalization, this alien would be able to file applications for a total of 60 family members. If his mother and father were alive, then he would have the absolute right to petition the United States government to permit 62 relatives to enter the United States as lawful immigrants.
Now multiply that possibility by the millions of illegal aliens who may well want to have their parents and their siblings all join them in the United States if Harry Reid has his way and provides them all with a “pathway to United States citizenship!”
The open borders crowd has a name for this multiplication chart – “Family Reunification.”
Those of us who want an immigration system that has even a modicum of integrity calls this “Chain Migration.”
In 1986 Senator Ted Kennedy and his cohorts who jammed the first amnesty through the process, told their colleagues in the Congress, and the citizens of our country, that the program was essential to finally clear up the immigration mess and create a system with integrity. They stated that at most some 1.1 million aliens would avail themselves of the opportunity to come out of the “shadows.”
By the time the bureaucratic dust settled, somewhere between 3.5 and 4 million aliens applied for amnesty.
There are two possible reasons for these much greater than predicted numbers.
First of all, there may have been an underestimate of the true number. Second, and I can assure this was a significant part of the problem, aliens falsely claimed to have entered the United States prior to the cutoff date that the program established. The amnesty of 1986 created a “cottage industry” of fraud document vendors who prepared and sold bogus supporting documents to enable the additional 3 million illegal aliens to claim that they had resided in the United States for the requisite period of time.
I can tell you with absolute certainty that if our nation enacts an amnesty program now, that the same sort of fraud and chicanery will run rampantly through the system.
Harry Reid links improved employer sanctions to his Comprehensive Immigration Reform. Here is the fallacy of this. With a massive Comprehensive Immigration Reform program, virtually every illegal alien will no longer be illegal in the eyes of the law. Millions of illegal aliens will suddenly be legal and they will have the necessary documents to get any job in any industry that they want! This at a time when the unemployment rate has soared to 9.4%.
Reid’s claim about improved employer sanctions is the same as saying that he will put stronger locks on our doors and then make damned certain that everyone who wants one, will get a key to the front door!
He also stated that the aliens would have to pay a fine.
This is the way that proponents of “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” deflects the criticism that this program would constitute an “amnesty.”
Here is my response to that.
The issue of whether or not Comprehensive Immigration Reform constitutes amnesty is not the real question. The real issue is whether or not this program would deter future illegal immigration.
As you may know, I have said that no one would break into an amusement park if they could not get to go on the rides. I have also said that no one would stay in the amusement park at the end of the day when they shut down the rides and turn off the lights. In order to understand the impact of the fines, you need to consider the amusement park analogy one more time.
What do you find when you go to the amusement park? You find long lines of people standing for hours in the hot sun, willing to fork over lots of money simply for the purpose of getting to go on the rides! If the amusement park patrons are not deterred by the long lines and the expensive fees, why would illegal aliens be deterred by having to pay a fine?
Many of them have already placed their lives in grave danger by trekking through the desert with smugglers who may have raped the women and forced them to carry drugs or other contraband on their bodies at great expense for the “services” provided by the smugglers.
I am not certain what Harry Reid had in mind when he said that the aliens would have to “stay out of trouble.”
Many of these illegal aliens have already committed identity theft and may have violated other laws along the way. Reid and company are, from what I have been told, pushing for a confidentiality provision that would shield the illegal aliens from the scrutiny of law enforcement authorities the way that the 1986 Amnesty did. You may not know this, but under the 1986 amnesty, the applications that were filed by the millions of illegal aliens could not be shared with any other law enforcement agency even if the alien was a suspect in a murder or other felony. We were not supposed to share those amnesty applications and relating material with the FBI, DEA or local cops. Those illegal aliens were shielded by our own government in a way that if we attempted to do this where a lawful immigrant or United States citizen was concerned, we would have been charged with a felony – obstruction of governmental administration! If we divulged the amnesty files the agents of the INS could be subject to the loss of their jobs and a criminal prosecution!
The Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007, that I had re-named the “Terrorist Assistance and Facilitation Act” would have required the United States government (YOU the taxpayer) to pay the legal fees for those illegal aliens!
Who pays for your accountant or tax preparer when you file your income tax returns?
Additionally, that piece of legislative detritus would have required the beleaguered adjudications officers at USCIS to process a minimum of 100,000 applications for amnesty each and every day – in addition to their other work that they cannot even keep up with now!
The idea of the “Witness Protection Program” is to have the government provide an informant with a new identity to enable him to hide from those who would do him harm for assisting law enforcement and prosecutors. This makes perfect sense to protect those who assist law enforcement.
However, Comprehensive Immigration Reform is, in essence a “Witness Protection Program” for illegal aliens whose intentions and affiliations are unknown and unknowable. What exactly would Harry Reid and company reward these illegal aliens for?
As we saw with the 1986 amnesty – when the government rewards those who violate the law with a green card and a pathway to citizenship, the message is heard loudly and clearly: Violate our borders, violate our laws and you will not only be allowed to get away with it – you will be rewarded for doing this!
Finally, let us consider this statement from Mr. Reid: But at least it keeps them so that they are not subject to arrest and that they are more productive than they are.”
The entire benefit of hiring illegal aliens (for the unscrupulous employer) is to be able to exploit them. Exploitation is possible only when the person being exploited can be threatened for not cooperating.
Once an illegal aliens is “legalized” that alien can no longer be exploited. As an INS agent during the amnesty of 1986 I saw ever so many instances where illegal aliens were legalized. They then approached their employers and told them that they wanted to continue to work for that employer but wanted prevailing wages and appropriate compensation for working overtime and on weekends.
They demanded that safety standards be met and that money be paid into the Social Security.
Most of them were fired and their employers simply hired the next wave of illegal aliens.
It is impossible that even members of Congress could be this foolish as to not understand the situation as I have explained it above. Clearly those politicians who favor Comprehensive Immigration Reform are eager to place their selfish political goals ahead of what is best for Americans and America! Ours is supposed to be a representative form of government.
What I want Mr. Reid and his cohorts to tell me is who, exactly, do they represent? In less than two years, more than one third of the seats in the United States Senate will be up for election. In less than two years, every single seat in the House of Representatives will be up for grabs!
The politicians have become accustomed to expecting that the power of the incumbency is on their side. We only have ourselves to blame for this. We the People need to take every opportunity to confront those who were elected to represent us and make it clear that if they fail to represent us, we will find someone who will!
The large scale apathy demonstrated by citizens of this nation has emboldened elected representatives to all but ignore the needs of the average American citizen in a quest for massive campaign funds and the promises of votes to be ostensibly delivered by special interest groups.
There is much that we cannot do but there is one thing that We the People absolutely must do – we must stop sitting on the sidelines! The collective failure of We the People to get involved in make our concerns known to our politicians have nearly made the concerns of the great majority of the citizens of this nation all but irrelevant to the politicians. I implore you to get involved! We live in a perilous world and in a perilous era. The survival of our nation and the lives of our citizens hang in the balance.
This is neither a Conservative issue, nor is it a Liberal issue – simply stated, this is most certainly an AMERICAN issue! You are either part of the solution or you are a part of the problem! Democracy is not a spectator sport! Lead, follow or get out of the way!
Harvard University will announce tomorrow that it will establish an endowed chair in lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender studies, in what is believed to be the first professorship of its kind in the country.
Harvard President Drew G. Faust described the academic post as “an important milestone” in an ongoing effort by faculty, students, and alumni to raise the profile of LGBT studies at the university.
The university has received a $1.5 million gift from the Harvard Gay & Lesbian Caucus, a 4,900 member group, to endow the F.O. Matthiessen Visiting Professorship of Gender and Sexuality. Matthiessen, who Harvard says stands out as an unusual example of a gay man who lived his sexuality as an “open secret” in the mid-20th century, was an American studies scholar and literary critic at Harvard and chaired the undergraduate program in history and literature.
A growing number of colleges have begun offering academic programs related to sex, sexuality, and sexual orientation, though LGBT studies is a relatively young discipline. The City University of New York began the first gay and lesbian studies program in 1986.
“This is an extraordinary moment in Harvard’s history and in the history of this rapidly emerging field,” Mitchell L. Adams, a member of the Harvard Board of Overseers, said in a written statement. “And because of Harvard’s leadership in academia and the world, this gift will foster continued progress toward a more inclusive society.”
Adams is expected to announce the gift during the caucus’s annual commencement dinner tomorrow. The caucus, composed of alumni, faculty, staff, and students, was founded in 1984 to advocate for Harvard’s gay community.
The new professorship will allow Harvard to invite scholars studying sexuality or sexual minorities to teach in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences for one semester.
The visiting professorship will advance LGBT studies at Harvard by exposing students and faculty to cutting-edge ideas as leading thinkers rotate through the position, Harvard officials said, as well as help expand the field. It will also funnel new scholars to Harvard’s women, gender, and sexuality department.
Freedom of expression is under attack. This is a theme I am addressing here in America this week as part of the Free Speech Summit being held in Florida under the sponsorship of the Florida Security Council. And it is clear that a serious discussion of the threats to our freedoms in the West cannot come too soon.
For example, my friend Rep. Adam Hasner, the majority leader of the Florida House of Representatives was attacked in a press release issued by the national office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) on Monday for daring to appear at a private event with me this past weekend. Because of that appearance, CAIR is demanding that Rep. Hasner step down or be removed from his position.
This attack on a friend and fellow legislator is of grave concern to me. CAIR’s assault on Rep. Hasner strikes at the very heart of our most basic freedoms. In fact, it is but the latest episode in that organization’s long-running and determined effort to silence its critics. Indeed, CAIR seeks to suppress all those who dare to challenge the theo-political-legal program that authoritative Islam calls “Shariah.” In so doing, they are seeking to impose what amount to Shariah blasphemy codes.
It is especially important to note that Adam Hasner is not only being attacked for comments he made that are deemed offensive by those who seek to impose Shariah in America. His career is now being threatened for comments made by others in his presence – in this case, by me. Thus the Islamists are infringing not only on this country’s constitutionally protected freedom of expression but also freedom of association.
If a high-ranking public official – elected by the people and appointed to his leadership position by his peers – cannot speak honestly and openly about his concerns, and do so in places and the company of his choosing, without fear of suppression or other retribution, who among us is safe?
I know these threats firsthand. Even before the international release last year of my short documentary film, Fitna, I have faced constant death threats and protests. My name has appeared on assassination lists. I have been subject of an Al-Qaeda death fatwa. I will be charged with blasphemy and contempt of Muslims by Jordanian prosecutors. I face prosecutions in my own country and elsewhere. I was recently banned from the United Kingdom because the Home Secretary believed my mere presence in the country constituted a national security threat.
In this trying time let us recall that in the darkest hours of World War II, when the world faced a global threat from German Nazism, Italian Fascism and Japanese Imperialism, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill challenged his people to rise to the occasion and fight. He told them, “Never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
This is why I am in America this week talking about the fight we now must wage in the West to defend our liberties. Freedom of association is one of the basic liberties guaranteed not only by the US Constitution but by the European Convention of Human Rights. And yet CAIR wants to silence and punish Rep. Hasner for associating with me. If America needs a poster child for the threat to our freedoms from Islamic extremism, no better example than CAIR could be found.
This episode underscores that the threat to freedom posed by creeping Shariah imposed by CAIR’s type of stealthy jihad is not just a problem in the Middle East, or Europe. It is also a problem in America.
I will not be bullied by Islamic thugs who want to use our freedoms to destroy those very same freedoms. And I will not stand by as they seek to do it to others.
Founded and directed by members of the international network of the Muslim Brotherhood, CAIR has an explicit agenda to subvert our freedoms and impose Islamic Shariah law on non-Muslims. This is not speculation on my part. This is the testimony of one of CAIR’s founders and chairman emeritus, Omar Ahmed, who told a California audience in 1998 that this was their agenda. “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant,” he said. “The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.” When CAIR officials say that this is their ultimate objective, we should believe them.
In just the past few weeks, the Council on American Islamic Relations has sought to silence another courageous lawmaker, Rep. Peter King, the ranking member on the Homeland Security Committee in the US House of Representatives. His “offense”? Rep. King correctly observed that CAIR and other Muslims were not providing enough assistance to the law enforcement authorities in combating terrorism-related activities in American mosques.
CAIR has attempted to silence other critics, as well. They have sued bloggers; they have defamed journalists who have asked too many questions about their terrorist ties; and they have tried to intimidate publications that have published articles challenging their putative “civil rights mission.” If they get away with it, CAIR will seek to threaten the careers of more politicians with the courage to say things and associate with those of challenge Shariah and the effort to impose it in this country.
It is utterly hypocritical that, on the one hand, CAIR claims to be defending freedom of religion in attacking Rep. Hasner when, on the other, they actively seek support from Islamic regimes that are among the worst of the worst human rights abusers on the planet – and notorious for suppressing religious freedoms.
I have been told that in an Arabic News article that CAIR officials have solicited and received financial support from Saudi Prince Al-Walid Bin Talal, whose country outlaws any religious expression except its own Wahhabi strain of Islam. You can’t even own a Bible or wear a cross in the country run by their patrons, and yet CAIR wants to lecture us about religious freedom?
The land for CAIR’s Capitol Hill office in Washington D.C. was purchased with a $250,000 donation from the Saudi-backed Islamic Development Bank and the deed to their headquarters is held by the foundation of United Arab Emirates Defense Minister Gen. Sheik Mohammed Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum. Sheik al-Maktoum’s country prohibits any non-Islamic religious proselytizing and threatens anyone caught with distribution of non-Muslim religious literature with imprisonment.
In September 2006, CAIR hosted an exclusive dinner with former Iranian President Mohammed Khatami. Under Khatami’s regime religious minorities were severely persecuted, non-Muslims were regularly harassed, and hundreds of student protestors murdered. The fact that CAIR chose to honor this dictator who is still a senior member of the Islamic theocracy in Iran tells us much.
Whether it is in America or back home in my own country, we are under attack by groups like CAIR who aim to silence their critics. This is why I am here in America. I aim to continue to fight regardless of the threats and intimidation and I am asking Americans to join with us. And when they attack good men like Rep. Adam Hasner, we must realize that they are attacking each and every one of us and the freedoms that we hold dear.
JEDDAH – A 50-year old Saudi man has agreed to divorce his 9-year-old bride, media reported on Thursday, after the marriage drew international criticism.
The decision, reported by newspapers Alwatan and Al-Riyadh, came after months of court hearings, criticism from the United Nations and an international media frenzy about Saudi Arabia’s human rights practices.
“This is a good step and I think the man did it because he was in a lot of pressure from everyone,” Wajeha Al-Huaider, founder of the Group for Women’s Rights in Saudi Arabia, told Reuters by telephone.
Al-Huaider, who campaigned for the child, said she hoped the pressure generated by the case would eventually lead to a law banning child marriages.
The child’s mother, who opposed the marriage which took place when the girl was 8 years old, took the case to court last year. The court in the small town of Onaiza upheld the marriage on condition that the husband did not consummate it until the girl reached puberty.
In Saudi Arabia’s patriarchal society, which applies an austere version of Sunni Islam, fathers have the right to decide whom their daughters marry.
Homeland Security Contracts for Vast New Detention Camps
Note: A little-known $385 million contract for Halliburton subsidiary KBR to build detention facilities for “an emergency influx of immigrants” is another step down the Bush administration’s road toward martial law, the writer says.
Also see: FEMA Concentration Camps: Locations and Executive Orders – Friends of Liberty (undated) 3sep04
BERKELEY, CA — A Halliburton subsidiary has just received a $385 million contract from the Department of Homeland Security to provide “temporary detention and processing capabilities.”
The contract — announced Jan. 24 by the engineering and construction firm KBR — calls for preparing for “an emergency influx of immigrants, or to support the rapid development of new programs” in the event of other emergencies, such as “a natural disaster.” The release offered no details about where Halliburton was to build these facilities, or when.
To date, some newspapers have worried that open-ended provisions in the contract could lead to cost overruns, such as have occurred with KBR in Iraq. A Homeland Security spokesperson has responded that this is a “contingency contract” and that conceivably no centers might be built. But almost no paper so far has discussed the possibility that detention centers could be used to detain American citizens if the Bush administration were to declare martial law.
For those who follow covert government operations abroad and at home, the contract evoked ominous memories of Oliver North’s controversial Rex-84 “readiness exercise” in 1984. This called for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to round up and detain 400,000 imaginary “refugees,” in the context of “uncontrolled population movements” over the Mexican border into the United States. North’s activities raised civil liberties concerns in both Congress and the Justice Department. The concerns persist.
“Almost certainly this is preparation for a roundup after the next 9/11 for Mid-Easterners, Muslims and possibly dissenters,” says Daniel Ellsberg, a former military analyst who in 1971 released the Pentagon Papers, the U.S. military’s account of its activities in Vietnam. “They’ve already done this on a smaller scale, with the ‘special registration’ detentions of immigrant men from Muslim countries, and with Guantanamo.”
Plans for detention facilities or camps have a long history, going back to fears in the 1970s of a national uprising by black militants. As Alonzo Chardy reported in the Miami Herald on July 5, 1987, an executive order for continuity of government (COG) had been drafted in 1982 by FEMA head Louis Giuffrida. The order called for “suspension of the Constitution” and “declaration of martial law.” The martial law portions of the plan were outlined in a memo by Giuffrida’s deputy, John Brinkerhoff.
In 1985, President Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 188, one of a series of directives that authorized continued planning for COG by a private parallel government.
Two books, James Mann’s “Rise of the Vulcans” and James Bamford’s “A Pretext for War,” have revealed that in the 1980s this parallel structure, operating outside normal government channels, included the then-head of G. D. Searle and Co., Donald Rumsfeld, and then-Congressman from Wyoming Dick Cheney.
After 9/11, new martial law plans began to surface similar to those of FEMA in the 1980s. In January 2002 the Pentagon submitted a proposal for deploying troops on American streets. One month later John Brinkerhoff, the author of the 1982 FEMA memo, published an article arguing for the legality of using U.S. troops for purposes of domestic security.
Then in April 2002, Defense Dept. officials implemented a plan for domestic U.S. military operations by creating a new U.S. Northern Command (CINC-NORTHCOM) for the continental United States. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called this “the most sweeping set of changes since the unified command system was set up in 1946.”
The NORTHCOM commander, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced, is responsible for “homeland defense and also serves as head of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)…. He will command U.S. forces that operate within the United States in support of civil authorities. The command will provide civil support not only in response to attacks, but for natural disasters.”
John Brinkerhoff later commented on PBS that, “The United States itself is now for the first time since the War of 1812 a theater of war. That means that we should apply, in my view, the same kind of command structure in the United States that we apply in other theaters of war.”
Then in response to Hurricane Katrina in Sept. 2005, according to the Washington Post, White House senior adviser Karl Rove told the governor of Louisiana, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, that she should explore legal options to impose martial law “or as close as we can get.” The White House tried vigorously, but ultimately failed, to compel Gov. Blanco to yield control of the state National Guard.
Also in September, NORTHCOM conducted its highly classified Granite Shadow exercise in Washington. As William Arkin reported in the Washington Post, “Granite Shadow is yet another new Top Secret and compartmented operation related to the military’s extra-legal powers regarding weapons of mass destruction. It allows for emergency military operations in the United States without civilian supervision or control.”
It is clear that the Bush administration is thinking seriously about martial law. Many critics have alleged that FEMA’s spectacular failure to respond to Katrina followed from a deliberate White House policy: of paring back FEMA, and instead strengthening the military for responses to disasters.
A multimillion program for detention facilities will greatly increase NORTHCOM’s ability to respond to any domestic disorders.
Index Journal | Greenwood, SC | News
Huckabee first in Lakelands, McCain second
Saturday, January 19, 2008 10:50 PM EST
Voters in the Lakelands closely mirrored their counterparts throughout the Palmetto State in Saturday’s Republican presidential primary.
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Arizona Sen. John McCain ran neck and neck in the region, with McCain holding a slight edge.
Former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson was a distant third. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney was the fourth-leading vote-getter, with Texas Rep. Ron Paul rounding out the top five. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who largely ignored South Carolina to focus on the upcoming Florida primary, finished sixth in the Lakelands.
Across the Lakelands, Huckabee edged McCain in Greenwood County.
*
In a hotly contested race, Huckabee garnered 2,295 votes in Greenwood, while McCain picked up 2,262 votes. Connie Moody, director of elections and voter registration, said Huckabee slipped past McCain toward the end of the vote tallying.
“McCain looked like he had it the whole time,” Moody said. “Then, at the end, Huckabee slipped right on in there.”
A total of 6,807 votes were cast on a cold and rainy Saturday in Greenwood.
Former Tennessee senator Fred Thompson placed third in the county, netting 1,057 votes. Moody said the results will be certified at 10 a.m. Thursday at Park Plaza.
Others receiving votes included Thompson 1,057, Romney 847, Paul 220, Giuliani 97, Duncan Hunter 25, John Cox 2 and Tom Tancredo 2.
IN SALUDA COUNTY, McCain beat Huckabee 778-589. Thompson was a distant third with 279 votes. Romney garnered 200 votes, and Paul rounded out the top five with 73 votes.
Other vote-getters included Giuliani 19, Cox two and Hunter one. Tancredo was on the ballot, but didn’t receive any votes.
IN ABBEVILLE COUNTY, which is considered the birthplace of the Confederacy, Huckabee placed first with 905 votes. The former Baptist minister was the only Republican front-runner not to call for the removal of the Confederate flag from the state capitol grounds – an issue that has drawn national attention, as well as an NAACP boycott, for years here.
“You don’t like people from outside the state coming in and telling you what to do with your flag,” Huckabee told supporters Thursday in Myrtle Beach. “In fact, if somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we’d tell ’em what to do with the pole, that’s what we’d do.”
McCain earned 540 votes. Thompson had 355, Romney 207, Paul 102 and Giuliani 11.
IN McCORMICK COUNTY, McCain won with 411 votes. Huckabee finished second with 237 [ only six votes more than Romney. Thompson was fourth with 181. Guiliani received 33 votes and Paul 21.
“Hillary Rodham Clinton needs to be kept very far away from the White House for the rest of her life.”
My two cents’ worth–and I think it is the two cents’ worth of everybody who worked for the Clinton Administration health care reform effort of 1993-1994–is that Hillary Rodham Clinton needs to be kept very far away from the White House for the rest of her life.
Heading up health-care reform was the only major administrative job she has ever tried to do. And she was a complete flop at it.
She had neither the grasp of policy substance, the managerial skills, nor the political smarts to do the job she was then given. And she wasn’t smart enough to realize that she was in over her head and had to get out of the Health Care Czar role quickly.
There is no reason to think that she would be anything but an abysmal president.
J. Bradford DeLong
professor of economics, Berkeley
clinton Administration veteran
HILLARY LIE: I spent a year after graduation working on a children’s rights project for poor kids.
THE FACTS: Hillary interned with Bob Truehaft, the head of the California Communist Party. She met Bob when he represented the Black Panthers, on trial for torturing and killing a federal agent. She traveled all the way to San Francisco to take an internship with him.
HILLARY LIE: I could have written my own job ticket, but I turned down all the lucrative job offers.
THE FACTS: Hillary flunked the DC bar exam and only passed the Arkansas bar. She had no job offers in Arkansas and only got hired by the University of Arkansas Law School at Fayetteville because Bill was already teaching there. She only joined the prestigious Rose Law Firm after Bill became Attorney General and made partner only after he was elected governor.
Arkansas schools ranked 49th when they entered Little Rock and 49th when they exited. For power and treasure, they sold everything from tainted blood of prisoners to mineral rights of The People. Little Rock was an obvious dry run for DC.
HILLARY LIE: I helped to create the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) that provides five million children with health insurance.
THE FACTS: Hillary had nothing to do with creating CHIP. It was included in the budget deal between her husband and Republican Majority Leader Senator Trent Lott. The money came half from the budget deal and half from the Attorney Generals’ tobacco settlement. Hillary had nothing to do with
either source of funds.
HILLARY LIE: I was the face of America all over the world.
THE FACTS: Her visits were part of a program to get her out of town so that Bill would not appear weak by feeding stories that Hillary was running the White House. Her visits abroad were entirely touristic and symbolic and there was no substantive diplomacy on any of them.
MISSUS CLINTON RODE CAMELS, NOT HERD.
HILLARY LIE: Hillary was an excellent Senator who kept fighting for children’s and women’s issues.
THE FACTS: Other than totally meaningless legislation like changing the names on courthouses and post offices, she has passed only four substantive pieces of legislation. One set up a national park in Puerto Rico. A second provided respite care for family members helping their relatives. And two were routine bills to aid 9-11 victims and responders which were sponsored by the entire NY delegation.
Hillary’s ‘serious plan’ in 2000 became hillary’s serious failure in 2006. The 200,000 new jobs she pledged to create in depressed Upstate became under her tenure a 75,000-job LOSS.
HILLARY CLINTON is inept. She is an abuser of power.
SHE HAS ROUTINELY, REFLEXIVELY, ABUSED-EXPLOITED-THE WEAK AND THE VULNERABLE-WOMEN AND CHILDREN AND BLACKS-FOR HER ENTIRE 35-YEAR PURSUIT OF POWER AND TREASURE.
“There’s not a sex act mentioned in the book. What is important is Hillary savaging the women….
Carl Bernstein, FROM CARL BERNSTEIN TO THE BROADDRICK RAPE: CONNECTING THE DOTS-’YouTube
HUMAN EVENTS
President Quietly Creating ‘NAFTA Plus’
by Jerome R. Corsi (More by this author)
Posted: 05/24/2006
Without announcing his intentions to do so, President Bush has decided to support the creation of a North American Union through a process of governmental regulations, never having to bring the issue before the American people for a clear referendum or vote.
The Bush Administration has decided to “back-door” the creation of a North American Union political entity that would effectively erase our borders with Mexico and Canada and create several super-regional governing bodies that would have jurisdiction over the U.S. Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court.
November 25, 2007 — I’ve often been left fascinated – and disturbed – by what makes TV news.
What makes big news? What makes less news? And what makes almost no news at all?
For example, if three local, young white men were charged in the racially motivated, beating death of an illegal African immigrant – the father of eight, no less – what kind of news would that make?
That would make huge news. It not only would lead all local newscasts, it likely would make national newscasts – at or near the top. As well it should.
But last week, after three young black men were arrested in Plainfield, NJ, charged in the robbery and beating murder of an illegal immigrant from Guatemala and police said the married father of eight was targeted because he was Hispanic, the story scarcely made a sound.
In fact, I knew nothing about it until last Sunday, when I read an AP report in a New Jersey newspaper, albeit just six paragraphs on Page 6. Another, larger NJ newspaper carried 15 paragraphs about the arrests in the murder, on Page 36.
Illegal aliens are killing more Americans than the Iraq war, says a new report from Family Security Matters that estimates some 2,158 murders are committed every year by illegal aliens in the U.S. The group says that number is more than 15 percent of all the murders reported by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the U.S. and about three times the representation of illegal aliens in the general population.
Mike Cutler, a former senior special agent with the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (the former INS), is a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies and an advisor to Family Security Matters (FSM). He says the high number of Americans being killed by illegal aliens is just part of the collateral damage that comes with tolerating illegal immigration.
“The military actually called for the BORTAC team, … the elite unit of the Border Patrol, to be detailed to Iraq to help to secure the Iraqi border,” Cutler notes. “Now, if our military can understand that Iraq’s security depends in measure on the ability to protect its border against insurgents and terrorists, then why isn’t our country similarly protecting our own borders?” he asks.
Melanie Phillips’s Diary » Beyond belief
True to its ever-more astounding and sickening form, (including this grovelling apology for calling Jerusalem, the capital of Israel, its capital) the BBC has been blaming the carnage in Gaza upon…Israel. According to its ineffable Middle East editor, Jeremy Bowen, the barbarism meted out by the Palestinians of Gaza upon each other is All Israel’s Fault:
The institutions, and the hopes behind them, have already taken a severe battering from Israel’s military actions over the last seven years and, more recently, by the punishing financial sanctions imposed by Israel and other countries after Hamas won a free election at the beginning of last year… What has happened also shows the failure of the decision of the world’s big powers to isolate Hamas. The financial sanctions they imposed, which caused severe hardship and helped fuel the violence in Gaza by making people even more desperate, were designed to either force Hamas to recognise Israel or to push it out of power. The policy has achieved neither objective.
No mention that aid to Gaza has at the very least doubled since these ‘punishing financial sanctions’ were imposed. No acknowledgement that it was Hamas’s genocidal attacks on Israel that caused these sanctions to be imposed. No awareness of the absurdity of blaming the violence on the ‘desperation’ caused by sanctions when a) it is plainly a power struggle between Hamas and Fatah, b) the Palestinians were given the opportunity to turn Gaza into a flourishing society two years ago, but within hours showed how ‘desperate’ they were not to achieve this by destroying millions of dollars’ worth of greenhouses that the Israelis had left for them to make money from, and c) Hamas is demonstrably not despairing at all but exultant that it can now tyrannise the inhabitants of Gaza all the way back to the 7th century.
Last week I mentioned about how the New York Times buried the JFK Airport terror plot on Page 37. You’d have been more likely to move on to the sports or movie section before ever finding it.
That turns out to almost be the least of the Times efforts on that day to minimize the significance of the threat that terrorism holds for America, its citizens and economy. The reporters didn’t get around to telling readers of the thousands of lives that could have been lost, or the huge economic hit it would have inflicted, until the 28th paragraph.
They certainly made sure to feature, in the fifth paragraph, the statement from Mayor Bloomberg’s office that there “was never any imminent danger because the attack was only in a preliminary phase.” You can imagine that the 9/11 hijackers would have been written about similarly if they had been foiled before the attacks were “imminent.” (I can almost hear the accusatory pleadings of the ACLU and Muslim advocacy groups that these well-bred, aspiring, young men wanted only a piece of the American dream by becoming airline pilots).
TSA: We’re not saying our hard drive is gone but…
It’s just not here anymore
By Austin Modine in Mountain View ? More by this author
Published Monday 7th May 2007 23:58 GMT
The universe has an odd tendency to absorb certain objects into the oblivion of un-existence. Television remotes, single socks, car keys, lighters, external hard drives containing 100,000 employee records, pen caps; they all come and go like tiny dimensional travelers.
And such is the order of things that missing socks and lighter go largely unreported in the media — bees in our bonnet though they may be.
But the minute the Transportation Security Administration loses a hard drive containing the names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, payroll information, bank account and routing information of 100,000 people employed at the agency between January 2002 and August 2005, there’s suddenly a big fuss.
On May 3, the TSA discovered the drive was missing from a controlled area at the Headquarters Office of Human Capital. The agency immediately reported the incident to law enforcement officials, the Department of Homeland Security and launched into an investigation.
Did it fall behind the desk? No.
Did Jim take it home to transfer his Phil Collins music collection to his desktop? No.
Maybe check behind the desk again?
The investigation hit a brick wall. By Friday night, it was time to fess up with a statement. The TSA doesn’t know whether the device is still within headquarters or was stolen. It has found no evidence an unauthorized individual is using the personal information.
TSA is a division of the Homeland Security Department, responsible for the safety of the US transportation system, including airports and train stations.
They are unsure whether the data was encrypted or not. The TSA is investigating to see if proper data security procedures were followed. The agency pledges disciplinary action against individuals found to be in violation of security procedures.
This is far from the first case of government hard drives phasing out of three dimensional time-space. In a similar case in January, the external hard drive of a Department of Veterans Affairs employee that contained personal data of approximately 48,000 employees went missing. A year ago this month, a VA laptop with personal details of 26.5m veterans was stolen; it was eventually turned in by a member of the public who bought it at a market.
TSA has begun to notify all affected individuals in the incident. They have also begun the process of selecting a contractor to provide one year of free credit monitoring for those with personal information in the drive. ®
The ugly truth about illegal immigration protests
OK, let me get this illegal immigration debate straight. Let me set the record straight as to exactly what those in favor of excusing and encouraging illegal entry into the United States are really out to accomplish. Just so, we all have a clear understanding of what those who have been taking to streets all across America, are supporting. Let us examine the attitudes of those marching. Let us look at WHO is really behind many of these protests. Moreover, while we are at it, let us look at the consequences if those folks win this battle for America’s borders!
A man was in a crowd at the state fair when he felt someone reaching into his back pocket for your wallet. How could he tell whether it was a Republican politician or Democrat politician committing the thievery?
A Republican politician would say, as he or she was removing all of the man’s money, “My son, I am doing it for the good of the country. Your money will buy us more weapons and me more votes.”
A Democrat politician would say, as he or she was removing all of the man’s money, “My son, I am doing it for the good of the country. Your money will buy us more social programs and me more votes.”
Either way the guy was robbed.
The point: be careful not to fall in love with either party. Power corrupts.
December 30, 1998 by: Phyllis Schlafly, Eagle Forum
Hiding behind the unprecedented headlines of the last few weeks, “Big Brother” government has been steadily expanding its encroachments on our personal privacy. What we thought was one of the most benign and beloved of federal agencies, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), proposed a revolutionary regulation called “Know Your Customer.” The proposed FDIC regulation would require each bank to do the following: determine the identity of all its customers, determine each customer’s sources of funds; determine each customer’s normal and expected bank transactions; monitor the activity of each account, looking for deposits and withdrawals that are inconsistent with the expected pattern of financial transactions; and report any transactions that someone might call “suspicious.”
Wow! Did you think that freedom in America includes the freedom to manage your own money without the government looking over your shoulder? Well, think again. Continue reading »