APNogales, AZ Police Chief Jeff Kirkham recently announced that his department has been warned by a Mexican drug cartel that his officers will be targeted for murder if they carry out another off-duty drug bust.

In early June, two off-duty Nogales officers riding horseback came upon a smuggling operation, which resulted in the seizure of 400 pounds of marijuana.

Chief Kirkham told reporters: “The warning was … that the officers, if they are off duty, are to look the other way and ignore any drug trafficking loads that are coming across the border, otherwise they will be targeted.”

This was only the latest in a series of outrageous acts taken by the cartels against the U.S., demonstrating the boldness with which they feel will go unanswered by a weak U.S. government.

In April, someone tossed an explosive device onto the grounds of the U.S. consulate in Nuevo Laredo. The bomb broke windows and caused some minor damage, but no injuries were reported.

Nuevo Laredo is just across the river from Laredo, TX.

In March, U.S. consulate employees in Juarez were murdered in targeted attacks, after leaving a child’s birthday party.

On March 13, in two separate attacks, cartel gunmen murdered two Americans attached to the U.S. consulate in Juarez.

Lesley Enriquez Redelfs, a consulate employee, along with her husband, Arthur Redelfs, a detention officer with the El Paso County Sheriff’s Department were gunned down on as they were leaving a child‘s birthday party. The couple was murdered after being chased-down by the hitmen. Their baby daughter who was in the backseat survived the assault.

Also shot to death in the coordinated attacks was the husband of consulate worker, Jorge Salcido Ceniceros, after the gunmen boxed-in his car. His wife, Hilda Antillon, was traveling in the car behind him was uninjured, though the couple’s two children were wounded in the attack.

The hit squads used AK-47s as well as 9mm handguns.

A member of the Mexican drug gang known as the Aztecas has been arrested for the murders.

President Obama failed to respond to either the bombing of our consulate, or to the coordinated murders of U.S. consulate employees. That inaction, combined with his unwillingness to defend the border has undoubtedly sent a message of weakness to the cartels, and will likely result in the deaths of more U.S. law enforcement officers.

Of course, Obama’s predecessor was equally weak on this issue. The threats began in earnest under the Bush administration, as assaults on Border Patrol agents began rising at unprecedented rates. By 2007, assaults (which include shootings) had tripled from 2001, with 987.

In 2007, the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin reported that they had obtained a confidential Department of Homeland Security memo. The function of the document was to issue an Officer Safety alert to U.S. Border Patrol agents that human smugglers were bringing MS-13 gang members into the country for the sole purpose of murdering the agents.

The alert reads: “Unidentified Mexican alien smugglers are angry about the increased security along the U.S./Mexican border and have agreed that the best way to deal with U.S. Border Patrol agents is to hire a group of contract killers.”

A Border Patrol agent speaking on the condition of anonymity said: “It’s not just people coming over here to pick lettuce. These gang members, criminals, are endangering American lives.” He went on: “Our vests won’t stop a rifle bullet, and many of us feel like sitting ducks.”

On August 25, 2008, federal and local law enforcement officials told the Associated Press that Mexican drug cartels are now sending hit men into the U.S.

Officer Chris Mears of the El Paso Police Department told reporters: “We received credible information that drug cartels in Mexico have given permission to hit targets on the U.S. side of the border. One of the first things we did was to notify all officers in our department of the situation.”

In July 2008, police in New Mexico and Texas received a cartel hit list, uncovered by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The list contained the name of at least one New Mexico police officer.

Luna County Sheriff’s Capt. Arturo Baeza told the press: “We have been concerned for quite some time that this thing will spill over here.”

Snipers, who at one time, operated only on the Mexican side of the border, now move about freely. They fire a few shots at agents, then move to cover–only to fire again from another location. The tactics are typical of military sniper training. More than likely, the snipers are creating a diversion so that the smugglers can cross in another location. They know that the U.S. agents cannot pursue them into Mexico, and their own government is seemingly powerless to stop their activities.

In 2005, Border Patrol spokesman Andy Adame said: “We believe the vast majority of these assaults are directly tied to alien and drug smugglers based in Mexico.”

Of course, Mexico´s drug cartels are now operating within the interior of the U.S.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the cartels have set up shop in 231 U.S. cities. Atlanta, for instance, has been transformed into a major hub from which Mexican methamphetamine is distributed throughout the east coast.

With a largely unprotected border, and a President and a Homeland Security chief who seem oblivious to the threat posed to American cities, it is very easy for cartel hit men to cross into the U.S.

If Obama does not begin to take seriously his oath of office, we must install a Congress which vows to impeach the man who seems more concerned with golf than with the safety of U.S. citizens.

Obama’s weakness only encourages the violent cartels, now in control of Mexico

While the Obama administration claims the lawsuit is necessary because immigration enforcement is solely the domain of the federal government, they have yet to object to the many so-called ‘sanctuary cities’ around the country.

Locally elected officials in these sanctuary cities enact their own policies to protect criminal aliens from deportation, by not allowing police departments to report the illegal immigration status of an arrestee to federal authorities. This policy often shields dangerous criminals and allows them to return to the streets, rather than to their own country of origin.

These local policies violate and interfere with federal law, and undoubtedly lead to more crime and encourage illegal immigration, by laying out the welcome mat to those who choose to sneak into this country.

However, the Justice Department has been strangely silent on the issue of ’sanctuary cities’ and the responsibility they have in this country’s growing illegal alien population.

One such city which seems to take great pride in flaunting U.S. immigration law, while aiding and abetting even the most violent of illegal aliens is San Francisco.

In San Francisco, on June 22, 2008, three members of the Bologna family were gunned down by Salvadoran national and gang member Edwin Ramos. Tony Bologna, 48, and his sons Michael, 20, and Matthew, 16 were shot to death by Ramos as they sat in their car on a crowded street, in the city´s Excelsior District

Ramos who is a member of the notoriously violent drug gang known as MS-13, shot the Bologna family to death because Tony Bologna had temporarily blocked the car in which Ramos was traveling, as the two cars made their way through an intersection. The Bologna men were returning home from a family barbecue.

Though an illegal alien, as a juvenile, Ramos committed felony attempted robbery and assault, but was never deported.

Shortly after the shooting, the San Francisco Chronicle reported, Juvenile Probation Department officials did not report Ramos to federal immigration authorities for possible deportation because of San Francisco´s stated sanctuary policy.

What are we to make of a President who has no problem allowing American families to be gunned down in the streets of their own cities, but goes to court to protect illegal aliens?

Of course, the Obama administration will never take legal action against San Francisco, nor against any other city which gives sanctuary to illegal aliens. Nor does Obama care about the rule of law, the current White House occupant is suing Arizona solely for political reasons.

Of course, Obama is betting not only his own political future, on amnesty, but that of the Democratic Party as well. In this nation’s illegal alien population, he sees millions of new voters.

Americans have to care because this global gobbledygook is coming to our shores, thanks to our globalist president. The European human rights group called Stop the Islamization of Europe (SIOE) has been working tirelessly to expose the mass Muslim immigration plan of the Euro-Med Partnership. A statement on the SIOE Web site criticizes the secrecy of the process: “It was shocking to hear about the plans and at the same time knowing that Danish politicians and a [cowardly] Danish press – who is otherwise proud to be critical – has told nothing to the Danish people about this project which begins in January. This also showed clearly at the conference. Only very few politicians showed up and no media. Those politicians who showed up had obviously never heard about the Euro-Mediterranean project.

The goal of the Euro-Mediterranean cooperation is to create a new Greater European Union encompassing both Europe and North Africa, with the Mediterranean Sea becoming a domestic Eurabian sea. The goal is to establish a “comprehensive political partnership,” including a “free trade area and economic integration”; “considerably more money for the partners” (that is, more European money flowing into North Africa); and “cultural partnership” – that is, importation of Islamic culture into post-Christian Europe. According to the SIOE, in the Euro-Med plan “Europe is to be islamized. Democracy, Christianity, European culture and Europeans are to be driven out of Europe.

Fifty million North Africans from Muslim countries are to be imported into the EU.” Skeptical? It’s already happening. The British newspaper the Daily Express reported in October 2008 on “a controversial taxpayer-funded ‘job centre’ ” that opened in Mali at that time as “just the first step towards promoting ‘free movement of people in Africa and the EU.’ Brussels economists claim Britain and other EU states will ‘need’ 56 million immigrant workers between them by 2050 to make up for the ‘demographic decline’ due to falling birthrates and rising death rates across Europe.” To offset this decline, a “blue card” system is to be created that will allow card holders to travel freely within the European Union and have full rights to work – as well as the full right to collect welfare benefits. A Muslim population from Africa moving freely into Europe threatens America. On Christmas Day, a Nigerian Muslim flew from Amsterdam to Detroit and tried to explode a bomb on the plane – after he was allowed to board the plane without a passport.

The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership will make jihad attacks like this one all the easier. And once in Europe, Muslims have already begun demanding special privileges and accommodations. IslamOnline reported on Dec. 21 that “Muslims activists from 26 European countries have come together to launch the first rights council to enlighten European Muslims about their rights, monitor rising Islamophobia and defend Muslim rights in European courts of law.” Ali Abu Shwaima, a Muslim leader in Italy, explained: “We think European human rights groups are not doing enough to defend the rights of Muslims. Therefore we thought that we need this new council, especially that all laws and constitutions in Europe respect freedom of religion and oppose all forms of discrimination and racism.” “Islamophobia,” “discrimination” and “racism” are all terms Muslims in Europe and America use to confuse people into thinking that the perpetrators of Islamic terrorism are the real victims. And it is working: Mr. Wilders is going on trial in the Netherlands, instead of all the Islamic hate sponsors he is fighting against. It has to be this way, to increase harmony among the Muslim and non-Muslim member states of the Euro-Med Partnership. This internationalism is already destroying what has made Europe free and great. And now Mr. Obama seems to want to do the same to America.

Losing is projected as failure, then fear of failure stifles development. Rational thinking suggests that competition builds character. I guarantee you, when my granddaughter loses in a track meet or softball game, she is resolved to work even harder the next time. I would never try to kill that spirit—liberalism does.

A.E. has infiltrated our culture, military and government. The current administration outlawed use of the word “terrorism,” as if that would make it go away.

President Obama took months to decide whether to appeal to his far-left base, or send our troops in Afghanistan additional help. As a state senator in 2002, he spoke out against the war in Iraq, saying Afghanistan was where we needed to focus. Now, after seven years as an expert on the subject, he had trouble coming up with a plan?

Here’s why. In an interview, the commander in chief said “I’m always worried about using the word victory…”. That’s just great. If he can’t even use the word victory, how are we possibly going to achieve it? We can debate whether or not to be in a “just war,” but one thing is certain—if we are afraid of winning, more soldiers will die.

Political correctness, protected Nidal Malik Hasan (a radical Muslim terrorist) as he rose to the rank of major in the U.S. Army. In lectures, Hasan said things like “non-believers should be beheaded and have boiling oil poured down their throats.” Fear of reprisal prevented his superiors from reporting him. The FBI was aware that he was in contact with Al Qaeda via e-mails, but also did nothing. Hasan murdered 13 (unarmed) soldiers at Fort Hood. Unarmed?—P.C. suggests our military can’t be trusted with weapons!

Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey said, “It’s important for the country not to get caught up in speculation about Hasan’s Muslim faith” and “as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.”

What a leader. Diversity is more important than the lives of his troops! Pvt. Gomer Pyle said, Goll-ee general, I sure don’t want to say anything about that nice man that would get him in trouble.

Casey instructed his commanders to be on the lookout for anti-Muslim reaction to the killings. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano chimed in with “We’re going to do everything we can to make sure there’s not a backlash against Muslim Americans in the United States.”

This is the same ignorance that contributed to the murders in the first place—scrutinizing the whistle blower, not the antagonist. Anti-exceptionalism, political correctness and diversity kill.

A side note: I applaud the legislators for repealing affirmative action in the state of Nebraska.

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.

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.

Foremost Leader in Change Management

Lou Pritchett is one of corporate America’s true living legends- an acclaimed author, dynamic teacher and one of the world’s highest rated speakers. Successful corporate executives everywhere recognize him as the foremost leader in change management. Lou changed the way America does business by creating an audacious concept that came to be known as “partnering.” Pritchett rose from soap salesman to Vice-President, Sales and Customer Development for Procter and Gamble and over the course of 36 years, made corporate history.

AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA

Dear President Obama:

You are the thirteenth President under whom I have lived and unlike any of the others, you truly scare me. You scare me because after months of exposure, I know nothing about you.

You scare me because I do not know how you paid for your expensive Ivy League education and your upscale lifestyle and housing with no visible signs of support.

You scare me because you did not spend the formative years of youth growing up in America and culturally you are not an American.

You scare me because you have never run a company or met a payroll.

You scare me because you have never had military experience, thus don’t understand it at its core.. You scare me because you lack humility and ‘class’, always blaming others.

You scare me because for over half your life you have aligned yourself with radical extremists who hate America and you refuse to publicly denounce these radicals who wish to see America fail.

You scare me because you are a cheerleader for the ‘blame America’ crowd and deliver this message abroad.

You scare me because you want to change America to a European style country where the government sector dominates instead of the private sector.

You scare me because you want to replace our health care system with a government controlled one.

You scare me because you prefer ‘wind mills’ to responsibly capitalizing on our own vast oil, coal and shale reserves.

You scare me because you want to kill the American capitalist goose that lays the golden egg which provides the highest standard of living in the world.

You scare me because you have begun to use ‘extortion’ tactics against certain banks and corporations.

You scare me because your own political party shrinks from challenging you on your wild and irresponsible spending proposals.

You scare me because you will not openly listen to or even consider opposing points of view from intelligent people.

You scare me because you falsely believe that you are both omnipotent and omniscient.

You scare me because the media gives you a free pass on everything you do.

You scare me because you demonize and want to silence the Limbaughs, Hannitys, O’Relllys and Becks who offer opposing, conservative points of view.

You scare me because you prefer controlling over governing.

Finally, you scare me because if you serve a second term I will probably not feel safe in writing a similar letter in 8 years.

Lou Pritchett

The FBI has launched an “aggressive” manhunt for the men, who have “gone to ground” and have mysteriously disappeared, terrorism experts tell Newsmax. Authorities fear the men may have been recruited by extremists to carry out suicide attacks inside the United States, or abroad.

Critics of the State Department programs that brought the Somalis to America express grave concerns about the practice of admitting refugees from failed nation-states known to harbor extremists. It can be difficult or impossible to verify a person’s identity in such a country, let alone obtain knowledge of their past associations, several experts tell Newsmax.

One Somali refugee who vanished in early November, Shirwa Ahmed, re-emerged in northern Somalia in February behind the wheel of a truck packed with explosives.

Ahmed, whose family immigrated to the Minneapolis area in the mid-1990s, drove his truck into a crowd and triggered a massive explosion that left some 30 persons dead. Ahmed’s case marked the first known suicide bombing conducted by an American citizen, according to FBI director Robert S. Mueller III.

“It appears that this individual was radicalized in his hometown in Minnesota,” Mueller told the Council on Foreign Relations, warning that in the past two years, about two dozen Somali men have disappeared from their residences near Minneapolis.

Authorities say the men may have been recruited by al-Shabab, a terrorist group believed to have ties to al-Qaida. There has been speculation the men were radicalized at mosques in the area.

Ahmed’s recruitment and training, and the subsequent suicide attack, is especially worrisome for the FBI because of the other missing Somali-Americans. “It raised the question of whether these young men will one day come home, and, if so, what might they undertake here,” Mueller said.

Fox 9, a Minneapolis television station, reported that eight local refugees left the Twin Cities area on August 1, and 10 more departed on Nov. 4. The men’s families later found flight itineraries for travel from Dubai to Nairobi and on to Kenya. From there, it is believed they most likely entered Somalia by boat.

Counterterrorism experts worry that operatives who are already familiar with U.S. society and culture would be much more difficult to stop, if they were employed to attack the U.S. homeland.

Terrorism analyst Daveed Gartenstien-Ross recently told CBN: “There’s a concern that … they’re going to training camps and receiving the kind of training they would need to carry out some kind of mischief in the United States.”

Critics of the program that grants immigrants their refugee status, even when their past activities and associations cannot be thoroughly documented, point out that since 1991 Somalia has exhibited the same type of failed-nation status associated with the rise of Islamic extremism in Afghanistan. That nation provided al-Qaida with a safe haven prior to 9/11.

They cite the spate of piracy off the Horn of Africa, including the dramatic rescue of Captain Richard Phillips — who was freed after U.S. Navy SEAL sharpshooters shot and killed three Somali pirates — as evidence that Somalia is a dangerous hotbed of extremism.

Experts disagree over the level of cooperation between the pirates and Somalia’s radical Islamic warlords. A recent Der Spiegel report warned: “The pirates are increasingly working hand-in-hand with Islamists, who are allies of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida. It’s a terrifying alliance: the Pirates supply money and arms, while the Islamists have troops and the power on land.”

Jane’s Intelligence Review reports the pirate-Islamist alliance is “fragile.” In some cases, the pirates pay a percentage of their ransom money to al-Shabab units, in return for protection against land-based attacks on their bases.

Jane’s Intelligence also states that pirates have paid for military-style training at the hands of al-Shabab, conducted in terrorist boot camps.

Conservative foreign-policy expert Frank Gaffney, founder and president of the D.C.-based Center for Security Policy, is among those who perceives a definite link between Somali’s pirates and its violent Islamic extremists.

“Shariah-adherent Somali pirates are a threat to the world’s shipping,” Gaffney tells Newsmax. “Their refugee counterparts being dumped into American communities are a threat to our country and its people. It adds insult to potentially enormous injury that, as the State Department has acknowledged, 80 percent of those refugees are here on the basis of fraudulent family-reunification grounds.”

Gaffney says the State Department “imports pirate/jihadist types into this country.”

One major concern: The pirates’ statements following the freeing of Phillips appeared to be couched in jihadist terms. They identified America as their “No. 1 enemy,” and one pirate leader told The Associated Press: “In the future, America will be the one mourning and crying.”

Don Barnett, a fellow with the Center for Immigration Services, tells Newsmax that it is clear some young refugees of Somali extraction have been recruited by extremists, and could now be working with al-Qaida or al-Shabab.

“I think that really should cause us to look at taking any refugees from Somalia with a much more fine magnifying glass,” Barnett says.

There are about 150,000 Somalis now living in the United States, and law-enforcement officials consider the vast majority of them to be peaceful and law-abiding.

Once resettled, the refugees are free to relocate and live anywhere they like.

A State Department official who asked not to be identified says refugees receive U.S. papers that identify them and their status. They are eligible to apply for a green card after residing in the United States for one year. Five years after receiving green cards, the source says, refugees are eligible to apply for American citizenship.

There are three State Department programs that vet and process refugees for admittance:

# The Priority One (P-1) program provides a means for individuals from Somalia and other nations to immigrate to the United States based on referrals from the United Nations, from a U.S. embassy, or from a non-governmental organization (NGO).

# The Priority Two (P-2) program gives refugee status to all members of a specific, persecuted group. In 1999, for example, the State Department granted blanket refugee status to some 12,000 persecuted Somali-Bantus who had been driven from their native country to Kenya.

# The Priority Three (P-3) program awards refugee status specifically for the purpose of family reunification with other refugees already legally residing in the United States.

When a family or individual qualifies for the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, a Department of Homeland Security agency, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS), conducts an interview with the “refugee applicant” to verify their eligibility and establish they are “otherwise admissible to the United States,” according to a State Department fact sheet about the program.

One of the purposes of USCIA is to ensure “that no one is admitted who is a threat to public safety,” according to its Web site.

The P-3 program was suspended in October, after reports of fraud led the State Department and DHS to conduct DNA testing on 3,000 applicants. Those tests revealed that as many as 80 percent of the family-reunification claims were false and did not involve relatives.

Officials suspended the program until new procedures — such as DNA testing — could be developed to verify claims of a family relationship. The P-1 and P-2 programs continue to be in effect.

Barnett tells Newsmax that the State Department is prepared to resume the troubled P-3 program in June. He also criticizes the P-1 program, due to U.N. refugee programs he describes as “one big long running fraud.” He adds: “The U.N. referral program itself has been subject to bribery and fraud.”

The State Department spokesman tells Newsmax it is unclear if the P-3 program will be reinstated by June, adding, “We do anticipate that the program will restart. A little later this year, we will have this program reinstated.”

Most critics of the program recognize that some resettlement in the United States is inevitable and probably beneficial. The problem, they say, comes when large numbers of immigrants arrive from chaotic nations known to harbor extremists. It is very difficult or impossible to review the backgrounds of people living in such countries, they say, because documentation and even birth certificates may be nonexistent. Advocates for refugees, on the other hand, point out that those are the very situations where resettlement may be most urgent.

Fred Burton, vice president of counterterrorism and corporate security for Stratfor, a global intelligence firm based in Austin, Texas, tells Newsmax: “Across the spectrum, when you attempt to vet the identify of that person, you have nothing to cross reference it to.”

Burton participated in the arrest of 1993 World Trade Center bombing mastermind Ramzi Yousef, and says the lack of intelligence about Somali extremists is quite serious.

“Whenever you have a suspected intelligence operative, whether it be from an espionage side or the terrorism side — and it’s more foreboding from the terrorism side — you really get a sense of dread, not knowing what he is up to,” he says.

Burton says the FBI is sparing no effort to locate the men who have gone missing in Minneapolis, but adds that it may be difficult.

“Knowing how the process works from a domestic terrorism perspective, there is no doubt the FBI is looking for the individuals involved, and probably very, very aggressively,” Burton tells Newsmax. “But then you go back to what has always been the Achilles’ heel in the counterterrorism business, your lack of human intelligence to tell you where that person is, because you lack the human sources to identify him.”

Burton states “I would certainly say the program appears to be a failure at this juncture.”

He says verifying identity is essential before admitting any refugee into the United States, and adds: “Having participated in several of those State Department meetings for many years, I would say, ‘Well, I’m sure we followed whatever process is in place, but what guarantees do we have that this process is not broken?’”

Egypt is “a country that in many ways represents the heart of the Arab world,” Gibbs said.

Obama chose Turkey, a more secular state, as the site of his first presidential speech to a Muslim majority nation, on April 6. He told the Turkish legislature in Ankara that the “United States is not and will never be at war with Islam.”

President Obama last Friday reiterated for the umpteenth time his determination to develop a “new relationship” with the Muslim world. On this occasion, the audience were the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Unfortunately, it increasingly appears that, in so doing, he will be embracing the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood – an organization dedicated to promoting the theo-political-legal program authoritative Islam calls Shariah and that has the self-described mission of “destroying Western civilization from within.”

As part of Mr. Obama’s “Respect Islam” campaign, he will travel to Turkey in early April. While there, he will not only pay tribute to an Islamist government that has systematically wrested every institution from the secular tradition of Kemal Ataturk and put the country squarely on the path to Islamification. He will also participate in something called the “Alliance of Civilizations.”

The Alliance is a United Nations-sponsored affair that reflects – as, increasingly do most things the United Nations is involved in – the views of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC). The OIC is made up of 57 Muslim-majority nations. Thanks to support from Saudi Arabia and its proxies, the Muslim Brotherhood has become a driving force within the Conference and their agendas largely coincide.

For example, in 2005 a communique issued after a summit in Mecca declared: “The Conference underlined the need to collectively endeavor to reflect the noble Islamic values, counter Islamophobia, defamation of Islam and its values and desecration of Islamic holy sites, and to effectively coordinate with states as well as regional and international institutions and organizations to urge them to criminalize this phenomenon as a form of racism.”

Ominously, as part of its bid to “criminalize” Islamophobia, the OIC is seeking “deterrent punishments.” It insists that not only freedom of expression but all human rights be circumscribed by the OIC’s 1990 Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, which concludes with the caveat that, “All the rights and freedoms stipulated in this Declaration are subject to the Islamic Shariah.” Translation: Liberties enshrined in the United Nations’ foundational Universal Declaration of Human Rights are largely rendered null and void.

The demand that no criticism of Islam be permitted is the pre-eminent feature of the Muslim Brotherhood’s efforts in the West. In fact, it is but the leading edge of the Brothers’ bid to suppress public awareness of the threat posed by their program in societies that pride themselves on religious tolerance, thereby facilitating seditious penetration and influence operations by the Shariah-adherent.

A playbook for the latter can be found in a publication issued last fall by the U.S.-Muslim Engagement Project being aggressively promoted to the Obama administration and Congress by a number of its non-Muslim participants. Notably, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright recently effusively presented to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee the Project’s book titled “Changing Course: A New Direction for U.S. Relations with the Muslim World.” Former Minnesota Rep. Vin Weber did the same at Grover Norquist’s weekly meeting of conservative activists last week.

Underwritten largely by George Soros’ and other left-wing foundations, “Changing Course” seems to reflect predominantly the recommendations of groups the government has established are Muslim Brotherhood fronts, such as the Islamic Society of North America and the Muslim Public Affairs Council. Both are represented in the Engagement Project’s “Leadership Group.” Accordingly, its book calls for:

• “Engagement with groups that have clearly demonstrated a commitment to nonviolent participation in politics” (read, the Brotherhood).
• “Not equat[ing] reform with secularism, nor … assum[ing] that reformers who advocate some form of Shariah as the basis for the rule of law will inevitably abuse human rights or adopt anti-American policies.”
• “Not supply[ing] additional ammunition to extremists by linking the term ‘Islam’ or key tenets of the religion of Islam with the actions of extremist or terrorist groups.”
• Launching “an education program comparable in scale” to “the more than $7 billion” invested in the “post-Sputnik U.S. commitment to math and science education” to “education on Islam and Muslims, sustained over a decade or more, focused on teacher training and curriculum in middle and high schools, and colleges.”

Emboldened by the promise of this influence operation and the apparent willingness of the Obama administration to embrace the Muslim Brotherhood’s agenda – in part, if not in its entirety – the organization’s assorted fronts in America are becoming ever more audacious.

In response to a long-overdue decision taken by the FBI last year to terminate “sensitivity training” of its agents by one of the most prominent of these fronts, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), assorted Brotherhood groups and operatives reportedly intend to announce that Muslims will henceforth cease any and all cooperation with U.S. law enforcement until CAIR is rehabilitated.

Such a step would call into question the patriotism of the many Muslims in America who do not embrace the Brotherhood’s Shariah agenda – something that would, presumably, be as offensive to them as it would be troubling to the rest of us. It could also expose those engaged in it to criminal charges of “misprision of felony,” conspiring to withhold information from the authorities concerning terrorist operations and activities in the Muslim community.

The message should go forth: Friends of the Muslim Brotherhood are no friends of America. We follow their guidance at our peril.