This is absurd, to say the least, and it’s not the first time we’ve heard about this kind of boneheadedness on the part of the Justice Department…

The Justice Department is co-sponsoring a convention held by the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) — an unindicted co-conspirator in an ongoing federal terrorist funding case — a move that is raising concerns among the Justice’s rank and file.

I can just imagine all the jihadis and jihad supporters out there grinning gleefully and wringing their hands at the stupidity of their infidel enemy. I imagine quite a few of them are somewhat confused — I mean, why doesn’t our government simply submit to Islam already, instead of dragging it out?

I can certainly see where they’re coming from, I mean,

According to an e-mail from Susana Lorenzo-Giguere, acting deputy chief of the Voting Rights Division, the sponsorship will involve sending government lawyers to man a booth for the Labor Day weekend event in Illinois.

“This is an important outreach opportunity, and a chance to reach a community that is at once very much discriminated against, and very wary of the national government and its willingness to protect them,” Mrs. Lorenzo-Giguere said in an e-mail obtained by The Washington Times.

“It would be a great step forward to break through those barriers. And Chicago is lovely this time of year,” Mrs. Lorenzo-Giguere said.

And Chicago is lovely this time of year.

Indeed, an expensive outing in the Windy City (I still haven’t figured out why they call it that, since I’ve been here we haven’t gone very far beyond gentle breezes) is a fine way to spend the taxpayers’ money, while stroking terrorism sponsoring, murderous, America hating, fanatical Muslim “activists” at the same time.

The Justice Department declined to say how much the sponsorship will cost.

“This is just staggering, it’s outrageous,” the lawyer said. “Lawyers from the Civil Rights Division traveling to Chicago on the federal dime. This will cost thousands of dollars.”

A second lawyer responded to Mrs. Lorenzo-Giguere’s e-mail questioning the participation and said it “seems like an odd time for one part of DOJ to lend credence and visible support to ISNA at the same time DOJ prosecutors will be called on to defend their decision to name ISNA as a conspirator.”

There’s a word for that, um, it will come to me…

The convention features book signings, musical entertainment and seminars on family, community service and political activism.

And political activism. Hmmm, I thought they held most Islamic “political activism” classes in mosques and desert compounds in places like Syria, Libya and Iran, as well as Wahhabi mosques all over the western world.

Now they have an official convention, and it’s sponsored by The Justice Department! Can things get more bizarre than that?

But the first lawyer also pointed to a morning session on “the threat and reality of U.S.-sponsored torture” as contrary to the department’s mission. The Justice Department was responsible for signing off on the legality and constitutionality of interrogation techniques.

“The extensive news coverage by the U.S. and international media sources makes it all too clear that the grim abuses in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and the sending of detainees to secret prisons around the world that are known to torture during interrogations, are not isolated incidents, but rather constitute policy of the U.S. government,” the schedule of events said.

“This session will describe the nature of U.S.-sponsored torture, the effects of torture on its victims, the efforts of the U.S. religious community, and what you can do to help end U.S.-sponsored torture,” the schedule said.

That must be what they mean by seminars on “family” and “community service”.

And as usual, we’re paying for it with our tax dollars.

Link H/T CNS News

…”If you’ve got something good, stick with it.” I can’t for the life of me remember whether it was a paper towel commercial or Allison the Plumber in a Comet ad or whatever.

This expression flitted through my mind for some reason when I saw this article.

The U.S. military will move its secure command center from deep inside Cheyenne Mountain even as Russia revives military maneuvers that led America to burrow under the rock almost 50 years ago.

Construction on a new command center 12 miles away at Peterson Air Force Base is well under way despite security concerns that have driven some lawmakers to consider halting funding for the transition.

The move will shift more than 100 people responsible for detecting attacks on North America from a facility that sits under 2,000 feet of granite to a basement in an office building on the base that officials concede offers lower protection.

Having our ultimate military command and control center inside Cheyenne Mountain rather than in a more exposed location is very sensible, but who says bureaucrats, military or civilian, are sensible people? Why, one wonders, can’t they leave what would amount to an enemy’s number one target in its present secure location and just work around it?

Air Force Gen. Gene Renuart, the U.S. commander responsible for homeland defense and protecting North American air space, says the switch is worth the risk of leaving a facility built to withstand the indirect effects of a multi-megaton nuclear blast.

It will combine operations now divided between Cheyenne and Peterson, helping the commander to receive information and respond to crises or attacks more quickly, Renuart said. It will not, however, save money as the military promised, congressional investigators have shown.
Renuart said the plan was the best way to make the most of resources currently split between the two Colorado locations.

“We can’t accommodate all of that integrated command and control capability in the mountain,” he said. “And so it makes sense to have that put in place where we can get the best unity of all of that effort, and that really is down here at Peterson.”

He said using communications technologies to link the two centers was no substitute for having everyone in one place.

Now me, I’d rather they dealt with the communications technology and kept the folks who might one day be running the defense of our country against an enemy country as far out of harm’s way as possible, lest our defense structure be decapitated at a highly inconvenient time.

We hear all this yelling from the portside about certain government agencies retaining a “Cold War mentality” when the Cold War is long over. Tell that to the Russian government, who would appear to be stepping back in time to the point of borderline saber rattling in an Americanly direction, or to the Chinese, who are using profits from their relatively recent emergence as a superstar in the global marketplace to build up their military, buy up megabucks’ worth of U.S. Treasuries (an abrupt selloff of which could have immediate and negative consequences for the international buying power of the U.S. dollar) and stockpile Mideast and Southwest Asia oil like water before a drought.

Like I just said…

But those arguments, offered repeatedly by defense officials for more than a year, come against a backdrop of tension between Washington and Moscow and Russia’s decision to resume long-range bomber missions common during the Cold War.

Russia, angered by U.S. plans to place missile defense assets in Eastern Europe, said the flights were resumed on a permanent basis due to security threats. In recent weeks, those flights have come near Alaska and Guam, a U.S. territory.

Those actions, coupled with China’s increasing military capabilities and concerns about the intentions of North Korea and Iran, have led some officials at Cheyenne to oppose the move out of the mountain.

Prior to 19 April, 1985, U.S. federal buildings were built purely on the basis’ of ascetics and bureaucratic convenience. No real attention was payed to any kind of blast resistance. A lesson was learned the hard way, and now structural security is incorporated in the plans for new federal buildings.

That lesson was extremely expensive in terms of lives needlessly lost — the transfer girder system, which essentially placed structural support on top of the first floor (to lend “an air of spaciousness” to the lobby by eliminating any support columns) rather than on the foundation, was directly responsible for the collapse of all the floors above. Assisting the tragedy, well, to a 5,000 F.P.S. explosion, the granite exterior on the ground floor was indistinguishable from flimsy glass.

But as I said, a lesson was learned and we have moved on — learning the same kind of lesson in the heat of, say, a nuclear attack by a hostile nation and having our military command suddenly vaporize might render any prospective lesson completely moot.

Ah, here are some anonymous folks on the inside weighing in:

Speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of harm to their careers, they say the new command center at Peterson cannot be protected from nuclear, chemical or biological attack and its systems will not be sufficiently hardened against an electromagnetic pulse from a nuclear blast overhead.

This all sounds very Democrat, if you ask me. Okay, Cold War’s over, folks. No need for any more defensive stuff, let’s just expose the ol’ jugular…

Article link Hat Tip: James Taranto

…such as this item.

Mexican shelters, usually the last stop for northbound migrants, are filling with southbound deportees. Fewer migrants are crossing in the wind-swept deserts along an increasingly fortified border. Far to the north, fields are empty at harvest time as workplace raids become more common.

Now, don’t take this the wrong way, but the remark about fields being empty at harvest time, obviously meaning due to lack of illegal Mexican workers, engenders in me a certain degree of sympathy for the farmers involved, as I understand that this will lead to financial shortfalls if they cannot harvest their crops, however: These same farmers have been knowingly breaking federal laws by hiring criminal aliens, year after year, to harvest for them.

They have been doing so for the sole purpose of getting their labor dirt cheap. In short, they have contributed to felonies in an ongoing, multi-decade violation of the law, to remittance that has collectively taken billions of untaxed payroll dollars out of the U.S. economy and, by the very nature of their transgression, have been instrumental in promoting millions more aliens to sneak into the country for the purpose of finding illegal jobs. Making the U.S. such a hospitable place has also led to ten digit abuse of our Social Security system, the displacement of millions of jobs from legal U.S. citizens to those who are, in effect, trespassing on U.S. soil, the closings of emergency rooms due to the suffocating influx of uninsured and poor illegals seeking every kind of treatment, an increase in drug trafficking by foreign gangs and an increase in violent crime.

So it’s comeuppance time, the cheque has arrived at the table, chickens have come home to roost, there is that long-dreaded knock at the door…

It’s high time these folks found a legal way to get their crops harvested, just as it is for all others who have been (and are still) employing illegals to cut expenses. Maybe the pain they’re feeling or will soon be feeling will serve as a lesson: “Don’t break the law, let alone become complacent about doing so.”

It’s not “okay” to violate federal laws just because it’s financially expedient or “cost effective”, as an accountant would say, just as it is no valid defense that, “the only reason my business survived was because I ignored federal laws”.

They should be overjoyed if they only have to get rid of the criminal alien help and seek legal laborers before they are caught, rather than pay heavy fines and do prison time.

This is very definitely good news…

Mexicans are increasingly giving up on the American dream and staying home, and the federal crackdown on undocumented workers announced Friday should discourage even potential migrants from taking the risks as the United States purges itself of its illegal population.

U.S. border agents detained 55,545 illegal migrants jumping over border walls, walking through the desert and swimming across the Rio Grande River between October and June. That’s down 38 percent for the entire border compared to the same period a year before.

U.S. and Mexican officials say increased border security, including 6,000 National Guard troops, remote surveillance technology and drone planes, have thwarted smugglers who had succeeded for years at beating the system.

Mexicans are increasingly giving up on the American dream and staying home…

There’s some of the usual Mainstream Media spin for you, packaging all Mexicans into one convenient group; They could more accurately have written: “Non-law abiding Mexicans are increasingly giving up on sneaking into America in search of welfare and/or illegal employment.”

Despite loud, well publicized (the MSM are, after all, a predominantly leftist, anti-America bunch) efforts on illegals’ behalf by liberals and activists on the ground, the Democrats in Congress, a few of thier weak Republican colleagues and the President, the Border Patrol and the National Guard have been doing their job, with dedication and success, along the border quite well.

While the majority party in Congress welcomes illegal immigration with open arms, majority output from the American People has been making many illegals and potential illegals feel anything but welcome.

Migrants also say they feel Americans are increasingly hostile toward immigrants.

“It’s the discrimination,” said 28-year-old George Guevara, who was deported to Tijuana last month after living in the U.S. for 18 years. “It’s making people step back. It’s just too much of a risk. It’s better to be out here.”

“Hostile” and “Discrimination”.

I’m pretty hostile towards illegal immigration and I definitely discriminate against illegal aliens. In the vernacular of the left, this would make me a racist, which I am not — I welcome anyone who comes to America with the intention of obeying our laws, becoming an American and assimilating into our society, but I do not welcome any non-citizen who sneaks into the country and preys on our economy.

Deportations also are up for illegal immigrants who have lived in the States for years. Some are caught for minor infractions like a burned-out headlight. Others are rounded up in workplace raids that the Bush administration has vowed to intensify.

The new measures announced Friday will force employers to fire anyone who cannot prove their Social Security numbers are legitimate.

While I am suspicious of the President’s abrupt turnaround on immigration enforcement, others whose opinions I respect and whose projections are usually right on the money have opined that having lost in his amnesty bid for illegals, this is likely a support effort for Republicans running in the 2008 election cycle.

My suspicions might be softened somewhat if the President were to issue complete pardons to Border Patrol Agents Ramos and Compean, but this lack of support for two brave federal officers who were completely ruined, then railroaded into prison by an assinine, law enforcement hostile federal attorney tells a story of its own. Especially in light of the fact that the key witness was himself a foreign criminal who at the time of the incident in question was in the midst of smuggling a large quantity of an illegal substance into the United States — and he was given immunity to testify against the agents that stopped him! This same Mexican criminal used a “border pass” bestowed upon him courtesy of the same federal attorney to smuggle in some more marijuana, even as the two agents were being prosecuted.

And then, of course,

Many employers join President Bush in blaming Congress for stalling an accord that would allow more people to work legally.

“Pretty shortly people are going to be knocking on people’s doors saying `Man we’re running out of workers,’” Bush said.

This is why I continue to believe that his sudden “get tough” policy may only be a hiatus while a back-burnered amnesty agenda is reworked. The Boss is still plugging his justification for the same agenda he’s followed all along.

So I will continue to wait patiently for the actual deeds that will or will not follow the words. After all, the positive results cited in the linked article have come to fruition over a long period of time, not just since the Administration announced last week that they are going to crack down on that which they’ve hitherto fervently supported.

More Cheek From Mexico

Mexican President Felipe Calderon also lashed out Thursday. “The U.S. Congress, which today turns its back on reality, knows full well that the American economy could not move forward without the labor of Mexicans,” he said.

Can you believe that guy? Here’s yet another in the long line of corrupt Mexican leaders who preside over one eternal failed economy, complete with millions of families living in squalor, and he’s lecturing us on our economy?

HaHaHaHaHaHa…cough!…Hah…whew!…excuse me…heh…

It is my personal observation that Calderone must sound a lot like calzone because both are full of cheese.

Of course, I can see why El Presidente is somewhat concerned –

Fewer Mexicans are sending home cash remittances — Mexico’s biggest source of foreign income after oil — leaving many Mexican relatives with no other resources, the Inter-American Development Bank reported Wednesday.

Basically, the only real basis for Felipe Calderone’s complaint is that his country’s massive “welfare” from America is beginning to dry up. He could care less about the American people — traditionally, leaders of Mexico barely, if at all, even care about their own people — he could care less about the U.S. economy except where it leaks over into Mexico.

He also forgets that he is an elected official of Mexico, not the United States, and would therefore be more proactive by pursuing ways by which his country can develop its economy on its own. I mean, Mexico is supposed to be an independent nation, isn’t it?

…this looks too much like a hundred eighty degree turn to me, abouuuuut face!

The Bush administration plans to step up immigration enforcement by raising fines on employers who hire undocumented workers, overhauling temporary worker programs and speeding up deployment of border agents, according to a summary of the plans.

More precisely,

An outline of the announcement, obtained by The Associated Press from a congressional aide, said the administration plans to expand the list of international gangs whose members are automatically denied admission to the U.S., reduce processing times for immigrant background checks and install by the end of the year an exit system so the departure of foreigners from the country can be recorded at airports and seaports.

In addition, employers will face possible criminal sanctions if they don’t fire employees unable to clear up problems with their Social Security numbers.

Also, the Homeland Security Department will ask states to voluntarily share their driver’s license photos and records with the agency for use in an employment verification system. The sharing is meant to help employers detect fraudulent licenses, according to the summary.

I’m sorry, but I can’t see a President who has so aggressively pursued amnesty and so failed to support the Border Patrol adopting this abrupt tooth & nail immigration policy unless he’s trying a new approach, some sort of stealth implementation policy. While I remain a supporter of the President on Iraq and the rest of the War On Terror, I take umbrage with his performance on immigration enforcement issues and the policies he wishes to engender granting amnesty to potentially millions of people whose very presence on our soil constitutes federal crimes.

Therefore, this is particularly ludicrous:

Chertoff alluded to the new enforcement tactics in a speech in Boston on Wednesday, calling to it “tool sharpening.”

“We shouldn’t have a patchwork of laws. We should be doing a comprehensive federal solution, but we haven’t got that thing done,” Chertoff said. “What I can tell you is we will certainly use every enforcement tool that we have, and every resource that we have available, to tackle the problem.

Considering that a Republican President might have a stealth agenda is a fairly new concept for me, that is usually a Democrat phenomenon, and it applies not only to their POTUSes, but to pretty much all of their politicians — dubiously in their defense, they have little choice; telling the American People their true intentions would lose them more votes than they’d like to contemplate, for unbeknownst to them, most Americans are both patriotic and smart, certainly more intelligent than today’s mainstream media and Democrat politicians apparently believe us to be.

However, since learning about George W. Bush’s leadership role in the very stealthy trilateral North American Union (NAU) agenda, promoted for obvious reasons as the Security & Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP), I have paid a lot of attention to his unrealistic and anti-Republican stance on illegal immigration.

In the event of the United States, Canada and Mexico becoming a three-country version of the EU, we would inevitably have to sacrifice nearly every aspect of our sovereignty to a higher Congress that includes decision making equality for politicians from two other countries, one with a predominantly socialist government, the other a grossly corrupt one that presides over millions of citizens who feel the need to flee their country in order to feed themselves and their families, or simply struggle unendingly in environments of squalor and disease.

The U.S. Constitution would become moot, as would the Supreme Court.

But back on track, the defeat of the latest immigration bill was a major setback for the Bush/ NAU amnesty aspirations (to say nothing of those of the Democrat persuation), and (Curses, foiled again!) — why spend billions of dollars securing our borders when they’ll be nothing more than turnstiles by 2010?

Let’s take another step here…it’s inevitable that as continental unions come together, for better or, more likely, for worse, they will fall under auspices united under a U.N. umbrella (the United States shouldn’t even belong to an organization represented most by dictatorships and socialist governments, in fact dominated by the latter) — it doesn’t speak very healthily for a world whose majority of nations seek, in a most avid manner, to bring down the one country among them that most supports their economies and is most willing to risk every kind of military assets, including the lives of our young warriors, to protect their rights.

The true decision-makers at the U.N. are like members of the Khaki Mafia were in Vietnam.

Uncle Sam (We, The People are supposed to tell him what to do) tends to surrender all too often to anti-America rhetoric at the U.N., wherein nations that support Islamic terrorist organizations, far-leftist regimes and brutal despots are considered credible global policy debate participants.

The MSM forever neglects to explain the non-military power we command throughout the globe, and our membership in the U.N. diminishes whatever the media misses. Today, using a shamefully distorted series of “reporting”, omission fraught accounts and outright fabrications on Iraq, they are suffering significant decreases in circulation, yet they perservere in carrying on the propaganda debate that glorifies the abandonment of the American way of life, a school of thought that’s been becoming increasingly unpopular among Americans.

Do I digress, or what?

Yeah, yeah, I know…

…but I’m not operating on the Conspiracy Theory plane, I’m looking at political “action and reaction”.

One piece of information that has sent up a flag in my “domain” is that while the Administration is suddenly going “great guns” on enforcing immigration laws, the President is going to meet, in Ottawa, with his counterparts from Mexico and Canada later this month. “What a coincidence!”

It appears that now terrorists have discovered a sure-fire way of training for missions on-line in order to successfully practice their Islam.

From NEWS.com.au:

THE bomb hit the ABC’s headquarters, destroying everything except one digital transmission tower. The force of the blast left Aunty’s site a cratered mess.
Just weeks before, a group of terrorists flew a helicopter into the Nissan building, creating an inferno that left two dead. Then a group of armed militants forced their way into an American Apparel clothing store and shot several customers before planting a bomb outside a Reebok store.
This terror campaign, which has been waged during the past six months, has left a trail of dead and injured, and caused hundreds of thousands of dollars’ damage. The terrorists belong to a militant group bent on overthrowing the government. But they will never be arrested or charged for their crimes because they have committed them away from the reach of the world’s law enforcement agencies, in the virtual world known as Second Life.

Sounds like just another evening on-line for the average advanced adolescent virtual reality game enthusiast, right? Unfortunately, this isn’t the case — this is a summary of terrorists using an on-line game that is purportedly so representative of real life that it makes a perfect training ground not only for the mounting of terror campaigns, but also practice in the manipulation of public perception and other factors of infiltrating a society under false and malevolent pretenses.

Terrorist organisations al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiah traditionally sent potential jihadists to train in military camps in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Southeast Asia. But due to increased surveillance and intelligence-gathering, they are swapping some military training to online camps to evade detection and avoid prosecution.

Rohan Gunaratna, author of Inside al-Qaeda, says it is a new phenomena that, until now, has not been openly discussed outside the intelligence community.

But he says security agencies are extremely concerned about what home-grown terrorists are up to in cyberspace. He believes the dismantling and disruption of military training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan after September 11 forced terrorists to turn to the virtual world.

“They are rehearsing their operations in Second Life because they don’t have the opportunity to rehearse in the real world,” Gunaratna says. “And unless governments improve their technical capabilities on a par with the terrorists’ access to globalisation tools like the internet and Second Life, they will not be able to monitor what is happening in the terrorist world.”

And they tell me how great the advance of technology is for us. Young people today will often gawk at you like you’re nuts when you tell them how well people got by back in the mid 1960s, when there was no Internet, only a few TV programs were in color, people relaxing at home played games on boards, ponderous telephone directories and yellow pages saw use in every household… And no text messaging, videocam bearing, e-mail accessing, razor-thin, shirt pocket-sized digital wireless phones enabling instant global communication? No way, dude!

Those were the days when corporate security departments didn’t yet have to sweat out the legal and social ramifications of allowing/not allowing employees access to the company database with their own palm devices, the days before hackers threatened the security of both corporations’ proprietary information and John Q. Citizen’s personal finances, before spammers and before…

…Islam realized that said advance of technology is great for terrorism, as well.

What is distressing here, as regards the above linked and quoted article and what it infers, which is quite accurate, is that those charged with our national security are not committing enough resources to preventing acts of terror against not only the U.S., but western countries as a whole.

If every scheme the enemy uses for financing, acquiring weapons, inserting personnel into target countries, training for, prepping and carrying out terrorist missions has already been in effect for some time before our intelligence community stumbles upon it and then relays it into the quagmire of bureaucrats, bean counters, PC politicos and lawyers (to determine how doing anything effective about it will play at the ACLU and CAIR), we’re positively screwed. Self-seeking politicians, PC burdened intelligence, security and law enforcement whips, liberal politicians, lawyers and judges, bureaucrats and bean counters are as much our enemies as…well, the enemy.

The fact that the intelligence community often takes its time about sharing valuable information with the enforcement folks isn’t very reassuring, either. Granted, there are occasions upon which they have to play their proverbial cards close to their chests because actions taken could expose and endanger assets in the field or methods of keeping track of terrorist activities (there-by usurping one role of the New York Times), but this cyber-situation hardly seems such a phenomenon.

This causes me to question the calibre of security decision-makers our tax money is paying for.

It hardly seems unrealistic that they would pay a staff of highly creative, larceny-minded, egomaniacal, mischievous hackers to do nothing but anticipate the enemy on all matters Internet, and determine ways of taking instant action of a close surveillance, disruptive or more decisive covert nature, and in the former two cases worry about the liberal outcry later — the longer we allow these “peaceful” followers of Mohammed the Pedophile to train for “missions”, the more likely we are to experience resultant applied Islam in its consistant form of death and destruction.

I definitely recommend reading the entire linked article.

So the other day a whole bunch of Senators grew brains – (at least temporary ones) and finally got the picture – voting for the amnesty based immigration bill would very definitely have mandated the typing of their resumes before the end of autumn, 2008. A lot of credit goes to junior senators who thankfully opted to buck their more senior counterparts and do the right thing for their country, thus proving my theory that imposing term limits on members of Congress would constitute a much needed reform. So-called “junior” senators apparently still possess the principles that drove them to serve to begin with, whereas most of the “senior” ones have become part of the machine.

At any rate, they shot down the bill. We conservatives are both pleased and relieved. I had been really sure that amnesty would pass if for no other reason than that too many Republican Senators would be sold on the proactive additions to the bill, figuring they could use them to placate their anti-amnesty constituencies. After all, a politician’s only real career asset is the gift of gab. He or she can be as dumb as a post, but as long as his/her skills as a con man (or con woman) remain intact, he or she can continue to parasite off the taxpayer for decades.

But I digress (ahem).

Let’s see what happens next – the amnesty that centralized the bill was like a shark, while all the positive ad-on agendas like securing the border and enforcing work eligibility laws were like pilot fish clinging to the shark.

Unfortunately, these particular Naucrates ductor didn’t enjoy the option afforded other pilot fish of simply dropping off a dead shark’s teeth and going elsewhere, they shared the fate of the shark. Bummer.

Now, watch the amnesty mongers on the Hill interpret this to mean that all immigration issues are up for individual assessment or reassessment. Bush signed off on the border fence, but that was before the Democrats became the Congressional majority. Those critters could promise us the moon, then not fund the acquisition when the time comes, somehow blaming their failure to deliver on the Republicans, the liberal mainstream media making it believable to the folks on Maple Street. Since they didn’t promise the fence, starving the project of funding would be at most a picayune bit of intentional neglect.

Given the above, the entire illegal immigration issue can be brought forward, without definitive resolution, right through the 2008 election season, giving the Democrats something to “champion”, with their own patented brand of misleading spin, as a co-side dish to man made global warming “climate change”, alongside the hefty Iraq entrée.

I perceive this as a political misstep for the Democrats, as their immigration agendas are offensive to the majority of Americans. But they would tear flesh from bone to stifle the viewpoint of right thinking Americans and flood the field with their liberal propaganda.

On the other hand, the more they obfuscate and promote delays, the larger the criminal alien problem can grow. The M-19 gangs can expand their memberships and bloody influence, emergency rooms can continue to close, billions of dollars in untaxed wages can be wired out of the country and out of our economy, American tradesmen such as carpenters, masons, roofers, plumbers, painters and landscapers, as well as general laborers, custodial workers, furniture movers and others can go hungry along with their families while unscrupulous contractors replace them with illegal, dirt wage, benefit free illegals.

In short, our enthusiasm regarding the defeat of the amnesty bill should be tempered by concern as to how both Bush and the Democrat majority, neither of whom has exhibited any real interest in quelling the flow of criminal aliens into the U.S. (actually, quite the opposite), will now attempt to exploit whatever they can in its aftermath in order to perpetuate a continued increase in the problem as they drag it out in hopes of eventually seeing their amnesty agenda succeed via the pressure of continuous attrition.

As I’ve said herein a few times before, the roll of protector (a job that includes or consists solely of security responsibilities) is more akin to a sacred duty than simply a paycheck generator.

Others are placing, whether they know or even know of their protectors or not, their lives, property and general well-being in the hands those who have agreed to safeguard these precious commodities. By taking any security job, high end to low, one is in effect vowing to assume a great trust.

Unfortunately, too many security functions are relegated to people who possess neither the mindset nor the single-minded dedication required to effectively protect others.

One of my pet peeves, as has undoubtedly become pretty obvious, is the security, or lack thereof, that we can expect to find at various and sundry airports that demonstrates the low priority placed upon our lives by bean counters and outright stupid individuals at the upper management levels of airlines and airports and, arguably, the TSA and those who hold its purse strings. (At this point, the image of an English teacher of yore appears in my mind’s eye, saying something or other about run-on sentences).

So, yes, here is yet another among the many disconcerting stories of security in air travel.

After an investigation uncovered what appeared to be major lapses in security, a prominent U.S. lawmaker is calling for transatlantic flights from the main airport in Britain’s second-largest city to be suspended.

In a six-month undercover investigation, Britain’s ITV News videotaped security staff at the Birmingham International Airport apparently sleeping on the job, not bothering to examine luggage being x-rayed, and leaving planes unguarded.

Lovely. What say you, Osama?

Among the incidents recorded was a conversation between two ICTS UK supervisors, cursing Continental Airlines and expressing the wish that one of its planes would blow up.

“You know what? F— Continental,” one said. “I’m f—ing sick of Continental.”

In another recorded conversation, two baggage checkers teased each other about not watching their screens as baggage was being x-rayed and laughing about how their brains were “miles away” from the task at hand.

Okay, sure. I understand that the interviewers, personnel screeners and other folks involved in the process of hiring these jamokes have busy jobs, and probably don’t have much in the way of hands-on security embedded in their career histories, but that’s not — or should not — be responsible for placing the lives of an unsuspecting public at risk.

Positions whose accents are on security should be filled entirely via processing by security personnel, not by human resources folks whose preponderant concerns involve staffing the production and marketing sectors of company affairs. This may involve spending more money, which holds more sway with many firms than the concept of people dying. Some idiotically and irresponsibly prefer to gamble that “nothing will happen”.

After viewing the footage, Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat who chairs the House Committee on Homeland Security, said the U.S.-bound flights should be suspended until security is improved.

Ah, rare good sense from a Democrat in Congress! Make it happen, Bennie.

Chris Yates, a British aviation security expert, told Cybercast News Service on Thursday that the problem stems from a”culture of denial.”

The staff appeared to be poorly supervised and nobody in charge wanted to hear about any problems, he said.

“The whistleblower in the program, Colin Cross, said that he flagged issues up to his superiors and to the airport itself but nothing was done,” he noted.

Yates pointed out that ICTS subsidiaries are contracted to other American airlines in Europe, and said he worried that similar conduct might be taking place at other airports on the continent.

“If it’s happening at one, it’s happening at others,” he said.

Exactly.

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I am happy to announce that I was wrong when I predicted that the amnesty supported by the President, the Democrats and a few worthless Republicans was likely a done deal. Fortunately, the bill kinda sorta fell apart in the heat of a rather fierce battle.

The jubilation that I have since received in emails and read of in a number of other places, however, should be tempered: It was such a spirited ruckus, including a Republican filibuster and politicians of both parties crossing the aisle and some proposals that threw everyone for a loop that the folks at the Tower of Babel could sooner have produced a coherent result.

Harry Reid finally jerked the bill, stating time concerns, so it is not yet any kind of a resolved argument.

The immigration “grand bargain” imploded in the Senate last night under a Republican-led filibuster, with the bill under attack from both sides and collapsing of its own weight.

In two votes yesterday Republicans blocked Democratic leaders’ bid to end to the debate and hold a final vote on the bill — each time joined by more than 10 Democrats.

At the end of the day, it was certainly the hammering voters all over the country gave our senators and their staffs regarding the will of the people that spawned those results.

To add to the positive side, RINO John McCain, a Kennedy Kohort in the attempted sellout of America, went away mad. I’ll bet he was muttering “drat, and double drat!”

Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican and a 2008 presidential candidate who had invested a lot of his political capital in the issue, refused to talk to reporters as he left the Senate floor.

“I don’t have anything to say. I apologize, but I don’t have anything to say,” he said as he ducked inside the senators-only elevator. Mr. McCain was one of the seven Republicans who sided with Democrats to break the filibuster.

This is far from over, count on it.

But Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican and another who voted to break the filibuster, said he will try to force the bill back onto the schedule.

“We could see the finish line,” he said. “At the end of the day, there’s a small group of people, probably on both sides, that want to make sure we don’t succeed. And we’ll find a way around that.”

Mr. Reid left open the possibility of returning to the bill again this year, but Democrats said that will depend on Mr. Bush.

“When the president calls Harry Reid and says I can get some more votes for you, we’ll come back to it. But until that time we can’t,” he said. “They said he made some phone calls, but he could only deliver six or seven votes.”

Passing an amnesty bill is of vital strategic importance to the Democrats: Doing so could literally blast the Republicans out of the ball park. The severe damage it would also inflict on our economy and our national work force are of no concern to the Democrats, not when compared to their party’s political aspirations. So much for patriotism.

Outside winning the War on Terror, the same amnesty is Bush’s first priority, and the President can’t campaign for reelection, as he’s had his two terms.

Given that his own political base is opposed to amnesty for criminal aliens, this says quite a bit,
that he has motives that are strong enough that he’s willing to tell his own party to go piss up a rope.

I’ll bet that when the bill was yanked (not defeated, remember), he was on the telephone with one of his senior people at the Committee On Foreign Relations, discussing strategies for garnering more support for the next go-round on the issue. Amnesty soon would make the transition, three or so years in the future, to the North American Union infinitely smoother.

Harry Reid, Ted Kennedy and the rest of that crowd will no doubt be browbeating or offering pork bribes to the Democrat senators that oppose amnesty, setting the stage, along with Bush, for enough votes to kill a filibuster and win a vote.

The amnesty bill will be bock!

I think the term reverse revolution pretty much defines a situation in which the United States Government mutinies against We, The People for whom, according to the Constitution, the government works.

My case in point is the ongoing immigration kerfuffle.

To simplify what politicians tell us is a complex issue, it’s really quite simple; There are upwards of 12 million illegal aliens currently residing in the United States, most of them from Mexico. One reason they are here is that the government failed to do their job, over a long period of years, of securing our borders and enforcing immigration laws concerning those criminal aliens already here in any way that can be called anything but lackluster. However, that’s moot, what’s done is done and we are now paying the price in terms of legal U.S. citizens being displaced in employment markets by the under the table coolie wage crowd, by our tax money funding social services provided these felony trespassers, by copious criminal activities on the part of same, by quality of life degradation that devalues property in neighborhoods across America and by illegal laborers sending large portions of their untaxed incomes to their families back home, thereby taking hundreds of millions of dollars out of the U.S. economy rather than recirculating the money to keep the economy strong.

Most Americans want our southern border secured, the continuous influx of illegals halted and those already in the country deported and compelled to apply to enter, work in and achieve citizenship in the U.S. through legal means.

Most of our elected government officials, however, are pushing a different solution: Amnesty. Many label it under other names and provide transparently false justifications for doing so. This includes the bulk of the Democrat majority in Congress, a truly sickening number of their Republican colleagues and even the President.

Despite the majority of Americans giving a strong “thumbs down” to any version of amnesty, the government is intent upon going through with it. They are, in effect, and again, this includes President Bush, telling We, The People to go to hell.

Mutiny? Reverse revolution? We, The People no longer control the government, they have in effect established themselves, on a bipartisan basis, as rulers, rather than representatives of, the citizenry.

A column from 20 May by Mark Steyn pretty well describes, with that columnist/author’s famous wit, the whole enchilada of government intent.

In more recent days, President Bush himself has resorted to shameful rhetoric aimed at his detractors, including many who have been staunch supporters of both his political campaigns and most of his other policies.

“If you want to kill the bill, if you don’t want to do what’s right for America, you can pick one little aspect out of it, you can use it to frighten people.”

Right.

Washington Times Editor-In-Chief Wesley Prudin weighs in.

Peggy Noonan has written an OpEd piece, rather strongly worded, condemning George Bush for what she considers his sellout of his conservative base and the Republican Party on the issue, which can be read in a link from this excellent post by Old Soldier.

In my personal opinion, in this battle of the Reverse Revolution, the government, by sheer force of Congressional votes and Presidential support, is going to defeat We, The People, no matter the volume of telephone calls, emails and letters we flood their offices with.

In the Republican/conservative vs Democrat/liberal debate on illegal immigration, there will never be a bipartisan consensus. The issue could be hammered out by honest, sincere thinkers on both sides and never come anywhere near any kind of mutual agreement.
The right believes that immigration should occur according to law, that all aliens entering the United States should be properly documented and should obtain the proper permits from the government in order to work in the U.S. They should be issued Social Security numbers and should both be adequately compensated for their work and pay taxes.
The left believes, for some reason, that anyone who sneaks into the country illegally has automatically earned the right not only to stay, but to avail himself of every tax financed social service in existence. It’s amazing that such supposedly learned individuals as our Democrat members of Congress (and lately, in the pork department, the Republicans as well) have forgotten that the Treasury belongs to all Americans, not just to our politicians to spend at will.
The Democrats are all for issuing drivers’ licenses to people whose existences aren’t even documented with the federal government, for taking care of their housing, medical, family and food expenses and doing so on the taxpayers’ dime. They defend these lawbreakers’ “right” to destroy the quality of life in American neighborhoods by renting one-family houses and moving in three or four families plus a few cousins, a dozen cars and then letting the properties decay while making noise 24/7. They could care less about the street crime, store robberies and gang activity that commence once these neighborhoods are overrun or about the decline in the value of area properties that force fleeing long term residents to sell their homes at prices far below market value.
The liberal mainstream media avoids discussion of the above tragic byproducts of illegal immigration, preferring instead to focus on the occasional sob story of one family being separated from a child during deportation proceedings or to perpetuate the myth that these trespassers do the work Americans won’t do. By this, they must include construction, house painting and other jobs Americans are being forced out of to the detriment of themselves, their families and every taxpaying citizen who has to pick up the slack for the lost tax revenues.
Democrats create “sanctuary cities”, where local authorities are prohibited from reporting illegals whom they encounter professionally to the federal government.
Meanwhile, these same Democrats do whatever needs doing to ensure that illegals don’t descend on their neighborhoods or otherwise have any effect on their lives.
The creation of slums has long been a strategy of the Democrats, who use their squalid, embattled, gang riddled creations as breeding grounds for Democrat voters. Falsely blame the Republicans for these folks’ poverty and make knowingly unfulfillable promises. Get the votes, and then forget all about those constituents until it’s time to campaign to them again. This more than explains the push, from the liberal front, to get criminal aliens into the polls to cast illegal votes.
Meanwhile, the hordes of illegals the policies of the left enable to enter the country have included, and continue to include the odd member of that satanic cult known as Islam, here to plot and execute terrorist operations against the American people. The only consolation there is that President Bush, whom the Democrats continuously describe as dumb, has put together a highly competent organization within his administration that repeatedly prevents such Muslim-made-mayhem from succeeding, but even in that regard any security professional will agree that the terrorists have a distinct advantage here, as does any offense when confronting a purely defensive target – as long as they keep trying, the odds are in their favor that eventually some of their “colleagues” will penetrate our homeland security venues and murder large numbers of innocent people.
The Democrats’ championing of “rights” to “undocumented” immigration will be, in many ways, responsible for the consummation of these Islamofascists’ plans, including, eventually, the smuggling in and detonation of nuclear weapons in one or more U.S. cities.
While numerous officials and other “experts” communicate their belief that such nuclear attacks will target New York and Washington D.C., one can only hope they actually realize that terrorists don’t strategize via the same priorities that legitimate armies do – while desirable, it is not vital to them to attack government centers, they are in business to demoralize the civil population. Exploding a nuke in L.A., Chicago or even Casper, Wyoming would more than suffice.
But I digress (who, me?).
Mark Steyn’s latest and as usual great column, which covers ground on Islamofascism in the Balkans and greater Europe (a figure of speech) to the potential price of the U.S. immigration fiasco, touches on both the subject of my above digression and the ease which the Democrats, as well as a few spineless, therefore Democrat-enabling Republicans, bestow upon criminal aliens to remain in this country.

The three Duka brothers were (if you’ll forgive the expression) illegal immigrants. They’re not meant to be here. Yet they graduated from a New Jersey high school and they operated two roofing companies and a pizzeria. Think of how often you have to produce your driver’s license or Social Security number. But, five years after 9/11, this is still one of the easiest countries in the world in which to establish a functioning but fraudulent identity.

Consider, for example, the post-9/11 ritual of airline security. You have to produce government-issued picture ID to the TSA official. Does that make you feel safer? On that Tuesday morning in September, four of the killers got on board by using picture ID they’d acquired through the “undocumented worker” network in Falls Church, Va. Half the jurisdictions in the United States issue picture ID to people who shouldn’t even be in the country, and they issue it as a matter of policy. The Fort Dix boys were pulled over for 19 traffic violations, but because they were in “sanctuary cities,” any cop who suspected they were illegals was unable to report them to immigration authorities. Again, as a matter of policy.

On one hand, America creates a vast federal security bureaucracy to prevent another 9/11. On the other hand, American politicians and bureaucrats create a parallel system of education and welfare and health care entitlements, maintaining and expanding a vast network of fraudulent identity that corrupts the integrity of almost all state databases. And though it played a part in the killing of 3,000 Americans, leaders of both parties insist nothing can be done to stop it. All we can do is give the Duka brothers “a fast track to citizenship.”

Democrats: What an un-star spangled web they weave….