The Transportation Security Administration{TSA}has come up with a plan that will definitely eliminate a lot of hassle for travellers when they pass through airport security checkpoints.

WASHINGTON — The government wants to offer airline passengers the chance to avoid extra security checks.

The Transportation Security Administration plans to make a “registered traveler” program available nationwide, agency chief Kip Hawley said Thursday in prepared testimony to Congress. The initial rollout is scheduled for June 20.

The program, which was tested at five airports, allows people to avoid random pat-downs if they pay a fee, clear a voluntary background check and provide some form of biometric identification, like a fingerprint. It’s designed to let people who travel often avoid delays and to free up screeners to focus on other travelers.

“We believe that a nationwide registered traveler program can provide expedited screening for many travelers and enhance aviation security as well,” Hawley told the House Homeland Security subcommittee on economic security.

Hawley said the TSA is considering adding benefits to the program, such as letting registered travelers keep their shoes and their jackets on, or setting up special screening lanes.

Yay!!!!

An item that came up in email correspondence earlier this evening inspired me to whip up a reply that illustrated the workings of the mind of a San Francisco liberal, and my friend Kender suggested that I post it, so here goes:

Hi, thailor! I’m Lionel! Bush lied, an’ he won’t let me marry my Bubba! Save the animals, let people die instead, cause people ruin the environment and animals don’t. Save spotted owls, too, and all the little fishes. Free Mumia! Bush lied, so we have global warming, and ’cause of that, we got Katrina, Bush’s racist hurricane that killed ten thousand black people — oooh, dark meat! — in Noo Orleans. I love the ACLU! And Bush killed two thousand U.S. troops in Iraq, single handedly, including Cindy Sheehan’s son. I know, ’cause she said it an’ she’s friends with that great patriot, Michael Moore. Yeah, Bush lied, so we’re in Iraq instead of keeping our soldiers safe. We need to disarm our soldiers, anyway, and instead of those nasty guns, rearm them with the yearning to reach out to those people in al Qaeda and strive to understand them. And to show our good faith, we should release all those political prisoners from Cuba and restore Saddam to his rightful place, leading his people, and pull all our troops out of everywhere. With the money we save, we can raise welfare payments, or use the money we save to open government run free abortion clinics or maybe buy cars for undocumented aliens to make it easier for the poor, poor things to drive to work. Maybe we can also open a socialist learning center and pay for buses to take our preadolescent children on progressive school outings to mosques, where thay can learn all about our friends, the Muslims and how much better their religion is than Christianity or Judaism, and if Islam takes over the country, we won’t have any more worries about seperation of church and state, because those damn Jews and Christians will be all gone. Yes! Then we’ll live free under Sharia law with no more stupid Republicans around to try to take away our liberty. YES!!!!

Believe it or not, I’ve actually gotten into arguments with local liberals whose entire existences seemed to be based on their burning hatred for George W. Bush, and their blatherings were nearly identical to the above.

I suppose that’s what happens when one restricts ones’ sources of news and information to the Mainstream Media.

This is an alert just in from RightMarch re the coming fight to get Judge Sam Alito confirmed as associate justice, and how we can help Bill Greene and RightMarch counter some of the tsunami of trashy innuendo, targeting this right-thinking nominee, that the left will be spewing from now until the day of the Senate vote.

ALERT: Wow.

President Bush just made one of the most important — and gutsiest — decisions in his term of office. He nominated Judge Samuel Alito to replace Sandra Day O’Connor on the U.S. Supreme Court.

He obviously made the RIGHT choice. Now WE need to stand up and FIGHT for a fair hearing and vote in the Senate:

https://secure.responseenterprises.com/rightmarch/?a=7

How do we know it’s the most important decision? Because Justice O’Connor has consistently been the most liberal “swing” vote on the high court for many years now — and we needed a strong CONSERVATIVE vote to take her place, and bring the court back to its Constitutional foundations.

How do we know he made the RIGHT choice? Because every single liberal Senator and far-left organization IMMEDIATELY began to squeal like stuck pigs:

“If confirmed, Alito could very well fundamentally alter the balance of the court and push it dangerously to the right, placing at risk decades of American progress in safeguarding our fundamental rights and freedoms.”
–Sen. Ted Kennedy
“It’s sad that [Bush] felt he had to pick a nominee likely to divide America.”
–Sen. Charles Schumer

“Has the right wing now forced a weakened President to nominate a divisive justice in the mold of Antonin Scalia?”
–Sen. John Kerry

“President Bush has… made a selection to appease the far right-wing of the Republican Party.”
–Sen. Barak Obama

“Last week after Harriet Miers withdrew her nomination, I asked the President: Who was in charge? Today, the President answered: the radical conservative right is in charge of this Administration.”
–Rep. Nancy Pelosi

“I look forward to… learning why those who want to pack the Court with judicial activists are so much more enthusiastic about him than they were about Harriet Miers.”
–Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid

“Alito is a notoriously right-wing judge on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. He has consistently ruled to strip basic protections from workers, women, minorities and the disabled in favor of unchecked power for corporations and special interests.”
– MoveOn.org

“Alito has compiled an extensive, right-wing judicial record on numerous matters of importance to the protection of the rights and interests of ordinary Americans… Alito’s judicial opinions demonstrate that he is an out of the mainstream opponent of fundamental legal rights and protections for all Americans and must not be confirmed to the Supreme Court.”
– People for the America Way (PFAW)

“Judge Alito’s position on each of these issues has been more hostile to civil liberties than positions taken by Justice O’Connor. His nomination therefore calls into question the court’s delicate balance that Justice O’Connor has helped to shape and preserve.”
– American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)

“On Halloween George W. Bush handed ultra-conservatives a treat with his nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, but he won’t trick women and girls with a nominee who opposes our rights… we are most concerned by Alito’s position on the far right of the judicial spectrum, distinctly outside the mainstream. If Alito is confirmed by the U.S. Senate, many of our fundamental rights will be at great risk.”
– National Organization for Women (NOW)

“Samuel Alito, Jr. of the Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit is an anti-choice jurist… Alito, who has been called ‘a favorite son of the political right,’ would likely vote to eviscerate or eliminate the protections of Roe as a member of the Supreme Court.”
– NARAL

“If confirmed to the pivotal O’Connor seat, Judge Alito would fundamentally change the balance of the Supreme Court, tipping it in a direction that could jeopardize our most cherished rights and freedoms.”
–Alliance for Justice

WOO-HOO! With that kind of talk coming from 100% of the left-wing fringes, Alito MUST be the best Supreme Court nominee to come down the pike since Scalia and Thomas!
In fact… most pundits have called Judge Alito by the nickname “Scalito” for years now!

With this pick, Bush got it RIGHT! THIS IS WHAT WE FOUGHT SO HARD FOR in 2000 and 2004!

But as you can see from all of these quotes from the far left, this is NOT the time for you and me to sit back and relax — NOW is the time to get up and take ACTION to support President Bush’s solid nominee.

TAKE ACTION: According to dozens of media reports, left-wing Senators like Ted Kennedy and Chuck Schumer, along with their radical liberal friends at groups like MoveOn.org and the ACLU, are launching an all-out WAR to block President Bush’s conservative nominee. They’re calling Judge Alito every name in the book, and they’re already talking about trying to FILIBUSTER against his confirmation in the U.S. Senate.

RightMarch.com is FIGHTING BACK against the likes of Kennedy and MoveOn.org — but we need YOUR help.

In these next two crucial weeks, we’re launching a MAJOR MEDIA BLITZ to demand a FAIR hearing and a FAIR vote for Judge Alito. Our first radio ad is scheduled to be broadcast to THOUSANDS of stations across the country, with a potential to reach literally MILLIONS of listeners — and it’s READY TO GO! Click to listen now:

http://www.rightmarch.com/media/AlitoAd1.mp3

We’re also creating print ads to run NATIONWIDE in newspapers and magazines… plus we’re already creating television ads to run ACROSS AMERICA, to counter the HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of dollars the Left is already pouring into their own ad campaigns against Alito.

WE MUST FIGHT BACK — and you KNOW that RightMarch.com NEVER pulls back from a REAL fight, for REAL conservative issues. And right now, NOTHING could be more immportant to fight for than this fight for the Constitutional heart and soul of the U.S. Supreme Court.

WE NEED YOUR HELP NOW! These ad campaigns — plus more plans that are in the works for the nomination hearings week in D.C. — are NOT cheap! But this is the fight we’ve been waiting for — the one we elected George W. Bush and the GOP Senate to engage in — and we CANNOT hide from it now!

Please give your BEST contribution right away, so that these ads can be fully-funded to run across the nation! Our average donation is only around $35 — we appreciate every single contribution, but if you can make up for others who can’t give as much, maybe by contributing $50, $100, $500, $1000 or more, then we CAN win this fight! Please click here to contribute now:

https://secure.responseenterprises.com/rightmarch/?a=7

NOTE: Last week, after Harriet Miers withdrew her name from nomination, we asked our members to call or write President Bush, and ask him to please keep his campaign promise to nominate a strict constructionist — a REAL conservative — to the Supreme Court. HE LISTENED TO YOU — so now it’s time to FIGHT BACK against the forces of the radical left, and MAKE A STAND for Judge Alito’s confirmation! Help now with your best contribution:

https://secure.responseenterprises.com/rightmarch/?a=7

Be sure to forward this Alert to EVERYONE you know who wants to help demand a FAIR hearing and a FAIR vote in the Senate for the President’s conservative pick, Judge Alito. Thank you!

Sincerely,

William Greene, President
RightMarch.com

If anyone can help in any way, no matter how small, please do so. The Democrats will be putting up a hell of a battle over this, one of the left’s worst nightmares, and our Repulican senators will have no real choice but to get up on their hind legs and fight for this Bush nominee(unless they plan to retire after the next election), and they’ll need all the support we can rally for them among our fellow voters — you know, the kind of support that breeds the pouring in of telephone calls, emails, faxes, shouts and letters to senators’ offices from the people who will soon be voting yea or nay on these politicians’ continued employment.

French rower finishes ‘record-breaking’ solo Pacific crossing: team

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - French rower Emmanuel Coindre ended a landmark 129-day solo voyage across the Pacific Ocean between Japan and the United States, setting a new record, according to his team.

Annnnnnd:

His reported feat comes 14 years after fellow Frenchman Gerard D’Aboville became the first person to row across the Pacific, rowing from Choshi, Japan, to Ilwaco in Washington state in 134 days.

It would seem that the French have this market cornered, wouldn’t it?

Could these folks actually be taking part in a secret military experiment on behalf of the French Navy, who may have decided that they needed a second option in their arsenal of combat tactics?

I mean, so far, the only tried and true tactic in the French military strategy manual, which of course includes their navy, has been the Surrender Option, usually the wisest course for implementing the saving of their skins, so perhaps now they’re experimenting with a back-up plan, that of a Retreat Option, in which case these personnel seem to be succeeding in their quest:

They’re discovering doable ways by which the French Navy can escape the necessity of surrender, by bravely beating feet across the sea, away from the looming menace of any violent confrontations.

Go, France!

And keep on going..

Michael Yon writes another of his always eagerly awaited posts in his online magazine, this one titled Paying Respect to Those Who’ve Earned It

I wonder what our founding fathers would’ve said had they known that one day, a certain major American political party’s greatest criteria for placing justices on the highest court in the land would be that the candidates were enthusiastically in favor of mothers being permitted, by law, to murder their babies.

It’s pretty pitiful that one of our two major political parties, I won’t tell you which one except to say that it’s not the Republicans, continue to refer to conservatives as “radicals.”

Radicals.

radical

In politics, someone who demands substantial or extreme changes in the existing system.

That’s funny, considering that we conservatives are the folks who are battling to maintain an America based upon the Constitution, as written, and an America based upon the blueprint drawn up by our founding fathers.

So what’s happened?

The left and their Mainstream Media propagandist allies have an interesting strategy: They ignore reality in favor of politics, pretending in speeches, interviews, newspaper “reports”, columns and newscasts that, despite Republicans winning a significant majority of elections the last few years, from the Executive Branch and both houses of Congress to governorships, that the far-and-away, vast majority of Americans despise all that conservatives stand for and are in total agreement with the Democrats’ “message” — they are not deterred by the bald fact that they don’t seem to have any sort of message — and that whatever the Dems do, whether it’s having one of their judges legislate from the bench to set a precedent that is not in keeping with the letter of the Constitution or simply slipping some Utopian ideal or other through as “what the Constitution meant” in a given case, is ironclad, The Law, a done deal.

When the Republicans attempt to set the record straight, the left then accuses us of being “radicals” by “trying to change the Constitution(boy, this is really Beatles Week for me, isn’t it?)”

So they change something, we try to put it back in its original state and we’re the radicals.

Hmmmmm.

Doze Dems, dey shaw gotta lotta bawls!

Democrat definition of a “radical”: Anyone attempting to prevent America from pursuing a socialist agenda.

The President has nominated Federal Appeals Court Judge Samuel Alito to replace Sandra Day O’Connor as an associate Justice at SCOTUS.

Judge Alito has a staunchly conservative record and one that’s almost sure to blast Senate Democrats into overdrive in an attempt to fight an Alito confirmation.

ALITO BIO

NAME: Samuel A. Alito, Jr.
AGE-BIRTH DATE: 55; April 1, 1950 in Trenton, N.J.
PERSONAL FINANCE: more than $615,000 in assets
EDUCATION: AB, Princeton, 1972; JD, Yale, 1975
EXPERIENCE: Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, 1990-present; U.S. attorney for the district of New Jersey, 1987-1990; deputy assistant to the U.S. attorney general, 1985-1987; assistant to the U.S. solicitor general, 1981-1985
JUDICIAL STYLE: Known among conservatives as a strict constructionist in the mold of Justice Antonin Scalia. Abortion-rights activists point to his dissent in the 1991 case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey — in which he argued to uphold a Pennsylvania law requiring a married woman to inform her husband before getting an abortion — as putting him in the anti-Roe v. Wade camp.
FAMILY: Alito and his wife, Martha, live in West Caldwell, N.J. They have two children, a college-age son, Philip, and a younger daughter, Laura. His late father, Samuel Alito Sr., was the director of New Jersey’s Office of Legislative Services from 1952 to 1984. Alito’s sister, Rosemary, is a top employment lawyer in New Jersey.

Okay, Republican senators, it’s time to get your game faces on and support a serious Bush nominee for a change. That means no more cowardice in the face of the enemy, as you’ve demonstrated during past confirmation hearings for conservative Bush nominees: You will fight to the death over this one, “blood and gore and things in your teeth” if necessary, and get Alito confirmed!

If you play the nose-up-Democrat-butt game as you’ve become so proficient at doing and fail us again, then don’t complain the next time POTUS nominates someone with less of a conservative track record…

In view of the government’s apparent determination not to guard our borders against illegal aliens nor enforce very many statutes regarding their deportation, it seems one Law Enforcement official has found a way to recoup the expenses of picking up Uncle Sam’s slack, and I’m behind him 100%.

Sheriff bills Immigration $71K for ‘illegals’ in jail
HAMILTON — The federal government will soon receive the first of several hefty bills from Butler County Sheriff Richard K. Jones for the housing of suspected illegal aliens in the county jail.

Following through on a threat made last week, Jones on Wednesday mailed a bill totaling $71,610 to the U.S. Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the cost of housing 15 “undocumented” people, some of whom have been in the jail since June.

Last week, Jones, County Commissioner Michael Fox and state Rep. Courtney Combs announced a multi-tiered initiative to eliminate illegal aliens living in the county and throughout the state.

Among the initiatives was the implementation, on Monday, of a new booking process to include the signing of declarations of citizenship by jail inmates.

Those in jail for misdemeanor offenses who falsify their information, or are found to be illegal aliens, will be reported to ICE — the enforcement arm of the Federal Department of Immigration and Naturalization Services — for possible immediate deportation.

Those who are jailed for a felony offense, will first stand trial for their crimes and then face possible deportation.

To force the issue, Jones is billing the federal government $70 a day for every illegal alien housed at the jail — $10 above the average daily cost of housing an inmate.

In sending the first bill to ICE, which represents 1,023 billable days of housing illegal aliens, Jones said he’s hoping other sheriff’s offices throughout the country start following suit.

“We want to put extreme pressure on ICE to do its job with regard to illegal aliens,” Jones said. “This isn’t just a local issue. This is a national problem.”

While Jones acknowledged that ICE is not under obligation to pay the bill, he said his next step will be to load the questionable inmates into buses and deliver them to immigration offices in Cincinnati.

“Why should Butler County taxpayers have to pay for jail costs associated with people we don’t believe should ever have been in this country, let alone this state or county?” Jones said.

“These prisoners appear to be undocumented, in that they have no Social Security numbers,” Jones said. “They are in my jail because they have committed crimes here. It’s time the federal government should at least pay for the criminals they let stay here. If they don’t want to pay for them, then they can deport them.”

A message left with Greg Palmore, of the ICE Regional Office in Detroit, was not returned Wednesday.

Since announcing the local initiative last week, Jones said he has been inundated with e-mails and telephone calls, mostly from people expressing support for the measures.

Jones has also sent letters to sheriffs in Ohio’s 87 other counties urging them to implement similar measures in their jails.

“If ICE is having so much trouble locating illegal aliens, heck, I’ll help them out — I’ll send them 20 a day from our county jail,” Jones said.

Meanwhile, Combs is drafting new state legislation that will make it a state offense for illegal aliens to cross over Ohio’s borders and Fox is working on initiatives to discourage employers from hiring illegal aliens.

Contact Mary Lolli at (513) 820-2192, or e-mail her at mlolli@coxohio.com.

Please bear in mind that I’m a limited government, states’ rights kind of guy, to the max. Certain issues belong to the Fed, others are the property of the private sector.

Border/frontier security issues are the property of the federal government. They have a job to do that they are not doing. The only thing that will fix that will be an onslaught of email from the general public to the human weevils that ultimately decide what makes it into the newspapers and on to TV news programs.

My source for the article posted above is the website produced by Tom Tancredo and Bay Buchanan, from the headquarters of Team America.

These are an issue and an organization we, as Americans, need to support.

According to members of both the F.B.I. and the Homeland Security Department’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, the government’s policy of deporting illegal aliens belonging to MS-13, the gang named Mara Salvatrucha has been working in the gang’s favor.

…a deportation policy aimed in part at breaking up a Los Angeles street gang has backfired and helped spread it across Central America and back into other parts of the United States. Newly organized cells in El Salvador have returned to establish strongholds in metropolitan Washington, D.C., and other U.S. cities. Prisons in El Salvador have become nerve centers, authorities say, where deported leaders from Los Angeles communicate with gang cliques across the United States.

A gang that once numbered a few thousand and was involved in street violence and turf battles has morphed into an international network with as many as 50,000 members, the most hard-core engaging in extortion, immigrant smuggling and racketeering. In the last year, the federal government has brought racketeering cases against MS-13 members in Long Island, N.Y., and southern Maryland.

Very interesting story, one that indicates the need for a change of policy where dealing with MS-13 members is concerned.

It is certainly bad enough, thanks to our porous borders, that we face a veritable infestation of illegal aliens in the United States –Mustang at Social Sense has a great post on our lax border security situation and the illegal alien problem that continues in a long, highly informed comment thread, well worth checking out — but to be infiltrated also by gangs of violent criminals who make our own domestic gangs seem like weak amateurs is an inexcusable breach of homeland security.