•   •   •  

67% Say Illegal Immigrants Are Major Strain on U.S. Budget   [3/03/10]
Rasmussen pollsters have checked out the public's attitude toward mass immigration and the results are familiar: citizens want our borders secured and our laws enforced because immigration anarchy is a big drain on the taxpayers.

As the country wrestles with a future of historic-level deficits, 67% of U.S. voters say that illegal immigrants are a significant strain on the U.S. budget.
    A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 23% disagree and do not believe illegal immigration is a strain on the budget.
    Two-out-of-three (66%) voters say the availability of government money and services draw illegal immigrants to the United States. Nineteen percent (19%) think otherwise and do not believe government money and services are a magnet for illegal immigration. Another 15% are not sure.
    These findings help to explain why 68% say gaining control of the border is more important than legalizing the status of undocumented workers already living in the United States. Twenty-six percent (26%) think legalizing illegal immigrants is more important.
    The majority support for controlling the borders has been consistent through several years of surveying.
    Budget documents provided by the Obama administration show that in Fiscal Year 2009 50% of all federal spending went to national defense, Social Security and Medicare. A recent Rasmussen Reports survey shows that only 35% of voters believe that the majority of federal spending goes to just defense, Social Security and Medicare.
    Just 20% say Congress is at least somewhat likely over the next year to pass legislation to gain control of the border and reduce illegal immigration, with a mere four percent (4%) who think its very likely. Seventy-one percent (71%) see congressional action this year to control the border as unlikely, with 47% who say its not very likely and 24% who say its not at all likely.
    On the other hand, 45% believe its at least somewhat likely that Congress in the next year will pass legislation to create a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants. This finding includes 10% who say its very likely.
    Forty-seven percent (47%) think its unlikely that Congress will approve legislation in the next year that makes it possible for those who are here illegally to become U.S. citizens. Of that number, nine percent (9%) say its not at all likely.
    This belief that Congress is more likely not to do what the majority of voters favor illustrates why unhappiness with Congress has reached the highest level ever recorded by Rasmussen Reports. Seventy-one percent (71%) of voters now say Congress is doing a poor job, and 63% say it would be better for the country if most congressional incumbents were defeated this November.
    Fifty-six percent (56%) say the policies and practices of the federal government encourage people to enter the United States illegally. Twenty-seven percent (27%) disagree, and 17% are not sure.
    Seventy-five percent (75%) of voters are angry at the governments current policies, up nine points since September.
    A majority of voters across virtually all demographic categories agree that illegal immigrants are a strain on the budget and that they are drawn to America by the availability of government money and services. But there are partisan differences.
    Eighty-three percent (83%) of Republicans and 73% of voters not affiliated with either major party say illegal immigrants are a budget strain. Just 48% of Democrats agree, and nearly as many (40%) disagree.

•   •   •  

17 states to fight dismal college completion rates   [3/03/10]
Many don't finish college because they aren't qualified, because the universities want a diverse campus so ethnic kids are admitted when they shouldn't be. Of course, there are other problems as well, such as the skyrocketing cost and difficulty for poor young people to survive in this economic climate.

About one in every two Americans who start college never finish, said Jones, who founded Complete College America, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, last year. [...]
    The campaign's goal: Make sure 60 percent of adults between the ages of 25 and 35 hold an associate or bachelor's degree by 2020, up from the 38 percent that now claim this status. [...]
    The states have also committed to addressing the gap in earning degrees between low-income and minority students and their classmates.
    Nationwide, about half of white students who enter college complete a degree. That compares with about one-third of African American and Hispanic students, said Jeannie Oakes, director of educational equity and scholarship at the Ford Foundation, which is backing the campaign launched this week. [...]
    California State University, the nation's largest four-year system with 23 campuses and more than 400,000 students, announced in January an ambitious initiative to boost the percentage of students who graduate in six years from 46 percent to 54 percent by 2016.

•   •   •  

UK Muslim Leader: Islam Not a Religion of Peace   [3/03/10]
Muslims residing in Britain have become so arrogant about owning the place that they don't bother to lie about their intentions any more. For example, this interview with the head of Islam4UK (now outlawed, supposedly) Anjem Choudary, in which he says, Why no, Islam isn't a religion of peace at all.

CBN News traveled to London to talk with Anjem Choudary, a leading Muslim radical who says Islamic teachings are what shaped his pro-jihad message.
    Although both George W. Bush and Barack Obama have declared that Islam is a religion of peace, Choudary begs to differ.
    "You can't say that Islam is a religion of peace," Choudary told CBN News. "Because Islam does not mean peace. Islam means submission. So the Muslim is one who submits. There is a place for violence in Islam. There is a place for jihad in Islam."
    Choudary is the leader of Islam4UK, a group recently banned in Britain under the country's counter-terrorism laws. He wants Islamic Sharia law to rule the United Kingdom and is working to make that dream a reality.
    While Islamic radicals in the United States usually prefer to speak in more moderate tones while in public, masking their true agenda, Choudary has no such inhibitions.
    He has praised the 9/11 hijackers and has called for the execution of Pope Benedict. He also stirred controversy recently when video emerged of him converting a 10-year-old British boy to Islam.

How could any sane country continue to allow the immigration of such a determined, historic enemy into its territory? They mean to enslave us yet we remain largely asleep.

•   •   •  

Illegal immigrant sentenced for drunk driving case that killed grandmother   [3/02/10]
A blotto drunk illegal alien who killed the beloved grandmother of three was sentenced to the maximum penalty in Colorado. Barbara Barben (pictured here with her husband Paul) was crossing the street when previously arrested Alberto Alvarado-Barojas ran her down.
    The perp pleaded guilty hoping for leniency, but the judge wasn't having any, noting that the man had the highest blood alcohol level she'd seen in her 12 years on the bench. He complained that his children in Mexico needed him to provide for them, as if that would excuse his crime and convince the judge to release him.

DENVER - Courtroom spectators in attendance for unrelated cases were brought to tears as Barbara Barben's family described the devastating loss caused by the driver who was so drunk he was nearly comatose behind the wheel.
    Alberto Alvarado-Barojas, who is in the United States illegally, was sentenced to the maximum of 12 years in prison after pleading guilty to vehicular homicide. He is expected to be deported to Mexico upon his release.
    Alvarado-Barojas had a blood alcohol level of at least .393, about five times the legal limit, when he ran a red light on Hampden Avenue and hit Barben on the morning of September 14, 2009.
    Paul A. Barben, Barbara Barben's widower, said there would be no forgiveness.
    "My grandchildren have had their grandmother taken from them. My sons had their mother taken from them," Barben said. "And I lost my best friend."
    "The vision that I go through daily is knowing that my wife's last moments on Earth were spent in anguish and in the indignity of being ground into the gutter by Mr. Barojas," Barben said.
    Christopher Barben, the victim's son, called Alvarado-Barojas "an uninvited guest in my country" who "seems to have a flagrant disregard for the law."
    Another one of Barbara Barben's sons told the judge that Alvarado-Barojas is a "thief."
    "He stole the soul of my family," Paul Barben said. "He also stole a plethora of memories not yet made, memories that will never be made."

•   •   •  

College credit for 9th-grade ethnic studies   [3/01/10]
The city of San Francisco took a step in expanding the idea of ethnic studies as academically valuable, rather than the classroom version of basket weaving.
    Actually, this smells like a scam to convince ethnic kiddies that they are college material even when they are not. Tell a ninth-grader that they already have earned college credits in a touchy-feely class -- yeah, that'll hook 'em into finishing high school. Right.

San Francisco high school students, just months out of middle school, can start earning San Francisco State college credit this fall through a ninth-grade ethnic studies course. [...]
    At a school board meeting last week, the head of the university's Ethnic Studies program also promised that students would earn up to six college course credits for the high school freshman course - a rare opportunity for a 14-year-old.
    The courses will become part of the California State University's Step to College program, which has offered college credit for high school students across the state since 1985. Most of those courses require students to be juniors or seniors. [...]
    "I don't ever learn about the accomplishments and contributions of the people who look like me and the members of my family," said Balboa High School freshman Monet Cathrina-Rescat Wilson during public comment at Tuesday's school board meeting. "How can I know who I can be if I don't know who I am? Ethnic studies provides me with the foundation to learn who I am."

The bigger picture is that more ethnic students are entering college than ever before, but their graduation rate remains poor. The ugly secret is that university suits get to brag about their diverse campus, based only on admissions, not graduation. Therefore, it's BS when unqualified kids are dumped into a situation above their abilities and don't finish their education as a result. More practically inclined young people would be better off learning a usable skill of a blue-collar nature.
    See my blog item from last summer: "Mentors" Attempt to Drag Unqualified Hispanic Students to College.
    A recent Newsweek article explored that subject: Minority Report.

The problem is pronounced at public universities. In 2007 (the last year for which Education Trust, a nonprofit advocacy group, has comparative statistics) the University of Wisconsin - Madison -- one of the top five or so "public Ivies" - graduated 81 percent of its white students within six years, but only 56 percent of its blacks. At less-selective state schools, the numbers get worse. During the same time frame, the University of Northern Iowa graduated 67 percent of its white students, but only 39 percent of its blacks. Community colleges have low graduation rates generally -- but rock-bottom rates for minorities. A recent review of California community colleges found that while a third of the Asian students picked up their degrees, only 15 percent of African-Americans did so as well.

•   •   •  

Drug gangs taking over US public lands   [3/01/10]
Usually you don't see this type of news story until the fall during harvest season. It sounds like the problem of park destruction by Mexican criminal marijuana growers is becoming worse.
    The trend is no surprise, since big environmental groups (like the corrupt Sierra Club) have been silent on this issue. The Sierra Club touted itself as an "outreach partner" when Ken Burns' PBS doc about the national parks was shown, but doesn't lift a finger to help when Sequoia and Yosemite have been despoiled by Mexican drug gangs for years.
    The faux greenies apparently consider it politically dangerous to speak ill of criminal Mexicans, which might displease their hispanic Congressional allies of convenience on environmental matters.

AP photo caption: In this photo taken Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2010, Fresno County Sheriff's Lt. Rick Ko walks through a camp site at an abandoned marijuana growing site in the Sequioa National Forest near Fresno, Calif. With billions of dollars in drug profits on the line, Mexican traffickers are expanding their foothold in the domestic marijuana market taking over vast swaths of public lands.

SEQUOIA NATIONAL FOREST, Calif. (AP) -- Not far from Yosemite's waterfalls and in the middle of California's redwood forests, Mexican drug gangs are quietly commandeering U.S. public land to grow millions of marijuana plants and using smuggled immigrants to cultivate them.
    Pot has been grown on public lands for decades, but Mexican traffickers have taken it to a whole new level: using armed guards and trip wires to safeguard sprawling plots that in some cases contain tens of thousands of plants offering a potential yield of more than 30 tons of pot a year.
    "Just like the Mexicans took over the methamphetamine trade, they've gone to mega, monster gardens," said Brent Wood, a supervisor for the California Department of Justice's Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement. He said Mexican traffickers have "supersized" the marijuana trade.
    Interviews conducted by The Associated Press with law enforcement officials across the country showed that Mexican gangs are largely responsible for a spike in large-scale marijuana farms over the last several years.
    Local, state and federal agents found about a million more pot plants each year between 2004 and 2008, and authorities say an estimated 75 percent to 90 percent of the new marijuana farms can be linked to Mexican gangs.
    In 2008 alone, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration, police across the country confiscated or destroyed 7.6 million plants from about 20,000 outdoor plots.

I'd really hate to see the parks become no-go zones in the Juarez style.

•   •   •  

Drug war: Laser, investors' visas allow many to live, work in El Paso   [2/28/10]
Despite propaganda to the contrary, you don't have to look far to see that Mexes are still piling into this country by any means they can devise. (For background see "They Keep Coming" Update.)
    Today's lesson in Mexo-scamology comes from Juarez residents "relocating" to safer El Paso with clever gimmicks. Of course the American border city won't keep its low number of murders for long with so many moocher Mexes filling up the place. There goes the neighborhood!
    Note the informative statistics showing the degree of social breakdown that can result when violent crime runs amok.

They are not your typical undocumented immigrants.
    Thousands of middle-class Mexican citizens, under the guise of being commuters or visitors, may be manipulating the U.S. immigration system to escape the violence of Juarez.
    More than 4,600 murders occurred in Juarez in 2008 and 2009, and the fallout is apparent in the city's decay. More than 110,000 houses have been abandoned, 75,000 people have lost their jobs and more than 10,000 businesses have closed.
    Now a white-collar segment of Juarez's population may be streaming to El Paso by misusing tourist visas, then renting houses or apartments or even opening businesses.
    Living in the United States may be illegal for these immigrants who flee the epicenter of Mexico's drug war by moving right across the border to one of the safest cities in the country.
    El Paso had 12 murders last year compared to 2,643 in Juarez. New York City, with eight times the population of Juarez, had 466 homicides in 2009.

America's stock is up in Mexico, even in the tanking economy. A Pew poll from last fall found that "Close to six-in-ten (57%) say that people who move from Mexico enjoy a better life in the U.S., up from 51% in 2007."
    So declining America looks good from the crime-hole of the hemisphere. Isn't that heartwarming?

•   •   •  

Save the European Culture and Values! EUROPE, Wake Up and Defend Yourself!   [2/27/10]
One of the nicer advertisements for saving Western Civilization that I've seen...

•   •   •  

Rep. Myrick, Muslims defend, debate in testy town hall meeting   [2/27/10]
Rep Sue Myrick has been a fearless leader on immigration enforcement, such as authoring the Scott Gardner Act, which would have required that every illegal alien convicted of drunk driving would be deported after serving his sentence. She also has actively defended 287(g), the provision of the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act which set up procedures for local police to assist the feds, in particular to check the status of persons already arrested.
    As the co-founder of the Congressional Anti-Terrorism Caucus, Rep Myrick has fought against jihadist infiltration of the government. She also wrote the forward to the new book Muslim Mafia (read here), so she is much hated by America's Islamic enemies.
    Nevertheless, she recently entered the lion's den of a very unfriendly audience to stand up for western values and American national security, as well as make her views clear.

In a testy two-hour town hall meeting, U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick argued Thursday night that the threat of homegrown Islamist terrorism is real and defended herself against charges by local Muslims that she was spreading fear about their religion.
    Using charts, maps, handouts and even a video slamming a Charlotte TV station, the Charlotte Republican told the crowd of about 175 people, most of them Muslims, that she has never condemned Islam or linked moderate Muslims with terrorism.
    "I'm talking about the sympathizers and supporters of a radical agenda," she said. "It's not that all Muslims are bad or all Muslims are trying to do this."

See also this report at WCNC...

•   •   •  

British Tea Party Movement to launch on Saturday   [2/26/10]
In 2008 I wrote an article in disappointment about the lack of citizen resistance in the UK to the Islamic invasion: Britain: Where Are the Minutemen... Er, Home Guard?.
    Now our cultural and linguistic cousins are taking a page from the American playbook of citizens taking back the country and have organized the first Tea Party, according to Conservative MP Daniel Hannan:

The inaugural British Tea Party will take place on Saturday in my home town of Brighton, and Ill be speaking. Do try to come: here are the details.
    Labour has raised more than a trillion pounds in additional taxation since 1997. Yet, unbelievably, Gordon Brown has still managed to run up a deficit of 12.6 per cent of GDP (Greeces is 12.7 per cent). A far lower level of taxation brought Americans out in spontaneous protest last year.

Resistance has already been building to unresponsive government. In January, a patriotic Facebook page was used to organize local anger against a Muslim march by the radical Islam4UK bunch in Wootton Bassett. The English Defense League has stood up for the rights of English people against violent Muslims.
    Of course, the British tea party is based around taxes and spending, but there's no way that voter dissatisfaction can be brought up without immigration quickly rising to the top.

•   •   •  

Saving Freedom from Obama's Immigration Plan   [2/26/10]
The big cheese American Conservative Union (CPAC) recently hosted its annual conference, attended by enthusiastic thousands. Its main immigration panel was titled Saving Freedom from Obama's Immigration Plan, even though the Obie amnesty is not much different from the Bush model.
    The CPAC panel was "diverse" in that speakers included both friends of borders (Dino Teppara, Congress candidate Ed Lynch, Robert Rector) and supporters of comprehensive amnesty (John Fund, Linda Chavez). Rector at 21 minutes is the most worthwhile.

Click the link below for the video. The embedded version annoyingly starts by itself.

Immigration panel video

•   •   •  

New Initiative to Attract Latinos to Conservative Movement Mirrors Liberals Policy, Critic Charges   [2/26/10]
Grover Norquist is a board member of the American Conservative Union (CPAC) and has long been a heavy hitter among conservative suits of the Beltway. Unfortunately he does not have the best interests of the country at heart, as evidenced by his support for amnesty.
    The recent CPAC convention definitely treated immigration restriction as the poor stepchild, with only one panel on the main stage, and it included spawn of Satan Linda Chavez, who preached the gospel of comprehensive amnesty. Robert Rector of Heritage gave an excellent talk during that panel, but was rudely dismissed by moderator John Fund.

The American Principles Project (APP) has launched an initiative designed to bring Latinos into the conservative movement by "supporting policies that are welcoming to immigrants," but critics said one of the policies - the pathway to citizenship plan - is identical to the open border stance of President Barack Obama and other liberals. [...]
    Conservative activist Grover Norquist, who serves as an advisor for the initiative, told CNSNews.com that there is precedent for conservatives wanting to change what he called bad laws.
    "Back in the 1970s, we had a 55-mile-an-hour speed limit on national highways," Norquist said. "I don't know of conservatives of the time insisting that we enforce the law."
    "The conservative position was: Change the law," Norquist said. "We need to have our immigration laws fit what our country's needs are."

The country's needs are to reduce immigration significantly or end it entirely for reasons of the economy, social cohesion and national security.
    How treacherous is Grover Norquist? His extreme anti-borders position is only the beginning. In 2003, Frank Gaffney published an article that was a warning that Norquist had a different agenda as he operated at the highest levels (like bringing his Islamist pals to the Bush White House): A Troubling Influence. In the article, Gaffney carefully explained how a conservative big wheel had quietly begun to promote the cause of radical Islam.
    Now, several years later, Norquist is still selling out America using his influential position, according to: CPAC Shills for Islamic Terrorists, an interview with Pamela Geller.

Grover Norquist has continued his activities on behalf of the jihad: in 2008 journalist Paul Sperry revealed Norquist's sponsorship of Muslim candidates with shadowy ties to terrorists, and wrote that Norquist had a "wicked project to dress Islamists up as patriotic Republicans so they can infiltrate the government." Norquist sponsored Kamal Nawash's unsuccessful bid to become Republican party leader in Virginia; Nawash was Abdurahman Alamoudi's attorney. Norquist also aided previous failed political runs by Nawash - including Nawash's 2003 Virginia state senate bid, to which Saffuri gave money.

It's disturbing how CPAC, a major conservative organization, can be so compromised yet thousands enthusiastically flock to its yearly confab. CPAC's list of beliefs bravely states "...we will be free only so long as the national sovereignty of the United States is secure," but its institutional attitudes toward hostile Islam and immigration show a different mindset.
    Norquist has been known to be dirty if not downright treasonous for years, yet he gets no grief from his conservative pals. What's up with that?

•   •   •  

The mounting cost of Spain's new illegal underclass   [2/25/10]
Even Spain's socialist government is cutting back on immigration because of the harm to Spanish workers. Why can't Washington be as sensible as Spanish socialists?

The Socialist government held an amnesty for 600,000 illegal immigrants in 2005, granting them visas if they could show proof of employment. And like left-of-center politicians elsewhere in Europe, Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero welcomed immigration as a way to both to make Spain more tolerant and diverse, and to ensure an aging population would be able to continue to afford its social security system.
    The government once spoke of how immigration could increase Spain's population by 50 percent to 66 million.
    Now unemployment is around 18 percent -- and 10 percentage points higher among foreign workers -- it is changing its tune.
    It has drastically cut back on working visas, tightened rules on family reunification and offered money to migrants wanting to leave Spain. In a stark departure from its previous talk of diversity, the government put up billboards featuring dark-skinned people and the question "Thinking of going home?"

•   •   •  

62 percent of illegal immigrants in U.S. from Mexico   [2/25/10]
The Mexican invasion continues apace...

Mexicans represented 62 percent of the nation's undocumented immigrant population in 2009, according to a new report by the Department of Homeland Security.
    The report shows that the percentage of undocumented immigrants who are Mexican also grew from 55 percent in 2000 to 62 percent in 2009.
    The report, which was released in January, has been getting a lot of attention because it shows that the nation's undocumented immigrant population declined sharply in 2008 during the recession, following years of rapid growth. In January 2008, the report estimates the nation's undocumented population was 11.6 million. A year later, it has fallen to 10.8 million, according to the report.
    But the report also includes lots of other interesting data.
    Of the 10.8 million undocumented immigrants estimated in the U.S. in January 2009, 6.6 million were from Mexico.

•   •   •  

Britain: "Somali mother of four has no right to live here... but we have to give her a council house"   [2/25/10]
Too bad British elites gave away their national sovereignty to the EU; now the citizens are stuck with freeloaders from around the world, whose numbers will only increase as word gets out that the UK is an even easier touch than before.

Standing proudly with her arm draped over her 36in television, this is the Somali woman who must be given a council house even though she has no right to live in Britain.
    Nimco Hassan Ibrahim - who lives with her four children on benefit handouts - was granted the right to the home by EU judges yesterday because she was once married to a Danish citizen who briefly worked in this country.
    The landmark judgment means the 34-year-old migrant and her children will soon be packing up their impressive collection of furniture and electrical equipment when they are given a new house. [...]
    Housing chief Barry Macleod-Cullinane said: 'We are very concerned-with this outcome, as it appears to establish a major new legal precedent over benefit claims.
    'It could well prove to be a floodgates judgment in that people who have not yet contributed to this country or who do not have the means to sustain themselves can now seek immediate help from state welfare services.

Illegal immigrants given full access to UK benefits (24Feb10)

•   •   •  

Illegal immigrant population in Georgia doubles, confirms changing migration trends   [2/25/10]
Oh, nothing has been done in decades to stem the tsunami of illegal aliens into the country -- what a surprise.

When the Olympic Games came to Atlanta in 1996, a building boom transformed the landscape of downtown and brought with it an influx of Latino immigrants - both legal and illegal.
    In the years since, the number of illegal immigrants living in Georgia has skyrocketed, more than doubling to 480,000 from January 2000 to January 2009, according to a new federal report. That gave Georgia the greatest percentage increase among the 10 states with the biggest illegal immigrant populations during those years. Many in metro Atlanta say the explanation for the boom is simple.
    "It was because of jobs," said Kathy Brannon, who worked for the suburban city of Chamblee for nearly 30 years. "That's why people have come to this country since it started, for opportunity."

That's right -- illegals come to steal American jobs, and citizen workers have no one in government protecting their rights and abiity to make a living.

•   •   •  

How illegal immigration hurts black America   [2/25/10]
Black Americans, just like the rest of the workforce, would benefit enormously if Washington would enact an immigration moratorium. But Obama prefers to spend billions of dollars we don't have to "save or create" imaginary jobs rather than suspend categories of legal immigrants, a policy that would at least lessen the number of people competing for limited employment slots. In addition, requiring universal workplace E-verify would liberate the seven to eight million jobs held by illegal aliens, making them available for citizens.

Today, with national unemployment hovering around 10 percent and black male unemployment at a staggering 17.6 percent, it seems even less likely that immigrants are filling only those jobs that Americans won't deign to do. Just ask Delonta Spriggs, a 24-year-old black man profiled in a November Washington Post piece on joblessness, who pleaded: "Give me a chance to show that I can work. Just give me a chance."
    Spriggs has a difficult road ahead. In this recessed United States, competition for all work is dog-eat-dog. But that holds especially true for low-skilled jobs, jobs for which high school dropouts (like Spriggs) and reformed criminals (also like Spriggs) must now vie against nearly 12 million illegal immigrants, 80 percent of whom are from Latin America.
    What's more, it seems that, in many cases, the immigrants are winning. From 2007 to 2008, though Latino immigrants reported significant job losses, black unemployment, the worst in the nation, remained 3.5 points higher.
    "I don't believe there are any jobs that Americans won't take, and that includes agricultural jobs," says Carol Swain, professor of law at Vanderbilt University and author of Debating Immigration. "[Illegal immigration] hurts low-skilled, low-wage workers of all races, but blacks are harmed the most because they're disproportionately low-skilled."

Interestingly, a new Zogby poll (An Examination of Minority Voters Views on Immigration) shows that black Americans have the highest percentage of persons who believe that immigration is too high: 68 percent, versus 57 percent of Asians and 56 percent of hispanics. Among voters taken as a whole, 67 percent think there is too much immigration.

•   •   •  

Judge tosses sanctuary suit in S.F. killings   [2/24/10]
There's been an unfortunate smackdown in the search for help from the court system to make the government enforce our immigration laws.

The family of a father and two sons who were shot dead on a San Francisco street in 2008 can't hold the city responsible for failing to turn their alleged killer over to immigration authorities after earlier arrests, a judge has ruled.
    The city isn't legally to blame for any crimes Edwin Ramos, a suspected illegal immigrant from El Salvador, committed after his release for the offenses he committed as a juvenile, Judge Charlotte Woolard of San Francisco Superior Court said Monday.
    Cities "generally are not liable for failing to protect individuals against crime," Woolard said.
    She dismissed a damage suit by the widow and daughter of Tony Bologna, 48, who was shot to death in his car near the family's home in the Excelsior district in June 2008. His sons Michael Bologna, 20, and Matthew Bologna, 16, were also killed. [...]
    The Bologna family's lawyer, Matthew Davis, said they would appeal Woolard's ruling. Davis said he agrees that a city usually can't be held responsible for failing to prevent a crime, but he contended that the shield of immunity shouldn't protect San Francisco because by failing to turn over Ramos to immigration authorities, it was "flat-out violating the law."

•   •   •  

Rep Tom McClintock Speech on Hawaiian Separatist Bill: HR 2314   [2/24/10]
The first-term California Republican nails the idiotic race-based dismantling of equality under law in Hawaii. As Rep McClintock stresses, the legislation would establish a terrible precedent that could tear the country apart.

It pains me to rise in opposition to the valedictory measure of the gentleman from Hawaii, but I believe this bill strikes at the very foundation of a nation dedicated to equality under law. It establishes a different set of laws, a different set of rights and a different government for one group of Americans based solely on their race.
    Two American families, living next door to one another, would be accorded two different sets of rights enforced by two separate sovereignties all based entirely by accident of birth. Ever since Brown v. Board of Education buried the Separate but equal doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson, the Supreme Court has consistently ruled that such an arrangement is fundamentally incompatible with the American Constitution. [...]
    This bill establishes a precedent that will allow any distinct group within our nation to demand its own separate organic rights and government. Were this bill to pass, there would be no grounds to deny any other racial group with historic grievances their own separatist government and exclusive rights.
    Having enacted this law, on what basis do we deny every other demand to tear our country apart? This is a precedent that does tremendous damage to a multi-racial nation founded upon the principles of e pluribus Unum and equal justice under the law.

•   •   •  

Man convicted in 3 deaths at Colo. ice cream shop   [2/24/10]
It took jurors only four hours to determine the guilt of the much-arrested Guatemalan man who killed three-year-old Marten Kudlis (shown) and two adult women. The jury apparently rejected the crude defense that blamed one of the victims and tried to suggest that the illegal alien driver might actually have been a passenger, even though his DNA was found on the driver side of the speeding truck.

An illegal immigrant was convicted Tuesday in a crash that killed three people, including a 3-year-old boy inside an ice cream shop.
    Jurors found Francis Hernandez, 25, of Guatemala guilty of vehicular homicide and other charges.
    Prosecutors said Hernandez was driving an SUV at twice the speed limit when it crashed into a pickup truck, which in turn crashed into an ice cream store in the east Denver suburb of Aurora in September 2008.
    The case sparked calls for immigration reform after Hernandez avoided deportation despite a dozen prior arrests in Colorado. Authorities said he used 12 aliases and two dates of birth to slip under the radar of immigration officials.

Any normal person would think that an illegal alien with at least a dozen arrests in five years was big trouble, and should have been deported long ago.
    Another article focused on the family of little Marten: Francis Hernandez guilty on all charges

As the judge read the first nine guilty verdicts against Francis Hernandez, Marat Kudlis sat quietly in the courtroom, just a few feet behind the man who killed his 3-year-old son, Marten.
    But when Judge John Wheeler read guilty verdict No. 10  this one for child abuse resulting in death, the most-serious charge against Hernandez  the imposing Russian immigrant let loose some of the emotion he'd bottled up since Marten's death in September 2008.
    "Yes, yes, yes," Marat said with muted jubilation as prosecutors quieted him so the judge could read the final eight verdicts.
    In the end, the jury of six men and six women found Hernandez guilty of every charge, a conviction that almost guarantees Hernandez, 25, a virtual life sentence.

The Kudlis family is also pursuing a lawsuit against government agencies that failed to follow the law and protect public safety. They may not have heard the bad news that the Bologna lawsuit in San Francisco was rejected today: Judge tosses sanctuary suit in S.F. killings.

•   •   •  

From Kabul to an M1 service station via a dinghy: the Afghans dying to get into Britain   [2/23/10]
Here's the deal: Afghans sink their own boats so European police will rescue them and they will get EU refugee status rather than arrest. Eventually the surviving Afghans will be eligible for big refrigerator of welfare benefits in Britain, known worldwide for providing very generous housing and cash. But along the way, many of the Afghans' own children drown during their refugee antics.

The small dinghy is so absurdly overcrowded, so unstable, it seems certain to capsize at any moment. The engine can't cope either; it cuts in and out as it struggles to shift the weight of its cargo. Now the Greek coastguard patrol boat powers closer to the floundering craft. One of the officers on board points his machine gun into the air and fires a stream of bullets.
    Around 20 young men, some in their early teens, and a woman and two young children cower lower and shoot their hands above their heads. One man holds a large knife. The armed officer knows exactly what will happen next.
    The man repeatedly stabs the side of the dinghy. Within seconds it begins to deflate and fold inwards, forcing everyone on board into the water. What was a border-control operation has now turned into a rescue, which is exactly what the people on the boat want. They are mainly illegal Afghan immigrants, and know their safety is ensured if they're being rescued rather than arrested.
    The coastguards have to move quickly to save them. Panic sets in as those in the sea not wearing life jackets cling onto, and drag down, those who are. The five coastguards are outnumbered. All they can do is throw ropes into the water and try to drag people to safety.
    'It's pulling the dead from the sea that's the worst part of the job,' says Commander Constantinos Moutzouvis.
    'We can never be sure we have saved them all. Most of the migrants can't swim. They end up floating dead in the sea and wash up on the beaches.

Meanwhile, young British soldiers are fighting and dying in Afghanistan to rid the place of the Taliban. But Afghan freeloaders (along with many other Muslims) live the good life on the backs of the British taxpayers.

Below, a dinghy full of invaders approach Greece from Turkey.

•   •   •  

Guilty plea in New York terrorism case   [2/22/10]
Najibullah Zazi is another Muslim immigrant whose most heartfelt wish was to kill thousands of Americans.

An Afghan immigrant admitted to a federal judge Monday that he was so enraged by U.S. military actions in Afghanistan that he attended an Al Qaeda training camp and planned to commit a suicide bombing in New York -- possibly on the subway -- to protest the war.
    The plot was thwarted in September after the immigrant, Najibullah Zazi, began to fear that police were trailing him and left the city, but Zazi's chilling statement during a plea hearing in federal court suggested that it came close to fruition.
    "The plan was to conduct a martyrdom operation . . . as soon as materials were ready," said Zazi, 25, after he pleaded guilty to three counts that could put him in prison for life.
    The charges included conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction against U.S. targets; conspiracy to commit murder in a foreign country; and providing material support for a foreign terrorism organization -- in this case, Al Qaeda.

•   •   •  

Ft. Hood suspect was Army dilemma   [2/22/10]
Diversity kills, in case any doubt remained. Thirteen Americans died in the Fort Hood massacre because the Army has become enamoured with the leftist ideal of multiculturalism.
    The ugly truth about the elite military's amnesia regarding its mission has been dribbling out, now that the Fort Hood case has disappeared from the front pages. In January, 9/11 Commissioner John Lehman remarked to Time magazine ...

The Pentagon report's silence on Islamic extremism "shows you how deeply entrenched the values of political correctness have become," [Lehman] told TIME on Tuesday. "It's definitely getting worse, and is now so ingrained that people no longer smirk when it happens."

In mid-February, the Army announced discipline for at least 6 officers who had let Hasan pass, which was seen by some as insufficiently critical of the policy of higher-ups, which Hasan's commanding officers were merely following. But at least the Pentagon action recognized the culpability in excusing a very unqualified doctor because of his diversity.
    Back to today's article...

WASHINGTON - Army superiors were warned about the radicalization of Major Nidal Malik Hasan years before he allegedly massacred 13 soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas, but did not act in part because they valued the rare diversity of having a Muslim psychiatrist, military investigators wrote in previously undisclosed reports.
    An obvious "problem child'' spouting extremist views, Hasan made numerous statements that were not protected by the First Amendment and were grounds for discharge by violating his military oath, investigators found.
    Examples of Hasan's radical behavior have previously been disclosed in press accounts based on interviews with unnamed Army officials, including his defense of suicide bombings and assertions that Islamic law took priority over his allegiance to the United States.
    But the Pentagon's careful documentation of individual episodes dating back to 2005 and the subsequent inaction of his superiors have not been made public before.
    The Globe was permitted to review the Army's more complete findings on the condition that it not name supervisory officers who did not act, some of whom are facing possible disciplinary action.
    In searching for explanations for why superiors did not move to revoke Hasan's security clearances or expel him from the Army, the report portrays colleagues and superiors as possibly reluctant to lose one of the Army's few Muslim mental health specialists.
    The report concludes that because the Army had attracted only one Muslim psychiatrist in addition to Hasan since 2001, "it is possible some were afraid" of losing such diversity "and thus were willing to overlook Hasan's deficiencies as an officer."

Who cares whether the Army has any Muslim psychiatrists? There would be no particular value of such a person anyway besides diversity points.

•   •   •  

More Muslims turning to home schooling   [2/21/10]
Muslim parents can largely prevent assimilation to American values by legally home-schooling their kiddies. Why do they come here?

Although three-quarters of the nation's estimated 2 million home-schoolers identify themselves as Christian, the number of Muslims is expanding "relatively quickly," compared with other groups, said Brian Ray, president of the National Home Education Research Institute.
    They do so, he said, for the same reasons as non-Muslims: "Stronger academics, more family time, they want to guide social interaction, provide a safe place to learn and . . . teach them [their] values, beliefs and worldview."
    Parents say it is an attractive alternative to public schools, with whose traditions and values they are not always comfortable, and Islamic schools, which might be too far away, cost too much or lack academic rigor.
    If Muslims have come to embrace home schooling later than others, it might be in part because so many Muslims in the United States are immigrants who might not be aware of the option. In fact, for many immigrants, the idea of home schooling runs counter to their reasons for coming to America, which frequently include better educational opportunities for their children. And public school has long been seen as a key portal to assimilation.

•   •   •  

Millions of Unemployed Face Years Without Jobs   [2/21/10]
Every new report about the millions of jobless Americans is worse than the last. How can pundits seriously tout economic "recovery" while such misery is still worsening?

Even as the American economy shows tentative signs of a rebound, the human toll of the recession continues to mount, with millions of Americans remaining out of work, out of savings and nearing the end of their unemployment benefits.
    Economists fear that the nascent recovery will leave more people behind than in past recessions, failing to create jobs in sufficient numbers to absorb the record-setting ranks of the long-term unemployed.
    Call them the new poor: people long accustomed to the comforts of middle-class life who are now relying on public assistance for the first time in their lives  potentially for years to come.
    Yet the social safety net is already showing severe strains. Roughly 2.7 million jobless people will lose their unemployment check before the end of April unless Congress approves the Obama administrations proposal to extend the payments, according to the Labor Department.
    Here in Southern California, Jean Eisen has been without work since she lost her job selling beauty salon equipment more than two years ago. In the several months she has endured with neither a paycheck nor an unemployment check, she has relied on local food banks for her groceries. [...]
    Warm, outgoing and prone to the positive, Ms. Eisen has worked much of her life. Now, she is one of 6.3 million Americans who have been unemployed for six months or longer, the largest number since the government began keeping track in 1948. That is more than double the toll in the next-worst period, in the early 1980s.

And there are millions more citizens like Jean Eisen, whom Washington has cast adrift with its globalist policies of outsourcing whole industries and importing foreign workers for jobs that can't be exported.
    Articles like this one make it unconscionable that an immigration moratorium has not been enacted, when the government is still admitting over a million legal immigrant workers annually.

Check out this map that shows increased joblessness.

•   •   •  

French politicians see fast food chain move to halal burgers as discrimination against non-Muslims   [2/20/10]
In France, a major restaurant chain has removed all pork from its menu to please Muslims. If someone wants a bacon burger, then tough luck; keeping hostile Muslims happy is becoming a top priority in Europe.
    This is how demographic warfare works: small steps, nothing too alarming all at once, but the mainstream culture is gradually dismantled piecemeal by a determined invader, as Muslims are.

•   •   •  

Imagining 'The Next Hundred Million' Americans   [2/19/10]
Joel Kotkin has a new book out, The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050. As an academic cosmopolitan (pardon the repetition), he thinks diversity is a wonderful thing that benefits this country, rather than the twisted unrealistic ideology of radical utopians. He further believes that an American population of 400 million (a doubling since 1970) will be "challenging" yet he is brimming with "long-term optimism."
    NPR interviewed Kotkin for some cheerful remarks about America's crowded future on February 8. It's slightly less painful to read the transcript rather than listen.

I think Americans do have an intrinsic sense that this amazing ability to bring in and assimilate immigrants - and at the same time, in a sense, be assimilated by them. In other words, their food, their words, their customs, their way of looking at the world, their business practices, their business connections become assets for us. And I think that this is something that I find, actually, that - there are always going to be nativists and people who are negative, but I find most people are really kind of excited about that.

Whatever happened to the traditional idea that it's the immigrants who do the assimilating? It's not an asset for Americans to accept customs like honor killing, FGM and polygamy, but globalists are strangely positive about diverse cultures despite daily reports of disturbing brutality that are social norms in many places.
    The paragraph below is taken from Kotkin's new book, excerpted by NPR.

The United States of 2050 will look very different from the country that existed just a decade ago, at the dawn of the new millennium. Between 2000 and 2050 the vast majority of America's net population growth will be in its racial minorities, particularly Asians and Hispanics, as well as in a growing mixed-race population. Our experiment with creating what Walt Whitman described as "the race of races" will continue to evolve. By midcentury the United States will be a "white country" no longer but rather a staggering amalgam of racial, ethnic, and religious groups, all participants in the construction of a new civilization whose roots lie not in any one country or continent but across the entirety of human cultures and racial types. No other advanced, populous country will enjoy such ethnic diversity.

Americans never voted to swamp the country with alien cultures; it is a project of globalist elites stuck on their trendy ideology of diversity uber alles. On the rare occasion that immigration or related issues have been put to the ballot, the majority of citizens consistently prefer limits rather than crazed liberalism. One example was 1994's Prop 187 in California, the initiative passed by 59% of voters which would have ended taxpayer-funded welfare for illegal aliens but for the back-room shenanigans which thwarted the will of the people.
    Furthermore, the Census' recent projections indicate that America will reach 400 million by 2039, so the diversity and overcrowding so esteemed by Kotkin will arrive much earlier than 2050 if the immigration firehose is not shut off. And the title of his book is a lie, at least according to the Census Bureau.

•   •   •  

Haas gift helps UC Berkeley diversity   [2/18/10]
California voters tried to end racial preferences when they approved Proposition 209 in 1996, and the University has been squirming ever since.
    Still, the urge among leftists to bow down to the great god Diversity is strong. And if academic elites can't welcome thousands of unqualified students to the University of California on the basis of race and ethnicity, then funding a silly program to explore the byways of multiculti is a nice additional item for the collection: UC Berkeley already has an abundance of diversity resources, but no way would the university turn down $16 million.

Campus diversity at UC Berkeley, hemmed in by state law and economic woes, will take a step forward today with the announcement of a privately funded $16 million venture to promote learning across cultural and social gaps.
    The university said a gift from the Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund will establish an ambitious program of teaching, research and public service on inequality and diversity. The project will endow five faculty research chairs, including one on disability and another on the rights of lesbians and gays.
    "We're turning the challenges of a multicultural society into a major academic endeavor," said Chancellor Robert Birgeneau. The message the university is sending to its students, he said, is that "We no longer can live in our own world surrounded by people who are just like us." [...]
    Although the newly announced program does not address student admissions, Birgeneau said, it is designed to make UC Berkeley's environment "more inclusive" and therefore make the university "progressively more attractive to people from diverse backgrounds."

Chancellor Birgeneau has been carping about UC Berkeley being insufficiently diverse for years, even though whites are a minority and are outnumbered by Asians. In 2007, the New York Times called the campus the Little Asia on the Hill.
    The University's own enrollment statistics for last fall's freshman admissions show Asian Americans 41.7%, Whites 34.0%.

•   •   •  

DUI Checkpoints Meet Rising Skepticism   [2/17/10]
This is a clever item from the PBS Newshour. It purports to be about squishy practices in California's drunk driving checkpoints, where unlicensed drivers lose their cars on the spot. But it quickly morphs into a sniffly sidebar about poor illegal aliens who have to buy new vehicles after the current one gets impounded. Oh, my.

DAVID RAGLAND, professor, University of California, Berkeley: It's a common perception that driving without a license is a victimless crime. And, in fact, it's not.
LOWELL BERGMAN: Professor David Ragland of the University of California, Berkeley, helps administer millions of dollars in federal funds for DUI checkpoints.
DAVID RAGLAND: In 20 percent of traffic fatalities, there's at least one unlicensed driver involved. And the risk of being in a hit-and-run crash is even higher. Therefore, it is extremely important that we find a way to get people without licenses off the road.

Interesting fact, something I didn't know before as a precise statistic.
    But now it's on to the sob story about Bernardino, an illegal alien construction worker whose vehicle was impounded.

UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANT (through translator): They asked me for my license. I said I didn't have one. They asked for I.D., and I said I left it at home. They said, OK, we're sorry, but we are going to have to take your car.
LOWELL BERGMAN: What happened to Bernardino? Like almost all of the undocumented immigrants who are stopped at checkpoints, after their vehicle is seized, they simply walk away.
    Law enforcement officers at checkpoints around the state told us they don't call immigration authorities.
    Sergeant David Hargadon of the Sacramento Police Department:
SERGEANT DAVID HARGADON, Sacramento Police Department: We don't check with immigration. You know, it's either they have a license or they don't. And, if they don't have a license, they are issued a citation and sent on their way, obviously, without a car, but -- but -- but they are free to go.
LOWELL BERGMAN: Bernardino, like two-thirds of those who vehicles are impounded at checkpoints, never claimed his vehicle. He simply went out and bought another one.

Good! We con consider the car confiscation an immigration tax, one that falls upon the perp rather than on us citizens for a change.
    Even better would be a guaranteed deportation in addition to auto impoundment. Then Americans wouldn't be endangered by foreigners like the unlicensed illegal Guatemalan who killed three-year-old Marten Kudlis and two adults in Aurora, Colorado, after being arrested more than a dozen times with no deportation.

•   •   •  

Cardinal Mahony: Devote special prayers to undocumented immigrants   [2/16/10]
Pervert priest protector Cardinal Roger Mahony is still shilling for his illegal alien parishioners.

Mahony also issued a special call for "special prayer and fasting on behalf of our many undocumented immigrants living in our midst."
    "It has been my personal goal for many years now to assist these families in having a path toward legal residency in our midst," he said. "Curt and abusive insults of our immigrant brothers and sisters do not help any of us in our great nation. The majority of our immigrant families are 'mixed families,' meaning that some members are legal United States citizens and some are not.
    "Because of this reality, these families will stay together and we will continue to have some people living in the shadows of legality," he said. "Both the Congress and our president have the responsibility to help bring an end to these people living in the shadows of our society -- often deprived of basic human rights and exploited by employers -- and onto a path which would eventually bring them into full legal residence.

•   •   •  

String of snow days deprives many students of food   [2/15/10]
Posting this item makes me feel a little grinchy, but it's certainly a sign of the times that schools have become food distribution points for immigrants, illegal aliens and poor Americans.
    It wasn't always that way. School lunches weren't subsidized or even provided -- parents were expected to pack some decent chow in a bag for kiddies to carry in. Certainly a whole wheat sandwich with sprouts and turkey is a lot more nutritious than a "hot meal" of greasy fries and pizza.
    In addition, a parent-provided bag lunch would avoid problems like demands for halal food by annoying Muslims. For example, the Detroit school system caved to Islamic insistence on halal lunches for their special, diverse children.
    Plus, it's not just lunches that are subsidized by taxpayers. Many kids get breakfast, lunch and a snack every day. In addition, there is a "Seamless Summer" program so kiddies get free food with no break.
    The upshot is that millions of children are fed by the government, not their parents. The USDA reports that its program feeds 2.9 million children. The National School Lunch Program cost $9.3 billion in FY 2008.

TAKOMA PARK, Md. -- As back-to-back snowstorms shuttered schools for the week across the mid-Atlantic states, parents fretted about lost learning time, administrators scheduled makeup days and teachers posted assignments online. But Marla Caplon worried about a more fundamental problem: How would students eat?
    The two snowstorms that pummeled the region, leaving more than 3 feet of snow in some areas, deprived tens of thousands of children from Virginia to Pennsylvania of the free or reduced-price school lunch that may be their only nutritious meal of the day. The nonprofits that try to meet the need when school is not in session also closed their doors for much of the week, leaving many families looking at bare cupboards. And many parents working hourly jobs were unable to earn any money during the week, as the snow forced businesses to close.
    Caplon is a food services supervisor for Montgomery County Public Schools, where about 43,000 children are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches. Some also get breakfast, dinner and bags of staple foods to take home for the weekend. The snow days meant children would get none of that until Tuesday, because schools are closed Monday for Presidents Day.
    "We've been bothered by this all week," Caplon said.
    So Caplon arranged for Manna Food Center, a local food bank whose board she chairs, to bring boxes of food Friday to two still-closed elementary schools. Officials used the school district's automated phone system to notify parents of the distribution.

In this Friday Jan. 12, 2010 photo, Mercedes Rodas, left, chooses cans of food that were being provided to people whose children are usually in the school lunch program at Rolling Terrace Elementary School in Takoma Park, Md., in the aftermath of back-to-back blizzards.

•   •   •  

Louis Armstrong - I Can't Give You Anything But Love - Hot Fives & Sevens version   [2/14/10]
Here's a fine tune for Valentines...

•   •   •  

Milan riots after Egyptian stabbed to death   [2/14/10]
When a country has too many Muslim immigrants, violence has a way of popping up. It just sorta happens somehow. Italy is learning the hard way, with one riot per month so far this year.

Dozens of angry North Africans overturned cars and smashed shop windows in an area of the city which in recent years has become one of the most multicultural pockets of Europe.
    The trouble began on Saturday after a 19-year-old was killed by a group of immigrants from South America following an argument on a bus.
    The North Africans, most of them Egyptian, then went on a rampage in the northeastern area of Via Padova, attacking shops and businesses owned by immigrants from Peru, Ecuador and other South American countries.
    Milan's deputy mayor, Riccardo De Corato, said the violence had turned the area into a "Wild West between North African and South American gangs".
    Milan's authorities said they would start checking people's documents in the city's most racially diverse neighbourhoods in order to root out illegal immigrants.
    Milan's deputy mayor, Riccardo De Corato, said officials would go from building to building in areas where immigrants live. Half of the 46 immigrants picked up by police on Saturday night had been found to be in Italy illegally, he said.

Below, Muslims residing in Milan (many illegally) apparently like to overturn cars.

(See Corriere Della Sera's slide show of the riot.)

•   •   •  

Sweden 2010 - Silent Exodus - Half of all Jews have already left Malmoe   [2/14/10]
This item is from the growing video empire of KitmanTV's full-length documentaries (many anti-jihad) and selected short subjects.
    Malmo, Sweden, is a prime example that Muslim immigration is a very bad idea. Jews and women are usually the first targets of the growing number of hostile Islamics, but everybody gets it in the end. When firemen appear in the Muslim enclave of Rosengard, they face rioting and are attacked with rocks thrown by the local sons of Allah.

•   •   •  

Language leaves justice tongue-tied   [2/14/10]
So much is wrong here, starting with the misogynous culture of the foreigners, in which forced sex with an 11-year-old child is considered normal rather than reprehensible. The perp is a Guatemalan illegal alien, Teodoro Pablo-Ramirez (pictured), who raped the girl (a relative by marriage) who later gave birth when she was 12.
    The other theme was the supposed unfairness of putting the accused man through a trial, because as a Mayan Indian speaker of Mam he did not speak Spanish well enough to understand a translation of the proceedings -- or so his lawyer said.

TAMPA, Fla. - He was 28. She was 11. Her parents said they gave consent, claiming cultural norms of the Guatemalan highlands. But in Dover, Florida, a little girl with a baby raises questions.
    When deputies came, Teodoro Pablo-Ramirez understood only some of what they said, according to his lawyer. He speaks no English and little Spanish -- just the Mayan tongue of Mam.
    The indigenous language, understood by few interpreters, has stymied court cases across the country. One interpreting service in Washington resorted to recruiting a Mam speaker out of a jail lobby.
    In Hillsborough Circuit Court, two cases, both too serious to dismiss, are stalled for lack of a Mam translator. In one, a 4-year-old Wimauma girl was raped. The details are locked inside her mother, who speaks only Mam. And last year, Pablo-Ramirez was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, before the judge granted a motion for retrial.
    The court could provide only Spanish interpreters.

The good news is how this vile criminal got hard time; the bad news is another trial with a Mam translator ($300 per day is the rate for one).
    Your tax dollars at work: defending the diversity of a pervert invader who doesn't speak the language of his home country, much less English.

•   •   •  

2,500 People Protest Muhammad Cartoon in Norway   [2/13/10]
Muslims really don't accept the free speech component that distinguishes the West. That alone should disqualify them as possible immigrants.

OSLO - About 2,500 people marched through downtown Oslo in a protest Friday against a Norwegian newspaper that printed a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad.
    The demonstrators chanted "God is great" in Arabic and waved placards calling for a boycott of the Dagbladet daily.
    On Feb. 3, the newspaper published a photograph showing a man in front of a computer screen with a depiction of Muhammad as a pig. The picture accompanied an article that said users were posting offensive material about Muslims and Jews on the Facebook page of Norway's security police.
    Dagbladet's acting editor-in-chief, Lars Helle, told The Associated Press that he doesn't regret printing the offending image and that he welcomed Friday's protest.
    "It was a test for Norwegian society - whether this would be a peaceful protest or not," Helle said.
    He said Dagbladet has not received any direct threats since it published the caricature. A hacker attack originating from Turkey brought down the newspaper's Web site for two hours Wednesday evening, but Helle said it's unclear whether that attack was connected to the caricature.

No "direct threats" to Dagobladet -- how wonderful that Muslims are learning to express themselves more appropriately!
    Actually, hostile Muslims have bigger plans in mind: Muslims threaten Norway with 911.

Speaking of Norway, here is a Tube that shows a different effect of Muslim immigration, a young Norwegian boy who had no friends because he was surrounded by Islamic children who rejected and bullied him. Muslim Racism in Norway (Part 1)

Here is Part 2 of the Norwegian boy's story, with more from his mother and how her anti-racism ideology had to change when it ran into Islamic culture.

•   •   •  

Calderon visits Ciudad Juarez   [2/13/10]
Mexico's war on the powerful drug cartels is not going well. El Presidente Calderon (pictured in a controversial South Park episode) recently visited besieged Juarez to mend fences with the local citizens for the failure of his anti-cartel policy to work. The violence is so bad there that residents have been demanding United Nations peacekeepers.

Facing intense political pressure and demands that he resign, President Felipe Calderon traveled Thursday to Mexico's deadliest city to defend his troubled fight against drug cartels, which critics charge has only intensified the violence.
    Angry crowds greeted Calderon as he arrived in a heavily guarded Ciudad Juarez. The president said it was time to launch a much-discussed expansion of the drug war to include efforts aimed at tackling social issues, such as unemployment and addiction.
    "I am convinced we have to review what we are doing," Calderon said. "We need a much more integrated approach . . . wider actions . . . of a social nature. Police and military action alone is not enough."
    To underscore the point, Calderon took with him an unusually large contingent of Cabinet members, including the ministers of health, education and public security. However, he was short on details and, in initial remarks, did not earmark money for new programs.
    Calderon's visit to Ciudad Juarez was prompted by the Jan. 31 massacre of at least 15 people, many of them youths, at a high school party, the latest in a spiral of increasingly gruesome bloodshed that has made the city across the border from El Paso a living hell.

If Calderon can't get a grip on the spiraling violence by drug gangs, the relative handful of people fleeing to the United States will turn into a flood. The article above noted the massacre of 15 young people in Juarez. Now their families want asylum in this country: Fearful Mexican families of teens slain in massacre seek refuge in Texas.

Young people who survived the massacre are despondent, afraid to leave the house and have no plans to return to school any time soon, the family members said.
    "They not only killed my son," one father said. "They killed off the entire neighborhood and whatever little faith we had in our government. By staying in Mexico, we feel like sitting ducks, afraid that sooner or later we'll take another bullet."
    As many as 10 other families plan to leave the neighborhood and seek shelter somewhere in Texas. Many have already abandoned their homes and are living with friends and relatives in other parts of Juárez.

America may appear law-abiding next to Mexico but that is hardly a worthy comparison. Our neighbor is turning into what Colombia was in the 1980s -- a violence-riven narco-state, and that poison has infected this country as well.
    The Department of Justice reports cartel organizations exist in 230 American cities. The influx of Mexicans rapidly turned Phoenix into America's kidnap capital. Mexican crime here is bad enough already, but it can get much worse.
    Unfortunately, at least one judge is kindly disposed to the idea of asylum based on being a crime victim: Girl who fled Honduran gangs is granted asylum. There's millions more where that one came from.

•   •   •  

Once Stigmatized, Food Stamps Find Acceptance   [2/12/10]
As the title says, America as a welfare nation is becoming the norm. Part of the reason is that the welfare establishment actually gets out and recruits people to take food stamps, even when individuals may feel they aren't that poor.
    Of course the outreach is diverse and multilingual.

A decade ago, New York City officials were so reluctant to give out food stamps, they made people register one day and return the next just to get an application. The welfare commissioner said the program caused dependency and the poor were "better off" without it.
    Now the city urges the needy to seek aid (in languages from Albanian to Yiddish). Neighborhood groups recruit clients at churches and grocery stores, with materials that all but proclaim a civic duty to apply - to "help New York farmers, grocers, and businesses." There is even a program on Rikers Island to enroll inmates leaving the jail.
    "Applying for food stamps is easier than ever," city posters say.
    The same is true nationwide. After a U-turn in the politics of poverty, food stamps, a program once scorned as "welfare," enjoys broad new support. Following deep cuts in the 1990s, Congress reversed course to expand eligibility, cut red tape and burnish the program's image, with a special effort to enroll the working poor. These changes, combined with soaring unemployment, have pushed enrollment to record highs, with one in eight Americans now getting aid. [...]
    Last month, [Colombian immigrant Alba] Catano was back at work, with a benefit of $170 a month and no qualms about joining 38 million Americans eating with government aid. "I had the feeling that working people were not eligible," she said. "But then they told me, 'No, no, the program has improved.' "

I certainly don't begrudge struggling citizens getting help in this terrible economy. However, a dependency habit is being instilled which may endure beyond the hard times.
    In addition, the Times article contains no mention of food stamp fraud, which must be skyrocketing when free money is being shoveled around by do-gooders. In 2008, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP -- the refashioned presentation of food stamps) served 28.4 million people a month at an annual cost of $34.6 billion, so it is not cheap.
    Many immigrants come from cultures where ripping off the government is normal anyway, and everyone has their hand out. Immigrants are happy to collect lots of food stamps and then sell them for cash (at maybe 50%) to a fellow foreigner store owner who then redeems them for full value. The ill-gotten gains may be for personal use or may go for the support of jihad.
    Meanwhile, regarding the fable that "They only come to work" and are not a drain on the public coffers, consider that more than half of immigrant-headed kiddie-including households receive taxpayer assistance: Welfare Use By Immigrant- and Native-Headed Households with Children.

In 2008, 53 percent of all households headed by an immigrant (legal or illegal) with one or more children under age 18 used at least one welfare program, compared to 36 percent for native households with children. Immigrant use of welfare tends to be much higher than natives for food assistance programs and Medicaid. Use of cash and housing programs tends to be very similar to natives. A large share of the welfare used by immigrants is received on behalf of their U.S.-born children. But even households with children comprised entirely of immigrants still have a welfare use rate of 47 percent.

Your tax dollars at work, building a diverse, dysfunctional America!

•   •   •  

The Grotesque Vocabulary in Congo   [2/11/10]
I respect New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. He is a rare liberal who has enough integrity to wade into the weeds of ugly cultural diversity, including a book (Half the Sky) about the struggle of women in the third world for rights and safety. I quoted him last summer about Liberia's rape culture which has been transported to this country via immigration (Liberians Residing in Arizona Fret over "Backlash" in Gang Rape of Child).
    Kristof's additions to his vocabulary are a reminder that not all diversity is equal, particularly in Africa.

I've learned some new words.
    One is "autocannibalism," coined in French but equally appropriate in English. It describes what happens when a militia here in eastern Congo's endless war cuts flesh from living victims and forces them to eat it.
    Another is "re-rape." The need for that term arose because doctors were seeing women and girls raped, re-raped and re-raped again, here in the world capital of murder, rape, mutilation.
    This grotesque vocabulary helps answer a question that I've had from readers: Why Congo? After a previous visit to eastern Congo, a reader named Jim D. objected. "Yes there are horrible things happening in Africa," he wrote on my blog. "None are anything we can do anything about by ourselves."
    "My question is why do you not concentrate on this nation's poor," he asked. "Yes, Africa suffers, but you need to look in your own house first."
    Jim D. has a legitimate complaint, echoed by other readers: We have enormous needs at home, and we shouldn't let foreign crises distract us from them.

Spoken like a true do-gooder. But Kristof at least walks the walk, goes to the backward places and has specific policy recommendations.

•   •   •  

India Pakistan Wagah Attari Border Closing Ceremony   [2/11/10]
The silly walks in this video represent diversity at its finest, in which Indian and Pakistani border guards strut their stuff in a battle of displays. However, the fact that both countries are armed with nukes makes the behavior a tiny bit less amusing.

•   •   •  

Labour's 'secret plan' to lure migrants   [2/10/10]
Peter Brimelow wrote in 1997 about the use of immigration to overwhelm the population of American center-right voters with statism-friendly foreigners: Electing a New People.
    In Britain, a smoking gun was recently found in the hands of the ruling left-wing party and many people seem strangely surprised...

The document released yesterday suggested that Labour originally pursued a different direction. It was published under the title "Migration: an economic and social analysis" but the removal of significant extracts suggested that officials or ministers were nervous over references to "social objectives".
    The original paper called for the need of a new framework for thinking about migration policy but the concluding phrase - "if we are to maximise the contribution of migration to the Government's economic and social objectives"  was edited out.
    Another deleted phrase suggested that it was "correct that the Government has both economic and social objectives for migration policy".
    Sir Andrew Green, the chairman of Migrationwatch, said the document showed that Mr Neather, who claimed ministers wanted to radically change the country and "rub the Right's nose in diversity", had been correct in his account of Labour's immigration policy.
    "Labour had a political agenda which they sought to conceal for initiating mass immigration to Britain," he said. "Why else would they be so anxious to remove any mention of social aspects?
    "Only now that their working-class supporters are deserting them in droves have they started to talk about restricting immigration."

This topic has popped up in America again with the leftist union video making the rounds. In it, Eliseo Medina remarks, "We reform the immigration laws it puts twelve million people on the path to citizenship and eventually voters."

•   •   •  

Haiti calls on voodoo priests to help battered nation heal   [2/10/10]
Since the recent massive earthquake, we are learning more about Haitian culture, such as the mention in this article, "More than half Haiti's population is believed to practice voodoo." In 2003 the belief was given government sanction: Haiti makes voodoo official.
    An estimated 100,000 to 200,000 Haitians reside illegally in the United States and were given TPS by the Obama administration. Elite media have mostly lined up in favor of liberal immigration policies to welcome thousands more Haitians, despite the terrible unemployment among Americans. So there may be many more from this retro culure residing in America. The following item from the Boston Globe is upbeat about voodoo's position in society and how its practicioners are key to Haiti's rejuvenation.

To the outside world, their faith has long been shrouded in mystery, ministering as much to the dead as the living, and associated with images of animal sacrifices and human skulls.
    But in postquake Haiti, the practitioners of voodoo have taken on a more practical role, enlisted by the government to help count the dead, tend to the injured, and soothe the psychologically damaged.
    "One must understand that Haiti is voodoo," said Max Beauvoir, 75, the "pope" of Haitian voodoo and a former biochemical engineer who once worked for Digital Equipment in Maynard, Mass. "Helping Haitians is nothing else but helping ourselves."
    To make use of that resource, the United Nations has reached out to the vast and influential network of about 60,000 voodoo priests in Haiti, Beauvoir said. And the priests, firmly entrenched in their displaced communities, are eager to lend a hand.
    "Priests are considered to be leaders," David Wimhurst, a UN spokesman here, said of the voodoo hierarchy. "And community leaders obviously have a role to play to help the humanitarian effort."

The article is essentially a voodoo puff piece, which required some skillful avoidance of unpleasantries like cruel animal sacrifice, zombies and bizarre ceremonies.
    Interestingly, the Times of London had a negative opinion about voodoo's effects in the earthquake trauma because of the inherant fatalism: Voodoo faith 'could hinder Haiti's recovery from quake'.
    Plus, any discussion of Haitian voodoo should include the recent history of how the dictator Francois Duvalier used voodoo-infused terror to rule over his superstitious subjects. He convinced the people that he was a powerful practicioner of sorcery and should therefore be obeyed.
    So how strange and/or violent is Haitian voodoo?
    In Queens last June, Haitian immigrant Marie Lauradin was arrested for setting her six-year-old daughter on fire in a cleansing ritual known as Loa. The girl spent 55 days in intensive care as a result and will be scarred for life: Mom, grandma charged in voodoo burning.

When doctors asked the family how the 6-year old-girl was burned over 25 percent of her body, her mother told police it was an accident, that she had spilled some boiling water.
    When the child was well enough to tell her side of the story, she said she was forced into a voodoo ritual.

In the video below, a Haitian neighbor is questioned about the ritual and said she was shocked, shocked that people actually practiced it.

Of course, not every Haitian family tortures children, but how many pre-primitive residents does America need in the 21st century?

•   •   •  

63% Say Better for Country If Most of Congress Not Reelected   [2/09/10]
Voters want Washington incumbents out of there.

Most voters think the country would be better off if the majority of the current Congress wasn't reelected this November, and their confidence in their own congressman continues to fall.
    A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 63% of likely voters believe, generally speaking, that it would be better for the country if most incumbents in Congress were defeated this November.
    Just 19% disagree and say it would be better if most congressional incumbents were reelected. Another 18% aren't sure.
    The Political Class strongly rejects these views, however. While 78% of Mainstream voters say it would be better for the country if most of the current Congress was turned out of office, 89% of the Political Class think it would be better if most were reelected.

Along the same lines: 75% Are Angry At Government's Current Policies.

•   •   •  

London's Islamic Radicals Speak Out   [2/09/10]
Terrorism analyst Erick Stakelbeck describes how Britain welcomed jihadists to live there in the mistaken belief that they would respond by not attacking the country. It was a deal with the devil, and Satan has not kept up his side, as shown by terrorist attacks such as the 7/7 London subway bombings.
    Stakelbeck says the government subsidizes the jihadists by paying them welfare. Plus, even when authorities try to deport bad guys, they may be stymied by soft-headed judges who fear the would-be (or actual) killers might be harmed in their homelands.

A radical Islamist can find a little bit of everything in London. Ex-jihadists, current jihadists, "wannabe" jihadists: they're all there. So how did this happen?
    During the 1980s and 1990s, British authorities granted asylum to a number of Islamic terrorists wanted in their home countries.
    "All of this happened under the assumption that if you allowed these people to operate in London, if you allowed them to do whatever they wanted to do, they would not be attacking Britain," terrorism expert Peter Neumann explained.
    Neumann is author of the book Old and New Terrorism and heads the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization in London.
    "The government, quite cynically, thought that whatever happened in other countries, whatever these people were plotting in other countries, was of no concern to the British government," he added.

•   •   •  

MCSO deputies will undergo training to target illegal immigrants   [2/08/10]
Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who arrests illegal aliens in Maricopa County, has been pestered for recent months by the local Mexican border anarchists, plus the Justice Department since Obie's election. The knock is racial profiling, but most of the illegal aliens in southern Arizona happen to be hispanic, strangely enough. Sheriff Arpaio is now going on the offensive by instituting more training for his deputies, as he recently announced.

PHOENIX - When the federal government stripped Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his deputies of their power to enforce federal immigration laws on the streets, the sheriff repeatedly said nothing would change.
    Nevertheless, something did change on Monday. The sheriff raised the stakes in his battle against illegal immigration. The sheriff said that starting Monday every one of his deputies will go through training to specifically target illegal immigrants.
    Sheriff Joe says, "I have been saying over and over again that my deputies can enforce the illegal immigration laws."
    The sheriff announced that he is ramping up the county's fight against illegal immigration by increasing the number of trained deputies from 100 to nearly 900.
    In October the feds took away the department's street authority to make major immigration sweeps.
    Instead, deputies would limit background checks until after a suspect committed a crime and was taken to jail. Under the new program, a simple traffic stop is enough reason to look into someone's background.
    Kris Kobach, an expert on immigration law and border security, says the sheriff has "inherent arrest authority" and does not need federal approval to move forward.

In addition, Sheriff Apaio is supporting strong pro-borders candidate JD Hayworth in his campaign to oust John McCain in the Senate primary. (Hayworth wrote a book, Whatever It Takes, about the necessity of controlling immigration.)

•   •   •  

Muslim man wins handshake case in Sweden   [2/08/10]
Here's another example of how when women's rights are in conflict with diversity, women lose most of the time. The West can have women's equality or Muslim immigration, but not both.

Sweden's unemployment agency has been found guilty of discrimination for expelling a Muslim man from a job training program because he refused to shake hands with a woman.
    A Stockholm court Monday ordered the Public Employment Service to pay 50,000 kronor ($6,700) in damages to an immigrant from Bosnia who lost his jobless benefits when he was kicked out of the program.
    Citing his faith, the man had refused to shake hands with a woman when he was interviewing for an internship. The agency said his behavior was part of the reason he didn't get the position, and decided to exclude him from the program.
    The court ruled that the man was discriminated against because of his religion. It wasn't immediately clear whether the ruling would be appealed.

Meanwhile in the British Isles, another assault on women's rights is ongoing: Muslim man demands right to bring second wife to Ireland. He was welcomed as a political asylee, but now wants his contract changed to conform to Islam.

A Muslim man has gone to the High Court in Ireland demanding that he be allowed bring in his second wife to Ireland.
    The native of Lebanon, where polygamy is allowed, says his polygamous marriage must be recognized.
    Liam Egan, a member of the Muslim Public Affairs Congress, told the Irish Sunday Times the man was being discriminated against unfairly. "It is draconian to treat this family differently," said Egan.

The cultural offensive by Islam on the West is endless. Muslim immigration should end immediately.

•   •   •  

Drug cartels tighten grip; Mexico becoming 'narco-state'   [2/07/10]
More bad news from the crackhouse country next door: Presidente Calderon's military offensive against Mexico's drug cartels is losing ground rather than gaining it. The possibility of a failed state is becoming more likely. (And American taxpayers' $1.4 billion in military aid, aka the Merida Initiative, has been wasted down a rathole.)
    What's interesting in this thorough report is how it describes a real war scenario in which territory is surrendered by local officials to the gangsters, with the cartel taking over some of the functions of the Mexican government.

MEXICO CITY - For months, the leaders of Tancitaro had held firm against the drug lords battling for control of this central Mexican town.
    Then one morning, after months of threats and violence from the traffickers, they finally surrendered.
    Before dawn, gunmen kidnapped the elderly fathers of the town administrator and the secretary of the City Council. Within hours, both officials resigned along with the mayor, the entire seven-member City Council, two department heads, the police chief and all 60 police officers. Tancitaro had fallen to the enemy.
    Across Mexico, the continuing ability of traffickers to topple governments like Tancitaro's, intimidate police and keep drug shipments flowing is raising doubts about the Mexican government's 3-year-old, U.S.-backed war on the drug cartels.
    Far from eliminating the gangs, the battle has exposed criminal networks more ingrained than most Americans could imagine: Hidden economies that employ up to one-fifth of the people in some Mexican states. Business empires that include holdings as everyday as gyms and a day-care center. [...]
    In many towns, smugglers pay for playgrounds and other things the government cannot afford. Bank loans are expensive and hard to get in Mexico, a lingering effect of the country's bank crises during the 1990s, so traffickers have stepped in to provide small-business loans.
    "What people did not recognize in Mexico was how deeply ingrained in both the economy and society the drug trade was," [Milken Institute fellow Joel] Kurtzman said. "So it's not as if the drug traders are unpopular - they're looked at in many cities like Robin Hoods." [...]
    In March, the financial magazine Forbes included Joaquin "Chapo" Guzman in its list of the world's billionaires for the first time. Guzman, the head of the Sinaloa Cartel, was listed at No. 701 with a net worth of about $1 billion.
    In fact, Guzman's cartel and other gangs probably bring in $3.8 billion just to Sinaloa state alone, said Guillermo Ibarra, an economist who used bank and government statistics to compile an estimate this year.
    That is 20 percent of the state's economy, twice as much as all of its factories put together. The drug trade employs about a fifth of the state's 2.6 million population, either directly or indirectly, he said.

Of course, Mexican organized crime is well implanted in this country due to decades of immigration anarchy. The criminals swim in a sea of Mexican nationals, immigrants and illegal aliens who reside here in the tens of millions.
    As noted in the article, cartel gangsters have invaded America's premier national parks and turned vast areas of protected lands into toxic marijuana plantations. But Washington has never seen the assault on the parks by Mexican organized crime as a priority for serious law enforcement.
    Meanwhile, the Obama budget has taken money from border protection and redirected it into the window dressing that masquerades as airport security.
    So while the President is busy spending the country into oblivion and extending state power wherever possible, he is also weakening our southern border and likely enabling Mexicanization. Who says Obie can't multitask?

•   •   •  

Immigrants Top Ranks of Jobless   [2/06/10]
How bad is unemployment in this country? So bad that even exploitable illegals can't find work for dirt-cheap slave wages.

Some 11.8% of foreign-born workers were unemployed in January, compared to 10.3% of native workers, the Labor Department said Friday.
    In addition to a deep recession that has wiped out more than eight-million jobs, the prevalence of immigrants working in the hard-hit construction sector helped fuel the higher numbers, according to analysts. [...]
    "I haven't had steady work for a year," said the Guatemalan immigrant. He used to send home $300 a month to help support his mother and three younger siblings. "Now, I barely earn enough money to eat and pay the rent."
    In the U.S. for four years, Mr. Ralda doesn't think of returning home. "There's not much opportunity in my country, either," he said.
    As an undocumented immigrant, he risks being caught and sent home if he tries to sneak into the U.S. again. Asked whether he had tried to find jobs at car washes or restaurants, Mr. Ralda said he had: "Those are all full."

Inquiring minds want to know how many of these struggling fellows are turning to crime to accrue some extra cash, as has been known to happen. See my 2008 blog, In DC, Last Week's Hard-Working Day Laborer Is Today's Burglar.
    By coincidence, the day laborers pictured below are located in Falls Church, Virginia, not far from the District. But perhaps I'm too suspicious.

Yoo hoo, illegal aliens loitering in the snow... it's nice and toasty warm back in the dear homeland.

•   •   •  

Barack Obama's Kenyan aunt arrives in a wheelchair to plead with judge not to throw her out of America   [2/06/10]
On Thursday I wrote about Aunt Z's court appearance, Auntie Mooch Gets to Stay a Few More Months (at Least). That was before the photo below appeared in Britain's Daily Mail.
    Aunt Zeituni is getting to be quite the clothes horse. Every time she appears in public, she sports a fancier outfit. (See photos from last December and August for earlier ensembles. In April she wore a herringbone coat and rust-colored wig to her court appearance.)
    No second-hand welfare rags for her; in fact she is quite well dressed, particularly for someone who lives in subsidized public housing and gets a stipend from Boston taxpayers.
    Inquiring minds want to know: Is the millionaire nephew sneaking her a few bills or does she have her welfare scam really wired?

Below, Zeituni Onyango leaves her immigration hearing on foot with a companion after arriving in a wheelchair.

•   •   •  

[Rep Steve] King on job creation: Crack down on illegal immigrants   [2/05/10]
Straight talk from the heartland courtesy of an Iowa Congressman...

U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Kiron, is challenging the president to look at his plan to tackle growing unemployment, which more or less comes down to going after undocumented immigrants.
    In an Op-Ed published on his Web site, King said his idea would "level the playing field for law-abiding American employers and employees." His plan is to "clarify" that wages and benefits paid to undocumented immigrants are not deductible for federal income tax purposes. He would also mandate use of "E-Verify," an Internet-based system that allows an employer, using information reported on an employee's Form I-9, to determine the eligibility of that employee to work in the United States. He would grant employers "safe harbor" if they discovered they had inadvertently hired someone illegally.

See Rep King's opinion piece, American Jobs Should Go To American Workers.

According to the Department of Labor, the December national unemployment rate was 10 percent and IowaÕs unemployment rate was 6.6 percent. There are 15.3 million unemployed American citizens while the Pew Hispanic Center reports that 8 million illegal aliens hold American jobs. In Iowa alone, there are 112,700 unemployed workers while 35,000 illegal aliens hold jobs.
    It is inexcusable for American citizens and law-abiding immigrants to be jobless while law-breaking illegal aliens hold American jobs. New IDEA [H.R. 3580] clarifies that wages and benefits paid to illegal aliens are not deductible for federal income tax purposes. So if employers hire illegal workers, the wages and benefits paid to illegal workers will be denied as a business expense, resulting in taxable income for employers.

•   •   •  

Teen sought in Vallejo ice-cream truck shooting   [2/05/10]
Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, there was shock and revulsion about the Wednesday shooting of an ice cream truck driver, single mother Amarjit Kaur, in Vallejo. She was shot in the chest, but it looks like she will recover.
    This being California, the heinous crime unsurprisingly includes fascinating diversity aspects.

Police say Montenegro and possibly a second person tried to rob Kaur, an immigrant from India who speaks little English. Montenegro shot her, apparently because she didn't understand their demands or react quickly enough, investigators said.
    "She is a very nice lady," said Raj Kumar, priest at the Vallejo Hindu Temple where Kaur worships. "She helps with cooking in the kitchen and cleans the church."
    Kaur is raising two daughters and a son and has lived in Vallejo for about six years after arriving from India, Kumar said. She has been driving the ice cream truck for five years to help support her family, he said.

Attention immigrants: it's to your benefit to speak English so you can respond to the commands of criminals.
    Speaking of the perp, police are seeking a 15-year-old runaway from his foster home, Peter Montenegro who is a school expellee and a Norteno gang member. He is described as "Latino, with short, dark hair, between 5 feet 6 inches tall and 5 feet 10 inches tall, weighing 200 pounds" (indicating a well-fed Mexican gang member).
    So it's a double-dip diversity story!

•   •   •  

Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) Swearing-In   [2/04/10]
Sweet to see a pro-borders guy take the Senate seat formerly held by the evil Ted Kennedy, open-borders quisling from hell.

I turned on some joyful sounds, poured myself a nice shot of Bushmills and enjoyed the moment. Big win, assuming of course that he will indeed vote for borders and sovereignty.

•   •   •  

Asylum hearing for Obama aunt ends with no ruling   [2/04/10]
Oh, what a surprise. No judge wants to kick Obie's freeloader aunt out of the country, so Judge Leonard Shapiro kicked the can down the road in a secret hearing until May. He is probably hoping for a wide-ranging illegal alien amnesty to solve his problem.

An immigration hearing for President Barack Obama's African aunt ended Thursday without an immediate decision in her second bid for asylum in the United States.
    Kenya native Zeituni Onyango did not comment after testifying for about 2 1/2 hours Thursday at the closed proceedings in U.S. Immigration Court.
    "The hearing went well. She was very honest. She was very to the point," her lawyer, Margaret Wong, said afterward.
    Wong said Onyango is hopeful the judge will rule in her favor because "she really wants to stay in America."

You bet she does! Auntie Mooch knows a good scam when she's found one, namely preying on the unprotected American taxpayer.

•   •   •  

Obama's budget curbs border programs   [2/04/10]
The budget contains more proof that Obie is averse to national security. His idea is to spend more money on airport window dressing by spending less on border security.
    One new item to be purchased will be pricey full body scanners for airports, which won't detect jihadists with surgically implanted bombs, so the intrusive machines are already obsolete.
    The administration could use more profiling to narrow the search for bad guys in airports, but would rather harass American grandmothers than focus on young Muslim males.

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration is proposing to scale back some border security programs set up after the 9/11 attacks and ramp up aviation security following the attempted Christmas bombing, in what some conservative lawmakers say is a dangerous priority shift.
    Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky., the top Republican on the House panel overseeing the Department of Homeland Security's budget, says the border security funding in President Obama's budget for fiscal year 2011 is "woefully inadequate" and "as dangerous as it is indefensible."
    Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says her department's $56.3 billion budget for next year, up 2% over this year, enhances security "across the board." Department spokesman Bobby Whithorne says the budget "continues to support smart, effective programs to strengthen border and interior security" while making "significant investments in aviation security."
    If Congress approves Obama's proposals:
• The Border Patrol, which doubled to 20,000 agents during the Bush administration, would lose 180 agents through attrition. Border staffing would stay the same.
• A "virtual" fence of pole cameras and sensors aimed at stopping illegal immigrants, drug smugglers and terrorists on the U.S.-Mexican border, faces a $225 million cut from $800 million last year. That would delay implementation while a review of the fence, plagued by technical problems, is done.
• Five of the Coast Guard's 13 elite Maritime Security and Safety Teams (MSST), created since 2001 to protect waterfront cities, would be eliminated. Obama is proposing cuts in New York City, San Francisco, Anchorage and King's Bay, Ga.
• The existing 643 miles of concrete-and-steel border fence would be maintained but no new barriers would be built.

There is real danger from a porous border, one which our enemies understand. See a Fox News report from last June with Sara Carter following her Washington Times article Al Qaeda eyes bio attack from Mexico.

•   •   •  

Texas couple guilty of enslaving Nigerian widow   [2/03/10]
Of course the "Texas couple" are Nigerians as well.

FORT WORTH, Texas - The Justice Department says a federal jury has found a couple guilty of enslaving a Nigerian widow at their Texas home for nine years.
    The department says in a statement that Emmanuel and Ngozi Nnaji each face up to 55 years in prison after their convictions Tuesday on conspiracy, forced labor and other charges.
    The statement says the Nigerian-born couple seized the woman's passport and made her work long hours as their servant with no days off and little pay. They provided no support for her six children in Nigeria and limited contact with her family.
    The statement says Emmanuel Nnaji sexually assaulted the widow.
    She escaped in February 2006 with the help of a Nigerian priest who lived in Texas.

•   •   •  

Taxi drivers accused of racism for displaying sign saying they are 'English speaking'   [2/02/10]
Obviously it is not racism to advertise the skill set of the driver. Prospective customers want to know that the cabbie will understand when they explain where they want to go. Communication is a central part of the job.

A racism row has broken out after a city's taxi drivers started displaying stickers in their cars saying they are 'English speaking'.
    Up to a dozen drivers have been showing off the notices bearing the St George's Cross on the back windows of their cars in Southampton, Hampshire.
    The small red and white sticker declares the cab is being driven by an 'English speaking driver.' [...]
    Taxi driver Peter Ford, 48, said: 'It's just about letting customers know that the driver will actually be able to speak English, which isn't always the case.'
    Fellow driver Chris Head, 49, added: 'I have no problem with the stickers.
    'Lots of customers will wait at ranks until an English driver comes along because they want someone they can talk to.'

The aim of the complainers is to remove any responsibility of immigrants that they learn English adequately and assimilate to the society to which they have moved. The squawk squad wants to erase the social contract by which immigrants are accepted and given the rights of citizens on the condition that they take on the values of the majority community.

•   •   •  

Fate of Obama's aunt to be fought behind closed doors   [2/02/10]
Obie's illegal alien absconder Aunt Zeituni is back before the judge, and like everything else connected with this President, transparency is lacking.

The illegal alien aunt of President Obama could learn this week whether she can put down roots in Boston - or start packing her bags for a one-way trip back to Kenya.
    And, save for U.S. Immigration Court Judge Leonard I. Shapiro, she'll know before anyone else. Zeituni Polly Onyango has persuaded Shapiro to bar the public from her removal proceeding Thursday morning at the John F. Kennedy Federal Building, though it's unclear why.
    "I assume (Shapiro) thought it would be a three-ring circus. She's the aunt of the president of the United States - the most famous man in the world," said Mike Rogers, spokesman for the Ohio law firm defending Onyango, 57, against the Department of Homeland Security.

Don't the American people have a right to see whether their immigration system is being run honestly? (Like they don't already know.)
    The fact that she, an absconder, is still free and living rather well off the taxpayer is another reminder of how lawbreaking foreigners get the red carpet treatment while citizens get the shaft. The apartment she occupies should go to a citizen who needs it, not to a world-class mooch, whose millionaire nephew's subsidized housing has several spare rooms.

•   •   •  

Chances are dim, but advocates will still push for immigration reform   [2/01/10]
The open borders Energizer Bunnies are back, or actually they never went away.

As President Obama vows to refocus Democrats' attention on jobs and the economy, advocates for overhauling the nation's immigration laws say they are still gearing up for a battle in the Senate in coming weeks, despite fading hopes for victory.
    Washington's drawn-out health-care debate badly damaged prospects for an immigration bill this winter. It ate up weeks of the Senate's time, sapped progressive lawmakers' energy and, most recently, stoked a populist backlash that cost Democrats the seat of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (Mass.), the chamber's most prominent champion of liberal health-care and immigration policies.

My lurking fear is that some legislators figure they are so screwed by healthcare that they might as well fall on their swords for a permanent Democratic majority in the future. As long as Obie promises a nice appointment or ambassadorship for going down for La Causa, some may sign on for a personal political suicide mission.

The following item, also from the Washington Post today, is curious: Obama 2011 budget request: Department of Homeland Security

The budget also sets aside $207 million to pay for refugee and asylum application processing, and $137 million to improve E-Verify, the employer program that electronically checks new hires' immigration status.

E-verify works perfectly well -- what kind of "improvements" do they want to make that cost $137 million?

•   •   •  

Seoul searching for new name in Oakland   [2/01/10]
This item represents a small skirmish in the ongoing diversity wars, territorial sub-topic. Humans are tribal beings, and immigrants would rather define their ethnic space than integrate with the national American community unless required to do so.

Oakland's losing its Seoul.
    Under pressure from Koreatown's thousands of non-Koreans, the neighborhood's new "Oakland's Got Seoul" welcome banners will soon come down.
    In their place will be something that better reflects an area that some say is hardly Korean at all. The 14-block stretch of Telegraph Avenue is also home to Ethiopians, Afghans, African Americans, artists and others who don't identify as Korean.
    "When people saw the Koreatown banners, they said, 'Where did that come from?' " said Mohsin Sharif, co-owner of the Oasis Market, a Middle Eastern grocery in the heart of Koreatown. "The fact is, there's a lot more than Koreans here."
    The cost to install the original banners: $12,000, covered by a city redevelopment grant. The cost to take them down: $5,000, also paid by the city.
    Over the next few weeks, the Koreatown merchants association will hold a series of neighborhood meetings to decide how to better define the nebulous area sandwiched between Uptown and Temescal.
    "I think we need to be more inclusive," said Darlene Drapkin, director of the Koreatown Northgate community benefit district. "If we want to attract business, we have to be more open about the different nodes here."

The glorious promises of diversity haven't worked out. Instead of a kumbaya rainbow of happy people, the reality is one squabble after another over turf.

•   •   •  

Yemen plans U.S.-funded militant rehab centre   [1/31/10]
Your tax dollars at work, once again dumped down a sewer. This exercise in futility is the result of Obama's insistence on shutting down the excellent prison at Gitmo. The prisoners have to go somewhere, so dirtbag governments like the Yemeni get to demand money for a meaningless program to "rehabilitate" killers.

Yemen will begin building an $11 million rehabilitation center for returning Guantanamo detainees in three months when it expects to receive funding from the United States, a government official said Wednesday.
    There are 91 Yemeni detainees left in the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Washington suspended transfers to Yemen this month because of a deteriorating security situation in the country, in the throes of a crackdown on a resurgent al Qaeda.
    Foreign ministers of Western powers, Gulf states, Egypt, Jordan and Turkey were meeting in London Wednesday to discuss ways to stabilize Yemen as it grapples with al Qaeda, a northern Shi'ite revolt and southern separatism.
    "Setting up the center will require $11 million and the U.S. side has announced it is prepared to provide the entire sum," the official said, declining to be named.

Hey, America has plenty of money to throw around, so Washington can continue to waste up a storm.

•   •   •  

Illegal-immigrant inmates no longer allowed in work program   [1/30/10]
Nearly bankrupt California just figured out that it is a waste of money to give job training to illegal aliens who will be deported at the conclusion of their sentences.

A board that oversees vocational training and work programs at California prisons has voted to discontinue allowing undocumented immigrant inmates set for deportation to participate in the California Prisons Industry Authority certification program.
    Authority spokesman Tom Collins said the aim of the Prison Industry Board action Thursday is to "ensure that the effective vocational training that CalPIA provides is first applied to inmates who will return to California's communities following their parole, rather than training individuals who will not."
    The program, established in its current form in 1982, provides training and jobs in the manufacturing and agricultural industries for inmates in 22 prisons across the state.
    Approximately 427 of the 5,700 inmates now participating are under an Immigration and Customs Enforcement hold and will be deported once their sentence is completed. Fifty-two of the 727 inmate workers enrolled in certification programs are also under an ICE hold, according to a staff report recommending the change.
    Collins said he did not know why inmates with ICE holds were not previously deemed ineligible for the program, but that the recommendation for the change came up as the board was exploring options for lowering costs and improving the effectiveness of the program.
    Recidivism rates for inmates who participated in the program are significantly lower than inmates who do not -- 12 percent of certification program participants paroled in fiscal year 2007-2008 re-offend, compared to 42 percent of the general prison population paroled during that time, according to the report. The report also estimated that limiting the program to inmates eligible for parole in California could translate to fewer inmates re-offending and a savings of $784,000 a year in corrections costs.

While on the topic of prisons, here's a related factoid:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's suggestion on Monday to build a prison in Mexico raised several questions, not least of which was how many illegal immigrant inmates in California actually have Mexican citizenship. Here's an answer, according to a Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation analysis. As of Dec. 31, about 68 percent of the 22,173 inmates with an actual or a potential immigration hold identified themselves as Mexican natives.

•   •   •  

Fifth of Swedish population foreign   [1/29/10]
Worsening globalization has been building in the far north.

Latest figures from Statistics Sweden reveal that in the last 50 years the number of foreigners living in Sweden or those with two foreign-born parents has risen from four to nearly 20 percent.
    A new report from Statistics Sweden (Statistiska CentralbyrŒn, SCB) reveals there are around 1.6 million foreigners currently residing in the country from a total population of 9.3 million.
    Annika Klinterfeldt, SCB population analyst told The Local the numbers are not surprising, with the total now surpassing 17 percent and edging ever closer to the 20 percent mark.
    "If we look at the trend over the last 50 years we can see growth in number of between 0.1-0.2 percent every year.
    "Back in 1960, foreigners or those with two foreign-born parents made up four percent of the population. It's been quite high for the last few years and we expect it to continue," she added. [...]
    Included in the Asian category, but not subdivided in the yearly report, are 142,053 Iraqis, 75,175 Iranians, 44,415 Lebanese, 35,886 Syrians, 27,552 Thais, 21,322 Chinese, 20,111 Vietnamese, 18 534 Indians, 14,292 Afghans, 9,818 Filipinos, 10,831 Koreans (North and South), and 10,823 Pakistanis.

The Tube below is an old Fox News segment, but it encapsulates the difficulty well. The problem is not just the growing percentage of foreign-born people, but the hostile Muslim ideology of many.

•   •   •  

Cats and dogs to be taken off menu in China   [1/29/10]
In the People's Republic, Beijing is making a big change in the chow department by ordering no more dogs and cats on the menu. It's hard to imagine that behavior will change much out in the countryside, but at least it's a start.

From serving it with turtle to stewing it with snake, China has savoured the delights of dog and cat meat for thousands of years. But now, the country known for its experimental culinary traditions could be about to end a centuries-old custom and remove both animals from the menu.
    In what would be China's first law against animal abuse, anyone caught eating cat or dog meat would face a fine of as much as 5,000 yuan (£450) and up to 15 days in jail. Organisations involved in the sale of either meat could be fined between 10,000 and 500,000 yuan. A draft law is expected to be sent to parliament, the National People's Congress, in April, according to state media.
    Dog meat - known euphemistically as "fragrant meat" - is an age-old delicacy, believed to have warming properties that make it particularly favoured as a winter dish. Consumption is most widespread in the northeast, where temperatures plunge in the winter. Practitioners of Chinese medicine say that dog meat is high in protein and fat, good for the kidneys, and boosts energy levels and male virility. Some parts of China have large numbers of dog farms, particularly Peixian county in southeastern Jiangsu province, home 2,000 years ago of an emperor known for his love of stewed dog with soft-shell turtle. The animals are also raised for their fur.

This article is good as far as it goes, but doesn't mention the intentional cruelty in the slaughter process, due to the belief of Chinese that an animal that suffers as it is being killed tastes better. (For details, see my 2006 article Diversity Is... Cruelty to Animals.)

Below, caged cats on the way to a Chinese market to be sold for food.

•   •   •  

To ward off evil, Zardari kills one black goat a day   [1/29/10]
President Zardari of Pakistan, a man with control over nuclear weapons, sacrifices a goat daily to protect himself from witchcraft.

A black goat is slaughtered almost daily to ward off 'evil eyes' and protect President Asif Ali Zardari from 'black magic'. Does this, and the use of camel and goat milk, make the beleaguered president appear to be a superstitious man?
    Well, not to his spokesman. "It has been an old practice of Mr Zardari to offer sadqa (animal sacrifice). He has been doing this for a long time," spokesman Farhatullah Babar told Dawn on Tuesday.

Oh, he has been performing animal sacrifice for a long time, so that makes it not a superstition.

But his detractors would see in his new-found religiosity a sign of nervousness in the wake of the scrapping of the NRO.
    One thing is certain: Hundreds of black goats have been sacrificed since Zardari moved into the President's House in September 2008. His trusted personal servant Bai Khan buys goats from Saidpur village. The animal is touched by Zardari before it is sent to his private house in F-8/2 to be sacrificed.
    Insiders say that when Zardari moved into the President's House, a flock of black partridges were introduced there for their supposedly magical effects.
    Unfortunately, the whole flock was electrocuted when a live wire fell on their cage.
    A camel, a cow and a few goats kept on the grounds of the presidency, however, survive and provide milk for its worthy resident.

It should be noted that animal sacrifice plays a big part in Islam (see The Virtue of Animal Sacrifice from an Islamic blog).
    However, the original reporting newspaper, Pakistan's Dawn, emphasized the superstition aspect: Goats sacrificed 'to ward off evil eyes'. Apparently it's okay to slaughter large numbers of animals to celebrate Eid, a major Islo-holiday, but the black magic thing is a no-no.
    No wonder India is nervous about nukes. Although average Indians rank high on the superstition scale, at least there's no indication that Prime Minister Singh takes action against the evil eye.

•   •   •  

Christian in Egypt: 'They Try to Kill Us'   [1/28/10]
In Egypt (and elsewhere), the Religion of Peace never sleeps when apostates are available to murder, as the Koran and other Islamic texts demand.

Egyptian Maher El-Gowhary and his 15 year old daughter Dina never pray twice at the same church, never stay longer than a month in any one apartment. They are constantly under threat, always on the run because they converted to Christianity in a largely Muslim country.
    Maher and Dina nervously agreed to meet us at a Church in Cairo. The priest at the Church said he feared problems from the Egyptian authorities and while he agreed to have us watch his Sunday mass, the Priest declined to speak to us about what is happening in Egypt and to the El-Gowhary's.
    They tell their story out of fear and desperation. Born Muslims they chose to convert to the Christian Church after both claim they had religious visions.
    Now Maher says "Muslims try to kill us, and will kill us if they find us." [...]
    In recent days the two met with the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom in Cairo. They asked for refugee status to get out of Egypt.
    A source at the Commission says its a complicated matter because Dina has a Muslim mother and there are legal issues, but their request is being considered.

I'm not kindly disposed toward the Refugee Industrial Complex, since many of the refugee claims are fraudulent, and the program has been key to admitting criminally diverse people into this country, whose cultural cluelessness guarantees resettlement workers remain employed.
    But people like the father and daughter should be given safe haven in America: their lives are at risk. Instead, the refugee enablers continue to drag in potentially dangerous characters like the 6000 Somalis recently added to the pipeline. Nobody wants more of them, after their gangster behavior and support for Islamic jihad.
    Or are endangered Christians not eligible to be refugees?

•   •   •  

Poll: Fla. voters want immigration laws enforced   [1/27/10]
FYI: the Florida unemployment rate for December was 11.6 percent, considerably higher than the national average. The poll was in response to calls from elites to allow a flood of Haitians following the recent earthquake, which would affect Florida the most.

Florida voters don't want immigration laws waived to make it easier for Haitians to stay in the United States or immigrate into the country, a new poll shows.
    Fifty-one percent of 1,618 registered Florida voters surveyed by Quinnipiac (Conn.) University said they wanted immigration laws enforced compared to 43 percent opposed to them being waived in the wake of the deadly Haitian earthquake Jan. 12.
    Voters were opposed, 50 percent to 46 percent, to a decision by the Obama Administration to grant temporary legal status for 18 months to Haitians living in the U.S. when the earthquake hit and divided on allowing more immigrants into the country. Quinnipiac said the survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.4 percentage points.

What sense does it make to welcome thousands more people into the country where there are no jobs for anyone? It doesn't help Haitians and serves to harm citizens.

•   •   •  

Venezuela and Securing Our Borders   [1/27/10]
Rep. Sue Myrick has long been a leader for America's borders, sovereignty and national security. In the Tube below, she explains how Hugo Chavez' Venezuela now provides an easy entrance point for Iranians and other unfriendlies to reach our country through the porous Mexican border.

Rep Myrick also discusses the category of Special Interest Countries, whose citizens (ASICs) receive a higher level of scrutiny when they are caught crossing the border illegally. Special Interest Aliens have been watched for a while -- persons who may pretend to be Mexicans but are Arabs or from other suspicious categories -- but the Venezuela connection is a new element.

Interestingly, every nation on this list is included in the 2010 Diversity Visa Lottery except for Pakistan and the Philippines, which are deemed by the State Deportment to be "not eligible" because we already have plenty of them. (Gaza and the West Bank are not real countries, but are full of jihad enthusiasts.)
    Washington's continuing generosity toward actual and potential enemies is truly astounding, not to mention unserious. The US government has had no diplomatic relations with Iran since the country's 1979 Islamic revolution (during which 53 Americans were held hostage for 444 days), but Hilary Clinton and company manage to hand out Diversity Visas to those hostile folks. Yemenis attacked the USS Cole in 2000 off the coast of Aden and killed 17 of our sailors, but no problema there either. Dozens of young Somali men have left Minnesota to help out with killing infidels in their beloved homeland, but the doors remain wide open to them as well (including an extra 6000 in the refugee category this year).
    Clearly there is no recognition of a war on terror or against jihadist Islam, whatever you want to call it, in the halls of the State Department.
    Following is a list of Special Interest Countries to which I've added the number of Diversity Visas each received for 2010:

Afghanistan 345, Algeria 1957, Bahrain 15, Bangladesh 6001, Djibouti 33, Egypt 4201, Eritrea 799, Indonesia 277, Iran 2773, Iraq 142, Jordan 143, Kazakhstan 343, Kuwait 70, Lebanon 181, Libya 152, Malaysia 60, Mauritania 20, Morocco 3124, Oman 2, Pakistan ZERO, Philippines ZERO, Qatar 13, Saudi Arabia 104, Somalia 229, Sudan 1084, Syria 98, Tajikistan 178, Tunisia 164, Turkmenistan 108, United Arab Emirates 30, Uzbekistan 4059, Yemen 72, Gaza, West Bank

•   •   •  

Feds find dubious home tax credit claims from Texas   [1/26/10]
"They only come to work"... and commit fraud when possible.

Federal inspectors scouring tax returns that contain a credit for first-time homebuyers have found something curious about claims from Texas.
    Nearly 1,000 were filed by people employing a special taxpayer identification number primarily used by illegal immigrants, who are not entitled to the credit.
    The Texas filings represented nearly one-third of the 3,200 suspicious homebuyer credit claims submitted by noncitizens around the country. The value of the credits from all the noncitizen claims was $20.8 million, a U.S. Treasury Department inspector general said.
    Texas' total was almost double that of similar suspicious filings from California, a state estimated to have nearly twice as many illegal residents.

•   •   •  

Our daughters should not be cut   [1/26/10]
From the Salon webzine: a rare admission from a liberal media outlet that diversity has its costs. As a result of welcoming any and all, America has become the home of cruel and misogynous customs.

Yes, FGM is practiced -- or at least planned -- on U.S. soil, on girls in immigrant families who were born and/or raised here. Perhaps even among people you know: Not long ago, a concerned mother posted on my Brooklyn-area parenting list-serv that she believed an eight-year-old friend of her daughter's had undergone some form of the procedure in her home country in the Middle East (and appeared to be markedly traumatized). Archana Pyati, an asylum attorney for Sanctuary for Families in New York, has encountered dozens of FGM cases just in the past six months. "The majority of our African clients have been through it, and most often, they are fighting to protect their daughters," she says. (Older relatives with "seniority" often push for the procedure.) "It is our hope that by recognizing that FGM may be occurring under our noses we will become better able to respond to it, just as we would any other form of violence against children," she says.
    Right now, though, that's not happening. While numerous countries, cities, and villages on other continents have made significant strides toward prohibiting and preventing the procedure -- and while it's been outlawed by U.S. federal law since 1996 and is also illegal in 17 states -- its practice by immigrant families here is, by all anecdotal reports, only increasing. Yet there remains practically no way to address it any way other than case by brutal, heartbreaking case. "The silence hasn't been broken here," says Taina Bien-Aime, executive director of Equality Now. "It's an issue that affects thousands of [U.S.] girls, some of whom were born here, and yet no one is really paying attention."

Criminal individuals are not eligible for legal immigration to the United States, but certain cultures with criminal practices are made very welcome indeed. For example the prevalence of FGM among Somalis is 98 percent, yet Somalis are admitted as both immigrants and refugees in large numbers -- over 80,000 in 25 years, as counted up by Refugee Resettlement Watch. And 6000 more are in the pipeline for this year.

•   •   •  

Will Business or Labor Blink First? Immigration Reform and "Future Flows"   [1/25/10]
The author of this Huffpo item is Jeffrey Kaye, who has done immigration reporting for PBS. He is right that the phrase "future flows" is important: it hints at the long-term goal of the open-borders crowd, that legal immigration should be massively increased indefinitely.

Here's a term--one you may be unfamiliar with--to add to your political lexicon: "future flows." In the weeks and months to come, we're going to be hearing it more as Congress very gradually turns its attention to reforming U.S. immigration laws.
    As legislators shape immigration legislation, business and union leaders are battling over the contentious issue of how best to control "future flows" of migrant workers. Even in a lousy economy, businesses want the ability to bring in foreign workers, skilled and unskilled, on both temporary and permanent work visas. A chief criticism by business of the last major overhaul of immigration law in 1986 was that the legislation, signed by President Ronald Reagan, contained provisions that gave workers amnesty (a good thing in their view) but failed to include any allowances for future flows (bad). On the other hand, unions historically have generally opposed temporary worker programs and denounced illegal immigration, fearing that migrant workers would undercut legal residents. However, labor's position has softened over the last decade in recognition of the glaring reality that as union membership has waned, the number and percentage of migrant workers in the economy has grown. For many union leaders, embracing, rather than shunning migrants seemed like a no-brainer.

Kaye goes on to explain how part of the latest amnesty bill includes a provision for a federal agency to determine the need for additional foreign labor, as if American workers didn't exist.
    The focus on labor is important since citizens are getting the shaft from Washington's legal immigration policy. As Gov. Dick Lamm has noted, "The United States has had zero net job growth since 2000, yet we have imported 10 million permanent immigrants in the same period."
    In addition, other major detriments to American society go unmentioned. They include social balkanization, bilingualism (i.e. Spanish everywhere), overuse of natural resources, national security threats, failing schools, increased crime, costs for building more infrastructure and the replacement of the independent values of Americans with the statism of most immigrant groups. What passes for debate on this subject is remarkably narrow these days.

•   •   •  

NYC's top cop Ray Kelly on decision to have terror trials in NY: We were not consulted   [1/24/10]
Obama-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed at your service, New York.

New York City's Police Commissioner Ray Kelly addressed the New York Young Republican Club on Thursday. Two hundred and fifty members of the organization were in attendance and mainly peppered the commissioner with questions regarding the upcoming 9/11 terror trials that are to be staged in lower Manhattan.
    When asked how the decision for the trials to be hosted in New York came about, Commisioner Kelly's response produced gasps among audience members (h/t Loud Citizen).:
"We were not consulted," Kelly said tersely of the decision. He stated that the trial "will raise the threat level of this city," a threat that "will not fade any time soon." And it affects more than lower Manhattan, we learned. "We will have to look at the entire city as a potential target."
Commissioner Kelly also hinted that the terror trials could potentially be scrapped. He mentioned a recent Newsweek piece by Michael Isikoff discussing this issue. Moreover, lower Manhattan's Community Board 1 may very well veto the idea of the trials being held in their neighborhood.

•   •   •  

Ban on burqas receives strong public support in France   [1/24/10]
France is moving in the right direction, though it has taken long enough.

A report drawn up by French MPs will this week call for a ban on Afghan-style burqas and other garments that cover a woman's face.
    The proposal has strong public support. According to an opinion poll by Ipsos for the magazine Le Point, 57% of voters favour a ban while 37% are opposed.
    The recommendations of a parliamentary commission, to be published on Tuesday, are expected to include a bar on wearing full veils on public transport and in schools, hospitals and public-sector offices including post offices. The commission is thought likely to call for a total ban after further consultation.
    President Nicolas Sarkozy launched a debate on veils last June, telling a special sitting of both houses of parliament that they were "not welcome" in France. He said last week the full veil was "contrary to our values and to the ideals we have of women's dignity". [...]
    Hassen Chalghoumi, a Tunisian-born imam in northern Paris, backed the proposed ban last week, saying full-face veils had no basis in Islam and "belong to a tiny minority tradition reflecting an ideology that scuttles the Muslim religion".
    "The burqa is a prison for women, a tool of sexist domination," he said.

In addition, the burqa is a swell disguise for both common criminals and Islo-terrorists. Daniel Pipes has a rather sizable list of miscreant cases, remarking "one cannot have faceless persons walking the streets, driving cars, or otherwise entering public spaces."

Below, a street scene in Marseille in the newly diversified France: "Is that a 9mm in your pocket or were you just shoplifting?"

•   •   •  

Feds Rush To Put Illegal Haitians To Work   [1/23/10]
Why is Washington giving away American jobs to lawbreakers, during a terrible jobs depression? The government has no right to hurt citizens in the process of helping Haitians.

•   •   •  

Editorial: Mexican migrants due for image makeover   [1/22/10]
In Dallas, the official Mexi-booster decided to pursue a contrarian marketing scheme by naming a few tiny defects in his countrymen's national character.

Mexico's new consul general in Dallas, Juan Carlos Cue-Vega, has an admirable and ambitious agenda for the estimated 400,000 to 500,000 Mexicans living in Dallas and other cities covered by his consular region. Cue-Vega says his compatriots here have a bad reputation, and it's time for an image makeover.
    With refreshing candor, he is blunt about the problem: "Frankly, we have spoken about the issues that make us not look very good, like celebrations using guns, littering, [being] noisy in the neighborhoods, leaving the kids at home while going to work. These are social and cultural things that we need to change."

Hey, just hire an image consultant to make citizens forget about the unpleasant invasion aspect and the inappropriate cultural fit. That'll work, for sure.
    Plus, Senor Cue-Vega's list of behavioral piggery was far from complete. He could have included Mexican men's sexual pursuit of under-age girls, an epidemic of lethal drunk driving, a massive school drop-out rate, animal cruelty, an acceptance of corruption and propensity for crime of all sorts.
    Oh, and 58 percent of Mexicans believe the American border means nada.

•   •   •  

California unemployment remains at 12.4 percent   [1/22/10]
More dreary jobless numbers are now in for December.

Imperial County in Southern California had the highest unemployment rate in the state at 27.7 percent. Marin County's rate was the lowest, at 7.8 percent.
    More than 2.2 million Californians were without work in December. The number does not include the nearly 500,000 workers who have taken low-paying or part-time jobs because that's all they could find, or the 115,000 people who have given up looking for work, according to the state.
    December capped off a dismal year where the state lost more than a half-million jobs. While most industries cut employment, there was one bright spot: Education and health care posted a 1.3 percent increase for the year.
    According to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, California has the fifth-highest unemployment rate in the nation.
    Michigan tops the nation with 14.6 percent, followed by Nevada, Rhode Island and South Carolina. The nation's overall unemployment rate was unchanged in December at 10 percent.

In addition, Unemployment Rose In 43 States Last Month.

•   •   •  

Marc Thiessen on Hannity   [1/22/10]
The author of the new book "Courting Disaster" explains how the Obama administration has made bonehead national security decisions that endanger us all. Very informative and important.

•   •   •  

Man Claims Terror Ties in Little Rock Shooting   [1/22/10]
At a time when the Pentagon is doing a tapdance of denial about the jihadist motivation for the Fort Hood shootings, the Muslim who murdered a young soldier outside an Army recruiting station is insisting that he killed for Allah, as the Koran instructs.

MEMPHIS - A Tennessee man accused of killing a soldier outside a Little Rock, Ark., military recruiting station last year has asked a judge to change his plea to guilty, claiming for the first time that he is affiliated with a Yemen-based affiliate of Al Qaeda.
    In a letter to the judge presiding over his case, the accused killer, Abdulhakim Muhammad, calls himself a soldier in Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and calls the shooting "a Jihadi Attack" in retribution for the killing of Muslims by American troops.
    "I wasn't insane or post traumatic nor was I forced to do this Act," Mr. Muhammad said in a two-page, hand-printed note in pencil. The attack, which he said did not go as planned, was "justified according to Islamic Laws and the Islamic Religion. Jihad - to fight those who wage war on Islam and Muslims."

You can read the accused shooter's letter admitting to Islamic jihad over at Jawa.

•   •   •  

A Dark Day for the Enlightenment   [1/22/10]
Author Bruce Bawer resides in Europe, and has written a couple of books about the threat of Islam to western civilization. As a writer, he is particularly attuned to the Islam/free speech issue there. Bawer emphasizes the threat to traditional free speech posed by the inappropriate response of the west to hostile Islam, typified by the trial of Geert Wilders for insulting Muslims, which has just begun in the Netherlands.

The charges are itemized. First, Wilders is charged with having "intentionally offended a group of people, i.e. Muslims, based on their religion." Second, with having "incited to hatred of people, i.e. Muslims, based on their religion." Third, with having "incited to discrimination . . . against people, i.e. Muslims, based on their religion." Fourth, with having "incited to hatred of people, i.e. non-Western immigrants and/or Moroccans, based on their race." And fifth, with having "incited to discrimination . . . against people, i.e. non-Western immigrants and/or Moroccans, based on their race."
    Supporting these charges is a long list of statements from Wilders, many purely factual, others opinions that follow logically from those facts. Among them: "The demographic composition of the population is the biggest problem of the Netherlands" and "those Moroccan boys are really violent. They beat up people because of their sexual orientation." Absurdly, among the statements cited in support of the charges against Wilders are his direct quotations from the Koran in Fitna, such as "Therefore, when ye meet the Unbelievers in fight, smite at their necks; at length, when ye have thoroughly subdued them, bind a bond firmly on them" and "Fight them until there is no dissension, and the religion is entirely Allah's." The summons also mentions footage shown in Fitna of imams preaching against unbelievers: "What makes Allah happy? Allah is happy if non-Muslims are being killed" and "Destroy the unbelievers and polytheists, your (Allah's) enemies and the enemies of the religion. Allah, count them and kill them up to the very last of them. And do not spare a single one."

Also worthwhile is the CBN reporting, Dutch Politician Facing Trial for Hate Speech.

Hundreds of Wilders' supporters demonstrated outside an Amsterdam court Wednesday at the start of his criminal trial for allegedly inciting hate against the Dutch Muslim minority. The Dutch are not given to overstatement, but one paper calls this the "Trial of the Century."
    It pits Wilders' right to free speech against European notions of political correctness, and also against Dutch Muslim fears of persecution.

•   •   •  

The Fort Hood Report: Why No Mention of Islam?   [1/21/10]
How totally lame and PC is the Pentagon's report about the Fort Hood mass murders?
    So lame that even Time magazine noticed.

The U.S. military's just-released report into the Fort Hood shootings spends 86 pages detailing various slipups by Army officers but not once mentions Major Nidal Hasan by name or even discusses whether the killings may have had anything to do with the suspect's view of his Muslim faith. And as Congress opens two days of hearings on Wednesday into the Pentagon probe of the Nov. 5 attack that left 13 dead, lawmakers want explanations for that omission.
    John Lehman, a member of the 9/11 commission and Navy Secretary during the Reagan Administration, says a reluctance to cause offense by citing Hasan's view of his Muslim faith and the U.S. military's activities in Muslim countries as a possible trigger for his alleged rampage reflects a problem that has gotten worse in the 40 years that Lehman has spent in and around the U.S. military. The Pentagon report's silence on Islamic extremism "shows you how deeply entrenched the values of political correctness have become," he told TIME on Tuesday. "It's definitely getting worse, and is now so ingrained that people no longer smirk when it happens."

Robert Spencer commented similarly: Pentagon on Fort Hood: Jihad? What Jihad?.

Political correctness was responsible for the murders of thirteen people at Fort Hood. If it had not held the political and military establishments in a stranglehold, Nidal Hasan would never have remained in the U.S. military, much less risen to the rank of major. He would have been removed from the ranks long before he had had a chance to murder anyone at Fort Hood. Political correctness was responsible for the fear among his superior officers -- they knew that if they disciplined or removed Hasan, they would have faced charges of "discrimination" and "bigotry." And such charges can ruin careers these days.

I tried to watch the Fort Hood hearing on C-span yesterday, but the testimony was so abstract and dissociated from events that it hardly made sense. The Senators' questions were sensible, but Togo West and Admiral Vernon Clark were obtuse.

•   •   •  

Sen. Sessions Grills FBI Director Muller on Christmas Bomber   [1/21/10]
Inquiring minds want to know who gave the order that the Nigerian terrorist would immediately get all the rights of an American citizen.

•   •   •  

"Hate speech or Free speech? Geert Wilders on trial"   [1/20/10]
The trial of Dutch member of Parliament and free speech champion Geert Wilder began this week. The event is a disturbing marker of the devolution of Europe into Eurabia, because too many of the people would rather surrender to totalitarian Islam than defend their freedoms.

See also Geert Wilders' statement to the court, translated into English: Geert Wilders's speech at his trial today:

I would like to make use of my right to speak for a few minutes.
    Freedom is the most precious of all our attainments and the most vulnerable. People have devoted their lives to it and given their lives for it. Our freedom in this country is the outcome of centuries. It is the consequence of a history that knows no equal and has brought us to where we are now.
    I believe with all my heart and soul that the freedom in the Netherlands is threatened. That what our heritage is, what generations could only dream about, that this freedom is no longer a given, no longer self-evident.
    I devote my life to the defence of our freedom. I know what the risks are and I pay a price for it every day. I do not complain about it; it is my own decision. I see that as my duty and it is why I am standing here.
    I know that the words I use are sometimes harsh, but they are never rash. It is not my intention to spare the ideology of conquest and destruction, but I am not any more out to offend people. I have nothing against Muslims. I have a problem with Islam and the Islamization of our country because Islam is at odds with freedom.
    Future generations will wonder to themselves how we in 2010, in this place, in this room, earned our most precious attainment. Whether there is freedom in this debate for both parties and thus also for the critics of Islam, or that only one side of the discussion may be heard in the Netherlands? Whether freedom of speech in the Netherlands applies to everyone or only to a few? The answer to this is at once the answer to the question whether freedom still has a home in this country.

•   •   •  

Hitler Finds Out Scott Brown Won Massachusetts Senate Seat   [1/20/10]
Let the jokes and send-ups begin!

•   •   •  

Massachusetts vote: Scott Brown's victory speech in full   [1/20/10]
So far, so good. There's a lot to like about Senator-elect Brown, particularly the following snip from his victory speech.

I will work in the Senate to defend our nation's interests and to keep our military second to none. As a lieutenant colonel and 30-year member of the Army National Guard, I will keep faith with all who serve, and get our veterans all the benefits they deserve.
    And let me say this, with respect to those who wish to harm us, I believe that our Constitution and laws exist to protect this nation - they do not grant rights and privileges to enemies in wartime. In dealing with terrorists, our tax dollars should pay for weapons to stop them, not lawyers to defend them.
    Raising taxes, taking over our health care, and giving new rights to terrorists is the wrong agenda for our country. What I've heard again and again on the campaign trail, is that our political leaders have grown aloof from the people, impatient with dissent, and comfortable in the back room making deals. And we can do better.

Have Donks and the President heard the message yet that we citizens are sick to death of arrogant Washington suits deciding what is good for us?

Brown's campaign website defines issues:

Immigration
I recognize that our strength as a nation is built on the immigrant experience in America. I welcome legal immigration to this country. However, we are also a nation of laws and government should not adopt policies that encourage illegal immigration. Providing driverÕs licenses and in-state tuition to illegal immigrant families will act as a magnet in drawing more people here in violation of the law and it will impose new costs on taxpayers. I oppose amnesty, and I believe we ought to strengthen our border enforcement and institute an employment verification system with penalties for companies that hire illegal immigrants.

Gun issues
I support the Second Amendment and believe that citizens have the right to keep and bear arms as a basic constitutional liberty. I support safe and responsible gun ownership.

•   •   •  

GOP rep.: Ft. Hood report 'sanitized'   [1/19/10]
More objections about the politically correct Pentagon report about the jihadist killer Hasan.

The Pentagon's 86-page report on the Fort Hood massacre was "sanitized" to avoid discussing Islamic terrorism, the congressman who represents the base told POLITICO Monday.
    The report, released last week, says that the Army's middle management missed signals about Nidal Malik Hasan in the months leading up to the mass shooting.
    But missing from the report is any discussion of what Rep. John Carter (R-Texas) said was the a "crisis" with Islamic terrorism. Hasan allegedly wore ritual Muslim garb shouted "God is great" in Arabic when opening fire on a group of soldiers on the base - facts Carter said should have been disclosed in the report to help soldiers identify such signs in the future.
    A search of the report does not turn up any mentions of Islam.

More details about how Hasan was not held accountable by his superiors: Hasan's med training was troubled.

Often teetering on failure during his medical training, Nidal Hasan hit a particularly rough patch in 2007 when his Army superior cited him for unprofessional behavior, inappropriately discussing religion, underperforming in his residency program and being too fat.
    Yet the same supervisor who meticulously catalogued Hasan's problems suddenly swept them under the rug when graduation arrived that year for the man now charged in the Nov. 5 massacre at Fort Hood, Texas, government documents show.
    Hasan, then a captain, was rated "Outstanding Performance, Must Promote" by that supervisor, Maj. Scott Moran, and as "Best Qualified" by another, Col. John Bradley, shortly after he barely escaped the punishment of administrative probation.

It's good to see some names at last.

•   •   •  

Lake Worth area crackdown targets those who rob immigrants   [1/18/10]
Behold: your tax dollars at work, under the diversity-friendly Obama Justice Department. A big chunk of cash -- half a million dollars -- has been awarded to a Florida county sheriff department to protect illegal aliens from predatory citizens.
    Oh, the horror, for poor aliens who came to America for a better life, but get their cash pinched by the cruel locals.

Criminals often target Guatemalans and other immigrants because they tend to carry cash and have traditionally been reluctant to report crimes.
    The Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office hopes to change that.
    The sheriff's office recently won a two-year, $500,000 grant from the U.S. Justice Department that will be used to educate the city's immigrants about crime and more vigorously prosecute gang members and other criminals who prey on them.
    "The suspects know if they wait it out long enough the victims won't show up for the prosecution," said Capt. Rolando Silva, commander of the sheriff's District 14 office, which covers Lake Worth. "It's a huge injustice."
    By March, the sheriff's office plans to hire a community liaison, a non-uniformed, bilingual civilian who will be charged with reaching out to the city's undocumented immigrants - those who might be reluctant to talk to uniformed deputies for fear of deportation.

That's right, a police department can't do proper outreach to illegal foreigners without a non-threatening bilingual specialist with cultural competence for Guatemalans.

Immigrants also tend to engage in behaviors that make them easy targets.
    Some linger on street corners looking for work. They also spend time socializing on the streets in small groups at night.

Getting blotto drunk makes for an easy mark, also.

The sheriff's office liaison is expected to teach immigrants how to avoid becoming victims and that they can report crimes in several languages without fear of being deported.

•   •   •  

Thousands protest sheriff's immigration efforts   [1/17/10]
A sizable gaggle of illegal aliens and their lefty pals gathered on Saturday to protest the competent immigration enforcement of Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Maricopa County. You might think that a wise strategy would have been the sob-story appeal with lots of tearful kiddies that Mexes use so frequently.
    Instead, some paraders were decked out in Aztec drag -- not the most friendly message, although no human sacrifices were performed that we know of.
    Do the protesters pictured below look like immigrants or invaders?

Phoenix police said Saturday night that five people were arrested during the protest and taken to Maricopa County Jail. Three were booked for aggravated assault on police; another was booked for aggravated assault on police and disorderly conduct. The fifth was booked for disorderly conduct and aggravated assault on police.
    Though the scene of the disturbance was cleared within minutes, the aftermath was chaotic. Protesters yelled obscenities at police officers in riot gear. One officer shook his pepper spray canister as he ordered people to keep moving. One protester wore goggles, and several others wrapped bandanas around their mouths.
    Critics have accused deputies working in Arpaio's immigration efforts of racial profiling, which the sheriff denies. He says his deputies approach people when they have probable cause to believe they had committed crimes.

•   •   •  

Hood massacre report gutless and shameful   [1/16/10]
Military analyst Ralph Peters has nothing good to say about the Pentagon's report on the Fort Hood terror attack, to put it mildly. In fact, he sounds furious.

Rarely in the course of human events has a report issued by any government agency been so cowardly and delusional. It's so inept, it doesn't even rise to cover-up level.
    Protecting the Force: Lessons from Fort Hood never mentions Islamist terror. Its 86 mind-numbing pages treat "the alleged perpetrator," Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, as just another workplace shooter (guess they're still looking for the pickup truck with the gun rack).
    The report is so politically correct that its authors don't even realize the extent of their political correctness -- they're body-and-soul creatures of the PC culture that murdered 12 soldiers and one Army civilian. [...]
    Unquestionably, the officers who let Hasan slide, despite his well-known wackiness and hatred of America, bear plenty of blame. But this disgraceful pretense of a report never asks why they didn't stop Hasan's career in its tracks.
    The answer is straightforward: Hasan's superiors feared -- correctly -- that any attempt to call attention to his radicalism or to prevent his promotion would backfire on them, destroying their careers, not his.
    Hasan was a protected-species minority. Under the PC tyranny of today's armed services, no non-minority officer was going to take him on.
    This is a military that imposes rules of engagement that protect our enemies and kill our own troops and that court-martials heroic SEALs to appease a terrorist. Ain't many colonels willing to hammer the Army's sole Palestinian-American psychiatrist.
    Of course, there's no mention of political correctness by the panel. Instead, the report settles for blinding flashes of the obvious, such as "We believe a gap exists in providing information to the right people." Gee, really? Well, that explains everything. Money well spent!
    Or "Department of Defense force protection policies are not optimized for countering internal threats." Of course not: You can't stop an internal threat you refuse to recognize.

It's disturbing to see the extent of political correctness at the highest level of the military. Shortly after the Fort Hood attack, General George Casey opined, "And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that's worse." Now we see that he was not off the reservation, as far as dogma, from the rest of the Pentagon: diversity ideology has replaced protecting the country as the prime directive.
    And if the military is too PC to protect its own people, how can we mere citizens think that it will keep us secure?

Col Peters appeared on Fox News to condemn the Armny's political correctness: This Is A Whitewash! Ralph Peters On Pentagon Report On Fort Hood Shooting.

•   •   •  

The Underlying Tragedy   [1/15/10]
Columnist David Brooks tackled some tough questions in why large-scale do-goodery often fails when countries like America try to help disaster states like Haiti get their act together.
    Going to culture analyst Lawrence Harrison for guidance is always a good idea.

Third, it is time to put the thorny issue of culture at the center of efforts to tackle global poverty. Why is Haiti so poor? Well, it has a history of oppression, slavery and colonialism. But so does Barbados, and Barbados is doing pretty well. Haiti has endured ruthless dictators, corruption and foreign invasions. But so has the Dominican Republic, and the D.R. is in much better shape. Haiti and the Dominican Republic share the same island and the same basic environment, yet the border between the two societies offers one of the starkest contrasts on earth - with trees and progress on one side, and deforestation and poverty and early death on the other.
    As Lawrence E. Harrison explained in his book "The Central Liberal Truth," Haiti, like most of the world's poorest nations, suffers from a complex web of progress-resistant cultural influences. There is the influence of the voodoo religion, which spreads the message that life is capricious and planning futile. There are high levels of social mistrust. Responsibility is often not internalized. Child-rearing practices often involve neglect in the early years and harsh retribution when kids hit 9 or 10.
    We're all supposed to politely respect each other's cultures. But some cultures are more progress-resistant than others, and a horrible tragedy was just exacerbated by one of them.

Prof. Harrison's chart of progress-prone vs. progress-resistant culture contains a lot of wisdom. (Larger image here.)

   

•   •   •  

Coakley Admits She "Looked the Other Way" on Immigration Law   [1/15/10]
Memorable quote from Massachusetts Senatorial candidate Coakley, "We are always going to have open borders."

Excerpt from an interview with Mindy Todd of WGBH-Boston on Nov. 17, 2009...

•   •   •  

Lake Co. sheriff: Arrest shows 'devastation' of illegal immigrant crime   [1/15/10]
You don't see headlines that the one above very often. The sheriff is correct that the ripoff from identity theft creates a huge burden for the victims.

Lake County Sheriff Mark Curran said the recent arrest of a Franklin Park man is another example of the havoc wrought by illegal aliens who commit crimes.
    Sergio Uscanga, 26, is charged with identity theft and forgery for using the financial information of a Lake Villa Township man to work for four years.
    Curran said Uscanga, who entered this country from Mexico, purchased the name and Social Security number of the 39-year-old victim.
    Uscanga used the information to apply for a job at Banner Service Co. in Carpentersville, Curran said, and was hired Sept. 12, 2005.
    This past December, Curran said, the victim received a letter from the Internal Revenue Service saying he owed taxes on the wages he had been paid from the job.
    The man called police, and Curran said sheriff's detectives tracked down Uscanga and arrested him Sunday morning.
    "This case is another example of the devastation criminals who are in this country illegally can cause," Curran said. "This victim will now have to spend months getting his credit straightened out and dealing with an IRS bill he does not owe."
    Curran, who has repeatedly called for harsh punishment and expedited deportation of illegal aliens who commit crimes, said it is estimated up to 50 percent of people in this country illegally have stolen identity information.

•   •   •  

Lawmakers urge improved defenses against extremism   [1/14/10]
Senators Lieberman and Collins, who head up the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, have essentially condemned the political correctness that has been hamstringing the military's protection of the troops.

A Senate committee on Wednesday urged the Defense Department to take firmer steps to combat the threat of Islamic extremism within the ranks, calling the current procedures inadequate for heading off possible attacks.
    The recommendations by leaders of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee come as the Pentagon is preparing to release an internal review of the shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, that left 13 people dead. That review, directed by two former senior defense officials, will propose ways to improve the military's ability to identify service members who may be a danger to others and quicken reaction times by emergency response teams.
    Led by Connecticut independent Sen. Joe Lieberman, the committee's investigation of the Fort Hood has focused on whether the military missed numerous signs the accused shooter, Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan, had embraced a radical view of Islam.
    In a Jan. 13 letter to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Lieberman, along with Sen. Susan Collins, the committee's top Republican, contend the threat of "homegrown terrorism" inspired by violent Islamic extremism is growing and the military isn't exempt.
    As a result, the Defense Department's existing policies for dealing with personnel that become involved in gangs and racist groups need to be expanded to cover new avenues of violence, Lieberman and Collins say. Not only will that head off future attacks, it will protect Muslim-Americans in the military from suspicion, they said.

The Senators' letter can be read at the Maine Public Broadcasting site: Collins Recommends Ban on "Violent Islamist Extremism" in Military.

•   •   •  

DWI killer of mother, daughter gets maximum sentence   [1/14/10]
On June 8, Lori Donohue and her 8-year-old daughter Kayla were hit and killed as they left the girl's dance class by a drunk-driving illegal alien (see New York State Mother and Daughter Struck Down by Illegal Alien).
    The killer was sentenced recently to the maximum allowable, after victim statements by Lori's husband Robert (pictured here) and her father, John Luhrs. However, 8 1/3 to 25 years in prison does not seem like an adequate punishment for causing the deaths of two people.

An illegal immigrant who was driving with no license and a blood-alcohol level nearly twice the legal limit when he plowed into and killed a Southeast mother and daughter received the maximum sentence Wednesday of 8 1/3 to 25 years in state prison.
    Conses Garcia-Zacarias, 35, who has been held in the Putnam County jail since the June 8 fatalities, pleaded guilty in November to two counts of vehicular homicide in the deaths of Lori Donohue, 37, and her 8-year-old daughter, Kayla. The second-grader and her mother were leaving the girl's dance class at Seven Stars School of Performing Arts in Brewster when Garcia-Zacarias struck them with a pickup truck.
    The act instantly took away half of the Donohue family, leaving Robert Donohue and his 5-year-old son, Christopher, grieving for the wife and mother, sister and daughter they lost.
    "Explaining to my 5-year-old son that he can never hug or kiss his mother and sister was the most difficult thing I've ever done," Donohue told the court Thursday.
    Donohue was accompanied in Putnam County Court by more than two dozen friends and family members who took up four of the six rows in the courtroom.
    Lori Donohue's father, John Luhrs, 70, of Bethel, Conn., also gave a victim-impact statement. He placed photos of his daughter and granddaughter on the prosecutor's table before looking up at Putnam County Judge James Rooney and saying, "Your Honor: A parent's worst nightmare."

You can watch the victim's statements of Lori's father and her husband Robert in the video below.

Finally, there is a remembrance website, LoriandKayla.org.

•   •   •  

Dutch lawmaker tries to avoid hate speech charges   [1/13/10]
Back in the 1930s, when Winston Churchill warned of the threat from Hitler, he was disparaged by some as alarmist, but no one suggested that he should be locked up for damaging the self-esteem of the Nazis.
    Today's liberal society, however, demands punishment for those who voice unpopular opinion, e.g. the idea that not all diversity is equal, particularly the hostile Islamic variety. Elites insist that the west bend over backwards to protect the delicate feelings of Muslims, whose religion demands death for homosexuality, apostasy and adultery.
    Free speech is increasingly weakened as speaking ill of Islam is rapidly becoming a crime under European "hate speech" laws. Interestingly the Koran itself is full of admonitions to kill any and all non-Muslims and would be recognized as a document containing hate speech in any honest analysis.
    In fact, Geert Wilders' brief documentary film Fitna merely quoted and illustrated the Koran. For that defense of western civilization and exercise of free speech, Wilders now faces jail in the Netherlands.

Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders asked judges on Wednesday to drop or reduce charges against him of criminal incitement, arguing that his anti-Islam message falls within the boundaries of freedom of speech.
    Wilders, one of the country's most popular politicians, is due to go on trial in March for allegedly insulting Muslims as a group and inciting hatred and discrimination against them.
    After the closed pretrial hearing at Amsterdam District Court, Wilders said the session was "the first day of a political trial."
    Charges against Wilders stem from his 2008 short film "Fitna," which offended many Muslims by juxtaposing Quranic verses against images of terrorism by Islamic radicals.

Below is clip of the first eight minutes of Fitna.

Geert Wilders has warned America that Islam's fanaticism threatens free people everywhere. In the talk below he quotes Mohammed: "I have been ordered by Allah to fight against people until they testify that there is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his messenger." Europe's welcome of Muslim immigration looks more and more like a fatal mistake.

•   •   •  

Congressman seeking to bar Iranians from US   [1/12/10]
The above headline is from an Iranian news service, and they are most interested in how US policy effects them. In fact, Rep. J. Gresham Barrett would like to keep out citizens from other unfriendly countries as well.
    What's odd is that Iranians can travel here at all. There are no diplomatic relations between Washington and Tehran, yet Iranians visit the US at will? How does that work? Even more curious is the diversity visa program, which always has a big slice for Iranians (e.g. 2,773 in 2010), despite the fact that Iran is a self-declared enemy os America. Nothing has changed since the Iranian occupation of the US Embassy in Tehran in the late 1970s.
    There's hardly a week that goes by without President Ahmadinejad threatening somebody. He has blamed this country for the protests in Iran -- like Iranians aren't sentient adults.
    Anyway, America has a right to regulate who enters the country, and a whole lot more regulating is indicated.

A US congressman has announced his plans to reintroduce the Stop Terrorists Entry Program (STEP) Act into Congress, which calls for the deportation of most Iranians without permanent resident status.
    The STEP Act, a bill that was originally presented in 2003, would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to bar citizens of Iran, Cuba, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen from entering the United States.
    Rep. J. Gresham Barrett says he is reintroducing the STEP Act in response to the Fort Hood shooting, carried out by a US citizen, and the Christmas Day attempt to blow up an airplane over Detroit, attempted by a Nigerian national.
    If passed, the bill would deport all Iranians on student visas, temporary work visas, exchange visas, and tourist visas from the United States within 60 days.

Rep. Barrett's January 5 press release has more background:

The State Department has indentified the following states as sponsors of terrorism: Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria. Given recent reports of increased levels of terrorist activities in Yemen, Congressman Barrett has requested that its citizens not be allowed to enter the United States.

•   •   •  

The diversity visa lottery must go   [1/12/10]
Roger Hedgecock has some compelling statistics about why the diversity visa is a national security threat. The diversity visa lottery picks 50,000 names out of a hat every year from countries deemed insufficiently represented in America's immigrant cohort. The idea is that America will be improved by still more diversity (!)

Among the legacy-of-Ted-Kennedy laws that plague this country is one that guarantees the legal immigration of terrorists to the U.S. It's called the "Diversity Visa Lottery" or "Green Card Lottery." You must make this abomination a priority for repeal in Congress. [...]
    For 2010, 13.8 million people from eligible countries entered the lottery, and 102,800 were chosen by lottery to apply for the 50,000 visas available for 2010.
    In 2010, 72 citizens of Yemen are "winners" and will immigrate legally to the U.S. More than 1,000 Yemenis have been "winners" since 2001.
    In 2010, the 72 Yemenis will be joined by 2,773 Iranians, 4,201 Egyptians, 343 Afghanis, 98 Syrians, 229 Somalis, and (amazingly) three North Koreans! They are all legal migrants to the U.S.
    Are these "winners" checked against the various "terror watch lists"? Are they graduates of Gitmo? Are any "dots" connected in this program? No one knows - at least no one will say.

The only requirement to be eligible for the drawing is a high-school diploma (or equivalent) or two years of work experience. The winners are awarded a direct and rapid path to American citizenship. What could possibly go wrong?
    Maybe welcoming terrorists??
    One indication is that over a dozen countries getting diversity visas are on the TSA watch list for increased screening at airports, noted in the map below:

Incidentally these problems have been recognized for years (e.g. see my article from 2004, Time to Dump the Diversity Visa); they are just more outrageous now given the increased hostile activity by jihadists. The GAO noted in 2007 that nearly 10,000 visas had been awarded to citizens of state sponsors of terror, as noted in my blog from that year, GAO Notes Open Doors for Terrorist Diversity.
    (See the original GAO report: Fraud Risks Complicate State's Ability to Manage Diversity Visa Program)
    Finally, Congressman Bob Goodlatte has submitted legislation on several occasions to end the idiotic program. This Tube (visa lottery- a threat to our nations security), dated May 5, 2009, is a good explainer.

•   •   •  

TB a top priority for public health leaders   [1/11/10]
San Francisco has a full plate of sanctuary-connected problems, and one is the increased threat to public health because of putting out the welcome mat for illegal aliens from around the world. One result is having more than three times the national rate of tuberculosis.
    Tuberculosis is a bacterial infection which is passed through the air, so the crowded conditions common to illegal aliens are a perfect breeding ground for more cases to develop. Plus nearly a third of San Francisco residents are Chinese, and China is home to above-average rates of drug-resistant TB.

About 100 cases of multi-drug resistant TB - and two to four cases of extensively drug resistant TB - show up in the United States each year. San Francisco usually sees one to four multi-drug resistant cases of TB a year. The city has seen one case of extensively drug-resistant TB. That patient was diagnosed in 2005 and it took three years to cure him.
    San Francisco gets about 120 cases of TB each year. That's about 14.6 cases per 100,000 people, which is twice the statewide rate and more than three times the national rate of 4.2 cases per 100,000. It's also the highest rate in the Bay Area, although several counties are also higher than the state and national averages.
    The reason for the high rate of disease in San Francisco is because of the city's large foreign-born population. Most people who get TB were infected outside the United States, including countries where the disease is much more prevalent.

The issue of drug-resistant TB is explained in more detail in a December article, First case of highly drug-resistant TB found in US.

"Drug resistance is starting to be a very big problem. In the past, people stopped worrying about TB and it came roaring back. We need to make sure that doesn't happen again," said Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who was himself infected with tuberculosis while caring for drug-resistant patients at a New York clinic in the early '90s. "We are all connected by the air we breathe, and that is why this must be everyone's problem."

The main reason for the re-emergence of infectious diseases once thought conquered has been the misuse of antibiotics, which has allowed drug-resistant mutations to develop. It also doesn't help when people with communicable disease are not kept out at the border.

•   •   •  

In Hasan case, superiors ignored their own worries   [1/11/10]
Politically correct superiors in the US Army let an obviously incompetent doctor advance in rank because no one wanted to speak ill of a Muslim.
    You might think the Army would put the safety and well-being of its soldiers as its top priority, but not so much, as it turns out. The Army was busy celebrating diversity instead of requiring competence. Thirteen people are dead as a result.

A Defense Department review of the shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, has found the doctors overseeing Maj. Nidal Hasan's medical training repeatedly voiced concerns over his strident views on Islam and his inappropriate behavior, yet continued to give him positive performance evaluations that kept him moving through the ranks.
    The picture emerging from the review ordered by Defense Secretary Robert Gates is one of supervisors who failed to heed their own warnings about an officer ill-suited to be an Army psychiatrist, according to information gathered during the internal Pentagon investigation and obtained by The Associated Press. The review has not been publicly released.
    Hasan, 39, is accused of murdering 13 people on Nov. 5 at Fort Hood, the worst killing spree on a U.S. military base.
    What remains unclear is why Hasan would be advanced in spite of all the worries over his competence. That is likely to be the subject of a more detailed accounting by the department. Recent statistics show the Army rarely blocks junior officers from promotion, especially in the medical corps.
    In telling episodes from the latter stages of Hasan's lengthy medical education in the Washington, D.C., area, he gave a class presentation questioning whether the U.S.-led war on terror was actually a war on Islam. And fellow students said he suggested that Shariah (shah-REE'-yuh), or Islamic law, trumped the Constitution and he attempted to justify suicide bombings.
    Yet no one in Hasan's chain of command appears to have challenged his eligibility to hold a secret security clearance even though they could have because the statements raised doubt about his loyalty to the United States. Had they, Hasan's fitness to serve as an Army officer may have been called into question long before he reported to Fort Hood.

The Hasan case was in the back of my mind when I questioned whether the 1500 Muslim officers in the New York Police Department were properly screened (New York Celebrates Diversity in its Police Department). We are all threatened by the secular enshrinement of diversity as the highest virtue by the liberal elite, and its enforcement device, political correctness.

•   •   •  

Myleene Klass warned by police after scaring off intruders with knife   [1/11/10]
Last year I wrote about the UK's nutty campaign against "the scourge of knife crime" (As Immigrant Crime Rises In Britain, The UK Government Is Trying To Ban Not Guns, But Knives). Because after the government had removed firearms from the hands of the citizens, violent crime did not miraculously disappear, so now knives are targeted by the nanny state. And in today's Britain, normal self-defense by law-abiding citizens against criminals is not permitted.
    In the current item, a woman attempting to protect her home and toddler by brandishing a knife against some threatening young males was told by police that she acted illegally.

Miss Klass, a model for Marks & Spencer and a former singer with the pop group Hear'Say, was in her kitchen in the early hours of Friday when she saw two teenagers behaving suspiciously in her garden.
    The youths approached the kitchen window, before attempting to break into her garden shed, prompting Miss Klass to wave a kitchen knife to scare them away.
    Miss Klass, 31, who was alone in her house in Potters Bar, Herts, with her two-year-old daughter, Ava, called the police. When they arrived at her house they informed her that she should not have used a knife to scare off the youths because carrying an "offensive weapon" Ð even in her own home Ð was illegal.

What kind of psychotic liberalism is so in love with criminals and pacificism that it denies the basic right of self-defense in a person's own home?

•   •   •  

Willie's World   [1/10/10]
San Francisco's former mayor Wille Brown writes a semi-regular column for the Chronicle on Sundays, mostly chatting about political gossip and deluxe parties he has attended. Below is an item from today.

You think San Francisco is diverse? We've got nothing compared to New York.
    Chinatown powerhouse Rose Pak told me over lunch at North Beach restaurant that she was in New York the other day, took a mile-and-a-half walk down Fifth Avenue and heard just two people speaking English.

•   •   •  

David Cameron: net immigration will be capped at tens of thousands   [1/10/10]
In the UK, the conservative candidate for Prime Minister in the upcoming election, David Cameron, is talking about numerical limits for immigration. Naming specific numbers of immigrants at all is something of a breakthrough for a western politician near a top leadership position.

Saying he opposed a rise in immigration which would take the population above 70 million, Mr Cameron said that limits needed to be imposed to ensure public services did not become overwhelmed.
    He said: "In a country like Britain you're going to have large numbers of people going and living abroad every year and working abroad, and also large numbers of people coming in. It seems to me what matters É is the net figure.
    "In the last decade, net immigration in some years has been sort of 200,000, so implying a 2 million increase over a decade, which I think is too much. [...]
    Reducing immigration to levels seen under the last Conservative government would mean around 50,000 more arrivals than departures a year.
    In recent years, the Tories have shied away from putting the issue of immigration at the centre of the party's election campaigning, for fear of appearing as the "nasty party".
    But Conservative chiefs are said to feel that voters are now keen to hear more about limiting the numbers arriving from overseas.

Britain is a tiny place and is rapidly becoming impossibly overcrowded due to immigration: British population to pass 70 million, forecasts Migrationwatch.

Official forecasts predict the population, currently at around 61 million, will pass the landmark figure by 2028 and around 70 per cent of that will be due to immigration.
    Last year, Karen Dunnell, the National Statistician, said net immigration would have to be cut by 80 per cent if the Government wants to keep the population below 70 million - thought to be a sustainable level.

And while the numbers alone indicate a severe curtailment of immigration, the unfriendly nature of one immigrant group in Britain also demands less of a bad thing: Britons are suspicious towards Muslims, study finds.

More than half the population would be strongly opposed to a mosque being built in their neighbourhood, the study found.
    A large proportion of the country believes that the multicultural experiment has failed, with 52 per cent considering that Britain is deeply divided along religious lines and 45 per cent saying that religious diversity has had a negative impact.

•   •   •  

Mukasey's Take on Terror Trial   [1/09/10]
Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey appeared on Fox News on Saturday and described the many problems with the current administration's legalist approach to terror. He was particularly appalled that Obama wants to do plea bargains with terrorists, rather than gather intelligence as the first priority.
    One disturbing possibility Mukasey mentioned is that Gitmo terrorists transferred to Illinois might later be released into this country after a successful habeas petition if no foreign country would be willing to take them. This dangerous future is the result when the government gives citizen rights to foreign enemy combatants. Our national security should not be in the hands of judges or the ACLU.

For more, see Michael Mukasey's opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, What Does the Detroit Bomber Know?.

Had Abdulmutallab been turned over immediately to interrogators intent on gathering intelligence, valuable facts could have been gathered and perhaps acted upon. Indeed, a White House spokesman has confirmed that Abdulmutallab did disclose some actionable intelligence before he fell silent on advice of counsel. Nor is it any comfort to be told, as we were, by the senior intelligence adviser referred to above -- he of the "no smoking gun" -- that we can learn facts from Abdulmutallab as part of a plea bargaining process in connection with his prosecution.
    Whatever that official thinks he knows about the plea bargaining process, he certainly should know that the kind of facts that Abdulmutallab might be expected to know have a shelf life that is a lot shorter than the plea bargaining process, assuming such a process ever gets started.

Mukasey was a serious public servant in a position that has become more and more politicized (from Bush's Mexophilic pal Alberto Gonzalez to Obama's creature of the far left Eric Holder). When new on the job of Attorney General, Mukasey spoke honestly about his first briefings about national security threats, describing them as "way beyond anything that I knew or believed."

•   •   •  

An open door for migrants to work on Olympics (while 20,000 British builders are laid off)   [1/09/10]
The London Olympics doesn't occur until 2012, yet British elites already intend to screw the many unemployed homegrown workers.
    It's all too familiar...

A scheme to relax immigration laws to allow tens of thousands of unskilled workers to enter the country to build Olympic sites is being drawn up for ministers.
    Migrant workers may be needed to complete the stadiums for the 2012 Games and also to work on separate engineering projects, Government advisers believe.
    But the prospect of a new wave of immigration for construction schemes - at a time when the recession has seen nearly 200,000 construction workers laid off in the past year - provoked furious protests last night. [...]
    Latest unemployment figures show that 187,000 jobs have been lost in construction in the past year as unemployment hit nearly 2.5million.
    There are 70,000 unemployed adults in the seven East London boroughs closest to the Olympic sites.
    Sir Andrew Green, of MigrationWatch, said: 'Has anybody told the Government's advisers we have unemployment of 2.5million and a serious skills shortage which people need to be trained to fill?
    'Permitting employers to recruit immigrant labour off the shelf can only reduce the prospects for British workers.'

•   •   •  

Police warn of terrorism threat behind illegal immigrant issue   [1/09/10]
The good news: police understand the danger of terrorists entering through open borders. The bad news: the cops are in Indonesia.

The National Police has found early indications that might link the current influx of foreign immigrants, who enter this country illegally, with terrorism, chief detective Comr. Gen. Ito Sumardi said Tuesday.
    "We received early intelligence information that shows these immigrants might be followed by those who share a relationship with some terrorist organizations," Ito said.
    "As of now, I have to acknowledge we are still in the dark about the backgrounds of these immigrants, especially those from Afghanistan and Sri Lanka," he said.

•   •   •  

Italy hit by race riots after immigrants shot and wounded   [1/08/10]
Here's another sad example of why the whole diversity-is-the-highest-good thing is total BS. Human beings are hard-wired to prefer the company of their own tribe, and happy-talk gibberish to the contrary doesn't work. As sociologist Robert Putnam has observed, "Diversity decreases trust."
    This recent conflict took place in Italy, started by a couple of local kids shooting some Africans (most foreign workers are illegal, it appears) with air rifles. Rioting has followed for a couple days. Such is the effect of multicultural immigration. Despite decades of pro-diversity propaganda in Europe and America, human nature remains the same as it ever was.

Immigrants in southern Italy clashed with police after they were attacked by white Italian youths with air guns.
    Dozens took to the street in the town of Rosarno, Calabria, smashing car windows and setting fire to vehicles and trash cans.
    Police said that a car was attacked while passengers were inside and several people were injured. A total of 32 people, including 18 policemen, were injured in the rioting which began on Thursday.

The video here is interesting because it has some local reaction.

The Daily Mail has some interesting photos in its story, Immigrant riot in Italy leaves 37 injured after series of beatings by white youths.

Authorities reporting at least 37 were wounded in the ensuing clashes, including 18 police officers and five migrants, as the violence reached its second day in the coastal town of Rosarno in Calabria.

Below, an African man argued with an Italian woman during the conflict.

Illegal alien Africans tore up the town of Rosarno in their two days of rioting.

•   •   •  

Liberian teen charged in rape released to parents   [1/08/10]
In July, four Liberian boys aged 9-14 allegedly gang raped an eight-year-old Liberian girl after luring her with the promise of chewing gum. The oldest boy was arraigned in August.

A 13-year-old Liberian boy charged in the reported gang-rape of an 8-year-old girl in Phoenix was released from custody Thursday and turned over to his parents as he continues lessons designed to make him competent to stand trial.
    The boy, whom The Associated Press is not naming because of his age, has made progress in his lessons to understand the charges against him and how the justice system works, Maricopa County juvenile Judge Shellie Smith said in court.
    The teen sat shackled in the courtroom and said only, "I want to go home."
    His parents sat by his side.
    "I want my son home," said his father. "We can keep our eyes on him."

Right, the parents have done such a swell job of raising him so far.
    As a footnote, keep in mind that even New York Times liberal Nicholas Kristoff says that gang rape has become pretty normal in Liberia: After Wars, Mass Rapes Persist.
    Another indicator of Liberian society's attitude toward women: individual rape was legal until 2006. (Only gang rape was illegal up to that point.)

•   •   •  

Bill O'Reilly and Lou Dobbs Discuss Immigration Reform - 01/07/10   [1/07/10]
This is sickening. Two pseudo-conservatives arguing over how massive an amnesty should be enacted. No mention of 15 million unemployed citizens, no mention that the voters don't want an amnesty in this economy, no mention of the psychological effect of rewarding lawbreakers and how deleterious it would be for American law and sovereignty.

How quickly memories fade. In 2007, Lou Dobbs interviewed Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation about the taxpayer burden within that year's amnesty bill: Robert Rector on the Cost of Low-Skill Immigrants.

See also Rector's paper from 2007, Amnesty Will Cost U.S. Taxpayers at Least $2.6 Trillion.

Also of interest is Robert Rector's 6/23/07 appearance on C-Span's Washington Journal show which is 35 minutes in length: Economic Impact of Immigration.

•   •   •  

Witch-doctors reveal extent of child sacrifice in Uganda   [1/07/10]
Diversity ideology posits that all cultures are morally equal. Its continued credibility depends upon a constant stream of media puff pieces in favor of multiculturalism, while ignoring the shadow side of human nature. Occasionally, elite media (the BBC in this case) investigate rough societies in the third world, and always seem surprised at the horrors they find.

A BBC investigation into human sacrifice in Uganda has heard first-hand accounts which suggest ritual killings of children may be more common than authorities have acknowledged.
    One witch-doctor led us to his secret shrine and said he had clients who regularly captured children and brought their blood and body parts to be consumed by spirits.
    Meanwhile, a former witch-doctor who now campaigns to end child sacrifice confessed for the first time to having murdered about 70 people, including his own son.
    The Ugandan government told us that human sacrifice is on the increase, and according to the head of the country's Anti-Human Sacrifice Taskforce the crime is directly linked to rising levels of development and prosperity, and an increasing belief that witchcraft can help people get rich quickly.

Oops, that last item refutes the widely held idea that rising prosperity is altogether positive. Perhaps not entirely.

The normal horror of witchcraft practicioners is unimaginable.

Former witch-doctor turned anti-sacrifice campaigner Polino Angela says he has persuaded 2,400 other witch-doctors to give up the trade since he himself repented in 1990.
    Mr Angela told us he had first been initiated as a witch-doctor at a ceremony in neighbouring Kenya, where a boy of about 13 was sacrificed.
    "The child was cut with a knife on the neck and the entire length from the neck down was ripped open, and then the open part was put on me," he said.

Below, the genitals of three-year-old Mukisa were hacked off to be used in witchcraft. His parents are concerned with what kind of life he will have.

The BBC also includes a slideshow: In pictures: Child sacrifice in Uganda.

•   •   •  

SAUDI ARABIA: 'Polygamy for women' article sparks public row in Egypt, Muslim world   [1/07/10]
In America, we have a saying, "What's good for the goose is good for the gander" meaning that there should not be different standards for men and women. Apparently there is no parallel aphorism in dar al-Islam, judging by a recent controversy where a Muslim woman suggested that her gender should be able to enjoy multiple marriage partners like men do.

"Allow me to choose four, five or even nine men, just as my wildest imagination shall choose. I'll pick them with different shapes and sizes, one of them will be dark and the other will be blond. ... [T]hey will be chosen from different backgrounds, religions, races and nations."
    So reads the first paragraph of Saudi journalist Nadine Bedair's controversial article,Êrecently published in the Egyptian independent daily Al Masry Al Youm, that raised the question of why only men are allowed to practice polygamy in Islam but not women.
    As expected, the daring article, entitled "My Four Husbands and I," has stirred the pot among various groups.
    Comments and criticism on the article continue to trickle in at a steady pace nearly a month after its publication, especially in Egypt, from where it originated. There, some Muslim authorities and lawmakers have attacked Bedair, condemning her writings as inflammatory and sexually provocative.
    One of those who reacted with fury to her reflections on the alleged unfairness of polygamy in Islam was Sheikh Mohamed Gama'i. He lashed out at the Saudi journalist in an article published on an Egyptian news site, saying that "no woman has the right to attack our traditions in this manner" and said that Bedair ought to be "stopped."

Islam has no tradition of or respect for free speech (as has been underlined in the recent attack on Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard). Furthermore, the idea that a mere woman would criticize Islam at all infuriates many Muslim males. Their societies may be human cesspools of corruption, but men still rule as autocrats over women in countries like Saudi Arabia, so they like gender inequality just fine.

•   •   •  

'I fear for my grandchildren' says former Archbishop of Canterbury, as he calls for Christian values to be defended   [1/07/10]
Another nervous voice from the UK warning about a Muslified future...

The former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey yesterday warned that Britain will be in Ôdeep troubleÕ if it does not cut immigration and stand up for its Christian values.
    He called for a dramatic reduction in migrant numbers and insisted those who want to enter the UK should be made to understand its Christian heritage.
    Lord Carey said: ÔWe Christians are very often so soft that we allow other people to walk over us and we are not as tough in what we want, in expressing our beliefs, because we do not want to upset other people.Õ

Similarly, the poet Robert Frost once described a liberal as a "man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel." It's not a good quality to have when facing political Islam.

•   •   •  

Driver who caused retired postman's death in Walker is sent to prison   [1/06/10]
In December, I reported on the preventable death of Leonard Dykstra (pictured), a Michigan grandfather who was killed after dinner with his family by a drunk-driving illegal alien. His killer was sentenced recently according to the wishes of his son.

GRAND RAPIDS -- Months after 80-year-old Leonard Dykstra was killed in a drunken driving crash, his son Brian Dykstra asked a judge to sentence the culprit, Efrain Garcia-Miron, to five years in prison.
    That's just what Kent County Circuit Judge Paul Sullivan did Tuesday, sentencing the 33-year-old illegal immigrant to between five and 15 years in prison for drunken driving causing the death of Dykstra, a retired postman.
    After serving his prison term, Garcia-Miron will be deported to Mexico.

•   •   •  

Police May Scrap Entrance Exam: Report   [1/06/10]
Chicago has a history of creativity in avoiding responsibility, so today's item is not too surprising. The strategy is clearly designed to end the clash between diversity and competence by removing the standards that define fitness.
    Problem solved -- Chicago style!

The Chicago Police Department is seriously considering scrapping the police entrance exam, sources tell Fran Spielman.
    Dropping the exam would bolster minority hiring and avert legal battles, according to one source, while others confirm that the exam could be scrapped to open the process to as many people as possible.
    However, the lack of an exam would make Chicago the lone major city without one, and experts contend that the exam is integral to eliminating unqualified applicants.
    The CPD has tried in recent years to boost minority hiring by offering the police exam online and turning to minority clergy to help in the recruitment effort.
    But those efforts have met with frustration. Despite seeing an increase in the number of minority applicants in 2006, the last year the exam was offered, the online component was never launched.
    And as of last year, one in four patrol officers were African-American, but just one in 12 Lieutenants were of color.

Floating in the background is the Supreme Court decision from last June in favor of fair testing: High court backs firefighters in reverse discrimination suit.

The U.S. Supreme Court sided Monday with white firefighters in a workplace discrimination lawsuit, a divisive case over the role race should play in job advancement.
    In the split 5-4 vote, a majority of the justices ruled that the city of New Haven, Connecticut, improperly threw out the results of promotional exams that officials said left too few minorities qualified.

•   •   •  

Father Bascio on the immorality of illegal immigration   [1/06/10]
In this clip, the author of On The Immorality of Illegal Immigration explains how a visit to his old parish in Harlem reversed his opinion of open borders. Friends took him on a tour, where he saw how cheap foreign labor had literally changed the face of the iconic black neighborhood. As Father Pat remarks, "In all these shops the kids were taking me to, I hardly saw one black man." The reason was that illegal foreign workers had taken jobs that had earlier been filled by African-American citizens. At the point of his self-described epiphany, he began to realize that illegal immigration is not a victimless crime.

See also my VDARE.com article about Father Pat, A Rare (?) Immigration Enforcement Voice In The Catholic Clergy.

•   •   •  

Anger Over Wootton Bassett Protest March   [1/06/10]
Here's more from European media about the provocation/march planned by Islamist creep Anjem Choudary and his Islam4UK gang to undermine British society with totalitarian Islam. (See my blog, Immigration Brings the War Home to Britain.)

Meanwhile the Facebook page opposing the Muslim march has reached well over half a million members in just a few days. It's very encouraging that the British people finally appear to be awakening from their PC fog. Two years ago, I wrote Britain: Where Are the Minutemen... Er, Home Guard?; recent events have lessened my despair.

•   •   •  

Costly case raises issues of immigration, health care   [1/05/10]
This is the kind of report that causes immediate throbbing headaches. It's bad enough that taxpayers are forced to pay for healthcare for illegal aliens, but the way the system is structured invites abuse.

For Jeanne d'Arc Kayembe, the trip to Washington in May 2007 was meant to be a month-long respite from an abusive boyfriend and a chance to visit relatives before going home to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to have her first child.
    But searing abdominal pains sent Kayembe, who was six months pregnant, to Shady Grove Adventist Hospital. After relieving her pain, a doctor told her to stay in bed and not return to Kinshasa until after she had delivered her baby.
    The Shady Grove emergency room was the entry point for Kayembe, who spoke almost no English and had little money, to a foreign medical system that was, by turns, both frightening and surprisingly welcoming.
    Kayembe gave birth at Shady Grove to a very sick son, Don Emmanuel, who eventually got more than $1 million worth of care, mostly at Children's National Medical Center. U.S. taxpayers and the hospitals footed the bill.
    In some ways, Kayembe and her son are at the white-hot intersection of immigration and health care. But Kayembe's case doesn't fit neatly into those political and policy battles, which often focus on undocumented immigrants. An employee of Congo's telecommunications agency, she came to the U.S. legally, on a tourist visa. And because her son was born here, he became a U.S. citizen and thus was entitled to Medicaid, like any poor child.

I have strong suspicions that Congo Mom planned her visit to drop a jackpot baby. Her advanced age of 39 for a presumably first-time mom is very curious in particular. But say she was innocent of plotting citizenship theft and the story is truthfully presented, then the immigration-asylum-medical complex practically kidnapped her by providing free-to-her healthcare plus social benefits that were too generous to refuse. The story hints that doctors told her the kid needed first-world medical care to survive, and she would be a bad mother to take him home to Congo.

As the debate ensues, legal and undocumented immigrants continue to show up in emergency rooms, where hospitals are required by federal law to treat and stabilize them. In Kayembe's case, medical staff helped in crucial ways that went far beyond health issues.

That's right, the hospital guided Congo Mom into the welfare system that hooked her up with lawyers to solve her immigration issues and with social workers to get an array of free stuff so she could stay in America on the back of the taxpayer. Read the whole article: it's a cautionary tale of do-gooders on steroids.
    In addition, word gets around. Presuming that Obamacare gets passed with no identification required for treatment, there could likely be an uptick (or perhaps a tsunami) in the rush to American hospitals, which exists already.

Children's is known as a place where legal and illegal immigrants, as well as American citizens with little money, can bring their children for top-notch care. In some cases, parents from other countries bring kids to the emergency room directly from the airport, hospital administrators say.
    But that comes at a price. Children's, like many other hospitals, doesn't keep track of how much uncompensated care they provide to noncitizens, documented or undocumented, but they said it is significant. The hospital once spent $3 million treating an illegal immigrant child with leukemia, officials say.

Once again, liberal institutions (like hospitals) are infinitely generous with other people's money.

•   •   •  

New US flight checks 'discriminate against Nigeria'   [1/05/10]
Sensitive Nigerians are complaining of hurt feelings about their inclusion in the alleged uptick of airport security and how it reflects badly on their nation. One of their arguments is that Nigeria is not home to Islamic extremism -- but in fact, lots of jihad activity occurs there.

Nigeria, home of the failed US plane bomber, Monday branded new security measures for passengers flying to the United States unfair and said they amounted to discrimination against its 150 million people.
    The US government announced that travellers from 14 countries, including Nigeria, are to be subjected to extra checks including body pat-downs after a young Nigerian was accused of trying to blow up a US jet on Christmas Day.
    But Nigeria's Information Minister Dora Akunyili said that Africa's most populous nation did not have a history of terrorism and such a move could not be justified.
    "It is unfair to include Nigeria on the US list for tighter screening because Nigerians do not have terrorist tendencies," Akunyili told journalists.
    "It is unfair to discriminate against over 150 million people because of the behaviour of one person," said the minister.

In fact, Nigeria is home to plenty of religious violence as a result of Muslims trying to enforce sharia law on unwilling Christians. One point of conflict is the desire of non-Muslims to drink beer, and Nigerians have been killed in the occasional outbreaks over alcohol and other religious differences.

Here's a Tube from last August: sharia law of islam in Nigeria Africa

For more on the unrest last summer, see Nigerian Islamist attacks spread (BBC, 7/27/09).

Dozens of people have been killed after Islamist militants staged three attacks in northern Nigeria, taking the total killed in two days of violence to 150.
    A BBC reporter has counted 100 bodies, mostly of militants, near the police headquarters in Maiduguri, Borno State, where hundreds are fleeing their homes.
    Witnesses told the BBC a gun battle raged for hours in Potiskum, Yobe State and a police station was set on fire.
    Some of the militants follow a preacher who campaigns against Western schools.

Nigerian spinmeisters try to portray their country as being home to moderate Muslims with no history of jihadism, but the facts indicate otherwise.

•   •   •  

Many roosters seized in cockfight raid will be euthanized, official says   [1/04/10]
Police busted a big cockfight a couple days ago west of Fort Worth, and now we learn that over one hundred of those arrested are illegal aliens.

Many of the 176 people arrested at a weekend cockfight in Parker County paid fines, but others still face charges that range from gambling to animal cruelty, authorities said Sunday. [...]
    More than 100 of those arrested were illegal immigrants, Fowler said Sunday.

•   •   •  

From Around the Globe, Serving New York   [1/04/10]
The New York Times is the Energizer Bunny of promoting extreme diversity, and today's collection of puffery featuring immigrant officers of the NYPD does not disappoint. No possible negative is mentioned because the very idea is anathema, since in multicultural America, diversity is the highest good.

The New York Police Department has sent its officers to 11 cities around the globe - even once dispatching a husband and wife to Abu Dhabi. But the return from the world has been far greater.
    Of the 5,593 officers hired since July 2006, when the department began tracking the nationalities of police officers, 1,042 of them were foreign-born - hailing from 88 countries, according to department records.
    The Dominican Republic leads the way, with 263 officers born there. The list also includes nations that would have been well represented two generations ago: Italy, Ireland and Germany, for example. But those three countries account for a total of only eight officers, far surpassed by those born in Haiti, 78; Jamaica, 59; Pakistan, 29; and Russia, 18.
    The department has made a concerted effort to become more diverse: Recruitment advertisements are now routinely placed in foreign-language newspapers, and new recruits are categorized by their potential to be trained for certain assignments - like counterterrorism or community affairs Ñ based on their language, culture or place of birth, something Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly refers to as "selective certification."

"Selective certification" sounds suspiciously like lowered standards. But when diversity is the goal, values like competence tend to suffer.

It has all worked to shatter past notions of a police force made up mostly of white men of European descent who followed their fathers and grandfathers onto the job.
    That, Mr. Kelly said, "has changed dramatically, and it has changed for the better. As the city has become more diverse, the department has become, I believe, the most diverse police department in the world and we're proud of it, and we want to continue to maintain our diversity. It's good for policing; it makes us a more effective organization."

Funny, I always thought multigenerational cop families had extra pride in their profession because it was interwoven with kinship connections. That family value is dismissed also in the rush to diversity.

The department's newest class of rookies underscores the trend.
    Of the 250 new officers who graduated last Monday, 65 of them were foreign-born, hailing from 23 countries, the police said. Those officers spoke a total of 28 different languages, including Bengali, Punjabi, Yoruba and Creole.

The item above is the general article; also part of the package are three upbeat portraits of individual officers, including Detective Ahmed Nasser, Yemen.

Ahmed Nasser was a young recruit in March 2000, one of three people of Arab descent in his Police Academy class, he recalled, and one of about 20 in the entire department.
    At times, his culture could feel singular to him. He recalled his first assignment, in Brooklyn's 76th Precinct, and how he spent quiet moments on lunch breaks bowing toward Mecca and praying in a training room in the police station house.
    "I pray for understanding," he said, recalling his daily ritual.
    Today, there are about 1,500 Muslim officers in the department, said Mr. Nasser, now a detective. Their roots run through the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Europe. They speak Arabic, Farsi, Pashto and Urdu, among other languages.

You have to wonder how thoroughly the 1500 Muslim officers were vetted. And even those who don't have a squirrelly past can catch the jihad bug from the internet these days. Islam is a hugely effective method of mass mind control in part because the five-times-daily prayers mean the tenets of Islam are never far from Muslims' thoughts. There have been many cases of Muslim immigrants who appeared assimilated to America, like Minneapolis-raised Shirwa Ahmed who shot hoops with friends and attended Roosevelt High School's prom, but later blew up himself and 30 others in Mogadishu.
    Even one Muslim NYPD officer acting as a spy could cause a great deal of harm. The case of Ali Mohamed comes to mind. He was an al-Qaeda operative who served as a sergeant in the US Army Special Forces, where he gained valuable intelligence about American tactics. He trained terrorists, including some who took part in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

•   •   •  

British Al-Qaeda plot to murder family of sniper soldier   [1/03/10]
Britain remains the poster country for why Muslim immigration is a very dumb idea.
    People complain about war, but at least your enemies are geographically distant rather than residing in your neighborhood. Non-discriminating multicultural immigration has imported many thousands of hostiles from the West's most intractable historical opponent. As a result, the war has been brought home to Britain.

British-based al-Qaeda fanatics threatened to kill a soldier's family after learning his sniper team had killed 32 Taliban.
    Armed police were sent to his home after anti-terrorism officers uncovered the plot to murder his parents.
    The plans came to light when the security services monitored "chatter" - believed to be on mobile phones or the internet - between al-Qaeda extremists.
    It is the second time a soldier or his loved ones are known to have been targeted in the UK by groups linked to al-Qaeda. The chilling threats came after the serviceman was praised in reports in the media for his skills during a tour in Afghanistan.
    The soldier, in his 20s and from Scotland, is a "spotter" who has been working alongside a crack marksman in one of the Army's highly-skilled twoman sniper teams. He and his colleague were hailed heroes for gunning down 32 Taliban fighters in Helmand Province. The Sunday Mirror is not identifying him for his and his family's safety.
    Police investigating the threats were sent to his home fearing al-Qaeda sympathisers were on the verge of brutally attacking his relatives in twisted retaliation for his military service. [...]
    The revelation follows a plot by an al-Qaeda cell in Birmingham to kidnap a soldier and behead him on the internet in 2007.

In other Muslified Britain news, the Islam4UK fifth column are stirring up trouble again, after demanding Sharia be made the law of the land a couple months back. Now provocateur Anjem Choudary and his crew are planning a march against British soldiers in a town that is known for its old-fashioned patriotism toward the military.

Muslim cleric Anjem Choudary vows to continue Wootton Bassett march

The controversial cleric, who heads up Islam4UK, has organised a march of 500 people through the Wiltshire town, in memory of Muslims "murdered in the name of democracy and freedom".
    Wootton Bassett has become the main focal point for the nation to show its respect to the troops killed in Afghanistan, with hundreds lining the streets each time a body is repatriated to nearby RAF Lyneham.
    But Choudary said it was unacceptable to honour those killed in the conflict and he would march through the town with supporters to voice opposition at the gatherings.
    Asked why he was against crowds honouring fallen British soldiers, he said: "The same could be said about the Germans fighting for Nazism in the Second World War. Those involved in 7/7 and 9/11 considered themselves to be soldiers.

There is plenty of outrage among the English people about the latest escalation. In fact, there is a Facebook page in opposition to the Muslim march with over 152,000 members as of today.

As Parapundit (Randall Parker) has remarked, "Muslims are nature's way of telling us that multiculturalism is a really bad idea." Yes, and double ditto that for Muslim immigration.

•   •   •  

Cartoonist intruder: 'links to Islamic terrorists'   [1/02/10]
What a surprise. The Somali who tried to murder Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard is linked to bigger jihadid groups.

An intruder who was shot and wounded by police after breaking into the Denmark home of Muhammad cartoonist Kurt Westergaard has links to Islamic terrorists, according to Danish intelligence.
    The 28-year-old Somali man is connected to the radical Islamist al-Shabaab militia and al-Qaeda leaders in East Africa, claims Denmark's PET intelligence service.
    Police say the intruder entered the property by smashing a window and was carrying a knife and axe. He has been charged with two counts of attempted murder after a court hearing today in Aarhus, Denmark. The 74-year-old, whose cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad sparked riots five years ago, has had numerous threats on his life and his house in Viby, near Aarhus, is heavily fortified with security modifications.

Below, a report from Sky News about the arrest...

Kurt Westergaard cannot stop sharia alone

Columnist Diana West salutes the courage of the Danish cartoonist while she condemns the cowardice of the American press for refusing to actually show the Mohammed cartoons on the occasion of Westergaard's speaking tour in 2009.

Surprise, surprise, the Westergaard cartoon didn't see media light of day during KurtÕs entire trip. American media disgraced themselves by covering Westergaard, his cartoon, the threats to his life, the barbarous Islamic reaction from the highest reaches of the Islamic diplomatic world to the Islamic street protests that resulted in loss of life, Kurt's principles, free speech - all without ever showing readers and viewers the cartoon itself. (One exception - the Chicago Sun Times, which ran a photo of Kurt holding a laptop displaying the cartoon.)

See also my 2007 blog excoriating the San Francisco Chronicle for its weak response regarding the 'toons: An MSM Celebration of Free Speech!

•   •   •  

Poverty growing in Texas schools   [1/02/10]
Why is there so little interest in the accumulating poverty that is the result of open borders and permissive immigration? How many high-school dropouts does America need? The country requires more educated people who can support the economy rather than a permanent underclass of hostile Mexicans.
    The statistics from Texas schools are ugly.

Almost six out of 10 Texas public schoolchildren hail from low-income families, marking a troubling spike in poverty over the last decade, a new state report shows.
    The increase coincides with a significant jump in the number of Hispanic students, while fewer Anglo students were enrolled last year than 10 years ago, according to the study by the Texas Education Agency. Schools also are educating many more children whose primary language is not English.
    The rapidly changing makeup of the Texas public school classroom poses growing challenges for the state. Impoverished and disadvantaged children are more likely to falter academically and drop out, and educating struggling students can be costly.
    "Economically disadvantaged students have needs," said Sarah Winkler, the president of the Texas Association of School Boards and an Alief school board trustee. "The cost of education is going to go up. Every student has to meet the same standards, and some of those students have never seen a book before." [...]
    The vast majority of the new students in Texas come from low-income families. Last year, poor children made up nearly 57 percent of the state's enrollment, up from 48 percent in the 1998-99 academic year. Many Houston-area school districts serve even larger percentages of impoverished children. [...]
    The racial and ethnic mix of the state's public schools also has changed dramatically in 10 years. Enrollment increased except for Anglos and blacks. The number of Hispanic students surpassed Anglos for the first time in the 2001-02 school year.
    Last year, Hispanics made up nearly 48 percent of the enrollment, followed by whites (34 percent), blacks (14 percent) and Asians (4 percent). Nearly 17 percent of students had limited English-speaking skills.

•   •   •  

Axe-wielding man shot and wounded trying to enter home of Danish 'Mohammed' cartoonist   [1/01/10]
Kurt Westergaard is a free-speech hero for standing up to Muslim bullies after drawing a controversial cartoon of Mohammed with a bomb in his turban. Because of his artistic integrity, he needs 24/7 police protection and his house has special security features, including steel doors and a panic room.

Danish police have shot a man trying to enter the house of a controversial cartoonist armed with an axe.
    A 27-year-old was wounded in the incident at the Aarhus home of Kurt Westergaard, who drew cartoons of Islam's prophet Mohammed.
    "At 10pm this evening, a personal alarm was received from Mr Westergaard's house," chief superintendant Morten Jensen, from East Jutland police, said.
    Officers found a 27-year-old Somalian man "armed with an axe and a knife in either hand".
    Chief superintendant Jensen said: "He broke a window of Mr Westergarrds house. He tried to attack one officer with an axe and he was shot in his right leg and his left arm.
    "He's not seriously injured, he's in custody," he added.
    Westergaard was one of the 12 cartoonists commissioned by the Danish Jyllands-Posten newspaper in 2005 to produce caricatures of the Muslim prophet.
    Islamic tradition says no image of him should be produced or shown.
    Muslims were particularly incensed by Westergaard's cartoon, which portrayed Mohammed with a bomb in his turban and was seen as extending the caricature of Muslims as terrorists. The images sparked protests and outrage across the globe.

Muslims want to kill because Islam is portrayed as a violent religion. You can't make this stuff up.

The AP article had more details about the terrifying nature of the attack: Official: Danish police stop attack on cartoonist.

Westergaard, who had his 5-year-old granddaughter on a sleepover, called police and sought shelter in a specially made safe room in the house, Nielsen said. Police arrived two minutes later and tried to arrest the assailant, who wielded an ax at a police officer. The officer then shot the man.
    Westergaard could not be reached for comment. He told his employer, the Jyllands-Posten daily, that the assailant shouted "revenge" and "blood" as he tried to enter the bathroom where Westergaard and the child had sought shelter.
    "My grandchild did fine," Westergaard said, according to the newspaper's Web edition. "It was scary. It was close. Really close. But we did it."

It's not a bad time to review a CBN news segment that explains the long-term goal of Islam to criminalize dissent against the "religion", Freedom of Speech Against Islam Being Silenced in Europe.

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NY's haul of the wild   [1/01/10]
Traditional Chinese medicine is known for using an amazing variety of living things. One indication is the diversity of flora and fauna that are illegally smuggled through New York City into America, nearly all headed for the various Chinatowns. As a result, the dozen inspectors for the US Fish and Wildlife Service have their hands full at the local airports to interdict unlawful cargos.
    The photo at right is of a cobra pickled in rice wine, said to have health benefits, that came from Thailand.

Pickled cobra that "cures" kidney problems. Chinese Viagra made with deer penis. Balms filled with powdered tiger bone. Bushels of bushmeat.
    These are just a few of the exotic and unlawful imports that pour into New York City daily.
    And when the black-market booty is not seized by federal agents at airports, they can be found on the shelves of China town apothecaries, Bronx botanicas or swap meets in ethnic neighborhoods throughout the city. [...]
    A Post interpreter was told recently in Chinatown that he could buy bear gall bladder to clean his blood, and deer penis to improve his sexual prowess.
    Inspectors say many strange objects are used in so-called traditional Chinese medicines -- thought to cure everything from a toothache to cancer.
    Onda said the Chinese use "medicine mules" like other cultures use "drug mules" -- smuggling into the country thousands of hidden pills containing ground-up tiger and leopard bone.
    "If they get it by us they mule it into Chinatown," he said.
    This month, a Liberian-born Staten Island woman, Mamie Manneh, was sentenced to three years probation for smuggling 65 pieces of African bushmeat from illegally poached wild animals. [See blogs about the Liberian monkey meat smuggler.]
    Because the laws that govern trade in wildlife make it illegal to import some objects but legal to sell them once they're in the country, City Hall passed a law in 2004 making it illegal to sell any products that claim to contain rhino and tiger parts.

Chinese medicine aficionados apparently don't care that their purchases further deplete endangered species, like tigers.
    Chinese eating habits also run toward the exotic, which accounts for China being a petrie dish for infectious diseases, like SARS from a few years back. The civet is blamed for SARS because of the animal's availability in China live food markets.
    In addition, nonhuman primates can carry Ebola and tuberculosis, for example. Public health is another reason to close up the ridiculously porous border.

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