Arizona Governor Signs Landmark Illegal Alien Bill

Governor Jan Brewer of Arizona signed immigration bill SB1070 into law today, in spite of push back by President Obama, who called the bill 'misguided' and pledged to sic the Justice Department on the state in an effort to overturn it.

"Respect for the rule of law means respect for every law," said Brewer, a Republican. "People across America are watching Arizona.

"We in Arizona have been more than patient waiting for Washington to act," Brewer added. "But decades of inaction and misguided policy have created a dangerous and unacceptable situation."

What the law does is to require anyone whom police suspect of being in the country illegally to produce "an alien registration document," such as a green card or other proof of citizenship such as a passport or Arizona driver's license.

It also makes it illegal to impede the flow of traffic by picking up day laborers for work. A day laborer who gets picked up for work by a pick up truck or car and is impeding traffic, would also be committing a criminal act.

What the bill does is simply require police to actually enforce US immigration laws instead of ignoring them.

Amnesty and open borders activists protested outside the Capitol - they've been collecting there since the measure passed out of the Legislature on Monday. Their numbers have grown steadily throughout the week, with buses bringing protesters from as far away as Los Angeles.

Needless to say, they pledge a legal challenge that will be based on rights supposedly only accorded to US citizens and legal immigrants.

Arizona is one of the main transit points for illegal aliens and sentiment for this bill has been fueled, as Governor Barber stated, by Washington's inability to act, by the impact of illegal aliens on the state's budget and by increased crime traced to illegal aliens.

The buzz words that Obama and his allies want to use to frame the arguments on this issue is the need for 'comprehensive immigration reform'. In fact, it's not about 'immigration reform', since immigrants are legal migrants with permission to settle in a country.

We don't have an immigration problem - we have an illegal alien problem and it is just as important to call things by their right names as it is not to demonize people who have mostly have simply come here for a better life.

The real issues are how to enforce our borders, find out who's here and decide who stays and who goes.

I especially reject the 'path to citizenship' meme, because it is manifestly unfair to reward people for essentially jumping the line ahead of thousands of people who have obeyed the law or simply married a foreign national and are trying deal with the outrageous obstacles ICE puts in their way just to get them into the country.

If this were my problem to solve, here's how I'd do it:

• I would immediately pass legislation mandating enforcement of our borders, even if we had to militarize them to some degree.

• I would require that every illegal alien register immediately with ICE with 60 days, or forfeit any future right or appeal to stay in this country. When they registered, each illegal alien would be issued a numbered, tamper proof ID card with a magnetic strip. The card would need to be renewed every 45 days while backgrounds were being checked and final status determined.

• I would establish a website with a database showing names, numbers and a physical description. An employer would be mandated to either check the website or swipe the card at a terminal they could purchase to verify status or face a $25,000 fine for each violation.

• I would put in place a points system, based on criterion like provable time in the country, job skills, English language skills, and willingness of a US citizen like a family member or employer to become a guarantor to see to it that the new migrant doesn't become a public charge.

If the new migrants have enough points to stay and pass background, I would require that they go to the back of the line...and that their residency period for citizenship starts when their quota number for their country of origin is reached, just like everybody else.

The only exception I would make would be for foreign nationals who choose to earn their citizenship by serving in our military.

Admittedly, America doesn't treat it's immigrants in this fashion...but then, as I've already said, these aren't immigrants and simply allowing those of them who meet certain standards to stay is a major compromise no other country would even contemplate.

If the various 'activists' are unwilling to accept the use of guarantors and legal residence with delayed citizenship,what they're really telling us is that they aren't concerned about the people involved, but about their own political agendas...like minting up a brand new batch of beholden Democrat voters and their well heeled activist grievance monger shepherds.

But you knew that, right?

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The Council Has Spoken! Watcher's Council Results 4/22/10

The Council has spoken! Here are the results of our weekly Watcher's Council contest.

This week's Council winner was Wolf Howling for Thoughts On Britain, Colonialism, and Multiculturalism a well thought out examination on how the British Empire contributed to the world's culture and left the world a better place.

Our non-council winning post came from Caroline Glick with The strategic foundations of the US-Israel alliance a piece that reveals both the history, basis and the importance of that alliance to both countries.

Here are the full results:

Council Winners

• First place with 3 votes – Wolf Howling - Thoughts On Britain, Colonialism, and Multiculturalism
• Second place with 2 votes – Bookworm Room - Ordinary people view Rush as a dangerous Svengali
• Third place with 1 2/3 votes – Mere Rhetoric - Academic Linguist: Palin Speaks Like A Cognitive “Toddler,” Linguistically She’s “A Child”
• Fourth place with 1 1/3 votes – The Razor – Clinton Holds Tea Party to Higher Standards Than Islam
• Fifth place with 1 vote – The Glittering Eye - Think Small!
• Sixth place *t* with 2/3 vote – The Colossus of Rhodey - Philly Inquirer offers ed school “solutions” to South Philly school violence
• Sixth place *t* with 2/3 vote – JoshuaPundit - Stealth Jihad – GOP Senate Wanna-Be Tom Campbell’s Questionable Connections
• Seventh place *t* with 1/3 vote – American Digest - The American Argument
• Seventh place *t* with 1/3 vote – Right Truth - Israel should set up a War Room for Propaganda

Non-Council Winners

• First place with 2 1/3 votes – Caroline Glick - The strategic foundations of the US-Israel alliance Submitted by Right Truth
• Second place with 2 votes – Zenpundit - More Mackinlay – On Why the USG Doesn’t “Get” AQ as a “Global Insurgency” Submitted by The Glittering Eye
• Third place with 1 2/3 votes – Word Around the Net -Creeping Tyranny Submitted by American Digest
• Fourth place with 1 vote -Daled Amos - Zionists Kicked Palestinian Arabs Out Of Palestine? Why Do You Think Arabs Came In The First Place? Submitted by The Watcher
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote - Doug Ross Journal - Gee, that policy change is quite a shock. In May of 2008, Candidate Obama stated: Israel a “constant sore” that “infects… foreign policy” Submitted by Mere Rhetoric
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote - Beltway Confidential - Is Goldman Obama’s Enron? No, it’s worse Submitted by The Razor
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote – Zombie/Pajamas Media – Crashing the Crashers: Tea Party Infiltrators Outmaneuvered in S.F. Submitted by Bookworm Room
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote – Sign on San Diego - Dog Fighting Portrayal Ruled Legal Submitted by The Provocateur
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote – The Truth In Black & Right - I Like My Tea Black Submitted by Wolf Howling
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote – NewsBusters – Time’s Klein: Beck, Palin Potentially Committing Sedition against U.S. Government; Heilemann Adds Limbaugh Submitted by Rhymes with Right

As always, congratulations to the participants as well as the winners.

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Rush: Liberals And The Violence Card

Rush Limbaugh scintillates as always with a superb editorial in the Wall Street Journal...reproduced here in full because of the paywall:

The latest liberal meme is to equate skepticism of the Obama administration with a tendency toward violence. That takes me back 15 years ago to the time President Bill Clinton accused "loud and angry voices" on the airwaves (i.e., radio talk-show hosts like me) of having incited Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. What self-serving nonsense. Liberals are perfectly comfortable with antigovernment protest when they're not in power.

From the halls of the Ivy League to the halls of Congress, from the antiwar protests during the Vietnam War and the war in Iraq to the anticapitalist protests during International Monetary Fund and World Bank meetings, we're used to seeing leftist malcontents take to the streets. Sometimes they're violent, breaking shop windows with bricks and throwing rocks at police. Sometimes there are arrests. Not all leftists are violent, of course. But most are angry. It's in their DNA. They view the culture as corrupt and capitalism as unjust.

Now the liberals run the government and they're using their power to implement their radical agenda. Mr. Obama and his party believe that the election of November 2008 entitled them to make permanent, "transformational" changes to our society. In just 16 months they've added more than $2 trillion to the national debt, essentially nationalized the health-care system, the student-loan industry, and have their sights set on draconian cap-and-trade regulations on carbon emissions and amnesty for illegal aliens.

Had President Obama campaigned on this agenda, he wouldn't have garnered 30% of the popular vote.

Like the millions of citizens who've peacefully risen up and attended thousands of rallies in protest, I seek nothing more than the preservation of the social contract that undergirds our society. I do not hate the government, as the left does when it is not running it. I love this country. And because I do, I insist that the temporary inhabitants of high political office comply with the Constitution, honor our God-given unalienable rights, and respect our hard-earned private property. For this I am called seditious, among other things, by some of the very people who've condemned this society?

I reject the notion that America is in a well-deserved decline, that she and her citizens are unexceptional. I do not believe America is the problem in the world. I believe America is the solution to the world's problems. I reject a foreign policy that treats our allies like our enemies and our enemies like our allies. I condemn the president traveling the world apologizing for America's great contributions to mankind. And I condemn his soft-pedaling the dangers we face from terrorism. For this I am inciting violence?

Few presidents have sunk so low as Mr. Clinton did with his accusations about Oklahoma City. Last week—on the very day I was contributing to and raising more than $3 million to fight leukemia and lymphoma on my radio program—Mr. Clinton used the 15th anniversary of that horrific day to regurgitate his claims about talk radio.

At a speech delivered last Friday at the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C., the former president said: [T]here were a lot of people who were in the business back then of saying that the biggest threat to our liberty and the cause of our domestic economic problem was the federal government itself. And we have to realize that there were others who fueled this both because they agreed with it and because it was in their advantage to do so. . . . We didn't have blog sites back then so the instrument of carrying this forward was basically the right-wing radio talk show hosts and they understand clearly that emotion was more powerful than reason most of the time."

Timothy McVeigh was incensed by the Clinton administration's 1993 siege on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas. It's no coincidence that the bombing took place two years to the day of the Waco siege. McVeigh was not inspired by anything I said or believe and to say otherwise is outright slander. In the aftermath of the bombing, I raised millions of dollars for the children of federal employees killed in that cowardly attack through my association with the Marine Corp Law Enforcement Foundation.

Let me just say it. The Obama/Clinton/media left are comfortable with the unrest in our society today. It allows them to blame and demonize their opponents (doctors, insurance companies, Wall Street, talk radio, Fox News) in order to portray their regime as the great healer of all our ills, thus expanding their power and control over our society.

A clear majority of the American people want no part of this. They instinctively know that the Obama way is not how things get done in this country. They are motivated by love. Not hate, not sedition. They love their country and want to save it from those who do not.

Rush it totally correct to castigate President Clinton on this one. As a matter of fact, McVeigh specifically mention Waco, where seventy-six people died in the Waco fire at the hands of the BATF, including more than 20 children and two pregnant women as a reason for his actions at his trial.

And there was also a very interesting Middle East connection to the Oklahoma city Bombing that President Clinton chose to totally ignore...with consequences that surfaced later.

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Sen. Schumer: "Obama's Counterproductive Israel policy Has To Stop"

After being mocked by Ed Koch for claiming he was working 'behind the scenes', New York Senator Chuck Schumer finally became th ehighest ranking Democrat to go after Obama's Israel policy publicly... on Nachum Segal's local radio show .

Here's a transcript:

SEGAL: Straight to what has become one of the most concerning issues in the Jewish Community certainly, and for anybody in the United States, and anywhere in the world who cares somewhat, or more, about Israel. There is a perception that the White House and Jerusalem are not enjoying the same type of relationship that the White House and Jerusalem have enjoyed in the past. Need we be concerned?

SCHUMER: Well of course we should be concerned, and the thing we should most be concerned about, of course, the threat to Israel…I mean it always changes but it’s always there it seems to be the fate if Israel and it seems to be the fate of the Jewish people. Right now what are the threats? I would rank them in this order: Greatest threat- Nuclear Iran, obviously as Netanyahu has said that’s an existential threat. Second greatest threat- SCUDs in Syria these are rockets that can go four or five hundred miles and carry a bigger payload and could be launched by Hezbollah and hit any part of Israel far more damaging and devastating than the katyusha rockets. And third actually is what everyone is focused on, which is the disagreements between the United States and Israel, very real, on how to sit down and negotiate with the Palestinians. The irony is Nachum, on the first two, if you talk to the Prime Minister if you talk to the Israeli military, US-Israeli cooperation continues strong and hand in glove. Both the US and Israel greatly fear a nuclear Iran, and there are very serious discussions going on as to how to deal with it. We in the Congress Senator Lieberman and myself, Senator Bayh, are working up our sanctions bill, which even if the UN sanctions are weak we could have unilateral sanctions by the United States, for instance, if you cut of gasoline. Iranians do not produce their own gasoline, and by the way the Iranian people are ready to rebel and overthrow this regime, and if we would squeeze them economically that could happen.

SEGAL: If in fact all this is true, and let’s assume there is no reason not to believe that it’s true, that in fact Israel and the United States continue the same cooperation level they have had in the past, and we know that when it comes to serious matters, especially military matters, it’s been great cooperation, Why wouldn’t the President of the U.S. want that perception to be out there? Why would he want to alienate so many who care about Israel.

SCHUMER: Nachum this is the question I talked to Rahm Emanuel about, and the President about this week. I told the President, I told Rahm Emanuel and others in the administration that I thought the policy they took to try to bring about negotiations is counter-productive, because when you give the Palestinians hope that the United States will do its negotiating for them, they are not going to sit down and talk. Palestinians don’t really believe in a state of Israel, they, unlike a majority of Israelis, who have come to the conclusion that they can live with a 2-state solution to be determined by the parties, the majority of Palestinians are still very reluctant, and they need to be pushed to get there. If the U.S. says certain things and takes certain stands the Palestinians say, “Why should we negotiate?” So that’s bad and that should change and we are working on changing it. But the other two are very good, according to both the Israeli government and the Israeli military and the U.S. government. But we should make that known, why don’t they? I asked them to do just that, I said we should make it public because it will, at least, give people, who are supportive of Israel, Jew and non-Jew alike, a little bit of solace.

SEGAL: That I agree with. But then you see the Gates memo which has become its own sort of entity out there, and you wonder about what type of support the United States could give Israel if, god-forbid, they were attacked by Iran.

SCHUMER: I do think that this administration, like previous ones, realizes a nuclear Iran is devastating and is a very bad thing. By the way, not just for Israel but for the whole Middle-East and for world peace and I think they’re working strenuously to avoid it. They are having more success in this area than the previous administration, they are trying to get some of the Europeans, and even the Russians and Chinese to impose sanctions, but we are moving in the Senate and the house to achieve any unilateral action that the U.S. can take. If we tell any major oil company that if they sell gasoline to Iran, directly or indirectly, they can’t sell any oil product in the U.S., then they will stop selling gasoline to Iran and the Iranian economy will have real problems. This will, at the very minimum, divert the leadership from their nuclear strategy and could bring down the regime. This is important and good. Let’s talk about the bad. Let’s talk about, what I’m sure your listeners are most aggravated about, is what’s happened in the last while in Israel. Let me say this: things were going pretty well, until a couple of months ago, for this reason—the Netanyahu administration, with money from the U.S., had gotten the PA on the west bank to have their own police force and have them come down on the terrorists , for their own self interest not to protect the Jewish people. It has worked, not only are there fewer killings of Jews on the Israeli side of the fence, but there are many fewer in the other side because there is a Palestinian police force and they have put those terrorists in line. As a result Israel has been able to take down 27 of the checkpoints and as a result of that there is some economic growth in the west bank. Its growing at 7-8%, Netanyahu brags that -- when he came here I spent a lot of time with him – That there are multiplex theatres in places like Ramallah and Janeen. At the same time that is happening, there is prosperity with the more moderate Palestinian Authority in the west bank, and Hamas in Gaza is being squeezed and people there are doing very badly. Not only because Israel has blocked off the border and not let anything into Gaza, and I support Israel in doing that, and it may be tough on the Palestinian people, but when they vote for Hamas they are going to have to suffer the consequences. But also because Egypt is preventing all the tunnels from going under the Gaza-Egyptian border, not so much because they want to help Israel but they don’t want the terrorists infiltrating from Gaza into Egypt. So the Palestinians were beginning to see those who talked about living in coexistence with Israel, and not terrorism, and not wiping it out, such as the PA on the west bank would do better, and those who talked about destroying Israel, and shooting rockets into it were doing horrible.

SEGAL. I don’t think the checkpoint and open highway point is one we are going to agree on Senator. But I want to move to another hot point which is Syria, it seems, and I’m not sure how many people would consider these confirmed reports or not and I’m sure you know more about this than I do, but Syria is making sure that Hezbollah, north of Israel is being armed with SCUD missiles at this point. And you know that Washington is making efforts to try and strengthen the diplomatic relationship with Syria. Do you think that’s outrageous?

SCHUMER: I do, and think that’s stopped. They are working very hard to put pressure on the Syrians both diplomatic and then maybe economic, to stop this and it’s intolerable and that has to change. Let me just finish this dialogue about Israel for a minute. All we have to do is leave things alone, and you might get the Palestinians more willing to sit down and actually discuss peace because they would see the contrast. When Biden was in Israel and there was this kerfuffle over settlements which is in Israeli Jerusalem 5 minutes from downtown and should never have been an issue to begin with, but they probably shouldn’t have made the announcement when Biden was there. But Israel apologized and when Biden left, and Biden is the best friend of Israel in the administration everything was fine. But then what happened is the next day Hillary Clinton called up Netanyahu and talked very tough to him, and worse they made it pubic through this spokesperson, a guy named Crowley. And Crowley said something I have never heard before, which is, the relationship of Israel and the United States depends on the pace of the negotiations. That is terrible. That is the dagger because the relationship is much deeper than the disagreements on negotiations, and most Americans—Democrat, Republican, Jew, non-Jew--would feel that. So I called up Rahm Emanuel and I called up the White House and I said, “If you don’t retract that statement you are going to hear me publicly blast you on this.”

Of course they did retract it. Now what’s happened, and many of us are pushing back, some of the Jewish members will be meeting with the President next week or the week after, and we are saying that this has to stop. You have to have, in terms of the negotiations, you have to show Israel that it’s not going to be forced to do things it doesn’t want to do and can’t do. At the same time you have to show the Palestinians that they are not going to get their way by just sitting back and not giving in, and not recognizing that there is a state of Israel. And right now there is a battle going on inside the administration, one side agrees with us, one side doesn’t, and we’re pushing hard to make sure the right side wins and if not we’ll have to take it to the next step.

SEGAL: You know Senator Schumer, the perception among New York state residents, and I’m one of them as you know, is there likely is no one closer in the Senate to the President than you.

SCHUMER: That’s not quite true, but I have an ear and frankly I spent time on the phone just yesterday talking to him about this, and telling him that I didn’t quite understand the United States policy, because even if the goal is to bring about talks of peace, it was counter-productive because it’s encouraging the Palestinians not to sit down.

SEGAL: More than ¾ of the Senate, including a lot of Democrats, signed the letter to Sec. of State Clinton rebuking the administration for these confrontational stances toward Israel. Were you surprised that names like Kerry, Dodd, Durbin, Leahy and Reid were not included in that letter?

SCHUMER: Well I think Senator Reid signed the letter, some didn’t sign but the majority of both parties signed. And we’ll have other letters and other meetings to keep pushing that. I think you can say there are a handful of people who are not sympathetic to Israel in the Senate of each party, but 90% of the Senate is overwhelmingly in support of Israel. And one of my jobs, as you know is to rally those forces to do strong poll work for this year (couldn’t hear this part perfectly). Believe me I think the policy has to change, and I’m working hard to make it change and I think it will. Every administration at the beginning has this view even Ronald Reagan, the best friend Israel ever had, do you remember his first 2 years? When George Schultz wanted to sell AWACs to Saudi Arabia? Every administration has this idea to talk tough to Israel and make nice to the Arabs and the Palestinians and that’s the way to bring about peace. It’s counter-productive, it’s actually the opposite. The only way the Palestinians will sit down and talk is if they know Israel and the United States are as close as could be. And each administration learns it. Schultz had to learn it and Reagan had to learn it. Clinton did it in the early years and later became a very good friend of Israel. George Bush the first did it and never got over it, (SEGAL laughing muffles SCHUMER). We are at a crucial moment here and I am hopeful that administration will see the right way to go. I am working on it. I don’t believe that have made any definitive decision, and as I have said on both Iran on Syria there is close cooperation, you can check with your Israeli contacts Nachum and they will confirm that. So we just have to get this third part right and I’m working hard to do it and I’m optimistic that that can happen.

SEGAL: Good to hear that. Finally Senator, just for our own curiosity, just like the most recent justice appointed to the Supreme Court, will the next one also be a New Yorker?

SCHUMER: I don’t know. I would like it to be, I recommended the first one. I have 3 criteria for Supreme Court Justices: they should be legally excellent, they should be moderate as is typical of my politics I don’t want too far right or far left, and diversity, which means different ethnic groups and everything else. Luckily in terms of Jewish people we have good representation in terms of the Supreme Court. That will continue. One thing I want to assure your listeners Nachum, my name as you know comes from a Hebrew word. It comes from the word shomer, which mean guardian. My ancestors were guardians of the ghetto wall in Chortkov and I believe Hashem, actually, gave me name as one of my roles that is very important in the United States Senate to be a shomer to be A. a shomer for Israel and I will continue to be that with every bone in my body for of the other is against me.

SEGAL: can I ask you one other favor Senator? To be a shomer against the value-add tax?

SCHUMER: I am against it. I’m not sure it’s needed but I will be a shomer against it.

SEGAL: always a pleasure Senator, thanks so much for joining us.

SCHUMER: Nachum, nice to see you and I hope your readership continues to grow in peace and prosperity.

Schumer, to give him his due has been pro-Israel since his days in the House.

The fact that he came out publicly like this tells us a lot. Chuck Schumer is by no means the stupidest man in politics and he obviously has heard from his constituents and donors in New York state.

For him to come out publicly like this indicates to me that he attempted to go privately through channels first to the Administration and got absolutely nowhere..so he's decided to publicly distance himself.

It will be interesting to see how Schumer and other pro-Israel Democrats react if Obama begins bullying Israel again, or if there are problems from the Administration on any type of meaningful Iran sanctions..say, ones that cut off refined petroleum imports.

Schumer is making noises about replacing Harry Reid as Senate leader if Reid gets defeated. It will be interesting to watch and see whether he's able to put together a coalition of other Senators to support his positions on Israel and Iran.

UPDATE: Obviously I was right about Schumer getting nowhere in private. Today, the White House pushed back, essentially rebuking Schumer for his remarks:

The Obama administration pushed back on Friday against critical comments made by Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y) accusing the president of having a "counterproductive" policy on Israel.

Asked by the Huffington Post about the remarks during the morning's gaggle, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs replied: "I don't think it is a stretch to say we don't agree with what Senator Schumer said."

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Poll: Obama Gets Thumbs Down On Treatment Of Israel

It's a Quinnipiac poll commissioned by CNN, so you know it oversamples Democrats. But the results speak for themselves:

Only a third of Americans approve of the way President Obama's handling the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, according to a new national poll.

A Quinnipiac University survey released Thursday morning indicates that 35 percent of the public gives the president a thumbs up on how he's dealing with the situation between Israel and the Palestinians, with 44 percent saying they disapprove, and just over one in five unsure. {...}

According to the poll, two-thirds of Jewish voters disapprove of how the president's handling Israeli-Palestinian relations, with 28 percent saying they approve.

I know, I know...hold an election and Zero would still probably get 50% plus of the Jewish vote. But the indications are that a lot of people, not just Jews are beginning to understand what sort of person they elected.

I have a feeling this poll and others may have led to Obama taking the time to write to to the reliably Democrat Alan Solow, the President of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations assuring him that he had no plans to impose a settlement on Israel and that 'the bond remains unbreakable.'

I regard any promise of Obama's with the proverbial grain of salt, especially if it concerns Israel. But the fact that he felt the need to do some damage control is interesting, and an indication that Zero's support among Jews is slipping fast.

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Navy SEAL Found Not Guilty In Alleged 'Beating' Of Iraqi Terrorist

Good news...you'll remember the three Navy SEALS who captured a dangerous terrorist murderer in Iraq and instead of a commendation were facing a court martial because the jihadi complained to Iraqi authorities that they allegedly hit him in the mouth.

The Navy, desperate to comply with the Obama Administration's PC notions actually shipped two of them to Camp Victory in Iraq for trial, and one of the SEALS has already been acquitted:

The trial of three SEALs, the Navy's elite special forces unit, in the abuse case has outraged many Americans who see it as coddling terrorists.

A six-man jury found Petty Officer 1st Class Julio Huertas, 29, of Blue Island, Illinois, not guilty of charges of dereliction of duty and attempting to influence the testimony of another service member. The jury spent two hours deliberating the verdict.

"It's a big weight off my shoulders," a smiling and composed Huertas said as he left the courthouse at the U.S. military's Camp Victory on Baghdad's western outskirts.

Huertas said he plans now to continue with his military career and "to go home and kiss my wife."

Huertas was the first of three SEALS to face a court-martial for charges related to the abuse incident and the verdict was a major blow to the government's case.

The jihadi dirtbag our heroes captured and supposedly slapped around was Ahmed Hashim Abed, the ringleader who oversaw the murder and mutilation of four American contractors in Fallujah by Moqtada al-Sadr's Iraqi Shi'ite sympathizers and militiamen. After the SEALS successfully completed their mission to bring him to justice this lawyered up jihadi accused the SEALS of what amounts to police brutality after he was turned over to the Iraqi authorities, claiming he was hit in the mouth.

As I predicted this is turning into In other words, this is the bogus Haditha Marines case all over again.

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Baseball Player Makes Superman Leap Over Catcher To Score

Brian Kownacki of Fordham U came up with a unique move. I think this little maneuver will be known as The Fordham Flip from now on!

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Happy Birthday Trig Palin! Oh, And More Mean Spirited Trig-Truther Rot From Sully

Congratulations Trig! You're a year old today and going strong. By now, you're just starting to get a sense of this wonderful world and everything that's in it, and there's so much more to come.

While I'm sure Mom and Dad and your brothers and sisters had a few wonderful presents for you, you and I both know that you've already gotten a far more wonderful gift from the Father of us all...life, and a family that truly loves you.

Unfortunately, you got another gift today, a nasty one. And I feel like I need to explain it to you so that it doesn't cast even the slightest shadow on your special day.

There's a man - and I use the term loosely - named Andrew Sullivan who thought that the occasion of your birth would be a great time to try to hurt your mother by writing a particularly disgusting column in a magazine about your birth.

You'll get a chuckle out of this, but this guy has been obsessed to the point of madness for years with trying to prove that your mother isn't your mother! Have you ever heard of anything so silly?

You see Trig, this man hates himself, and that hatred comes oozing out in a lot of ways. He hates the idea of happy families and he especially hates women like your mother, especially when they're strong and successful. And he hates people who understand how important babies are, especially special ones like you. For some reason, he hates Jewish people too, and writes about them also in his poopy little columns.

He is, in a word, creepy.

There are a lot of grown ups who laugh at this pathetic, infantile man and his hateful obsessions, and that makes him mad, because he thinks what he writes is actually important. The funny thing is that the more people ridicule him, the more he likes it in a strange, twisted way because it mirrors the way he feels about himself deep inside. Some people are like that, and as you'll find as you go through life, they're best avoided because they try to suck the happiness right out of you so that you'll be as miserable as they are.

So don't take this sad, deformed man seriously in any way or let it spoil your birthday. Don't consider it for a second.Your mother laughs at this sort of thing, and we both know how wise she is.

Many more.

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Steele Steps In it Again: Blacks 'Don't have A Good Reason To Vote Republican'

Yes, he actually said that:

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele told a group of students that African-Americans “don’t have a reason” to vote for Republicans.

Steele was asked Tuesday night during a speech to roughly 200 students at DePaul University why African-Americans should vote for GOP candidates.

“You really don’t have a reason, to be honest,” Steele responded, as was first reported by the Chicago Sun-Times. “We haven’t done a very good job of giving you one.”

“We have lost sight of the historic, integral link between the party and African-Americans,” Steele said. “This party was co-founded by blacks, among them Frederick Douglass. The Republican Party had a hand in forming the NAACP, and yet we have mistreated that relationship. People don’t walk away from parties, Their parties walk away from them.

“For the last 40-plus years we had a ‘Southern Strategy’ that alienated many minority voters by focusing on the white male vote in the South. Well, guess what happened in 1992, folks, ‘Bubba’ went back home to the Democratic Party and voted for Bill Clinton.”

Needless to say, regardless of context or what he might have meant about the need for outreach, what's being reported in the Leftist media is that Steele said blacks have no reason to vote Republican and that Steele 'admitted the GOP's racism.'

Well done, Mr. Chairman! You stuck your foot into your stoo-pid mouth...again.

Actually, doofus, there are plenty of reasons for blacks to vote Republican.

The GOP at its conservative best - and it's vitally important to say that - champions the rights of the individual rather than the rights of government. It favors lower taxes, fiscal responsibility, and a climate where people are allowed to achieve on their own merits and RISE UP, the quality above all that has people fighting to come to America. In short, it stands for freedom instead of government dependent slavery.

It favors life over the right to kill babies if they happen to be inconvenient.The Democrat's abortion-on-demand policies have disproportionately affected blacks just the way Planned Parenthood's racist founder Margaret Sanger intended.

And it favors families and the sort of moral traditions taught in the majority of black churches as opposed to the Democrat's policies starting in the 1960's that decimated the black family.

It even favors giving working families the right to take advantage of the same private schools favored by the elites and choose how their children are educated and get away from unsafe, dysfunctional public schools run by inept, corrupt bureaucrats and the teacher's unions.

And most importantly, it gives black folks a chance to vote for a party that actually considers them equal and capable individuals, rather than a box to check in the racial bean counting lottery that goes along with the inherent liberal racism of artificial results...predicated on the racist expectation of failure.

Oh, and that so-called 'Southern strategy'? For one thing, it wasn't just Southern in origin but extended to the Midwest and the Sun Belt. Nixon first used that term and trust me, it wasn't successful so much because of racism as it was because of the hell storm of counter culture anarchy and violence the Left unleashed on the country in 1968 and the Democrat party's embracing of that demon seed four years later with McGovern in 1972. Watch videos of the '72 Democrat convention some time to see what America was looking at and why the country went overwhelmingly Republican and abandoned the Democrats and their values.

That's the sort of things someone like Michael Steele ought to be telling blacks, instead of telling them they're right all along to stay on the Left's plantation.

Doesn’t Steele’s role go beyond creating soundbites for the Democrats and extend to developing and communicating a strategy how to engage the African American voter in the Republican party? Is he working for Obama and the DNC?

At this point I doubt they'll fire him, but he definitely needs to be put in a secure bunker somewhere in handcuffs and a ball gag with a moat around it so that no reporter can get to him until it's time to cut him adrift in a floatie with the Humboldt current...just to make sure he doesn't find his way back again..

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Appeals Court Reverses Lower Court, Upholds ACORN Funding Ban

Yes, the ban on government funding for ACORN was reversed today:

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has issued a stay on the December 2009 injunction by Clinton-appointed Judge Nina Gershon that declared the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN) funding ban was unconstitutional.

The result of the stay is that the Congressional funding ban will go back into effect, and ACORN will not receive taxpayer dollars while the court reviews the case.

“I applaud the Court of Appeals for immediately addressing the effects of Judge Gershon’s attempt to legislate from the bench,” said Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif), top Republican on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. “Today’s action immediately restores the congressionally mandated ban on funding ACORN and its affiliates as a result of their criminal conduct and wasting of taxpayer dollars. Congress does have the constitutional right to deny an organization the benefit of taxpayer dollars.”

“With today’s action by the Appeals Court, the Obama Administration must take immediate steps to re-implement the funding ban for ACORN that Congress put in to law,” Issa added. “In recent months, ACORN has undergone a rebranding campaign to disguise itself and its affiliates. As a result, the White House and all federal agencies must be extremely vigilant to ensure that rebranded organizations who have continued to make deals and maintain connections to ACORN don’t receive taxpayer dollars.”

Interesting how this works when ACORN can't go judge shopping.

At any rate, the American taxpayer is no longer funding mortgage fraud and child prostitution...at least for awhile.

Note Rep. Issa's remarks on how ACORN has split into components and is changing its name while still maintaining ties to the original organization. The octopus is going to have to be chased down.But this is still an encouraging beginning.

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Understanding The Tea Party Movement..And Washington's Disconnect

One of the best explanations I have read of the tea party movement and why most of the political and media elites simply don't get it comes from the always scintillating Wretchard (AKA Richard Fernandez) at Pajamas Media:

Where one is on the totem is everything in Washington. The idea of hierarchy permeates every situation. Behavior is a question of knowing your place; when to say ‘thank you’ and never speaking out of turn. If you can’t understand the rules you’re a rube. Because of the default presumption that you are at Court; it follows that beneath every courteous speech ultimately you want something from the king or the duke or the duchess. And this is where Bill Clinton has got it subtly wrong.

The former President argued that political discourse had gotten so strident that certain individuals on the right have crossed the line between criticizing government officials and “demonizing them.” Things now remind him of the days preceding the Oklahoma City bombing when Clinton’s unpopular actions were unappreciated by an America lucky to have him.

CLINTON: I worry about these threats against the president and the Congress. … I just think we all have to be careful. We ought to remember after Oklahoma City. We learned something about the difference in disagreement and demonization.

ALLEN: You said that this time reminds you of — of that time. Politically does this year remind you of 1994?

CLINTON: A little bit. We passed the bill which reversed trickledown economics by one vote. Close like the healthcare bill. And it led to an enormous flowering of the economy in America. And that bill was responsible for, take is more than 90 percent of the weight of the balanced budget. But people didn’t realize its benefits.

I think the same thing is happening now with the healthcare bill. Where people are still reading into it all manner of dark things. And they haven’t felt the benefits of it yet. But America is a different country now. We are culturally a different country. We are more diverse. We’re more communitarian. That is, we understand we have to solve a lot of these problems together.

The point Bill Clinton is missing is that the danger doesn’t come from right wing ‘anger.’ The anger is just a byproduct. The voices he hears from the Tea Party crowds aren’t threats; they’re warnings. The real peril is coming from somewhere else: the demographic decline in industrial world working populations, the increasing cost of energy and the international movement in the factors of production. A whole generation of failed policy from both parties is coming to a head and it probably means that the welfare state, the European Union and by consequence the Chinese economy are heading for a cliff.

What’s driving the Tea Parties isn’t amorphous hate. It is concrete fear: worry that pensions have been devalued; medical care will become unaffordable; taxes are too high and jobs are gone, never to return. And a look around the world shows there’s no place to hide. When the wave hits it will be global. In the UK membership in political parties is at near historic lows. In America Congress’s popularity is lower than whales**t. The Eurozone is cracking up under its weight of debt. First Greece, now Portugal are being ripped off the cliff face like a zipper — and all the climbers are roped together. Japan is like a kamikaze sub heading for the depths and tapping out a sayonara. Russia was history long ago. And China, when it has used up its flowering moment, will face the consequences of its one-child policy. And Middle Eastern potentates, stuck in the same old, same old, are warning about a Summer War. The Tea Parties aren’t about putting some country club Republican in the White House, though Bill can’t help hearing it like that.

The media and academic elites live in their own sort of bubble of course, one that's self-created by a false feeling of superiority based on their impression that they are insiders and thus smarter, hipper and more enlightened that some knuckle dragging rube in flyover country. This is a fallacy based on yesterday's realities, and it's becoming more and more evident at least in the dinosaur media as viewers and readers vote with their mouses and remotes and the layoffs mount up. And academia isn't far behind. When the economy goes south, so do enrollments and alumni donations.

As Wretched presciently points out, when the Old Order falls apart, what matters is how people perceive themselves and their values, and which of those values and first principles are ingrained enough to stand by and hang on to..which is exactly the point of the Tea Party movement:

But perhaps the most unremarked thing about the Tea Parties is that they’re not calling for a repeal of the Constitution but for its enforcement. They are the complete opposite of what Clinton thinks they are; an affirmation, not a call to create “a different country” that Clinton congratulates himself in attaining. And that may be an advantage. If the world descends into a prolonged and tectonic crisis, the one clear advantage that America will have going into it is a clear and widely shared sense of the legitimacy of its foundational principles. That may not seem like much, but if a crisis impends a widely shared sense of legitimacy will be among the most precious things in a planet gone awry.

Yet politicians can’t see it. For perfectly natural reasons they fall into the habit of thinking everyone is a supplicant. It’s an understandable outcome of living in a world where someone is constantly asking them for something: photo opportunities, access to news releases, seats on Air Force One or Internet access. Nothing throws them for a loop more than something that doesn’t want anything they can bestow. The Tea Partiers already know the establishment is bankrupt. They don’t want to be the next Botox Queen, the next guest on Oprah or the man with Internet access on Air Force One; they only want their freedom and a chance to meet the crisis with common sense, if that’s not asking too much. It’s a novel idea which will take a little time for politicians to understand. But give them time and eventually someone will take credit for it.

Actually, some politicians have already gone fairly far in latching on to this energy. Sarah Palin comes to mind readily, and she's by no means unique..just one of the first ones out of the box.

Wretched hits the nail on the head. In the end, we will live or die in accordance to how we value the basic principles that made America the greatest nation on G-d's earth.

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Would the U.S. Shoot Down an Israeli Jet? Adm. Mullen Won't Say

An interesting question was asked of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen by a young airman..twice:

In a town hall on the campus of the University of West Virginia, a young airman asked Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen to respond to a “rumor.” If Israel decided to attack Iran, the speculation went, those jet would need to fly through Iraqi airspace to reach their targets. That airspace is considered a “no-fly” zone by the American military. So might U.S. troops shoot down the Israeli jets, the airmen asked the chairman, if they breached that airspace?

Mullen tried to sidestep the question. “We have an exceptionally strong relationship with Israel. I’ve spent a lot of time with my counterpart in Israel. So we also have a very clear understanding of where we are. And beyond that, I just wouldn’t get into the speculation of what might happen and who might do what. I don’t think it serves a purpose, frankly,” he said. “I am hopeful that this will be resolved in a way where we never have to answer a question like that.”

The airmen followed-up: “Would an airmen like me ever be ordered to fire on an Israeli – aircraft or personnel?”

Mullen’s second answer was much the same as his first. “Again, I wouldn’t move out into the future very far from here. They’re an extraordinarily close ally, have been for a long time, and will be in the future,” the admiral said.

I know one airman that's going to get reamed for asking a question of the JCS chief like that in a public forum! Nevertheless, Mullen gave the best answer possible without exceeding his brief. Unless Obama has formulated an official policy one way or another, Mullen can't commit or limit the military one way or the other.

It's also worth remembering that according to the Status of Forces agreement we have with Iraq, we are required to help defend them.

But that aside, a few points.

First of all, it's much more likely according to my sources that the IAF would fly to targets in Iran via Saudi Arabia, mimicking the signals put out bu commercial airliners with the Saudis turning a blind eye as Iran gets hammered.

And if they did fly via Iraq? Given the IAF's stealth capabilities we'd likely just ‘miss’ them on their flight through and I can't see even Obama risking the political fallout from giving the order to fire on Israeli planes....certainly if would have to come from him.

It's also worth remembering that an order to fire on Israeli planes would be a tough one for our military in Iraq to swallow. A lot of US troops owe their lives to the training they've received from the IDF on how to fight and function in Arab cities, and they've likewise seen the casualties from Iranian rockets and IED's smuggled into Iraq for years. My guess is that even if Obama gave such an order, the attempt to carry it out might be less than thorough.

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Watcher's Council Nominations 4/21/10

Welcome to the latest edition of the Watcher's Council, a group of some of the most incisive blogs in the`sphere. Every week, the members nominate two posts each, one of their own and one from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. The Council votes to pick the winners in each category and the results can be seen in this space on Friday morning.

So, let's see what we have here:

Council Submissions

• Mere Rhetoric - Academic Linguist: Palin Speaks Like A Cognitive “Toddler,” Linguistically She’s “A Child”
• The Razor – Clinton Holds Tea Party to Higher Standards Than Islam
• The Colossus of Rhodey - Philly Inquirer offers ed school “solutions” to South Philly school violence
• Bookworm Room - Ordinary people view Rush as a dangerous Svengali
• The Provocateur - The Politics of Financial Reform
• Right Truth - Israel should set up a War Room for Propaganda
• Wolf Howling - Thoughts On Britain, Colonialism, and Multiculturalism
• The Glittering Eye - Think Small!
• Rhymes With Right - Dem Congresscritter Proposes Free School Lunches For Kids — On Weekends!
• JoshuaPundit - Stealth Jihad – GOP Senate Wanna-Be Tom Campbell’s Questionable Connections
• American Digest - The American Argument

Non-Council Submissions

• Doug Ross Journal - Gee, that policy change is quite a shock. In May of 2008, Candidate Obama stated: Israel a “constant sore” that “infects… foreign policy” Submitted by Mere Rhetoric
• Beltway Confidential - Is Goldman Obama’s Enron? No, it’s worse Submitted by The Razor
• Weekly Standard Blog - Tea Partiers Stand Up for Tea Party-Crashing Teacher Submitted by Colossus of Rhodey
• Zombie/Pajamas Media – Crashing the Crashers: Tea Party Infiltrators Outmaneuvered in S.F. Submitted by Bookworm Room
• Sign on San Diego - Dog Fighting Portrayal Ruled Legal Submitted by The Provocateur
• Caroline Glick - The strategic foundations of the US-Israel alliance Submitted by Right Truth
• The Truth In Black & Right - I Like My Tea Black Submitted by Wolf Howling
• Zenpundit - More Mackinlay – On Why the USG Doesn’t “Get” AQ as a “Global Insurgency” Submitted by The Glittering Eye
• NewsBusters – Time’s Klein: Beck, Palin Potentially Committing Sedition against U.S. Government; Heilemann Adds Limbaugh Submitted by Rhymes with Right
• Doug Ross Journal - Ruh Roh: Rep. Darrel Issa demands full disclosure from SEC regarding collusion with the White House and the New York Times over Goldman charges Submitted by JoshuaPundit
• Word Around the Net -Creeping Tyranny Submitted by American Digest
• Daled Amos - Zionists Kicked Palestinian Arabs Out Of Palestine? Why Do You Think Arabs Came In The First Place? Submitted by The Watcher

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Will America Lose Its Soul If It Abandons Israel?

Dennis Prager asks the question:

Most observers, right or left, pro-Israel or anti-Israel, would agree that Israeli-American relations are the worst they have been in memory. Among the many indications is that only 9 percent of Jewish Israelis think Pres. Barack Obama’s administration is more pro-Israel than pro-Palestinian, according to a Smith Research poll taken during the last week of March on behalf of the Jerusalem Post. Given how much Israelis love and admire (and emigrate to) America, this level of mistrust is remarkable.

Commentators on the left blame Israel, of course. For them, this is a no-brainer; blaming Israel is as natural as breathing. Furthermore, Israel is headed by a conservative prime minister and America is led by the most left-wing president in its history.

Meanwhile, commentators on the right are virtually unanimous in supporting Israel. This is not simply an anti-Obama, pro-Netanyahu reflex, however. There are many reasons for it.

Prager lists a few reasons, such as our close strategic alliance and one, Israel supporting us in the UN that I think means absolutely nothing to a nation with a Security Council veto. But then he gets to the heart of things:

There is a fifth reason tens of millions of Americans, including many conservative commentators, support Israel and worry about America as American support for Israel wanes. To the Left in America and around the world, this reason is dangerous nonsense. But for a vast number of America’s Christians, for many Jews, and even many non-religious conservatives, it is deeper than any military or political reason. The reason is based on a verse in Genesis in which God, referring to the Jewish people, says to Abraham: “I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you.”

One need not be a Jew or Christian or even believe in God to appreciate that this verse is as accurate a prediction as humanity has ever been given by the ancient world. The Jewish people have suffered longer and more horribly than any other living people. But they are still around. Its historic enemies are all gone. Those that cursed the Jews were indeed cursed.

And those who blessed the Jews were indeed blessed. The most blessed country for over 200 years has been the United States. It has also been the most blessed place Jews have ever lived in. Is this a coincidence? Many of us think not.{..}

The converse is what worries tens of millions of Americans — the day America abandons Israel, America will begin its descent.

Israel shares America’s values such as liberty, an independent judiciary, a free press, freedom of religion, free speech, and women’s equality. The Arab and Muslim worlds have none of these. Those facts — and America’s Judeo-Christian roots — make support of Israel, no matter what the Arab and Muslim “street” feels about America — a moral linchpin of American foreign policy.

This administration’s desire to have America liked in the Arab and Muslim worlds necessarily means altering that linchpin. You cannot protect Israel and strive to be liked in the Arab and Muslim worlds at the same time. And you cannot weaken that protection without weakening America’s moral values, which form the basis of America’s greatness.

Is Dennis Prager correct?

Certainly,unlike Europe America has always blessed its Jews, and that relationship goes back to its earliest days and indeed went both ways. If not for the efforts of Haym Salomon, whose efforts during the American Revolution to raise funds to support Washington and his nascent colonial army extended even to bankrupting his personal fortune, it's unlikely that America would have survived long enough to win its independence. Certainly George Washington as President set the tone for America's relationship with its Jewish citizens in his famous reply to the Jews of the Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, promising his fellow citizens "of the Stock of Abraham" that the new American republic would give "to bigotry no sanction, to persecution not assistance."

It is also true that every nation that has turned on the Jews, no matter how powerful - Egypt,Babylon, The Seleucids, Rome, Hitler and a host of others - have seen their empires disappear, their power dissipated and destroyed.

But unlike Dennis Prager, I'm not at all worried about America abandoning Israel just because of the ascendancy of a disciple of Reverend Jeremiah Wright and his assorted cohorts to the White House.

Aside from the religious reasons Prager mentions ( and I would probably have quoted the appropriate verses in Isaiah rather than Genesis) Americans are pro Israel by better than a two to one ratio because of what Israel is as well as its proven alliance with the US every time we needed them to come through for us.

We see in them a mirror of our earlier selves, a pioneer nation standing on its own two feet with values we recognize that created a homeland for themselves in a wilderness, who made the desert bloom and the barren hillsides flourish. We admire their stubborn willingness to defend what is theirs.

In spite of well funded efforts to demonize Israel, most Americans see them as an outpost of American values, an ally surrounded by our common enemies in th eWar on Jihad.

Barack Hussein Obama can strain those ties, but I doubt he will be able to break them unless the fundamental nature of the American people changes. And I don't see that happening...in spite of the busy efforts of the Left, including many severely confused Jews themselves.

Try as he might, I doubt Obama will convince the American people en masse that the Muslim world and their values are friendly to us and that Israel and the Jews are our enemies. The weight and path of history and of our traditions are simply against it.

Someone once asked me which side I would stand on in the event of a war between America and Israel. I simply told him that for that to happen, either America or Israel would have had to have changed so much that the choice would be self-evident to me.

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Iraq's Own Abu Ghreib - A Secret Prison For Sunnis

Ah yes,Arab democracy...

News of a secret prison/torture chamber run by the Shi'ite Iraqi government has surfaced:

Hundreds of Sunni men disappeared for months into a secret Baghdad prison under the jurisdiction of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's military office, where many were routinely tortured until the country's Human Rights Ministry gained access to the facility, Iraqi officials say.

The men were detained by the Iraqi army in October in sweeps targeting Sunni groups in Nineveh province, a stronghold of the group Al Qaeda in Iraq and other militants in the north. The provincial governor alleged at the time that ordinary citizens had been detained as well, often without a warrant.

Worried that courts would order the detainees' release, security forces obtained a court order and transferred them to Baghdad, where they were held in isolation. Human rights officials learned of the facility in March from family members searching for missing relatives.

And I the guards at this prison were using real torture,not the kid stuff the US Army's Lynndie England was popped for.

Commanders initially resisted efforts to inspect the prison but relented and allowed visits by two teams of inspectors, including Human Rights Minister Wijdan Salim. Inspectors said they found that the 431 prisoners had been subjected to appalling conditions and quoted prisoners as saying that one of them, a former colonel in President Saddam Hussein's army, had died in January as a result of torture.

"More than 100 were tortured. There were a lot of marks on their bodies," said an Iraqi official familiar with the inspections. "They beat people, they used electricity. They suffocated them with plastic bags, and different methods."

An internal U.S. Embassy report quotes Salim as saying that prisoners had told her they were handcuffed for three to four hours at a time in stress positions or sodomized.

"One prisoner told her that he had been raped on a daily basis, another showed her his undergarments, which were entirely bloodstained," the memo reads.

Maliki, by the way,still defends his use of special prisons and an elite military force that answers only to him; even though this little hellhole is going to be shut down, others undoubtedly persist.

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Congressmen To Obama: Push Amnesty or We'll Tell Latino Voters To Stay Home

The problem with basing a political coalition on blatant identity politics is that sooner or later, people start demanding what you promised them. And those demands usually conflict with the demands of other groups you want to keep in the fold:

A congressman from the president’s home state is threatening that he will urge Latino voters to stay home this November if the Democratic Party does not make a concerted effort to pass comprehensive immigration reform.

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (Ill.) is arguably President Barack Obama’s biggest Democratic critic in Congress. And he’s not fond of Obama’s top advisers at the White House, either.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) member has strongly criticized the administration’s policy on deportation and questioned its commitment to far-reaching reform.

Some Democrats have felt little urgency in pursuing the controversial issue, partly because they see no risk that Hispanic voters will bolt the party for the GOP. But Gutierrez says they are missing the real political consequence of inaction.

“We can stay home,” Gutierrez said in an interview with The Hill. “We can say, ‘You know what? There is a third option: We can refuse to participate.’ ” {...}

Gutierrez says Latinos have lost patience with Obama, and he predicts an “escalation” of activism aimed at forcing immigration reform to the fore of the party agenda.

“We’re going to make it uncomfortable for the Democratic Party,” Gutierrez said, adding that immigration advocates would step up the pressure by drawing lessons from the movements for civil rights and women’s suffrage. “There’ll probably be civil disobedience. There will probably be a number of different actions. What we have to do is we have to break through this wall of silence, because we’re invisible.”

Gutierrez is not alone. Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.), a CHC member who serves in the Democratic leadership, said earlier this month that Latinos view the president with “suspicion” for failing to meet expectations.

Prez Zero has his hands full here.Amnesty for illegal aliens is markedly unpopular,even more so than his Obamacare bill with today's record unemployment. And amnestia is especially unpopular with African-Americans,one of the few constituencies the president still has decent popularity with.

On the plus side, Barack Obama is going to need more Democrat votes in a hurry, and especially Democrat voters who will get behind a socialist agenda where they can vote for benefits for themselves at other people's expense. Legalizing illegal aliens is one sure way to get them.

it will be interesting to see how this goes down.

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Bill Clinton And Oklahoma City

Today is the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombings, and a friend of mine read Mr. Bill's spiffy new editorial linking Oklahoma city with the Tea Party movement and asked me "Why is he doing this?"

It's pretty simple, really. As usual, Mr. Bill is trying to cover for himself.

You see, the man who just wrote 'violence has no place in a democracy' initiated it.

The horrendous bombing in Oklahoma city occurred exactly two years after Bill Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno sent heavily armed agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms(BATF) in to make war on a religious compound in Waco. In case anyone missed that fact, Tim McVeigh mentioned it specifically as a motive during his trial, along with the earlier carnage at Ruby Ridge. Seventy-six people died in the Waco fire at the hands of the BATF, including more than 20 children and two pregnant women. And as further investigation disclosed, it was the BATF agents who opened fire first and who kept firing, even after Davidian Wayne Martin called emergency services from the house pleading for a ceasefire.

So you see, Mr. Bill has every reason to link what happened at Oklahoma City with that 'vast Right Wing conspiracy' he and Hillary are so fond of mentioning.

Another interesting factoid that most people are unaware of it the Middle East connection to the Oklahoma City bombing.

An investigation by the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the House International Relations Committee found that convicted terrorist and Iraqi intelligence officer Ramzi Yousef, the planner of the first WTC bombing and Terry Nichols were in Cebu City in the Philippines at exactly the same time three months before the Oklahoma City bombing. Also, Ramzi Yousef’s phone records from early 1993, show calls placed to the Filipina neighbor and close friend of Terry Nichols’ in-laws in Queens, New York.

It's important to remember that both Oklahoma City and the first World Trade Center bombing took place after the Gulf war...and both involved Iraqi intel officer Youseff.

Youseff apparently financed part of the Oklahoma city operation, and reportedly Hussein-al-Husseini, an Iraqi soldier in Saddam Hussein's Army, sat with Timothy McVeigh on the day of the bombing in that famous Ryder truck that was used.

It's also worth noting that the Oklahoma City Bombing followed almost exaclty the same tactics as the 1993 World Trade Center bombing —the use of a rental truck loaded with ammonium-based explosives, using similar detonation devices, based on the strategy of driving a vehicle into or near the target.

There's a great deal more on this, and I recommend that interested parties read The Third Terrorist:The Middle East Connection to the Oklahoma City Bombing a best seller by former NBC investigative reporter Jayna Davis, who devoted considerable time to this story.

You can read highlights of the book here.

Needless to say,Mr, Bill went out of his way to stifle any kind of a Middle East connection to what happened in Oklahoma City that day.Much more politically useful to blame it on some right wing nuts.

Same old same old.

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Goldman-Sachs

The Obama Administration is chock full of Goldman-Sachs functionaries, from tax cheat and Secretary of the Treasury Timmy Geithner to Ben Bernake. All of a sudden...horrors! They discover 'irregularities' and the SEC decides to sue them by 3-2 margin....

Does anyone think that the higher ups in the Obama Administration had no clue of what was going on until now? Anyone naive enough to believe that none of this would have surfaced if Obama wasn't pushing a 'financial reform' bill just now via Chris Dodd (of all people)...a bill that along with some admirable consumer protections built in gives the federal government total control to hire and fire, make or break at its whim in what's left of the financial services industry?

UPDATE: Bloomberg's analysts shed some more light on how the Obama Administration is using this for its own dubious ends.

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