Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Amnesty is Not The Answer





7/30/2013 - Phyllis Schlafly Eagle Forum

The Gang of Eight pro-amnesty Senators are trying to con the House of Representatives into passing parts of an anti-American amnesty bill so they can get a Chuck Schumer-dominated conference committee and bamboozle Representatives into going along with their sellout plans. The few pro-amnesty Republican Senators had Marco Rubio as the salesman for the unpopular amnesty bill, and the few pro-amnesty Republicans in the House have Paul Ryan to play the same un-Republican role.

The Gang of Eight patted itself on the back for successfully passing their bill in the Senate, but, funny thing, the bill was never forwarded to the House for action. The explanation for this irregular omission is fear that the House would "blue slip" the bill.

Article 1, Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution gives the sole power to the House to originate all bills for raising revenue, known as the Origination Clause. If the Senate oversteps and includes a provision to raise some revenue (which it did in the Gang's amnesty bill), the House can reject the bill and send it back to the Senate for correction in what is known as a "blue slip" procedure.

The devious Ryan plan to circumvent this rule is for the House to pass five or six bills on various aspects of amnesty and then use that bunch of bills to call for a conference committee with the Senate. Ryan let the cat out of the bag when he told a constituent audience in Racine, Wis. on July 26 that his revised plan now calls for a House vote, not before the August recess as originally expected but in October.

There is no indication that the Ryan amnesty is any better for Americans than the Rubio amnesty. Amnesty is still a bad deal for all, whether it comes in one package or in six.

The former New York Lt. Gov., Dr. Betsy McCaughey, the only one known to have actually read the 1,200-page Senate bill, says that the bill's text is loaded with "slippery" words (such as "emergency," "comprehensive," "plan" and "reform") that create loopholes giving Barack Obama the opportunity to refuse to enforce any provisions he doesn't like, including border security that the public is demanding.

That's what Obama notoriously did to cancel provisions of other laws, notably Obamacare's date of enforcement and the effective Work Requirement in Welfare Reform. Obama also seems to think he can invent his own new laws never passed by Congress, such as the Dream Act and anti-coal regulations.

There are so many dangerous and costly provisions in Congress' amnesty plans that they are difficult even to itemize, but for starters take the foolishness that amnesty loosens the rules for asylum seekers. We should have learned some deadly lessons from the asylum seekers we have already welcomed who turned out to be terrorists, such as the first World Trade bombers in 1993 and the Boston Marathon bombers this year.

The new amnesty bill reduces the application to be an asylum seeker from the current one-year deadline to as many years as the immigrant wants and, incredibly, allows the U.S. Attorney General to pay the asylum seekers' legal fees. We should absolutely bar all entry from countries that routinely engage in terrorism.

Another highly dangerous and costly provision that should be decisively rejected is the politically motivated plan to outsource duties to community organizers and activists who will be paid by our taxpayers to help immigrants transition to American life and apply for government benefits. That's like pouring tax dollars into the Democratic voting machine to do phone banking and outreach to load new entrants permanently into the Democratic Party.

The amnesty bill even assigns some of these so-called non-profit, left-wing community groups the task of rewriting provisions for U.S. citizenship. This indicates how far the left-wing's "religion" of diversity is taking us: That duty certainly should be performed by Americans, not foreigners.

Here's a good question for a new Congressional hearing. Will the Internal Revenue Service do a thorough audit of these groups' tax-exempt status and demand answers to intrusive questions, as the IRS did with the Tea Parties?

Here's another good question to which we would like an answer in an open congressional hearing. How many young illegal aliens who cross our southern border illegally are valedictorians compared with those who are carrying illegal drugs? The left went into spasms of rage when Rep. Steve King suggested there might be more of the latter, so let's have an investigation to find out if King was correct.

Sunday, July 28, 2013

6/19/2013 - Michelle Malkin Townhall.com
You can try to put "conservative" lipstick on the lawless amnesty mob. In the end, however, it's still a lawless mob. The big government/big business alliance to protect illegal immigration got a lot of mileage using foolish Republicans Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan as front men. But the true colors of the open-borders grievance-mongers always show through.
After America said no to a pork-filled security-undermining amnesty bill in 2007, the No Illegal Alien Left Behind lobbyists changed their overtly thuggish tactics. They put down their upside-down American flags, stopped wearing their commie Che Guevara T-shirts and cloaked their radical "Aztlan" aspirations in the less divisive rhetoric of "reform" and "opportunity."
It was all just an act, of course. Inevitably, the mask has slipped. Over the weekend, illegal alien protesters descended on the private residence of Kansas Secretary of State and immigration enforcement lawyer Kris Kobach. As Twitchy.com reported on Saturday, 300 amnesty activists marched into Kobach's neighborhood and barged up his driveway and right onto his doorstep. It's how the Alinskyite "community organizers" roll.
Shouting into a bullhorn and waving their fists from his front porch, the property rights-invaders dubbed Kobach "King of Hate" for his work representing border security activists and federal customs enforcement agents who are fighting the systemic sabotage of immigration law. Thankfully, Kobach, his wife and their four young daughters were not home at the time.
But the aggrieved amnesty demanders are not done yet. And Kobach is not the only one in their crosshairs.
After tea party activist turned Kansas state representative Amanda Grosserode condemned the mob action publicly on Facebook, racist insults and threats littered her page. Roberto Medina Ramirez wrote: "I'll give her something to be disgusted about!" Doris Lynn Crouse Gent chimed in: "OMG! Maybe her drive should be next." Matt S. Bashaw echoed the call: "Maybe her house should be next." Facebook user Jude Robinson also ranted on Grosserode's page: "Since Kobach steals taxpayer money spreading hate around the country, he deserves what he gets."
Dennis Paul Romero left this message for Grosserode: "(N)azi kkk and she is proud of it." A user writing as "Paul-says Fckmarkzuck" left death threats under Romero's comment: "Gotta start killing all the Nazis. Politicans (sic), bankers, and priests. Cops, lawyers, and Judges. ASAP." The same user added: "Just another b*tch that needs to die off already."
The radicals of Occupy Kansas posted an inflammatory photo of Grosserode with the race-baiting caption: "Kansas State legislator Amanda Grosserode says she is 'disgusted' by Hispanic protesters." Grosserode wasn't disgusted by their ethnicity. She was disgusted by their actions. No matter. Race/ethnic card: activated.
Gina Long pounced: "(S)he is stupid and doesn't like brown people." So did Diana Bauer: "Ah, poor Ms Grosserode; sorry that you find our Constitution so difficult to stomach. Or is it only whites that have the right to freedom of speech." One Lupe Ramirez left his own message for Grosserode: "We are starting our fundraising and campaign to unseat you. Do you not realize how many Hispanics are in Kansas. You no longer live in Dorothy's Kansas. You cannot represent your state, you don't even know who they are."
Grosserode isn't backing down. She told me Tuesday that she will remain "vigilant" and has given local law enforcement a heads-up. The conservative mom and lawmaker notes sadly that "there are some who would say that when you are in elected office that you should expect this kind of thing. I would disagree. No one deserves threats nor threats to their home and family."
But the amnesty vigilantes have no respect for borders, let alone private front porches, in their quest for another massive federal illegal alien bailout. They have no respect for law-abiding U.S. workers. They have no respect for law-abiding foreigners applying to get into our country the right and proper way.
As they besiege Capitol Hill this month demanding more rights and payoffs, take note: These groups do not stand for the American dream. They are a nightmare conglomeration of George Soros-funded social justice operatives, transnationalists and La Raza militants who detest U.S. sovereignty. National People's Action, which spearheads progressive "direct actions" at the private homes of their political foes and led the march on Kobach's home, is a "community organizing" nonprofit based in -- you guessed it -- Chicago.
NPA's past shakedowns have involved busing in protesters and schoolchildren (using public school buses) to invade the private property of their victims and intimidate their families. They relish their brass knuckles with this anthem:
Who's on your hit list NPA?
Who's on your hit list for today?
Take no prisoner, take no names.
Kick 'em in the (a--) when they play their games.
As I first reported in 2004, NPA is funded by the Tides Foundation, the Ben and Jerry's Foundation, and the MacArthur, Ford and Rockefeller foundations. It's also funded by your tax dollars. My research found that the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Massachusetts Department of Education had all given tens of thousands of dollars in grants to NPA members for left-wing activism, identity politics and illegal alien benefits.
Rubio, Ryan and other Republicans who've made common cause with these welfare-state goons have betrayed fundamental principles of limited government and the rule of law. They've allied themselves with the mob. There's nothing, not one thing, "conservative" about mass illegal alien amnesty. It's the complete Chicago-ization of America.

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

We Have Become the Divided States of America





6/14/2013 - Diana West

At what point does it become clear that we no longer inhabit America? When we "Press 2," not "1" for English? When a National Social Security Number syncs an electronic identity that the government hospital provided us at birth to track us till death?

When borders are no more, but the Surveillance State always knows where we are?

Ours is the age of dislocation before realization: The United States of America no longer exists. Why? How? The answer is simple, tragic and outrageous: Government officials, elected and unelected, with precious exceptions, no longer preserve, protect and defend the U.S. Constitution. Instead, they do whatever it takes to beat it, flout it and ignore it. Worse, We, the People, let them.

This can't go on. Otherwise our country-'tis-of-thee becomes a melody to be forgotten, a mirage of a tradition more storybook than real every day. Nowhere is this more the case, of course, than in Washington, D.C., where absolute unaccountability corrupts absolutely, where echoing down the cool, white marble halls of power, hollow men and women trample sovereignty and citizenship in a pathway to American betrayal.

And I haven't even gotten to Congress, busy, busy "reforming" the illegal alien crisis they antiseptically refer to as "immigration," while considering passage of a $940 billion "farm bill," 80 percent of which will fund food stamps. These two laws alone can institutionalize the lawlessness of the land and make countless more Americans wards of the state.

Meanwhile, there is in Washington a faceless power-mongery that lives and works in the shadows. City by city, rural state by rural state, its mechanisms of "immigration," "refugee resettlement," and socialist government programs overwhelm a near-impotent citizenry with alien cultures, religions, languages and traditions.
There is no "melting pot" out there, nor is there even residual belief in one -- particularly not on the part of the state. Most of our new peoples will never embrace American constitutional virtues en masse to perpetuate them because their own sponsor, their own lifeline, is the mega-state that brought them here and supports them.

This goes for newcomers from the Hispano-sphere, 75 percent of whom, Pew reported in 2012, believe the U.S. government isn't big enough and want more government services. It also goes for Muslim "refugee resettlement" populations, willfully deployed by this same power-mongery to displace and erase what we may one day look back on as just another indigenous culture that Washington overlords destroyed.

Then there is the faceless power-mongery that transforms the country, ironically, in the name of "national security." How can "national security" be achievable in an America without borders? It is a post-9/11 fact that more than one million Americans, government employees and contactors, now have "top-secret" access. They monitor our electronic lives, and collect all of our telephone numbers, something we have learned from the completely unauthorized but vital disclosures of Edward Snowden. This mass monitoring, we are told repeatedly, is what it takes to prevent "another 9/11."

Never mind those pinprick jihad attacks in Boston, Arkansas or Fort Hood. In fact, never mind jihad, period. This same Surveillance State has officially eliminated jihad as a subject to be taught or studied by security agencies and the military. In this way, every one of us becomes a suspect.

"Why do you need every telephone number?" NBC's Andrea Mitchell asked Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. "Why is it such a broad vacuum cleaner approach?"

"Well, you have to start someplace," Clapper replied.

Incredibly, this deaf, dumb and blind vacuum cleaner approach is touted as effective enough to have prevented 9/11 in the first place. So stresses former CIA and NSA chief Michael Hayden, a booster of the warrantless "data mining" of the PRISM program and the mass collection of all Americans' telephone records.

The mendacity of this rationale is as appalling as the hyper-state it enables. Just ask the airline ticket taker in Boston who, constricted by "political correctness" forced herself to tell the al-Qaida hijackers to "have a nice flight" rather than investigate their strange pre-boarding behavior.

If our leaders really wanted to prevent "another 9/11," they would have long ago admitted the obvious: that the world of Islam, from its terrorists to its kings, is engaged in the latest historical cycle of jihad to extend the reach of Islamic law (sharia). They would have decided that "profiling" isn't worse than terrorism.
They would have halted Islamic immigration not only to stop more jihad cells from forming but also to prevent Constitution-endangering, pro-sharia demographics from forming, too. They would have sharply curtailed travel, and particularly return travel from jihad nations such as Chechnya and Pakistan.

They would have long ago blocked U.S. institutions, including colleges, media organizations and banks, from accepting millions of dollars from sharia-ruled dictatorships.

They would have closed down mosques in America where jihad is preached and supported.
Above all, they would have secured our borders rather than leave them open all these post-9/11 years. Of course, that would mean re-establishing and defending those borders, both literally and figuratively.

That's one thing Washington, D.C., will never tolerate.

(Diana West's new book is "American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation's Character" from St. Martin's Press. She blogs at dianawest.net, and she can be contacted via dianawest@verizon.net. Follow her on Twitter @diana_west_.)

Monday, July 22, 2013

Uncontrolled Demographics Will Ruin a Nation






5/24/2013 - Pat Buchanan Townhall.com

After a British soldier wearing a Help for Heroes charity T-shirt was run over, stabbed and slashed with machetes and a meat cleaver, and beheaded, the Tory government advised its soldiers that it is probably best not to appear in uniform on the streets of their capital.

Both murderers were wounded by police. One was photographed and recorded. His message: "There are many, many (verses) throughout the Quran that says we must fight them as they fight us. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. I apologize that women had to witness this today, but in our land women have to see the same. Your people will never be safe."

According to ITV, one murderer, hands dripping blood, ranted, "We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you." Both killers are Muslim converts of African descent, and both are British born.
Wednesday also, Stockholm and its suburbs ended a fourth night of riots, vandalism and arson by immigrant mobs protesting the police shooting of a machete-wielding 69-year-old. "We have institutional racism," says Rami Al-khamisi, founder of a group for "social change."

Sweden, racist? Among advanced nations, Sweden ranks fourth in the number of asylum seekers it has admitted and second relative to its population. Are the Swedes really the problem in Sweden?
The same day these stories ran, the Washington Post carried a front-page photo of Ibrahim Todashev, martial arts professional and friend of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who, with brother Dzhokhar, set off the bombs at the Boston Marathon massacre.

Todashev, another Chechen, had been shot to death by FBI agents, reportedly after he confessed to his and Tamerlan's role in a triple murder in Waltham, Mass.

Though Tamerlan had been radicalized and Moscow had made inquiries about him, he had escaped the notice of U.S. authorities. Even after he returned to the Caucasus for six months, sought to contact extremists, then returned to the U.S.A., Tamerlan still was not on Homeland Security's radar.

His father, granted political asylum, went back to the same region he had fled in fear. His mother had been arrested for shoplifting. Yet none of this caused U.S. officials to pick up Tamerlan, a welfare freeloader, and throw the lot of them out of the country.

One wonders if the West is going to wake up to the new world we have entered, or adhere to immigration policies dating to a liberal era long since dead.

It was in 1965, halcyon hour of the Great Society, that Ted Kennedy led Congress into abolishing a policy that had restricted immigration for 40 years, while we absorbed and Americanized the millions who had come over between 1890 and 1920.

The "national origins" feature of that 1924 law mandated that ships arriving at U.S. ports carry immigrants from countries that had provided our immigrants in the past. We liked who we were. Immigration policy was written to reinforce the Western orientation and roots of America, 90 percent of whose population could by 1960 trace its ancestry to the Old Continent.

But since 1965, immigration policy has been run by people who detest that America and wanted a new nation that looked less like Europe and more like a continental replica of the U.N. General Assembly.
They wanted to end America's history as the largest and greatest of Western nations and make her a nation of nations, a new society and a new people, more racially, ethnically, religiously and culturally diverse than any nation on the face of the earth.

Behind this vision lies an ideology, an idee fixe, that America is not a normal nation of blood and soil, history and heroes, but a nation erected upon an idea, the idea that anyone and everyone who comes here, raises his hand, and swears allegiance to the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights becomes, de facto, not just a legal citizen but an American.

But that is no more true than to say that someone who arrives in Paris from Africa or the Middle East and raises his hand to declare allegiance to the Rights of Man thereby becomes a Frenchman.

What is the peril into which America and the West are drifting? Ties of race, religion, ethnicity and culture are the prevailing winds among mankind and are tearing apart countries and continents. And as we bring in people from all over the world, they are not leaving all of their old allegiances and animosities behind.

Many carry them, if at times dormant, within their hearts. And if we bring into America -- afflicted by her polarized politics, hateful rhetoric and culture wars -- peoples on all sides of every conflict roiling mankind, how do we think this experiment is going to end?

The immigration bill moving through the Senate, with an amnesty for 11 to 12 million illegal aliens already here, and millions of their relatives back home, may write an end to more than just the Republican Party.