Back to Basics

Here we go again. I’ve long reported on the danger of illegal alien sanctuary city policies embraced by woefully misguided (at best) and criminally reckless public officials seeking to appease the open borders lobby. One of the countless casualties of this deadly pandering was Houston PD officer Rodney Johnson, who shot and killed during a traffic stop in 2006 by an previously deported illegal alien protected by Houston’s sanctuary law. His widow, Josyln, continues to speak out against continued non-enforcement policies — and she is livid that the Houston police chief will now be joining the Obama administration:

The widow of a Houston police officer killed by an illegal immigrant said Sunday that the policies left in place in her city by a top immigration official in the Obama administration continue to put officers in danger.

That official, former Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt, is taking a job to oversee partnerships between federal and local officials with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. However, during his tenure in Houston he resisted enforcing immigration law and criticized ICE’s key program that draws on local law enforcement’s support. Hurtt is now facing a lawsuit over those policies filed by Joslyn Johnson, whose husband, Rodney, was killed in 2006 by a once-deported illegal immigrant who had been arrested three times.

Joslyn Johnson, herself a sergeant in the Houston force, told Fox News that the policies that kept local officers from checking the immigration status of suspects remain in place and pose a risk to her and her colleagues.

“It has remained the same. It has not changed,” Johnson said.

Johnson is suing to seek a change in policy so that federal immigration databases are widely available to local departments. Johnson’s original court petition — naming Hurtt as well as the city and the police department — claimed that the department’s failure to discover the gunman’s immigration status and report him to federal authorities enabled him to stay “at large” in the country.

These open-borders sympathizers endanger us all — and it will only prompt more of an Arizona-style backlash in other states and cities across the country.

“Illegal alien sanctuary” or rule of law community: It’s your choice.

The ALIPAC Team
www.alipac.us

Some of you may have heard the news stories about Maywood, California. The small town is on the verge of becoming unincorporated and has fired all police and staff. Maywood has fallen to illegal immigration. Is your town next?

National radio show host Roger Hedgecock has written a very important piece about Maywood, Ca. to help our supporters understand how illegal immigration swept Maywood into destruction. In fact, Maywood may just be one of many dominoes falling in California. The evidence is strong that what happened there is coming to your town eventually unless we can stop Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch, NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and the CEO’s of Hewlett Packard, Boeing, and Disney from passing Comprehensive Amnesty with President Obama.

Welcome to Maywood, Mexico

June 26, 2010

Boasting a population that is 97% Hispanic, more than half foreign born, and 40% illegal, the Los Angeles County, Calif., incorporated city of Maywood has achieved the Reconquista goal. It is now as lawless and chaotic as any place in Mexico. Maywood is a warning to every city and town in America.

The Maywood City Council announced this week that after years of radical policies, corruption and scandal, the city was broke and all city employees would be laid off and essential city services contracted out to neighboring cities or to L.A. County government.

June 25, 2010
Roger Hedgecock
Human Events

How did this happen? Until recently, Maywood was the model for “brown power” politics.

The only person who has been fired in the midst of the oil spill fiasco has been the former head of the Minerals Management Service of the Department of the Interior.

According to a June 17 editorial in The Wall Street Journal, it is now clear that both the Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, and the White House energy “czar”, Carol Browner, both lied to the nation regarding the recommendations by drilling experts, alleging that they had agreed to a moratorium on oil drilling in the Gulf.

Browner, citing the falsified recommendation to impose a moratorium, inserted after the memorandum had been received, said, “No one’s been deceived or misrepresented.” She lied.

From the beginning of the oil spill, the administration has failed to respond in a timely fashion.

In an article in Human Events the following lack of action by the administration was cited:

It failed to accept help offered by the Netherlands to help with skimming booms and plans to create barriers.

It failed to suspend the Jones Act in order to allow foreign vessels into American waters.

It failed to suspend the Davis-Bacon wage laws to allow rapid deployment of new workers to help the containment efforts.

It failed to suspend FEMA contracting and bidding rules.

It failed to allow coastal governors to immediately begin dredging to create barrier islands.

Failure on this scale requires that those involved should lose their jobs. We cannot “fire” the President, but his administration is shot through with people from the highest level to those below that exacerbated the Gulf oil spill.

The Secretary of Energy, Dr. Steven Chu, has barely been heard from. The Secretary of the Interior has been silenced since his comment that he would keep his “boot on the neck of BP.”

It took nearly two months before the President met with officials from BP.

The reformers are at it again with yet another attempt to criminalize political speech and campaign activity.

From the government’s Department of Perverse Acronyms comes the “DISCLOSE Act”, which stands for “Democracy is Strengthened by Casting Light On Spending in Elections”.  How clever.  And how disingenuous.

It’s being championed by New York Democrat Chuck Schumer in an attempt to get around this year’s Supreme Court decision which threw out restrictions on freedom of speech for unions and corporations in political campaigns.

The claim is that large amounts of money spent by corporations on political speech somehow corrupts the system, but it should be noted that Schumer’s bill would reinstate no restrictions on unions, just corporations and average citizens.  In other words, he only seems to want to cast light on “some” spending.

Of course, as Democrats attempt to limit political activity by corporations they want to bring to mind visions of BP or mega-sized drug companies, but it would also apply to the corporation that you set up to run your family business.

In a world increasingly run by Washington, corporations need the ability to protect their interests and speak out effectively when necessary – and, as experience has taught us, size doesn’t matter when it comes to being at risk from government.

Then there are the non-profit corporations on all sides of the political spectrum that exist specifically so that Americans of like mind can join together and have an impact on the things they care about.  This latest version of reform would force the public disclosure of their membership lists, which means that Democrats now support a right of privacy for abortion, but not for membership in political organizations.

Having hinged the entire future of the country’s economy on “green jobs,” spent billions pushing them and created a Czar position for it, Team Obama now figures that it’s time to try and decide exactly what the hell a “green job” is — better late than never, I suppose:

Buried deep inside a federal newsletter on March 16 was something called a “notice of solicitation of comments” from the Bureau of Labor Statistics at the Department of Labor.

“BLS is responsible for developing and implementing the collection of new data on green jobs,” said the note in the Federal Register, which is widely read by government bureaucrats and almost never seen by the general public. But the notice said there is “no widely accepted standard definition of ‘green jobs.’” To help find that definition, the Labor Department asked that readers send in suggestions.

The notice came only after the department scoured studies from government, academia, and business in search of a definition. “The common thread through the studies and discussions is that green jobs are jobs related to preserving or restoring the environment,” the notice said. Duh! Beyond that, a precise definition has eluded Labor Department officials.

For any of you M*A*S*H fans, “green jobs” might remind you of the “Captain Tuttle” episode:

Hawkeye and Trapper invent a fictional Captain Tuttle (based on Hawkeye’s imaginary friend from childhood), but one thing leads to another and soon everyone at the camp believes Captain Tuttle is real. This creates problems when General Clayton decides to honor Tuttle by placing his picture in the newspaper and awarding him a medal.

Well, it’s time to put a picture of “green jobs” in the paper and award it a medal, so the scramble begins.

“Whose side are you on?”

In light of the fact that all problems are solved in the United States and our debt and spending are under control, President Obama yesterday pledged $400 million in U.S. aid to the Palestinian territories. The money was pledged during a meeting between Obama and Mahmoud Abbas.

Obama said he would not meet with the CEO of BP because “he’s going to say all the right things to me, I’m not interested in words, I’m interested in actions,” so it’s nice to see him have such confidence in Abbas to be honest and forthright in his ultimately successful attempt to get his hands on hundreds of millions of American taxpayer dollars.

Cassy Fiano calls it a “terrorist stimulus package,” and if it is, the only reason for optimism is the hope that a terrorist stimulus will work as well as the stimulus package. If Sheriff Biden is in charge of making sure the aid works as intended, Abbas is screwed.

But remember, the $400 million is just a “down payment”:

The Obama administration’s promise of aid includes money to increase access to clean drinking water, create jobs and build schools and affordable housing. State Department officials called the projects “a down payment” on the U.S. commitment to improving life in Gaza.

Last year, U.S. officials pledged a total of $900 million for Gaza and the West Bank, but acknowledged the difficulty of distributing the funds, especially because Hamas controls Gaza and is considered a terrorist organization. The aid announced Wednesday may be distributed through organizations performing relief work, State Department officials said.

Sure. This aid will be different… it won’t be handed to the guys in the “Hamas” shirts, but rather to the nice folks wearing the “samaH” shirts (inability to recognize a t-shirt turned inside-out is a time-honored skill that’s been handed down through generations of United Nations aid distributors).

Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana isn’t happy with any of this, and asks Obama what I’d consider the rhetorical question of the week: “Whose side are you on?” (h/t Cubachi):

Members of congress demand criminal probe

“This is punishable by prison. This is a felony.” – Rep. Darrell Issa

Joe Sestak

29 May 2010: Due to the recent equivocations from the Obama White House and the apparent unwillingness by the mainstream media to investigate this matter, the majority of Americans are unaware of the seriousness of the Obama administration’s alleged actions involving Joseph Sestak.  If proven, the reported actions of the Obama administration are clear violations of three federal laws[i]. The impact and fallout from documented violations, as well as the refusal of the Holder Justice Department to appoint a Special Counsel to investigate this matter, have the potential to eclipse the Watergate scandal of the early 1970’s – it is that serious.

The crime

In an attempt to retain as much political control over Congress during the 2010 midterm elections, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel dispatched William Clinton and lawyer Doug Band to meet with senatorial candidate Joseph Sestak who was running against Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania. In exchange for dropping out of the race, Sestak was offered a position with the administration. It was reasoned that should Sestak accept, Specter would be unopposed in the primary and have a much better chance of retaining his senatorial seat. The meetings reportedly took place in June and July of last year.

Based on open source reports stemming back to February, it is apparent that Sestak had no idea that such overtures are illegal as he readily admitted the meeting and job offer in a February 18, 2010 interview with Philadelphia TV newscaster Larry Kane (documented here).

The Summer of Corruption plot thickens
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2010

In Chicago politics, there’s an old term for the publicly subsidized pay-offs and positions meted out to the corruptocrats’ friends and special interests: boodle.

In the age of Obama, Hope and Change is all about the boodle. So it was with the stimulus. And the massive national service expansion. And the health care bill. And the financial reform bill. And the blossoming job-trading scandals engulfing the White House.

There’s always been an ageless, interdependent relationship between Windy City politicos and “goo-goos” (the cynical Chicago term for good government reformers). Chicago-style “reform” has always entailed the redistribution of wealth and power under the guise of public service. And it has inevitably led to more corruption.

In March 2010, this column first took note of allegations by Democrats Joe Sestak and Andrew Romanoff that the White House had offered them jobs in exchange for dropping their respective bids against Obama-favored incumbent Sens. Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania and Michael Bennet in Colorado. White House legal counsel Bob “The Fixer” Bauer’s attempt to bury questions about the Sestak affair with a Memorial Day weekend document dump failed. So has the attempt to make Rahm Emanuel-enlisted former president Bill Clinton the sole scapegoat.

Bauer’s memo mentions “efforts” (plural, not singular) to woo Sestak. But the White House refuses to divulge what offers besides Clinton’s were extended to Sestak. Moreover, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs has now denied that Team Obama was involved in the one Clinton offer that has been publicized — an unpaid appointment on an intelligence board for which Sestak was ineligible.

After months of silence, Romanoff finally stepped forward this week to acknowledge that the White House had dangled several positions before him, too. He released e-mails detailing not one, not two, but three different paid positions offered by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina — whose boss, Emanuel, was subpoenaed this week by impeached former Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich of Illinois to testify in his Senate pay-for-play corruption trial.

Now that the oil leak has been plugged, we can now move on to the next step of figuring out legal liability. Check that — the leak hasn’t been plugged, but send in the lawyers anyway!

VENICE, La., May 31 (UPI) — U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder plans to visit areas affected by the gulf oil spill Tuesday and meet with state attorneys generals, officials said.

The White House has said the Justice Department was looking at the circumstances leading up to the April explosion and spill, but has shied away from saying the department is conducting an investigation.

However, the department said Holder plans to meet with U.S. prosecutors as well as state attorneys general from Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi.

This is why the entire Obama administration is so perplexed by what to do about this spill. An oil leak isn’t something you can simply commandeer, bribe, shout down, intimidate or boycott. Anything beyond that, they’re completely stumped as to what to do, and it shows.