Multiculturalism?
No thanks!
Multiculturalism Is a Fraud
and is a disaster for women's rights!
The
Diversity File
A fact-based response to the idea that all cultures are equal
Open
Borders' Inevitable Result
What is LimitsToGrowth?
Immigration's Many Effects
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Overpopulation!
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Clash of Myths
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Traffic and Sprawl
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Hysteria Endangers Speech
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Balkanized Society
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Impact on Black Americans
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Immigration in the Classroom
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The Terrorist Threat, March 2001
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The Diversity File
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Importing Anti-Semitism
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Remittances
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Rep. Tom Tancredo Speeches
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Public Health Put at Risk
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Unliveable California
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Growth, Lies and Water Supply
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Awakenings
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The Role of the Media
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Pim Fortuyn
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Muslims in France
• Alleviating the Pressure to Emigrate
Mass Immigration's
Sponsors
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Vatican Subversion
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Mexican Creative
Financing
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Mexico Is Rich
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Mexico's Territorial
Desires
Immigration Amusements
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Identification Kit
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Parody
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Poetry
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Crossword Puzzle
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Celebrate Homogeneity
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Medical Malady Exposed
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Politics 101
Literary Pursuits
ARCHIVES
July 2008
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101
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Links
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Groups and Information
How to Contact LimitsToGrowth
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E-mail, snail mail, phone
See our companion website ImmigrationsHumanCost.org
For more on this subject, see
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What's New
Boy thrown under train for writing love letter
[11/20/08]
• • •
Africa rejoices over Obama, but seeks own answers
[11/19/08]
I preferred the time when the American President acted like the leader and advocate of the United States, not the world. Bush would rather be seen as a big man benefactor in Africa than help out the millions of hard-working citizens who get nothing but the shaft from Washington.
• • •
Probation, instead of deportation
[11/18/08]
• • •
16 Year-Old Girl Killed on Way to School Parade in Gilbert
[11/18/08]
• • •
Mexico drug wars spill across the border
[11/18/08]
• • •
An abuse of freedom: Many illegal immigrants out on bail commit another crime or vanish before trial
[11/17/08]
• • •
"In killing blamed on immigrant, woman's kin want answers"
[11/16/08]
Click here to see the local rogues gallery of illegal alien criminals. See also the case history of Pedro Edgardo Alvarez, a criminal with a lengthy rap sheet who was ordered deported 17 years but has escaped deportation on several occasions.
• • •
No open-borders mandate
[11/16/08]
• • •
Slain officer's widow sues city, gun store
[11/15/08]
• • •
Dallas ISD faulted for using fake Social Security numbers
[11/14/08]
• • •
Suspect in 14-year-old S.F. boy's slaying had avoided deportation
[11/14/08]
• • •
Former Panda Express staffers air worries over immigration raids
[11/13/08]
• • •
Report: Philadelphia area sees immigration growth
[11/13/08]
• • •
Catholic Church cuts off ACORN funding
[11/13/08]
• • •
Kin Sues Firm in Actress Murder
[11/12/08]
• • •
REMEMBERING THE SACRIFICES OF VETERANS...
[11/11/08]
Always stirring is General Dwight Eisenhower's message to the troops prior to D-Day. It begins...
You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have
striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The
hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you.
Sadly you can't even say "crusade" today because it might upset some Muslim somewhere. But WWII was before political correctness, and America was a better place for being free of such nonsense.
And what's a patriotic holliday withour "God Bless America" sung by Kate Smith? This version has particularly beautiful photos of our spectacular land, to match the inspiring lyrics.
• • •
Alleged S.F. gang members laughed over boy's killing, police say
[11/11/08]
• • •
Mexico's drug wars curtail holiday travel
[11/10/08]
• • •
Zogby Post-Election Poll Reveals No Mandate for Illegal Alien Amnesty
[11/10/08]
• • •
"Babies bred for sale in Nigeria"
[11/09/08]
• • •
With local police support, Ariz. deportations soar
[11/09/08]
• • •
Report identifies UK terrorist enclaves
[11/08/08]
• • •
Blacks, Hispanics nixed gay marriage
[11/08/08]
• • •
Turkish Village Slaughters 44 Sheep for 44th U.S. President-Elect
[11/07/08]
• • •
BART criticized for closing 3 stations
[11/07/08]
For another example of Marxist indoctrination, see "Why We Shut ICE Down For A Day" from the ethnic website New American Media.
• • •
The Hispanic Vote in the 2008 Election
[11/06/08]
• • •
Local Kenyans celebrate Obama's victory
[11/05/08]
• • •
Hazleton mayor pins congressional defeat on Obama
[11/05/08]
• • •
ELECTION DAY!
[11/04/08]
Below, is a photo from Los Angeles County showing the diversity of languages in which ballots are printed. According to US English, the cost of multilingual ballots and translations represented one-eighth of Los Angeles County's $16 million expense in the Nov. 2004 general election.
In addition, here's an upbeat tune in Cajun style...
• • •
Aunt Zeituni's Protectors
[11/03/08]
• • •
Central American immigrants adopt Mexican ways in U.S.
[11/03/08]
Below, Salvadoran kiddies residing in Los Angeles celebrate their flag on Central American Independence Day at MacArthur Park.
• • •
Councils ban 'elitist' and 'discriminatory' Latin phrases
[11/02/08]
• • •
Mexico death industry thrives on drug war killings
[11/02/08]
• • •
Democratic Party to bring immigration reforms, if voted to power
[11/02/08]
• • •
Terrorists try to infiltrate UK's top labs
[11/02/08]
• • •
Mexico's top federal police chief quits amid probe
[11/01/08]
• • •
Police halt wedding of boy, seven, to girl aged five
[10/31/08]
The 2000 Census numbers Pakistan-born persons residing in the United States at 223,475.
• • •
BART reopens 3 stations where protesters jumped fare gates
[10/31/08]
Below, (mostly) kiddies who should be in school, protesting American sovereignty ("immigration is a human right" according to one sign).
The brutal caste system of India remains in place. Getting thrown under the train is what happens to people who don't obey the retro social conventions. (When Indian immigrants come to America, however, they expect a classless society and squawk up a storm if they feel they haven't been treated with absolute fairness and given maximum opportunity.)
PATNA (Reuters) - A teenage boy was thrashed, paraded through the streets with his head shaved and then thrown under a train in Bihar for daring to write a love letter to a girl from a different caste, police said on Thursday.
Fifteen-year-old Manish Kumar was kidnapped by members of the rival caste on his way to school, had his head shaved and was thrown under a train as his mother begged for mercy, police said.
One man has so far been arrested and a policeman suspended.
The victim's mother Lalit Devi told police she had watched "helplessly" as the wheels of the train passed over her son.
"The accused persons killed the boy for writing a love letter to the girl of the same village," superintendent of police in Kaimur district, Rajesh Kumar, told Reuters by telephone.
Police said the girl belonged to a washerman community, considered a lower caste, whereas the boy came from the slightly higher dairymen Yadav community.
Will Africa get more attention -- and more taxpayer money -- under President Obama? Expectations are high there that goodies will be flowing their way from a son of Africa, who is about to become the most powerful man on earth.
Many of the remedies Obama has said he would apply to Africa's miseries will sound familiar: aid twinned with an emphasis on fostering entrepreneurship; tough talk for dictators; commitment to fighting AIDS.
In all fairness however, it must be noted that "compassionate conservative" George W. Bush has been more than generous with American dollars given for African healthcare: U.S. triples AIDS, malaria, TB funds for Africa [Windsor Star, July 30, 2008].
He has also said he would double foreign aid spending from $25 billion in 2008 to $50 billion by the end of his first term.
But he hasn't said how much of it would go to Africa, and the continent will struggle for a place on a presidential agenda that includes Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran's nuclear program, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the global financial meltdown, and climate change.
WASHINGTON - U.S. President George W. Bush on Wednesday signed legislation tripling funds to fight the killer diseases of AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis in the world's poorest countries, mainly in Africa.
Is it not shocking that President Bush was happy to spend such an enormous sum of taxpayer money in Africa when nearly 50 million Americans do not have healthcare coverage? No one seemed bothered at the time with his profligate generosity -- and on borrowed money too, part of the trillions of dollars he has racked up on the national credit card to be paid back at some unspecified time in the future.
Congress approved a package earlier this month which lifted funding for the five-year program from 15 billion dollars, set in 2003, to the 48 billion dollars signed into law by Bush.
The U.S. president had called during a trip to Africa in February for Congress to double funding for the program to 30 billion dollars, but the final sum was much larger.
For a look at the critical lack of healthcare among America's working poor, see the Sixty Minutes segment about an organization of volunteer medical workers (Remote Area Medical) which sets up temporary clinics in US communities, like Knoxville early this year. The group does similar operations in Third World countries like Honduras.
It's maddening to see how the police and criminal justice system have completely forgotten their mission to protect the public from dangerous people. Even men who rape children are released with no punishment.
Bayron Orlando Euceda, an illegal immigrant from Honduras, did not serve a day in prison for sexually assaulting a 13-year-old Houston girl.
Juan Quintero, the convicted killer of Houston PD Officer Rodney Johnson, also got treated with kid gloves.
Instead, a Harris County judge sentenced the 21-year-old to eight years deferred adjudication, a form of probation. A sticky note on his plea agreement reads, "Best interest of victim."
"That's incredible," said Andy Kahan, director of the Houston Mayor's Crime Victims Office and a former probation officer, after thumbing through Euceda's court paperwork. "The best interest of the victim would have been to have that guy locked up."
The twin photos show the killer at an early court appearance and later when he was cleaned up for trial.
The practice of sentencing illegal immigrants to probation attracted sharp criticism after an illegal immigrant from Mexico killed Houston police officer Rodney Johnson.
One bit of good news: Cornyn wants investigation into immigrant inmates: Lawmaker's call for action follows Chronicle's series on the release of violent criminals who admitted to jailers they were in the U.S. illegally
Juan Quintero, who is serving a life sentence for the murder, had several DWI convictions and was sentenced to deferred adjudication for indecency with a 12-year-old girl in 1999. Quintero was deported but returned to Houston illegally and shot Johnson on Sept. 21, 2006.
Johnson's widow, Houston police Sgt. Joslyn Johnson, said she hopes for a policy change that would stop illegal immigrants from ending up on probation, saying prison time would be more of a deterrent to coming back to the U.S. illegally.
"They broke the law when they came into the country illegally, and if they've committed another crime on top of that, I think they should be automatically deported," she said. "They should not be allowed to stay in the country on probation."
The Texas Republican said on Monday that the Chronicle's investigation "raised some very serious concerns." He said he requested information from Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, and was particularly concerned about the finding that suspected illegal immigrants had posted bail and absconded on criminal charges, including murder, aggravated sexual assault of a child and drug trafficking.
In addition, the Texas Governor was also displeased to to learn the extent of immigration crime anarchy detailed in the Houston Chronicle series: Perry outraged that criminal immigrants aren't being deported.
AUSTIN -- Gov. Rick Perry demanded Tuesday that the federal government take steps to help state and local officials ensure that unauthorized immigrants who commit crimes in Texas remain in custody until they are deported.
See also Sen. Cornyn's press release on the topic: Sen. Cornyn To Seek Answers On Reports Of Immigration & Customs Enforcement Failing To Detain Violent Illegal Immigrants.
In a strongly worded letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, Perry said he was "outraged" to learn that many convicted immigrants in Texas jails were released after they completed their jail sentences instead of being deported.
"Texas has spent the last four years investing unprecedented amounts of state resources to secure our border with Mexico. To now learn that criminal aliens who have been jailed are being released back into our communities by federal authorities who have neglected to secure our border is infuriating and unconscionable,'' he said.
Spokeswoman Allison Castle said the governor was reacting, in part, to a series of stories in the Houston Chronicle, reporting how federal immigration officials have allowed scores of violent criminals to be freed despite the inmates' admission to jailers that they were in the United States illegally.
"We knew there was a problem, but we didn't know the scope and magnitude of it," Castle said. In his letter, Perry noted that some of the released immigrants were later charged with felonies, including capital murder, rape, robbery and child molestation.
It's incredibly sad to see another innocent kid killed in a traffic crash caused by a drunk-driving illegal alien. Kelly Tracy, a percussionist in the Highland High School band, was on her way to a music event with her brother Matthew when she was killed in a head-on by Mexican Manuel Contreras-Galdean, according to police.
MESA, Ariz. (AP) -- Mesa Police say an illegal immigrant who was driving impaired is responsible for a crash in Mesa that killed a 16-year-old girl who was on her way to a school parade in Gilbert.
Additionally upsetting is how easily the perp scammed the police last year, convincing them that he was not illegal by his high quality forged documents: Suspect pleaded guilty to drunken driving in '07.
32-year-old Manuel Contreras Galdean turned in front of a car carrying the girl and her 17-year-old brother Saturday morning, says Mesa Police Sgt. Ed Wessing.
According to Mesa Police, the collision was head-on and caused massive head trauma and injuries to both legs of 16 year-old Kelly Tracy. Her brother Matthew Tracy, who was driving, suffered non-life-threatening injuries.
A man jailed on suspicion of killing a Highland High School band member in a crash Saturday gave Tempe police no reason to believe he was an illegal immigrant when he was stopped on suspicion of drunken driving almost two years ago.
Isn't it more important for police to protect the public than worry about profiling, particularly when there is a drunk-driving foreigner under arrest?
Tempe police spokesman Sgt. Steve Carbajal said Monday that Manuel Contreras-Galdean gave officers who arrested him Jan. 27, 2007, a local address that matched the address for his car registration, and his Mexican driver's license seemed to also be valid, all signs that he could be here legally.
Carbajal said officers run the risk of racial profiling if they begin inquiring about a person's citizenship without a good reason.
Contreras, who police say was drunk and who was booked on suspicion of manslaughter in connection with the crash that killed Kelly Tracy, 16, Saturday morning, was here illegally in 2007, according to court records.
Our next door neighbor is a crack house and we have open borders -- what did you think would happen?
The drug violence that has left about 4,000 people dead this year in Mexico is spreading deep into the United States, leaving a trail of slayings, kidnappings and other crimes in at least 195 cities as far afield as Atlanta, Boston, Seattle and Honolulu, according to federal authorities.
Torture in the basement of a suburban Georgia home -- that's some diversity! It makes me feel extra enriched.
The involvement of the top four Mexican drug-trafficking organizations in distribution and money-laundering on U.S. soil has brought a war once dismissed as a foreign affair to the doorstep of local communities.
Residents of the quiet Beaver Hills subdivision in Lilburn, Ga., an Atlanta suburb, awoke to the trans-border crime wave in July, when a brigade of well-armored federal and state police officers surrounded a two-story colonial home at 755 East Fork Shady Drive, ordered neighbors to lock their doors and flushed out three men described as members of a Mexican drug cartel. One was captured after he tried to slip down a storm drain. Another was caught in the ivy in Pete Bogerd's backyard. He lives two doors up and is president of the neighborhood association.
"It blew us away," Bogerd said. "I didn't know we had that many cops."
A short while later, police hauled out a 31-year-old from the Dominican Republic who for nearly a week had been chained and tortured inside the basement, allegedly for not paying a $300,000 drug debt.
The release of illegal alien criminals on bail is absolutely an invitation to abscond, but judges don't always know the status of accused persons. Sometimes authorities do know the status and let the bad guys go anyway, particularly in sanctuary cities like Houston and San Francisco (see A system's fatal flaws) -- and there is no excuse for that.
The excellent series in the Houston Chronicle has shocking details of a criminal justice system chained by political correctness.
The Chronicle examined arrest and immigration records for 3,500 inmates who told jailers that they were in the country illegally during a span of eight months starting in June 2007, the earliest immigration records available.
The city's criminal immigrant records only go back to June 2007? That in itself is a jaw-dropper. I suspect that the public furor following the murder of Houston PD Officer Rodney Johnson by a previously convicted illegal alien may have had a part in finally bringing the sanctuary city of Houston closer to sanity.
The cases make you wonder what is going on in Houston when dangerous illegal alien criminals, including child rapists, are freed to walk the streets.
• Jose Blanco, a 64-year-old accused of repeatedly sexually molesting a 6-year-old girl in southwest Houston, told jailers when he was arrested in June 2007 that he was in the country illegally. He was charged with indecency with a child and posted $10,000 bail. That charge was dismissed and replaced with more serious allegations: two counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child. Blanco absconded after missing a court date in October 2007 and remains a fugitive.
How dreary that law enforcement will not even protect us from the worst of the worst.
• Juan Fernando Villalon, 43, told Harris County jailers twice in 2007 he was an illegal immigrant from Mexico — both times after being arrested on suspicion of assaulting his ex-girlfriend. He posted $10,000 bail in December 2007 and was released from Harris County Jail. In January, while out on bail, he tracked her down and punched her, leading to another felony assault charge. He was arrested in June and is serving a two-year prison sentence.
• Arturo Munoz Osorio, 62, was charged in August 2007 with aggravated sexual assault of a child. He told jailers he was in the country illegally when he was booked into jail Aug. 2, 2007. He posted $10,000 bail four days later and missed a September court date. A warrant for his arrest was issued in January.
Tina Davila was the mother of five who was murdered last April in Houston during an attempted car hijacking. She was stabbed as she resisted in order to protect her baby in a car seat. The killer was a previously arrested illegal alien, Timoteo Rios, who readily admitted his status when he was first booked in 2007 for marijuana possession.
On a cloudy Monday afternoon in April, Tina Davila was buried according to her wishes: dressed in her favorite Dallas Cowboys jersey, with a photo of all five of her children tucked inside her coffin. In the picture, Kaylynn, the baby girl Davila died trying to protect, looks fussy, her chubby cheeks puckered into a pout.
Another article in the Houston Chronicle's series on illegal alien crime discloses some disturbing statistics about law enforcement in the sanctuary city and beyond: A system's fatal flaws.
Billy Brewer, Kaylynn's father, watched as Davila's coffin was lowered into a grave at San Jacinto Memorial Park Cemetery in Houston.
Brewer, a long-haul trucker, had a crush on Davila since he was a teenager. He loved her wide smile and how, he said, ''she wouldn't back down from nothing for nobody." Most especially on the day Davila, 39, tried to fight off the man who cornered her in a parking lot while Kaylynn was strapped into her car seat.
Witnesses told police Davila refused to hand over her car keys and screamed as she was stabbed in the chest: "My baby! My baby!"
In the days after her death April 16, Brewer couldn't bring himself to watch the surveillance camera video of the slaying. Not yet. He had a 4-month-old baby, just learning how to roll from her back to her belly, and a house full of memories.
On the TV news, Brewer learned that Timoteo Rios, the man charged with killing Davila, was an illegal immigrant with a criminal record. Rios had admitted to local law enforcement twice before the slaying that he was in the country illegally, but he wasn't deported, according to arrest and immigration records.
A review of thousands of criminal and immigration records shows that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials didn't file the paperwork to detain roughly 75 percent of the more than 3,500 inmates who told jailers during the booking process that they were in the U.S. illegally.
Although most of the inmates released from custody were accused of minor crimes, hundreds of convicted felons — including child molesters, rapists and drug dealers — also managed to avoid deportation after serving time in Harris County's jails [...]
• In 177 cases reviewed by the Chronicle, inmates who were released from jail after admitting to being in the country illegally later were charged with additional crimes. More than half of those charges were felonies, including aggravated sexual assault of a child and capital murder.
• About 11 percent of the 3,500 inmates in the review had three or more prior convictions in Harris County. Many had repeatedly cycled through the system despite a history of violence and, in some cases, outstanding deportation orders. [...]
ICE officials estimated that between 300,000 and 450,000 inmates incarcerated in the U.S. are eligible for deportation each year.
Though ICE has improved screening in federal and state prisons in recent years, the agency estimates it screens inmates in only about 10 percent of the nation's jails.
This spring, ICE officials announced a plan to identify and deport the most serious offenders in the nation's prisons and jails, estimating it would cost between $930 million and $1 billion and take about 3 1/2 years.
America to President Elect BHO: we don't want an amnesty now or ever, and particularly not in this failing economy. The Washington Times makes a cogent argument with lots of illustrative statistics.
President-elect Barack Obama never offered a salient plan to address illegal immigration, despite clear public sentiment favoring reform.
A recent Zogby poll showed that a majority of Americans would like to see a crackdown on illegal immigrants, but voted for Mr. Obama in spite of his support for amnesty. It is important to note that 60 percent of voters would like to reduce illegal immigration and crack down on employers who hire illegal workers. Only 21 percent of voters would support creating a legalized pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants.
Furthermore, 57 percent of voters said amnesty would hurt American workers and create more of a burden for the taxpayer. In Arizona, Proposition 202 would have made it easier for businesses to hire illegal immigrants. It was rejected by 60 percent of voters. This number included 56 percent of Latino voters. Only 26 percent of those polled said amnesty would not cause a burden to the taxpayer and would help America recover from the recession.
Unfortunately, the economy swamped immigration as an issue. Even among Latino voters in America, 54 percent placed the economy as issue No. 1 and only 11 percent said immigration was their No. 1 issue.
Hopefully there is a trend shaping up of crime victims taking enablers of illegal alien criminals to court. The family of murdered film director Adrienne Shelly recently announced its lawsuit against the employer of the killer. The Bologna family is suing San Francisco for the wrongful deaths of Tony Bologna and his two sons because the city's sanctuary policy harbored a dangerous MS-13 gangster who killed them.
Now the widow of murdered Houston Police Officer Rodney Johnson is suing the city and the gun store that illegally sold the firearm.
I am a huge Second Amendment supporter, but illegal aliens are prohibited from being sold firearms. The store screwed up if the events were as described.
The widow of Houston police officer Rodney Johnson has filed a civil lawsuit against the city of Houston, claiming its policy of having one officer per patrol car contributed to her husband's death.
It would probably be better for police safety if Sgt. Johnson had taken on Houston's sanctuary policy, but it's her choice.
Houston police Sgt. Joslyn Johnson says in the wrongful death lawsuit, filed in Harris County Civil Court on Sept. 22, that she would give up monetary damages if the city would change its policy and put two officers in each police car as a safety measure.
"She wants that policy changed," said Ben Dominguez, Joslyn Johnson's attorney "There are police officers out there today driving the midnight shift in areas of the city where crime is prevalent, and they're by themselves."
Jaqueline Leguizamon, a city attorney, declined comment on the lawsuit on Friday. The city denies liability.
Johnson was killed on Sept. 21, 2006, by Juan Leonardo Quintero, an illegal immigrant from Mexico who is serving a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Johnson stopped Quintero for speeding and patted him down but missed the gun that Quintero used to shoot him in the back of the head from the rear seat of the patrol car. [...]
Johnson charges that gun store employees improperly sold a 9 mm Smith & Wesson handgun to Quintero's wife, Theresa Lynn Quintero.
The lawsuit says that Juan Quintero picked out the gun, but store employees allowed his wife to fill out the required paperwork for its purchase. Quintero pleaded guilty to indecency with a child in Harris County in 1999 and was deported to Mexico, making him ineligible to buy a gun, according to the lawsuit.
While we're considering Texas, Mexico's nosy post-Presidente dropped in with some unwanted advice as is his custom: Ex-Mexican President Vicente Fox visits Dallas.
Former Mexican President Vicente Fox said during a visit to Dallas on Friday that he hopes President-elect Barack Obama will tear down the fence dividing parts of Mexico from the United States.
He is the Energizer Bunny on open borders!
He said the removal of the barrier designed to stem illegal entries into the U.S. should be the start of any new immigration reforms.
"I think that will be quite a sign," Mr. Fox said in an interview before his remarks Friday night at a gala presented by HELPS International. "Instead of building walls, build bridges."
It's bad enough when professional ID thieves distribute fake or stolen Social Security numbers to illegal aliens, but the school system of a major city is doing the same thing as a matter of policy -- a disturbing marker in the decreasing respect for law in America.
There's no mention of possible prosecution in the article, which is a little sketchy about the legal aspects of the case.
Years after being advised by a state agency to stop, the Dallas Independent School District continued to provide foreign citizens with fake Social Security numbers to get them on the payroll quickly.
Some of the numbers were real Social Security numbers already assigned to people elsewhere. And in some cases, the state's educator certification office unknowingly used the bogus numbers to run criminal background checks on the new hires, most of whom were brought in to teach bilingual classes.
The practice was described in an internal report issued in September by the district's investigative office, which looked into the matter after receiving a tip. The report said the Texas Education Agency learned of the fake numbers in 2004 and told DISD then that the practice "was illegal."
More Sanctuary City horror story from San Francisco... Rony Aguilera had been previously arrested for a violent assault in 2007, but was not turned over to federal immigration authorities because of the city's policy of protecting dangerous foreign criminals. He went on to stab a 14-year-old boy to death last July, according to authorities.
A teenager accused of stabbing a 14-year-old boy to death in a gang-motivated attack had been given sanctuary from deportation under San Francisco's previous practice of shielding young illegal immigrant felons from federal authorities, records show.
Rony Aguilera, 17, known as "Guerrillero," has been charged as an adult in the July 31 sword attack in the Excelsior neighborhood that killed Ivan Miranda, who police say was an innocent victim caught up in an act of gang vengeance. Authorities believe Aguilera is an illegal immigrant from Honduras, but he was never referred to federal officials after being arrested last year in an assault case, according to records reviewed by The Chronicle.
Aguilera is the second person this year to be charged with murder in San Francisco after having been protected from possible deportation, under city officials' now-discarded interpretation of a sanctuary ordinance that bars agencies from cooperating with federal efforts to round up illegal immigrants.
In June, Edwin Ramos, now 22, an alleged illegal immigrant from El Salvador who compiled a record of gang-related crimes as a juvenile, was accused of fatally shooting Anthony Bologna, 48, and his sons Michael, 20, and Matthew, 16, in their car in the Excelsior.
It's really pretty outrageous when illegal aliens arrested for serious felonies whine about their suffering in front of groups with the press in attendance.
Almost 200 people gathered downtown Wednesday night to hear emotional testimony from three Panda Express workers, illegal immigrants who were arrested on charges of identity theft last spring.
Excuse me, identity theft is a real crime and causes a great deal of expense and hardship for the innocent Americans whose ID is stolen. See my blog about the subject, ID Theft Victims Get Overdue Attention.
One of them was Omar Espino-Lara, a 25-year-old Sunnyside High School graduate who had been promoted to restaurant manager just days before the raid.
Espino-Lara wept as he told the crowd at the Armory Park Senior Center that his life changed March 18, when the state Department of Public Safety raided Panda Express, 2485 N. Swan Road, on what he thought was "just another day at work."
"I'm a father, a husband, and an honest man who was punished and taken away from his family for working hard and paying taxes but without legal papers," Espino-Lara said.
"I was put in jail like a criminal next to real criminals, drug dealers and drunk drivers who were let out."
One horror story is that of Audra Schmierer (pictured), whose Social Security number has been used by more than 200 illegal aliens and had a $1 million bill from the IRS as of 2006.
This guy absolutely is a "real criminal."
Here's an item for the "they keep coming" file.
More than 500,000 immigrants call the Philadelphia metropolitan area home, with more than one-fifth of them arriving since 2000, according to a new report.
As an environmentalist, I think immigration should be essentially ended. We are full up and then some. Particularly in California, where there is mandatory water rationing and the highest unemployment in 12 years, we don't need any more immigrants.
Between 2000 and 2006, the immigrant population in the region grew by 113,000 — nearly as many as had arrived during the entire 1990s — comprising 9 percent of the population, according to the report being released Thursday by the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.
The report suggests that the Philadelphia area is poised to re-emerge as a destination for immigrants, a longtime characteristic of the region that stalled in the mid-20th century.
The Catholic Church is cutting off funding to the corrupt leftist organization ACORN, which has been accused of promoting voter fraud. That's a good thing. What's fascinating to me is how much money the Church has to throw around on issues like amnesty for illegal aliens and promoting voting fraud.
These details with dollar signs tend to come out in the lower paragraphs, as here.
The Roman Catholic Church is cutting off funds to the community organizing group ACORN, citing complaints over its voter registration drives in the November 4 election as part of the reason.
There needs to be a lot more attention of all the money sloshing through the Catholic Church. In 2004, for example, the Migration and Refugee Services wing received $40 million in taxpayer funds from Uncle Sam -- aka us. I can think of many better uses for $40M.
The Catholic Campaign for Human Development froze its contributions to the group in June amid allegations that Dale Rathke, the brother of ACORN founder Wade Rathke, had embezzled nearly $1 million.
This week, as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops met in Baltimore, Maryland, the campaign's chairman said it was cutting all ties with the group.
"We simply had too many questions and concerns to permit further CCHD funding of ACORN groups," Roger Morin, the auxiliary bishop of New Orleans, Louisiana, told his colleagues in a letter to the conference.
The CCHD has donated more than $7.3 million to ACORN-related projects over the past decade, including $40,000 to an ACORN chapter in Las Vegas, Nevada, that was raided before the election in an investigation into fraudulent voter registration forms. Among other questionable documents, the ACORN chapter submitted registration forms for members of the Dallas Cowboys football team.
It's good to see a very liberal fellow like Andy Ostroy get serious about immigration law enforcement. It is tragic that he had to learn in the hardest way imaginable that illegal immigration is not a victimless crime.
He lost his wife, filmmaker Adrienne Shelly, when she was murdered by an illegal alien who feared being deported.
The husband of murdered actress Adrienne Shelly is suing the contractor who employed her murderer, contending she'd still be alive if the company hadn't looked the other way while hiring illegal immigrants.
This case was disturbing for many reasons, including how at least one blogger blamed the victim, accepting the killer's story that Shelly smacked him and called him an SOB out of feminist pique. Why anyone would believe anything said by an admitted illegal alien murderer is beyond me. Pilco lied up a story to his own advantage, period.
The Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit filed on behalf of Andrew Ostroy also seeks to hold the owners and management of the building where she was killed accountable, calling them "vicariously liable" for her death.
The indie actress, who also directed the acclaimed movie "Waitress," was working at her office in 15 Abingdon Square on Nov. 1, 2006, when Diego Pillco, who was doing renovation work on the apartment downstairs from her, attacked and killed her during a robbery gone wrong.
The New York Times also accepted killer Diego Pilco's original explanation as reasonable: In Guilty Plea, Actress’s Killer Changes Story to Robbery.
His original confession had the ring of truth: He was an illegal immigrant working on a renovation job in a Greenwich Village building when the imperious woman upstairs confronted him over construction noise.
The killer's original confession didn't have the "ring of truth" to me -- far from it. Women's rights and safety get thrown under the bus at the New York Times when weighed against the all-important concerns of illegal aliens. Continuing...
They argued. She scratched him. Panicked that she would call the police and that he would be deported, he punched her and pushed her to the floor. Mistakenly thinking he had killed her, he hanged her from the shower rod of her bathroom, in a staged suicide.
At least the abominably weak plea deal (25 years for manslaughter) brought out the true story from the cold-blooded killer.
In fact, Pilco broke into her apartment and she caught him stealing her purse. He killed her to protect himself and staged the crime to appear a suicide. The medical examiner reported that Shelly was alive when Pilco hanged her. He wanted her dead so she couldn't report his thievery to the police.
Andy Ostroy is to be congratulated for pursuing justice by going after the cheap-labor magnets that bring immoral and dangerous foreigners like Diego Pilco into our communities.
On Veterans' Day in particular, I recall how I am eternally grateful for the sacrifice of members of our armed forces for protecting our great country.
Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen of the Allied Expeditionary Force!
In San Francisco, young MS-13 gang members got a big yuck over murdering a boy by stabbing him to death. The details paint a picture of stone-cold killers -- the same people that the city had been protecting until very recently.
Two San Francisco juveniles charged as adults with murder in the stabbing death of a 14-year-old boy boasted and laughed about the killing in secretly recorded conversations with a government informant, authorities say.
"What made me laugh is how he went down," Marlon Rivera, a 16-year-old alleged member of the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) street gang, said soon after Ivan Miranda was stabbed with a sword early July 31 on an Excelsior district street, according to police.
Also facing adult charges is Rony Aguilera, 17, another alleged member of the gang. Authorities believe both Aguilera and Rivera stabbed Ivan about 1:38 a.m. as the boy was walking to a friend's house to return an iPod he had borrowed. They are being held on $2 million bail each on charges of murder in furtherance of a street gang, robbery and attempted robbery.
According to police accounts, Ivan was stabbed hours after the relative of an MS-13 member was wounded in a shooting. Gang members blamed the rival Norteno group, and several went looking for Nortenos to attack, investigators said.
How dangerous is Mexico? Even Mexicans are afraid to go there, including for traditional Christmas celebrations because of drug cartel violence.
"It's not safe for us to gather over there," said Cardoso, who was born in Mexico but is now a U.S. citizen. "It's sad because it was a tradition that we grew up with. . . . Now, unfortunately, we can't do it because of how the situation is in Mexico." [...]
Note how Mexicans continue to "move" here, in the same way you or I might relocate to Peoria.
After Cardoso's uncle was a victim of carjacking and her cousin was mugged at gunpoint, several of her relatives moved from Tijuana to the United States. Cardoso and her family still own a house in the city, where they used to spend one weekend a month, but they haven't spent the night there in more than six months.
Mariajimenez, 50, said she has traveled to Mexico dozens of times in the last decade and usually spends her visits driving elderly relatives to neighboring towns to see one another. Her aunt told her that if she went this year, she shouldn't rent a car or drive around the country.
Mexico -- too corrupt and dangerous for Mexicans to return to for retirement. Bummer.
"The more I talked to her, I realized that it wasn't just my safety that she was concerned about, but it was hers as well," she said. "If they see a foreigner, the assumption is that the person has money."
Though Mariajimenez was born and raised in the U.S., she said Mexico is a part of her heritage and she is devastated by the increasing violence. She said she had hopes of retiring in Mexico, which she remembers as a relaxing and beautiful country, but worries now that may not be possible.
A new Zogby survey shows the American people still want immigration to be legal, controlled and reduced.
WASHINGTON, Nov 10, 2008 /PRNewswire-USNewswire via COMTEX/ -- A nationwide survey of actual voters reveals that Americans strongly support immigration enforcement, and that less than one-third of Obama voters favor granting amnesty to illegal aliens. The poll conducted by Zogby International on behalf of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) on November 5 and 6 also found that a decisive majority of voters believe that an illegal alien amnesty would "further harm the interests of struggling American workers."
Among the key findings of the poll are:
-- Only 32% of Obama voters considered his support for amnesty as a factor in their decisions to vote for him. 67% said it was either not a factor at all, or they voted for Obama in spite of his stance on amnesty.
-- 60% of voters said reducing illegal immigration and cracking down on employers who hire them is important to them, while only 21% supported"legalizing or creating a pathway to citizenship" for illegal aliens.
-- 57% of voters stated that amnesty would harm American workers and further strain public resources, while only 26% believe amnesty would aid economic recovery and ease public burdens.
The findings of the poll commissioned by FAIR of all voters are similar to an unrelated poll conducted of Latino voters by Zogby and Univision on the eve of the election. That poll found that 54% of Latino voters placed concern about the economy as their top voting priority, while only 11% said that immigration was their number one concern.
My recent article on VDARE.com about witchcraft pointed out the many ways in which cultures are not equal in any sense. This item would have gone into that piece.
The title is misleading, however. In some cases, the babies were not "bred" for sale, but were stolen from teen mothers who thought they were getting an abortion. Some very poor women did rent their bodies out to produce babies to be purchased. The buyers included childless couples but other babies would be raised as child labor and for sexual abuse, or worse.
In 2005, a Lagos-based orphanage suspected of ties to child trafficking rings, was shut down. There, charred baby-bones were discovered on the rubbish tip, leading to suspicion the orphanage was involved in the peddling of human body parts, possibly for use in rituals or for organ harvesting. [...]
Witchcraft rituals also fuel baby trafficking, but experts say it is other motives that predominate, at least in this region of Nigeria.
Arizona shows that enforcement works, particularly when federal and state governments work together.
The federal government deported nearly 73,000 illegal immigrants from Arizona in the past fiscal year, a record number that immigration officials said resulted largely from state and local authorities being allowed to enforce immigration laws.
Arizona has been leading the way, as shown in the recent election. Maricopa County voters returned tough enforcers Sheriff Joe Arpaio and County Attorney Andrew Thomas to office. The state defeated Proposition 202 which was designed to gut immigration enforcement while pretending to crack down further on illegal employers. Arizona's election results mean immigration still a key issue.
The 72,955 immigrants deported from Arizona marked a 64 percent increase from the 44,376 deported the previous year, according to statistics from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Arizona led the nation in deportations, making up about a fifth of the total 349,041 illegal immigrants deported nationwide, ICE officials said. The fiscal year ended Sept. 30.
[Raul] Yzaguirre said Tuesday's election results show that voters in Arizona remain deeply frustrated over illegal immigration.
Raul thinks that patriotic citizens will forget that our country is being invaded. As if.
"I thought the pendulum was swinging the other way," he said.
Speaking of deportations, the Irish whiners are crying up a river because a few dozen of their tribe got a free ride home: Rise in number of Irish deported from US.
The total number of deportations of Irish people from the US is also up: in 2006, 41 were deported; in 2007, 53; and so far this year, 58 have been expelled for immigration violations, figures from the Irish consulates reveal.
By admitting large numbers of Muslim immigrants, Britain has welcomed deadly enemies into its communities. Some weeks ago there was a report of increased terrorist "chatter" indicating the threat level was "approaching critical," so this latest news must add to police concerns.
Secret enclaves of al-Qaeda extremists based in London, Birmingham and Luton are planning mass-casualty attacks in Britain, according to a leaked Government intelligence report.
The document, which was drawn up by the intelligence branch of the Ministry of Defence, MI5 and Special Branch, states that "some thousands" of extremists are active in the UK. They are predominantly UK-born and aged between 18 and 30, and many are believed to have been trained in overseas terrorist camps.
Under the heading "International Terrorism", the report, which is marked "restricted" states: "For the foreseeable future the UK will continue to be a high-priority target for international terrorists aligned with al-Qaeda. It will face a threat from British nationals, including Muslim converts, and UK-based foreign terrorists, as well as terrorists planning attacks from abroad."
The report states that the threat from the Islamist extremist community in the UK is "diverse and widely distributed" but adds that the numbers of terrorist in Britain is "difficult to judge".
The document does state, however, that the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, which is based in MI5's headquarters at Thames House in London, estimates that there are "some thousands of extremists in the UK committed to supporting Jihadi activities, either in the UK or abroad".
In California, a Constitutional amendment to define marriage as being between a man and a woman passed, with very strong votes from blacks and hispanics. Gay people expected blacks and hispanics to support their pet issue, and that didn't happen.
"Really, Hispanic and black voters in California passed Proposition 8," said Andrew Pugno, general counsel of ProtectMarriage.com, which backed the amendment.
I bring this up mainly to show that the cracks in the liberal Democratic coalition are already forming. The gay marriage proponents are furious about their loss: "They voted for hate, and that's what we are going to give them," said Gary Young, a San Francisco resident.
"Inner-city black neighborhoods voted stronger for Prop. 8 than the Republican suburbs. An amazing analysis," Mr. Pugno continued.
Blacks voted 70 percent in favor of Proposition 8, and slightly more than half the Hispanic voters backed the measure, according to exit polls released by the National Election Pool.
Some gays feel shafted by groups they believed to be reliable political allies such as African-Americans, who voted 70 percent for a ban on same-sex marriage. NPR noted a "blame the blacks backlash"
Conservative religious people and Mormons came under particular condemnation, judging from the San Francisco comments: Thousands in S.F. march to protest Prop. 8.
In Los Angeles, angry gay crowds rallied against the LDS on Thursday Prop. 8 protesters target Mormon temple in Westwood.
More than a thousand gay-rights activists gathered Thursday afternoon outside the Mormon temple in Westwood to protest the role Mormons played in passing Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California.
It looks like perfect kumbaya was not achieved by the election of Comrade Obama after all.
Here's a post-election diverse celebration of the new "citizen of the world" President." Sheep better run and hide if they know what's good for them.
ANKARA, Turkey - Residents of a mainly Kurdish village in southeastern Turkey have sacrificed 44 sheep to celebrate the election of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States.
(I wonder whether Muslim "ancestry" was what the Turks really said they liked about Obama; Daniel Pipes has written that many Muslims see him as one of their own. Oh, well!)
Dogan news agency video Friday shows villagers in Cavustepe village, in the province of Van, bordering Iran, holding Obama posters smeared with blood. In overwhelmingly Muslim Turkey, the practice is believed to protect people or property from bad luck.
The posters read "you are one of us" and "we love you."
Abdulkerim Kulaz of Cavustepe village says Obama's election and his Muslim ancestry have excited the villagers. Kulaz says Obama's election was a "proof of an end to racism in the world."
On Halloween, several hundred young people used the occasion to paint their faces and skip school to try to shut down the ICE office in San Francisco. Being fine little anarchists, they all jumped the BART fare gates, because they are too special to have to pay to ride like the rest of us. As a result of the massive lawbreaking, BART shut down three stations for a time.
Today, the radicals were back, and were lawyered up. Riding BART for free is a right guaranteed by the Constitution, they believe.
Prominent Bay Area civil rights groups issued a joint statement Thursday voicing "grave concern" over BART's decision to close three stations last week after youths heading to a protest over immigration raids began jumping fare gates on their way to San Francisco.
Below is a TV segment from October 31, the day of the protest. The kids sound like they have heard nothing but Marx in school.
The action, the groups said, may have violated people's constitutional rights.
Last week hundreds of youth, families and organizers from over 10 different cities in the Bay Area gathered at the Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) building in San Francisco to demand an end to ICE raids, to demand that all detention centers be shut down and to demand real sanctuary cities.
There was a major arrest October 22 of violent MS-13 gangsters which any sensible person would welcome as a plus for public safety, but Raza types want no law enforcement against their tribe whatsoever.
For that day the community prevented ICE from breaking into our homes, and terrorizing our people. Crowds of young and old, black, white, Asian and Raza gathered around the police blockade chanting, speaking and singing in the rain.
The Pew Hispanic Center has analyzed some exit polling, and noted interestingly that the percentage of the hispanic vote has not risen since 2004, even in this year's very emotional election. Read the full report in PDF here.
Also noteworthy is how few hispanics voted for Senator McCain, even after he put his career on the line to finagle amnesty for their illegal alien pals and relatives. He joined up with Ted Kennedy to screw the country, something many friends of sovereignty can never forget.
Hispanics voted for Democrats Barack Obama and Joe Biden over Republicans John McCain and Sarah Palin by a margin of more than two-to-one in the 2008 presidential election, 66% versus 32%, according to an analysis by the Pew Hispanic Center of exit polls from Edison Media Research as published by CNN. The Center's analysis also finds that 8% of the electorate was Latino, unchanged from 2004. This report contains an analysis of exit poll results for the Latino vote in 9 states and for the U.S.
Below is a graph taken from Steve Sailer's 2007 blog item, In 2006, the Long Predicted Tidal Wave of Angry Hispanic Voters Failed to Materialize Once Again. Apparently the promised tsunami didn't appear in this election either.
From Baltimore: Kenyan immigrants and other Africans revel in BHO's win.
Halfway through his meal of grilled goat meat and lemon-scented tomato chunks, Dishon Kimani, 31, leaped out of his seat and pumped his fists in the air.
As the New York Times reported in 2005, More Africans Enter U.S. Than in Days of Slavery.
"Oh my God! He took Ohio!" he announced as CNN declared the state for Barack Obama. "This thing is over."
Kimani, a tow truck operator from Baltimore, was among about 20 African natives huddled around a flat-screen television at a lounge above George's Auto Repair in Northeast Baltimore. They chatted in a rowdy mix of Swahili, English and Kenyan slang as the election results trickled in. Every few minutes, as if on cue, the crowd would go silent as a winner was declared in a state, erupting in cheers and whistles moments later.
Since 1990, according to immigration figures, more have arrived voluntarily than the total who disembarked in chains before the United States outlawed international slave trafficking in 1807. More have been coming here annually - about 50,000 legal immigrants - than in any of the peak years of the middle passage across the Atlantic, and more have migrated here from Africa since 1990 than in nearly the entire preceding two centuries.
Will President Obama work to increase African immigration still further? It is certainly unlikely he will reduce it. I fear an emergency airlift of his 100,000 closest relatives, similar to the Mariel boatlift.
New York State draws the most; Nigeria and Ghana are among the top 20 sources of immigrants to New York City. But many have moved to metropolitan Washington, Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston and Houston. Pockets of refugees, especially Somalis, have found havens in Minnesota, Maine and Oregon.
According to the 2000 Census, there were 40,680 Kenyan-born persons living in the US at that time.
The Diversity Visa lottery of 2008 included 4,547 slots for Kenyans.
There were a lot of disappointments yesterday, but Lou Barletta's loss to incumbent Representative Kanjorski was particularly tough. Barletta had been leading in polls for some time, so the defeat was a surprise. Many friends of sovereignty hoped for his election as at least one bright spot in a dreary Congress.
Barletta, 52, enjoyed broad name recognition from his efforts to crack down on illegal immigrants in Hazleton, a city of about 30,000. He faced a weakened opponent in Kanjorski, whose ethics were questioned after he directed nearly $10 million to a technology firm controlled by his family that later went bankrupt and $3 million more to a now-vacant office building named after him.
However there was good news in Arizona where voters defeated Prop 202, an initiative that would have gutted the state's strong workplace enforcement law.
Barletta led Kanjorski by 9 percentage points in a September Franklin & Marshall College poll, and he maintained a small lead into October even as the national economic meltdown shifted focus away from his signature issue.
I just got back from voting (1 pm) -- there was no waiting at midday at my local firestation. I don't do political recommendations, but I will say that I didn't vote for either of the mainstream candidates, and felt free to do so because California is forecast to be overwhelmingly for Obama. The electoral college system is both liberating and disenfranchising.
No surprise that Obama knew all the time about his illegal alien deportation absconder aunt from Kenya now residing on taxpayer expense in Boston public housing. Governor Deval Patrick was in on the scam as well. Due to her illegal freeloading off the public dole, Zeituni Onyango had enough spare cash to (unlawfully) donate $260 to Obama's campaign.
Senior aides to Sen. Barack Obama and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick were aware that Obama's aunt, Zeituni Onyango, was living in the United States illegally and in a South Boston public-housing project, and were monitoring her at the request of senior Obama campaign officials, according to a current employee for Obama's key political consulting firm, AKP&D Message and Media.
See also how the Times of Britain traced down the absconder aunt starting with references in Obama's own book: How The Times followed a trail to find Barack Obama's aunt. The MSM in America should have dug this up a year ago but has been too deep in the tank for BHO to do any investigative reporting.
Back in early 2007, as Obama's chief campaign strategist David Axelrod was organizing and planning the Obama campaign, he identified Obama's unique family situation -- a number of half-brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, some living overseas -- as a potential problem, says an employee for Axelrod's political consulting firm, and who has done work on the Obama campaign. "Given [Obama's] father's family history here and in Africa, David wanted the campaign to know who was who, where they lived, and what they were doing. No surprises. We knew she was here illegally. We knew her income levels, but I don't think anyone from the campaign had had contact with her."
Instead, according to the source, Axelrod reached out to his former client, Patrick, who had retained Axelrod's firm for his run for governor. Onyango was living in a state-funded housing project, "so Patrick's people could just as easily keep track of things, and could do it without drawing a ton of attention," says the AKP&D Message and Media employee, who requested anonymity as he hopes to get a job in an Obama administration should the candidate win. "If we had Obama people around, the media would probably have found her much sooner. She was in [Obama's] book, it wasn't like she couldn't be found." Indeed, that is exactly how the London Times found her.
While the South Boston housing project is managed by the Boston Housing Authority, it is a state-funded facility, according to the BHA press office, and so it would not be uncommon for state housing officials to be on the grounds or in the area. "Patrick was the go-between, he's trusted by David and Senator Obama," says the aide.
In fact, Patrick spent most of the past two or three days stumping for Obama up and down the East Coast. His and Obama's relationship goes back a couple of decades, and the two actually represented ACORN together in a civil suit back in 1993. Some Republican political operatives believe that Patrick and his political team have been cutouts for un-reported cash distributed to ACORN officials around the country for Democrat "get out the vote" projects.
Some Obama aides believe that Obama was briefed at least twice by Axelrod or campaign manager David Plouffe on the status of family members. "We tracked who was talking to the press, we kept in touch with some of these people," says an Obama campaign media aide. "Anyone who thinks we didn't doesn't understand just how nervous we were about all of these people, particularly the members of [Obama's] father's family. Axelrod had everything covered." The aide said she was never present for such a briefing, but "we all knew the candidate's family was being taken care of, to protect their privacy and try to contain any damage."
The Obama campaign has denied knowing anything about Onyango's illegal status or her poor financial situation.
The good news: assimilation is taking place in Los Angeles. The bad news: the culture being internalized is that of Mexico, not America.
Many jobs are so dominated by Mexicans that they feel they can keep out any uncool Salvadorans, etc. who would mess up the little Mexico vibe that is apparently so important. Some Central Americans feel they have to pretend to be Mexicans to get work. The Salvadoran fellow featured in this article feared he might be beaten up if his workplace colleagues discovered his true nationality.
Nice people!
Juan Carlos Rivera knew that if he wanted to get a dishwashing job at the MacArthur Park hamburger stand, he would have to pretend to be Mexican.
Since the story is published in the LA Times, no friend of traditional assimilation, the tone is one of intellectual curiosity. The idea that immigrants should accept the values and language of the national community -- as desired by the majority of citizens -- doesn't enter in.
But the thought of lying made the Salvadoran anxious. He paced outside the restaurant, worried that his melodic Spanish accent, his use of the Central American vos, instead of the Mexican tu, would give him away.
Resolving to say as little as possible, Rivera remembers steeling himself and stepping inside -- into the world of Mexicanization. [...]
Rivera and thousands of other Central and South American immigrants have left their native countries only to arrive in an American city dominated by Mexicans, who comprise L.A.'s largest Latino group and have access to most of the jobs sought by immigrants. The metropolis drives many to Mexicanize, to degrees big and small, often before they start to Americanize.
Britain doesn't want to be part of Western Civilization any more, or so it seems. Latin words are a part of English, I thought.
Local authorities have ordered employees to stop using the words and phrases on documents and when communicating with members of the public and to rely on wordier alternatives instead.
As is often the case in Britain, the changes are being made to please immigrants and make their lives easier. But have any immigrants complained about Latin? It is not specified. How is learning words in Latin more difficult than absorbing new words in English? It is all one mass of vocabulary to a foreign-language speaker.
The ban has infuriated classical scholars who say it is diluting the world's richest language and is the "linguistic equivalent of ethnic cleansing".
Bournemouth Council, which has the Latin motto Pulchritudo et Salubritas, meaning beauty and health, has listed 19 terms it no longer considers acceptable for use.
This includes bona fide, eg (exempli gratia), prima facie, ad lib or ad libitum, etc or et cetera, ie or id est, inter alia, NB or nota bene, per, per se, pro rata, quid pro quo, vis-a-vis, vice versa and even via.
Its list of more verbose alternatives, includes "for this special purpose", in place of ad hoc and "existing condition" or "state of things", instead of status quo.
In instructions to staff, the council said: "Not everyone knows Latin. Many readers do not have English as their first language so using Latin can be particularly difficult."
At least the article balances the PC nuttiness with a few words of sanity from someone who cares about our cutural heritage regarding language...
Dr Peter Jones, co-founder of the charity Friends of Classics said "This sort of thing sends out the message that language is about nothing more than the communication of very basic information in the manner of a railway timetable.
Friends of Classics has a website that includes Dr. Jones' email if you wish to contact him with your appreciation: pvjones@friends-classics.demon.co.uk.
"But it is about much more than that. The great strength of English is that it has a massive infusion of Latin. We have a very rich lexicon with almost two sets of words for everything.
"To try and wipe out the richness does a great disservice to the language. It demeans it. I am all for immigrants raising their sights not lowering them. Plain English and Latin phrasing are not diametrically opposed concepts."
Every cloud has a silver lining, and the massive carnage of Mexico's narco-war has been very good indeed for the funeral business. If I could buy stock in it, I would -- the future looks bright for caskets and plots.
In addition, the article notes that extra services, like facial reconstruction after a messy death, come at a nice price.
"We've seen a big increase in the number of clients because of the drug war, especially since September. It's gone from a few (bodies) a week to one or two every day," said Fernando, a funeral home owner in Tijuana across the border from San Diego, California. He declined to give his last name.
Mexicans celebrate the Day of the Dead with sometimes macrabre images.
About 4,000 people have been killed in Mexico this year as gangs vie for control of the cocaine trade amid a crackdown that has thousands of army troops battling drug cartels on their home turf.
Drug cartel hit men have killed some 160 people in the past month in Tijuana, once a party town serving Americans tequila and sex that is being devastated by the war.
Gun battles and gangland mutilations are also boosting demand for facial reconstructions. Funeral parlors can charge more than $1,000 to make the dead presentable for their wakes.
And because of the rise in decapitations in the city, undertakers offer to hold the body and wait for the head to be found before proceeding with the funeral.
I disagree with those who think the Dems won't go whole hog for amnesty in the next Congress. The intoxication of unrestrained power will be too much for them to resist, as well as the prospect of an immigration-fueled permanent Democratic majority.
Here's a lefty Congressman, Mike Honda, from Silicon Valley who thinks amnesty is a swell idea. His Immigration Voting Report Card shows an F-.
San Francisco, Nov.2 (ANI): While recognizing the concerns of non-immigrants residing in the United States of America, the Democratic Party's Vice Chairman Mike Honda has said that there is need for a comprehensive immigration reforms and his party would bring in such reforms if they were voted to power.
Taking to ANI after attending an election campaign meeting for Barack Obama, in the Silicon Valley on Saturday, Congressman Honda said that it was for all Americans.
Honda said: "The new policies, everything from economy, jobs, small business, education for our youngsters, not only pre-school but all college, making sure that college is affordable. Second, would be passing the dream Act. Lots of youngsters are here with parents without documents. If they (kids) have gone to school and gotten good grades and can go to college, they should be able to go to college without any worries. But having said that, one of the first things would be comprehensive immigration reform."
He said: "We are going to make sure that 11 to 12 million undocumented people here are given a fair shake to make sure that they have a pathway to citizenship. They are all contributing right now. Let's make it work for our country and for them. Healthcare, we have to have healthcare insurance for our children. We have to also make sure that protect civil right and correct all the mess that the past President has made in terms of setting aside our civil rights that are protected in our constitution."
Britain has just been served up a big reminder that welcoming foreign students from hostile countries are not a wise idea.
Dozens of suspected terrorists have attempted to infiltrate Britain's top laboratories in order to develop weapons of mass destruction, such as biological and nuclear devices, during the past year.
The security services, MI5 and MI6, have intercepted up to 100 potential terrorists posing as postgraduate students who they believe tried accessing laboratories to gain the materials and expertise needed to create chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons, the government has confirmed.
It follows warnings from MI5 to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office that al-Qaeda's terror network is actively seeking to recruit scientists and university students with access to laboratories containing deadly viruses and weapons technology. [...]
He added: 'There is empirical evidence of a problem with postgraduate students becoming weapons proliferators.' The overseas students, a number of whom are thought to be from 'countries of concern' such as Iran and Pakistan, were intercepted under the Academic Technology Approval Scheme, introduced by universities and the security services last November. [...]
In addition, a number of well-educated Iraqi scientists - funded by Baghdad - infiltrated several British microbiology laboratories in the run-up to the Gulf war of 1990-91. Britain has about 800 laboratories in hospitals, universities and private firms where staff have access to lethal viruses such as Ebola, polio and avian flu or could acquire the technology and expertise to develop deadly weapons. Whitehall sources remain concerned about the number of countries intent on acquiring the materials and knowledge to develop a nuclear or biological warfare capability.
Another marker on the downward spiral of Mexico. Is the top cop receiving a cartel paycheck or is he merely disgusted with the ubiquity of corruption? Either way, the place is in the sewer and turning to crap.
The top officer of Mexico's federal police force has quit amid allegations that drug gangs have infiltrated senior levels of crime-fighting agencies, according to a resignation statement posted Saturday.
The New York Times had an oddly chipper item today, In Mexico, Sorting Out Good Guys From Bad. It seems that some narco types looks like thugs and others wear suits. What a journalistic revelation.
Acting federal police Commissioner Gerardo Garay said he was stepping aside "to place myself at the orders of legal judicial authorities to clear up any accusation against me."
Garay did not say what accusations he was referring to, nor were federal officials available Saturday to comment on the resignation. But the newspaper Reform reported Saturday that prosecutors are looking into whether the federal police assigned to the Mexico City airport had aided drug traffickers.
A top operator of the Sinaloa drug cartel was arrested in Mexico City on Oct. 20 following a gunbattle with police, and prosecutors say the man was in charge of trafficking cocaine and methamphetamine through the capital's international airport.
There was a gray-haired, grandfatherly type who was pushing 70, as well as an avuncular figure with a neatly coiffed goatee and wire-rimmed spectacles perched upon his nose. Some of the five men who found themselves on the front pages of newspapers on their way to jail, wore suits, which made them look more like bureaucrats than bad guys.
Brilliant, or what?
Among the greatest challenges in Mexico's drug war is the fact that the traffickers fit no type. Their ranks include men and women, the young and the old. And they can work anywhere: in remote drug labs, as part of roving assassination squads, even within the upper reaches of the government.
There is some interesting stuff tucked away at the end, which contains irony which I am sure was unintended, regarding the rule of law.
In Tuesday's speech, a clearly frustrated Mr. Calderon said that the fight to clean up Mexico depended on citizens putting their country first and respecting the law above all else. He suggested that the small bribes so often demanded by the officer on the beat, and accepted by the public as normal, for infractions real and imagined, were not disconnected from the government official receiving millions of dollars in drug profits.
Mexico as a nation of laws -- woo hoo!
"We need a stronger society, a society that lives the principle of legality with conviction, that encourages, promotes, spreads and educates its children with values," Mr. Calderón said. In other words, there has to be a line people will not cross, even for a suitcase full of cash.
For a diversity moment, consider this: in Pakistan, children are used as bargaining chips to settle family business in a way that constitutes slavery.
Police have halted a wedding between a seven-year-old boy and a five-year-old girl in Pakistan, arresting the Muslim cleric officiating at the ceremony and the children's parents.
Below, Mohammad Ismil holds his 7-year-old son Mohammad Waseem and the boy's 5-year-old bride Nisha at a police station in Karachi after Pakistani police raided the children's wedding ceremony.
A police raid prevented the cleric from going ahead with the ceremony in Karachi, which was attended by 100 guests, said the deputy superintendent of police, Malik Mazhar.
Pakistani law forbids marriage below the age of 18, but some Muslim scholars deem it permissible if the bride and groom have reached puberty.
TV footage showed both children in traditional wedding clothes in the laps of policemen after the raid. The girl, called Nisha, had tears running down her cheeks.
According to a report on Express News TV, the parents said the wedding had been arranged to end an eight-year feud between the two families.
Mazhar said he had heard about similar cases in rural areas but "it is shocking to have this right in the centre of the city".
This morning, young anarchists jumped BART fare gates en masse in a co-ordinated ripoff on their way to a protest of US immigration policies in San Francisco. Why stop at just breaking a couple laws; foreigners believe they are victims and therefore entitled to all the benefits they steal.
OAKLAND -- BART has closed the Fruitvale station in Oakland for the second time this morning because of a rash of youths jumping fare gates on their way to a protest in San Francisco against federal immigration policies, authorities said.
The immigration anarchists cleverly chose Halloween for their squawking so they could wear masks without suspicion. The poster ominously warns "Make this a Halloween day to remember."
Earlier, BART closed the Fruitvale, Coliseum and Richmond stations as hundreds of youths evaded fares starting around 9:15 p.m., BART spokesman Linton Johnson said. All three stations were reopened by 10:30 a.m., but shortly before 11 a.m., the Fruitvale station was closed again.
Trains are passing through the station without stopping.
In addition to the station closures, BART trains bound for San Francisco have been delayed at the West Oakland station by protesters holding doors open and demanding that Fruitvale be reopened, passengers and BART officials said.
