TSA Represents Danger to America, Says Roger Cohen

Roger Cohen for The New York Times says a word here on behalf of the Fourth Amendment, and seems to see in Homeland Security and the TSA an incipient threat to our American way of life:

The unfettered growth of the Department of Homeland Security and the TSA represent a greater long-term threat to the prosperity, character and wellbeing of the United States than a few madmen in the valleys of Waziristan or the voids of Yemen.

America is a nation of openness, boldness and risk-taking. Close this nation, cow it, constrict it and you unravel its magic.

There are now about 400 full-body scanners, set to grow to 1,000 next year.


The trouble is, Roger Cohen has commented half-approvingly (here) that the large-scale targeted killings of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan have been "more eloquent than words," killings made possible by the use of predator drones, which, before long, Homeland Security and the TSA might very well use here at home to invade the privacy of the American people as surely as do these scanners.

Consider that the very same predator drone used by the military was already tested out of Fort Drum over northern New York in the summer of 2009 to evaluate its utility to law enforcement, according to this story. Not a year later five such drones are on active duty flying missions over America's southern and northern borders for US Customs and Border Control, as reported here by TheHill.com. The technology for drones has advanced so rapidly that their size is down to 3' in diameter and they are virtually silent, meaning they are becoming increasingly attractive to law enforcement. Three examples of law enforcement use of drones in 2006 and 2007 have been discussed here at The Rutherford Institute. Obama has been described as "in love" with the things.

The airport scanners represent only one element of the new national security state Obama and his surveillance enthusiasts Janet Napolitano and John Pistole want to erect in America. They are equally eager to install thousands of cameras all over the country, and they are funding them. Security check points are going to spring up everywhere if they get their way.

We'll see how eloquent people think all this is when the government comes looking for Roger Cohen and other American citizens with a complete portfolio of your movements and associations in hand, matched to your naked image.

The M/O of Tyranny: Crush Resistance, Enlist Accomplices, Screw Slowly

As Barack Obama transforms the creations of George Bush into the architecture of the national security state, it is well to remember how the process worked in another time, another place, for clues about what one could expect as the TSA tightens its grip on the American people:

There were perhaps three key factors to the success of the anti-Jewish measures in Holland. First, the initial wave of public protest on the part of the Dutch population was immediately and ruthlessly suppressed with extremely severe reprisals. From that point on protest became a more private matter, conducted largely by small underground groups engaged in sabotage against the Germans, or in aiding Nazi victims, particularly Jews, to hide or escape. As public protest disappeared, the Germans were encouraged to proceed with their systematic plan to empty the Jews from Holland.

The second factor was the German device of setting up a Jewish Council, the Joodsche Raad, composed of a group of prominent middle-class Jewish leaders, for the purpose of conveying German commands efficiently to the Jewish population. The Jewish leaders reasoned among themselves, as they did in other occupied countries, that their role in keeping the channels of communication with their German oppressers open, and of maintaining law and order in the newly formed chaotic ghetto population of uprooted families, would help the bereft Jews more than harm them. In retrospect it is easy to see how wrong they were, as the Council quickly became the unwitting tool of the German destruction machinery, actually delivering the Jews directly to the German deportation trains.

The third factor was the gradual nature of the implementation of the anti-Jewish measures, which lulled Jew and non-Jew alike into believing that despite the difficulties and inconveniences, things weren't that bad, and the Germans' demands could be accommodated. The common feeling was that the Germans would certainly lose the war and it was just a matter of waiting out the interim as best as possible. With this in mind, a great many Dutch Jews willingly reported to the trains, which they believed would take them to work camps where they would labor for the Reich.

Learn more from this episode here.

German Leftist Says Importing Guest Workers A Gigantic Error

From the jobs-Germans-won't-do department, Thilo Sarrazin of the German Social Democrat party and a Bundesbank board member has written a book which has had multiculturalists everywhere in an uproar:

In the book, Sarrazin says Europe's top economy is being undermined, overwhelmed and made "more stupid" by poorly educated, fast-breeding, badly integrated and unproductive Muslim immigrants and their offspring.

"If I want to hear the muezzin's call to prayer, then I'll go to the Orient," he says, saying that allowing in millions of "guest workers" in the 1960s and 1970s was a "gigantic error."...

According to a study from Bielefeld University, one in two Germans thinks there are too many foreigners in the country.

And that's what the left in Germany thinks.

For more, go here.

Pew Poll Says Americans Overwhelmingly Support Arizona Immigration Law

A new poll from the Pew Research Center on the recently passed immigration legislation in Arizona shows that Obama and the Democrats, who vehemently oppose the law, are wildly out of step with 73% of the American people:

The public broadly supports a new Arizona law aimed at dealing with illegal immigration and the law’s provisions giving police increased powers to stop and detain people who are suspected of being in the country illegally.

Fully 73% say they approve of requiring people to produce documents verifying their legal status if police ask for them. Two-thirds (67%) approve of allowing police to detain anyone who cannot verify their legal status, while 62% approve of allowing police to question people they think may be in the country illegally.

I wonder what percentage of the American people would like Obama to produce his papers?

The Good Olde Days

When George W. Bush co-opted conservatism for a season,

entangled the country in costly foreign adventures,

pandered to illegal immigrants and the businesses who hired them,

expanded the welfare state to secure the votes of seniors,

exported American jobs because of his free-trade zealotry,

routinely slaughtered the English language and generally spent money like a drunken sailor,

we didn't know how good we had it.

Illegals For Redistribution! Illegals For Violence!

We Are The I.C.E. Men, Koo Koo Ka Choo

Minutemen counter-protestors carried signs like this in San Francisco on Saturday to protest the presence of illegal immigrants in America, and to remind Americans how both Democrat and Republican administrations have been derelict in their duty to secure the borders.

I.C.E. refers to U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Immigration Militants Destroy Private Property In California

The Telegram is reporting that immigrant rights militants caused tens of thousands of dollars in damage in California late Saturday:

Close to 20 businesses were damaged after what started as a peaceful immigrants' rights march in downtown Santa Cruz turned violent, requiring police to call other agencies for help, authorities said.

If Tea Partiers had done this, you'd never hear the end of it, but since leftists did it you're lucky to hear the beginning of it.

The story is here.

We Need More Ice At This Fiesta

In a story on yesterday's May Day immigration law protests, AP is very carefully reporting the totals from cities all across the country. Doing the math, I put the reported numbers for the whole country at at least 116,335.

In LA, protestors numbered 50,000, described by AP as "massive."

In NY, they managed only 6,500, where the organizer described the nationwide protests as the awakening of "a sleeping giant."

In Chicago, police estimated the crowds at 8,000.

At The White House, 35 cranks were arrested for civil disobedience.

In Dallas, 20,000 protested, a handful with signs saying Arizona's Governor is a Nazi and Sheriff Joe a Klansman.

In Denver there were 3,000, in Miami hundreds.

In Houston 7,000.

In Atlanta and Milwaukee each, 5,000, while 3,000 were counted in Boston.

Ann Arbor demonstrators numbered 500.

Tucson, AZ, had 5,000, and Phoenix had "several thousand," according to AP, which also said in San Francisco one counter-protestor had a sign saying "We Need More Ice At This Fiesta."

This is all in sharp contrast to the rallies of four years ago. In 2006 "more than 1 million people across the country" were counted, according to AP. In 2010 barely 10% of that.

Yep, that new Arizona law really galvanized dissent yesterday.

Read the story, here.

51% of Americans Favor New Arizona Immigration Law

The latest Gallup poll shows widespread support for Arizona's new immigration legislation, despite a barrage of negative stories in the media in the wake of its passage:

More than three-quarters of Americans have heard about the state of Arizona's new immigration law, and of these, 51% say they favor it and 39% oppose it.

MediaMatters.org is not happy:

Gallup polled adults nationally about a law that only applies to one state and that, at the time of the survey, had only really been in the national news for a few days, and assumed people who had "heard" of the new law knew what the law was about?

Clearly the left has a lot more work to do to convince people to change their opinion on this subject. The pesky center-right character of the American people just keeps getting in the way.

"Only Controlling The Border Has To Be Settled Right Away"

The ever practical and often wise Peggy Noonan strikes another blow for Edmund Burke in a piece on the illegal immigration problem, "The Big Alienation," for The Wall Street Journal:

In the past four years, I have argued in this space that nothing can or should be done, no new federal law passed, until the border itself is secure. That is the predicate, the commonsense first step. Once existing laws are enforced and the border made peaceful, everyone in the country will be able to breathe easier and consider, without an air of clamor and crisis, what should be done next. What might that be? How about relax, see where we are, and absorb. Pass a small, clear law—say, one granting citizenship to all who serve two years in the armed forces—and then go have a Coke. Not everything has to be settled right away. Only controlling the border has to be settled right away.

To read more, go here.

U.S. Law Already Requires Aliens To Carry Proof Of Registration At All Times

U.S. Code:

TITLE 8 > CHAPTER 12 > SUBCHAPTER II > Part VII > § 1304

(d) Certificate of alien registration or alien receipt card

Every alien in the United States who has been registered and fingerprinted under the provisions of the Alien Registration Act, 1940, or under the provisions of this chapter shall be issued a certificate of alien registration or an alien registration receipt card in such form and manner and at such time as shall be prescribed under regulations issued by the Attorney General.

(e) Personal possession of registration or receipt card; penalties

Every alien, eighteen years of age and over, shall at all times carry with him and have in his personal possession any certificate of alien registration or alien registration receipt card issued to him pursuant to subsection (d) of this section. Any alien who fails to comply with the provisions of this subsection shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and shall upon conviction for each offense be fined not to exceed $100 or be imprisoned not more than thirty days, or both.

Arizona Law Is "Sensibly Written And Rigorously Focused"

In "A Carefully Crafted Immigration Law in Arizona," Byron York for The Washington Examiner asks:

Has anyone actually read the law? Contrary to the talk, it is a reasonable, limited, carefully-crafted measure designed to help law enforcement deal with a serious problem in Arizona. Its authors anticipated criticism and went to great lengths to make sure it is constitutional and will hold up in court. It is the criticism of the law that is over the top, not the law itself.

Read the rest of what he has to say, here.

Nothing Personal, Just (Left-Wing Thug) Business

Michael Graham is just a little ticked off about the easy way the intallekshuls at Brandeis lump together the Tea Party movement with extremism and neo-Nazism while ignoring the actual violence committed by leftists, such as last weekend by opponents to immigration law enforcement in Arizona, or by two Brandeis women, encouraged by one Bill Ayers, who once participated in a bank stick up in which a policeman was killed.

Read all about it here at the Boston Herald.

Five Million Jobs Lost, Net, In 2009, Over A Million Green Cards Issued!

The following appeared here:

April 26, 2010

WND.COMMENTARY

Whose country is this?

'Obama has done everything but his duty to enforce the law'

By Patrick J. Buchanan

With the support of 70 percent of its citizens, Arizona has ordered sheriffs and police to secure the border and remove illegal aliens, half a million of whom now reside there.

Arizona acted because the U.S. government has abdicated its constitutional duty to protect the states from invasion and refuses to enforce America's immigration laws.

"We in Arizona have been more than patient waiting for Washington to act," said Gov. Jan Brewer. "But decades of inaction and misguided policy have created an unacceptable situation."

We have a crisis in Arizona because we have a failed state in Washington.

What is the response of Barack Obama, who took an oath to see to it that federal laws are faithfully executed?

He is siding with the law-breakers. He is pandering to the ethnic lobbies. He is not berating a Mexican regime that aids and abets this invasion of the country of which he is commander in chief. Instead, he attacks the government of Arizona for trying to fill a gaping hole in law enforcement left by his own dereliction of duty.

He has denounced Arizona as "misguided." He has called on the Justice Department to ensure that Arizona's sheriffs and police do not violate anyone's civil rights. But he has said nothing about the rights of the people of Arizona who must deal with the costs of having hundreds of thousands of lawbreakers in their midst.

How's that for Andrew Jackson-style leadership?

Obama has done everything but his duty to enforce the law.

Undeniably, making it a state as well as a federal crime to be in this country illegally, and requiring police to check the immigration status of anyone they have a "reasonable suspicion" is here illegally, is tough and burdensome. But what choice did Arizona have?

The state has a fiscal crisis caused in part by the burden of providing schooling and social welfare for illegals and their families, who consume far more in services than they pay in taxes and who continue to pour in. Even John McCain is now calling for 3,000 troops on the border.

Police officers and a prominent rancher have been murdered. There have been kidnappings believed to be tied to the Mexican drug cartels. There are nightly high-speed chases through the barrios where innocent people are constantly at risk.

If Arizona does not get control of the border and stop the invasion, U.S. citizens will stop coming to Arizona and will begin to depart, as they are already fleeing California.

What we are talking about here is the Balkanization and breakup of a nation into ethnic enclaves. A country that cannot control its borders isn't really a country anymore, Ronald Reagan reminded us.

The tasks that Arizonans are themselves undertaking are ones that belong by right, the Constitution and federal law to the Border Patrol, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Homeland Security.

Arizona has been compelled to assume the feds' role because the feds won't do their job. And for that dereliction of duty the buck stops on the desk of the president of the United States.

Why is Obama paralyzed? Why does he not enforce the law, even if he dislikes it, by punishing the businessmen who hire illegals and by sending the 12 million to 20 million illegals back home? President Eisenhower did it. Why won't he?

Because he is politically correct. Because he owes a big debt to the Hispanic lobby that helped deliver two-thirds of that vote in 2008. Though most citizens of Hispanic descent in Arizona want the border protected and the laws enforced, the Hispanic lobby demands that the law be changed.

Fair enough. But the nation rose up as one to reject the "path-to-citizenship" – i.e., amnesty – that the 2007 plan of George W. Bush, McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama envisioned.

Al Sharpton threatens to go to Phoenix and march in the streets against the new Arizona law. Let him go.

Let us see how many African-Americans, who are today frozen out of the 8 million jobs held by illegal aliens that might otherwise go to them or their children, will march to defend an invasion for which they are themselves paying the heaviest price.

Last year, while Americans were losing a net of 5 million jobs, the U.S. government – Bush and Obama both – issued 1,131,000 green cards to legal immigrants to come and take the jobs that did open up, a flood of immigrants equaled in only four other years in our history.

What are we doing to our own people?

Whose country is this, anyway?

America today has an establishment that, because it does not like the immigration laws, countenances and condones wholesale violation of those laws.

Nevertheless, under those laws, the U.S. government is obligated to deport illegal aliens and punish businesses that knowingly hire them.

This is not an option. It is an obligation.

Can anyone say Barack Obama is meeting that obligation?

70% Support Sheriff Joe's Revenge

As detailed by RasmussenReports.com:

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey finds that 70% of likely voters in Arizona approve of the legislation, while just 23% oppose it. . . .

The new law puts into state statute some of the policies that have long been practiced by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. But his aggressive enforcement of federal laws against illegal immigration have triggered a Justice Department probe and moves by the Obama administration to reduce his ability to enforce federal immigration laws.

Read the full story here.

"Obama Is Against Law Enforcement, Our Citizens And The Rule Of Law"

The Washington Post is reporting "Ariz. governor signs immigration enforcement bill":

The legislation, sent to the Republican governor by the GOP-led Legislature, makes it a crime under state law to be in the country illegally. It also requires local police officers to question people about their immigration status if there is reason to suspect they are illegal immigrants; allows lawsuits against government agencies that hinder enforcement of immigration laws; and makes it illegal to hire illegal immigrants for day labor or knowingly transport them. . . .

The bill's Republican sponsor, state Rep. Russell Pearce of Mesa, said Obama and other critics of the bill were "against law enforcement, our citizens and the rule of law."

Read the full story, here.

Democrats "Attacking Most of the American People"

The following was found here:

April 1, 2010

Enemies of the state

Monica Crowley

During President George W. Bush's two terms, you couldn't drive far without seeing a particular bumper sticker: "Dissent is the highest form of patriotism." Now that Democrats control the White House and Congress, the left treats dissent as the lowest form of treason. When the left agitates over government policies, it's considered righteous anger. When the right - and much of the center - agitate, it's painted as the rantings of the criminally and violently insane.

With Obamacare signed into law, Democrats have stopped congratulating themselves long enough to notice that the American people aren't cheering on the sidelines. According to a CNN poll released last week, 58 percent oppose President Obama's handling of Obamacare, while Gallup shows him this week with a 46 percent job approval, his lowest yet. A CBS poll released after the House of Representatives passed Obamacare showed Speaker Nancy Pelosi's favorable rating at 11 percent and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's at 8 percent, higher only than Beelzebub's.

Aware that their "reform" is rejected by most of the American people and that they will face serious consequences in November, the Democrats have decided that the best defense is a good offense: Attack those who oppose Obamacare. It doesn't seem to bother most Democrats that that pernicious strategy puts them in the weird and politically untenable position of attacking most of the American people.

Over the past week, a parade of Democrats have accused members of the Tea Party movement and other opponents of Obamacare of threatening them. There may be an infinitesimal number of looney tunes who have engaged in that kind of unacceptable behavior out of hundreds of millions of Americans. But the Democrats have dishonestly extrapolated from a few claimed incidents to taint all those who reject Obamacare as wild-eyed wackos.

If this sounds familiar, it's because the Democrats have shown a disturbing pattern of demonizing those who disagree with them. A year ago, Mr. Obama's Department of Homeland Security issued a report for law enforcement called "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment." It suggested that anyone who opposed abortion, illegal immigration and oppressive taxes, supported gun rights or served in Iraq and Afghanistan should be singled out for special attention. Why? Because such people might burst into a spasm of violence at any time. There was no mention of being on the lookout for potential violence committed by Islamic jihadists, even after actual acts of violence committed by an Islamic jihadist in Little Rock. (The Fort Hood shooting happened later.)

In other words, if you go to church, believe in protecting innocent life, own a gun or defend your country, the Democrats consider you a potential enemy of the state. It was no coincidence that the Homeland Security report was issued just as the Tea Party movement was gaining real national traction.

Not surprisingly, then, once they had passed their widely unpopular health care bill, the Democrats moved quickly to delegitimize opposition to it. Their defiant move in the face of overwhelming popular resistance gave them another excuse to equate big-government progressives with good patriots and small government advocates with potentially violent nutcases who must be watched.

As if on cue, this week, Homeland Security, the FBI and the Department of Justice's Joint Terrorism Task Force carried out raids against a purported "Christian militia group" in the Midwest. According to reports, nine people have been charged with plotting to kill police officers with "weapons of mass destruction." The indictment describes the group as an "anti-government extremist organization" and the FBI special agent in charge, Andrew Arena, cast it as "radical and fringe." That may be, but the description has a conveniently familiar ring to it.

Interestingly, the head of the Michigan branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Dawud Walid, rushed to announce the raids at a CAIR banquet at about the same time the story became public. "We salute the FBI for breaking up a militia that was seeking to harm American Muslims," he said. It's curious that he would know that at a time when the FBI still had the investigation under seal. (We're still waiting to hear why Homeland Security and the FBI chose to use the descriptive word "Christian" when they seem unable to use the word "Muslim" in connection with Islamic extremism.)

It's mind-blowingly coincidental that these raids on a supposedly "Christian" militia group would come at the exact moment that Democrats were trying to change public opinion on Obamacare by claiming persecution by their opponents. They have cast Tea Partiers, conservatives, independents, Christians and militia members as all cut from the same unstable, volatile cloth. How can anyone take their opposition to the Democrats' agenda seriously when they're toting guns and being raided by Homeland Security and the FBI? They're all nuts, don't you know?

The Democrats handle dissent by isolating it, smearing it and delegitimizing it in order to crush it. The warning should be clear: If you have small-government, traditional values, you may be considered by your own leadership to be an enemy of the state.

Monica Crowley is a nationally syndicated radio host, a panelist on "The McLaughlin Group" and a Fox News contributor.

All Points Bulletin

The United States Border Patrol is asking citizens to keep on the lookout for a red 1951 Chevy that they suspect is being used to smuggle illegal immigrants across the border from Mexico and into points along the U.S. border. If you see the vehicle pictured below and have reason to believe that it is the suspect vehicle, you are urged to contact your local police department or the U. S. Border Patrol.

h/t Scott

Of 56 Democrat Women in the House, Just 2 Voted For Stupak

Kathleen Dahlkemper of Pennsylvania and Marcy Kaptur of Ohio voted for the Stupak Amendment last November, but for the House healthcare bill. All the other women in the House Democrat Caucus, 54 of them, voted against the Stupak Amendment which prohibits federal funding of abortion.

Only Stephanie Herseth Sandlin of South Dakota, Suzanne Kosmas of Florida, and Betsy Markey of Colorado voted against the House healthcare bill.

Nancy Pelosi is whipping them all today, according to Roll Call:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is asking all female Democratic Members to attend a hastily called meeting Wednesday morning but isn’t saying what the meeting is about. . . .

The meeting comes as Democratic leaders enter the final stretch of health care reform — and as they scramble to address fractures in their Caucus over abortion and immigration provisions in the bill.

The full story is here.